Jack Frost pays the Park a visit

Greetings from the Heart of Scouting

For two weeks now we have had high cirrus clouds drifting over Matabeleland. These cobweb-like cloud formations look so delicate and are a joy to watch as the light high altitude winds at 40 000 feet, ( 13 000 metres) transport them across the brilliant blue sky backdrop. As they move, their formations are continually changing and with a little imagination, one can 'see' the shape of a tree, a bird or the head of a animal. Then it is gone and a new shape is formed in its place. I am told that they are precursors of warm weather, although they are themselves the coldest of clouds being ice crystals.

The weekend turned out to be rather fragmented. I left home a little later than usual owing to having to prepare some equipment that I needed to use at the Park. The morning was bright, sunny and warm with only a light breeze blowing. One of my missions for this weekend was to pay Chief Moyo a visit, the second one within a week, to request his permission to allow the Scouts to hike through his area during the forth coming Centenary Camp. Unfortunately, he was not at home and so I will have to make another journey in the coming weeks. I had taken a short cut to get to his house, I know the area well having hiked through it many times, and was following a narrow road where the bushes were scrapping along the sides of Inguluvani, when all a sudden I was confronted by a vehicle coming in the opposite direction. Well, I did not expect another vehicle along the bush track that I was following. Then just for good measure, about fifty meters behind, was a second vehicle. Can you imagine a traffic jam in the middle of the veldt? Us drivers just laughed and on talking to them as we passed each other, they were just as surprised to see me, a white fellow in the Communal Land, as I was to see so much traffic on the dusty narrow track. In contrast, on my way to the Chief, I had to shoo cattle off the track, now I was shooing other vehicles. It is a crazy but beautiful world we live in.

A Cherie greeting from the staff at the Sandy Spruit entrance gate to the Matobo National Park and then a lazy seven kilometre drive along the winding narrow tar road to Gordon Park. Although I did not see any wild animals, there were numerous spoor along the verges of the road.

Once at the Park, I attended to the usual chores to make life comfortable, I am in reality a real softy when I have no Scouts around. After lunch I re-whipped the ends of some of the ropes that needed repairs and then locking up the pump, I headed back into town for Mass. Christopher was waiting for me after the service and so we headed out to the Park for the remainder of the weekend.

Sunday morning was exceptionally cold. The air was still and the sun took ages to rise. Now, this situation is really not on. I mean last week was mid-winter and now according to my wishes we should be enjoying lovely warm weather. Having had our breakfast, the main task for the day was to complete a project that we had begun during the parent's camp the weekend before, by pouring concreting around a stone that we had placed on the 'Skipper' Knapman Training Ground. This was Christopher's first experience of mixing concrete, which he thoroughly enjoyed. I am waiting until he sees me next week, for I am sure he will be complaining of sore stomach muscles. Ha, Ha.

In the afternoon we cut dead wood out of the trees around Headquarters, so as to prevent any possibility of people getting hurt should a dead branch fall at the wrong time.

Did I say a week or two ago that winter had come and gone? Well, if I did I was very much mistaken, not an unusual problem for me, as Jack Frost paid the Park a visit some time during the week. On recording the temperatures for the week I was surprised to find out that the minimum temperature had fallen to 24 F.That is 8 degrees F below freezing or -4 degrees C.

Temperatures for the week ending 28 June: 24F or -4C and 79F or 26C

A hurried good bye as I dash for my winter woolies. Brrrrr!

Norman
Bulawayo, 29-06-2009