INTRODUCTION: ECOTHERAPY IN THE DRAKENSBERG MOUNTAINS

‘Think like a mountain’, the early American conservationist Aldo Leopold said. In his view, mountains have the potential to change our thinking, to enlarge our view of the world and to ground it in a sense of perspective. The mountains of Yosemite moved the pioneer American environmentalist John Muir to write of their ‘spiritual power’ to make people realise that they are not separate from, but part of nature. As he expressed it: ‘You bathe in these spirit-beams, turning round and round, as if warming at a camp-fire. Presently you lose consciousness of your own separate existence: you blend with the landscape, and become part and parcel of nature’ (Muir, 1996: 100). The Drakensberg mountains may not possess the grandeur of the mountains of Yosemite; however, for a group of ex-liberation struggle combatants from Soweto, scarred by their experience of South Africa's long years of violent conflict, the challenge of surviving in the Drakensberg mountains for seven days deepened their selfreliance and their capacity to come to terms with the past, to respond to challenges, and to relate with empathy and sensitivity to others. Their experience included solitary meditations, as well as climbing and swimming through a rock tunnel that symbolised their rebirth as transformed individuals. These activities were part of a programme of ‘ecotherapy’, which is rooted in the notion of nature as a healer.

This notion is included in the ‘mapping exercise’ this chapter attempts. It is what Haraway has called ‘a travelogue through mindscapes and landscapes of what may count as nature’ (Haraway, 1992: 295). Nature, as Williams has suggested, is ‘perhaps the most complex word in the (English) language’ (Williams, 1980: 69). It is a dense social concept, a sort of keyword whose meanings are always unstable and contested. It is often invoked as a singular, undifferentiated entity: an entity with intrinsic powers that speaks with a single voice (Soper, 1995). But there is no consensus on how to understand and value nature. Different cultures, and individuals within them, have constructed different meanings and purposes for nature, which are embedded in a complex set of beliefs, practices and values.