Focus on wild life of Africa

CATHEDRAL OF THE WILD: AN AFRICAN JOURNEY HOME by Boyd Varty, published by Random House

BOYD Varty writes with enthusiasm, honesty and a refreshing curiosity about this place we call home including the larger address of the planet itself.

He sums up living in Africa, the idyllic and the violent, the natural and man-made.

Short chapters focus on events as diverse as Madiba periodically visiting Londolozi Private Game Reserve after 27 years in prison to Varty's experience in a sweat lodge in the desert in Arizona at the invitation of Martha Beck, another visitor to Londolozi.

He charts his growing up and becoming his own man after a series of trials that threatened his sanity; it is a journey of the body, mind and spirit.

He traces the changing attitudes towards game, from big game hunting to becoming custodians and preservers of a threatened heritage. He speaks of a family's passion to share that heritage with the world and relates his own growing certainty of the particular legacy he would like to effect.

There is a belief that Londolozi only work because of the efforts of the family and the wider community in which it is situated. The involvement of the Shangaan people throughout the years of apartheid and beyond was integral to the success and the ambience of the game reserve.

Varty emphasises that changes in the natural world take time, and as he traces his family's impact on their "acre" of the planet, one can see that what was essentially a wasteland returns generation by generation to an Eden. – Liz van Aarde