WPC Resilient: Ode to women

WPC Resilient

This is a bold statement and I challenge you to dispute this IF you are bold enough to do so:

Women are the epitome of flexibility, elasticity, strength, hardiness – in short, all those qualities that can be described as resilience, despite the fact that they are often referred to as the weaker sex.

Women all over the world and through the ages have labored and suffered emotionally and physically in many ways, but somehow they have managed to survive cruelty and abuse. They find the strength to bear and raise children in difficult circumstances, support their life partners, care for the poor and sick, care for their families and community, have full-time careers, run a country (yes, sometimes they win elections)  🙂 … and … and.

Yes, sometimes they make life difficult for themselves – the picture above was taken on one of the physically most challenging days of my life. As a result of a spur of the moment decision to hit a challenging hiking trail in the Oribi Gorge in KwaZulu-Natal, coupled with bad planning, a tendency to get lost in my own backyard and a short memory (I’m 65, but keep on forgetting that I am no longer young and agile), we were at times convinced of the fact that we would never see our base camp again. It was a hot day, we skipped breakfast (and inadvertently lunch as well), carried too little water, were inappropriately dressed for a very hot day … and … and.

We returned home hours later, sunburnt, very tired, famished, dehydrated, and in my case, with blisters and very sore toes. However, in the process of almost killing ourselves, we captured the most beautiful nature scenes (you can see some of these on my Afrikaans blog which I wrote about the experience).

Yes, and thanks for asking, we are none the worse for wear, although I am now missing two big toenails) and guess what? less than a month later we were back on the same trail, just to make sure that we didn’t miss out on any nice shots and to add our flat stone to the pile!

Resilient we are!