Mountain view

I was out in Mitchell's Plain last week, visiting one of my partner organizations. I spent some time stomping around their permaculture garden in Rocklands, which is leafy and leaf-smelly and really just oasis-esquely amazing. The organization has an organic mushroom project, where mushrooms are grown in hundreds of plastic bags, in access-controlled incubator rooms. All very X-Files. I peered through the glass walls at the rows of bags on rows of shelves, not having the correct head gear, foot gear and overalls to go inside. Unsurprisingly, it smelt less than fresh. Project staff have ambitious production goals for the future, hoping to harvest 200kg of mushrooms a month. I tried to imagine what 200kg of mushrooms could look like and created an fairly unpleasant Dr Seuss meets set-in-space-made-for-TV-movie picture in my mind. But that's not my point here.

We drove back to the southern suburbs via Baden-Powell Drive, stopping at the side of the road so that Will could buy dried snoek from a couple of guys behind a trestle table. I love Baden-Powell Drive. It's so close to the ocean that the sand dunes literally blow across the road. Driving west, you see the whole of False Bay, mountain backdrop-included. That's my point.

I was busy in Nyanga yesterday, and there peeping out from between roofs and under electrical wires, just a smidgen of a peak, just a hint of a mountain. Look, it's not the same view that I had when I was living in Gardens, in that flat that looked over the top of Gardens Centre. There I was so close to the mountain that I couldn't see Devil's Peak, the Table and Lion's Head all in one go. But hells, it's still a mountain-view. And it's somewhat comforting to know that there are some things big enough to transcend the distances between the here's and there's of the city.