Clear skies led us to abandon previous plans for the afternoon; instead, we took our window of sunshine and visited Table Mountain. “Visited” seems the wrong word to use, as though we somehow graced the massive natural wonder with our presence. In actual fact, we took our place among countless others and marveled while the mountains stood unperturbed.
Our caravan of combis (South African for vans) wound through Cape Town and arrived on the other side, already considerably high with an unhindered view of the city and port. Here we met our ride: a 60-passenger cable car that took us the rest of the way until we were approximately 1,086 metres above sea level.
Here. Fully present as I rarely am, struck speechless in the presence of a beauty that more richly resonates in me than anything I have ever experienced. I see, but my mind cannot process, and suddenly I understand a bit more why the Lord hid Moses behind a rock when He passed him by. On one side, the densely-clustered colors of the city and the glassy bay. On another, steep cliffs cascading into the ocean—alternating patches of vibrant green and stone, giant chiseled rocks—and the mountaintops continue before our eyes, crowding out the horizon. Eternity in every direction.
Size, dimension, distance, I now hold loosely. We spanned half the globe in a day and landed in a corner of the world to stand at an unimaginable height and swim where two oceans meet . . . and we find that beauty, however foreign, is still somehow familiar.
The world I know has grown; I, too, am forced to grow if I will embrace it still.
by Rachel Harlow