Leaping into the New Year is one way to hit the ground running

I began my new year by running off the edge of Lions Head and leaping into the air.

My knees almost scraped the tips of the proteas at the foot of the “runway” but thanks Wayne, my paraglider pilots’ skill with the big wing, we were up, up and away in the nick of time.

I ended the year with walk on Muizenberg beach, a slalom ski through the crowds packed closer than the clichéd sardines in a tin. There I tip toed over a rash of bluebottles, caught wafts of conversation, and captured vignettes of humans on holiday to the smell of suntan lotion, and the low gravelly rush of the sea at high tide.

I will never forget watching a little girl, about eight years old, standing in the crowd at the water’s edge her arms outstretched, little hands waving, tiny fingers like propellers, jumping for joy.

She was yelling “thank you, thank you, thank you” as the high tide washed a swathe of foamy water into the trench she had scooped in the sand.

Then she squealed with delight as she jumped into her private tidal pool and splashed about in the few seconds the water lasted before it was sponged into the sand.

Much later on the same day, I walked behind a man, who was sweating with exertion, huffing and puffing as he tried to keep up with his 10-year-old daughter climbing step-by-step up a steep section of the path to the summit of Lions Head.

We were among the hundreds and hundreds of people climbing, just before New Year’s Eve, like a row of soldier ants, to bathe under the pale light of the full blue moon while the city, winked orange neon far below.

The little girl springy as a cricket in her bright pink top, all gangly legs and arms was hopping, step-by-step effortlessly higher and higher. Her father struggling to keep up, as she asked if they could climb Table Mountain when they had done with Lions Head.

He did not have the breath to reply, but said afterwards, to me; “Jus! Its hard to keep up with them, man.”

It reminded me of a footnote I received attached to an e-mail this week: It read: Every morning in Africa a Gazelle wakes up knowing it must out-run the fastest lion or it will be eaten up. Every morning a Lion wakes up knowing that it must run faster than the slowest Gazelle or it will die of hunger. Whether you are a lion or a Gazelle, when the sun is up...better be running.

And so it was last year that I ran. I sprinted to South America, to Australia, swam in the Amazon, walked the length of the Copacabana, to Ipanema and back, and dreamed of Long Beach, Noordhoek and longed for home. In the sultry rainforest I remembered the slopes of Table Mountain, and the in the warm and oily Amazon, the cool, refreshing waters of the Palmiet. And in Australia, they have beaches but who would there be to understand you if you said: “Jou ma’ se…”

So happy to be home, I took my life into my own hands jumped off Lions Head, to begin my new year with a gasp of exhilaration followed by a whoop of pure joy.