Passing on Dreams

Cricket commentator, Robin Jackman, said it the best after the moving and very well supported memorial service to Mike Lundy a few days back. ‘They should hold MY funeral service BEFORE I pass on,’ he said. ‘Then I will sneak in and sit in the back row.  In that way I can listen to all the agreeable comments which people say on these occasions.  No point in saying them when I am not here, is there?’

Mike Lundy

We were talking after the memorial service for Mike Lundy, Wynberg Old Boy who matriculated in 1958.  He was a popular member of the Hout Bay community as well as an admired and respected author who died recently.  The well-deserved praises and laudatory comments flowed.  This was exemplified by his son, Guy, when he welcomed everyone to the gathering. ‘He is Cape Town’s Sir Edmund Hilary.’

That was certainly no exaggeration.  There can’t be many Capetonians who have hiked our Western Cape mountain trails who have not at some stage dipped into one of his eight well-researched best-selling books on hiking.  He is a household name and judging by the plethora of comments and tributes at the service, there are many who attribute their love of the Cape mountains to this remarkable author who tramped every inch of the mountain paths to ensure authenticity and legitimacy in his writings.  All his observations and recommendations were tinged with humour and a special humanity as he described the history of the area he was walking through as well as insisting that the reader would enjoy the spectacular views as much as he did.

No wonder, then, that in 1996 he received the Merit Award from the Hiking Federation of Southern Africa for what they described as his ‘exceptional service to the hiking community of Southern Africa’.

Virtually every speaker at the service made mention of the fact that Mike had inspired them to put on hiking boots and venture out on a mountain trail. None said it more eloquently or unpretentiously than his twelve year old grandson, Jake. ‘Grandad gave me a love for the mountains,’ he said simply to the assembled company. ‘When he died, I went up to his favourite waterfall above Baviaanskloof, where he and I often walked.  It was raining but when we arrived at the waterfall, the clouds parted and for a moment I saw blue sky.  I am sure that was a sign from Grandad that he was watching us. I know that I am going to love the mountains as much as he did.’

That surely is the greatest gift which we can give to those who come after us - passion and enthusiasm.

Occasionally articles from newspapers stick in our memories.  I particularly remember one published on Christmas Day many years ago.  It was written by a Cape Times journalist, Evelyn Holtzhauzen, who had a regular fortnightly column on the outdoors entitled ‘Urban Edge’.  It was entitled:  The Best Christmas Present I Ever Received.

He recounted how, as a young teenager, he had had a visit from his uncle one Christmas morning who announced that the young Evelyn must put on his takkies immediately as he was now going to give him his best-ever Christmas present. He proceeded to take him to the Drakensberg and introduce him to the mountains. The bug bit and Evelyn became a life-long hiker.  What a worthwhile Christmas present for a young man.

Mike Lundy gave Jake – and thousands of others – that same present on the other 364 days of the year.

In his address, Guy quoted from a contribution which was sent in by a listener when his father was once speaking on radio.  Mike made his son promise that one day he would read it out at his funeral. With the Hout Bay mountains outside Suikerbossie barely visible in the cloud and the rain teeming down outside, Guy honoured that promise:

The mountain is a cathedral,

The stream a quiet prayer,

The wind a psalm that whispers

Our God is everywhere.

It is interesting that the word ‘enthusiasm’ comes from the Greek word ‘entheos’ meaning ‘divinely inspired’ or ‘possessed by a god’.  There can be no greater reward for a parent, or a teacher, than to unlock a life-long passion in any subject or activity in our children as that then gives us adults a raison d’etre -  a reason for living - knowing that we have sparked an interest and passed on something worthwhile and meaningful. 

Guy finished off by quoting George Bernard Shaw.  Surely every father, every teacher, every coach would like this said about him:  ‘This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no “brief candle” for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations’.

Now THAT is a good lesson to pass on to your son.

Tim, the youngest of the sons, clutched the metaphorical torch as spoke movingly of his father inspiring him in his personal ardour for the mountains.  He mentioned that he wanted to carry on the Lundy tradition of writing books to inspire young mountaineers – and it was not lost on anyone that the torch was being passed on.

Tim and I chatted afterwards about our history classes back in the day.  Unknowingly, he expressed the same sentiment about history at school as his father did in his book ‘Twenty Walks around Hout Bay’.  In the Introduction, Mike wrote: ‘Hout Bay is so steeped in history…. and to think that as a schoolboy, I absolutely despised History! But it suddenly came alive when I read about it in the newspapers of the day…. this was the real thing! These were no dry history books.’

Tim was equally scathing about my History classes before asking me if I received his postcard twenty years ago from Amsterdam which he had visited after school with his brother. ‘I saw Anne Frank’s house,’ he said. ‘Do you remember discussing her story in class? I am afraid that I was not really listening when you told us how she lived and the reasons why she was hidden away in an upstairs room before she was betrayed. But when I was there in the house, it took on a real meaning.  I had to write to you and tell you. So I posted a card to you from her house.’

I went home and found the card.  I am a Virgo after all and we Virgos don’t throw away anything. I have the view that if a boy takes the trouble to handwrite a card to me, I will take the trouble to keep it.

‘History was never my favourite subject at school,’ he said in the card, ‘but now that I am in Amsterdam I see the point.’

I decided to take that as a backhanded compliment!

Teaching History and Latin is a real privilege as we have an endless source of material with which we can delight our classes.  We use the events, the places and the characters from the past in order to learn more about our present.

After I re-read Tim’s card, I took the opportunity to read a number of other cards sent to me over the years by various boys on their overseas trips. Edmund Rodseth (2007) wrote to me from Hadrian’s Wall where he found the time to walk right along its length.  Kevin Bacon (1992) sent me a card from Pompeii: ‘I am finally here and it is my filial duty to let you know that I am thinking of my Standard 6 Latin lessons.’

I certainly couldn’t claim paternity for Kevin but I appreciated the card. Perhaps our classes helped to give birth to his desire to see the ancient world.  He finished off his card by boasting that he remembered his Latin by reeling off the present tense of ‘amo’.  Now that it is over twenty years later, I am sure that he won’t take offence when I tell him that he made two errors in his conjugating.

Bastien Ruwiel (1989) also expressed his excitement in his card from Pompei. ‘It has taken almost 15 years, but another of my dreams has been fulfilled.  I am now in Pompeii. Won’t you show this card to your Latin classes and also inspire their interest and desire to travel …’

His classmate, Sheldon MacDonald, managed the trip 14 years earlier than Bastien in that he went travelling straight after matric. ‘I promised myself in Standard 6 that I would get to Pompeii – and now I have.’

Perhaps Donovan Cooper (1996) said it the most meaningfully: ‘Thank you for the dreams.  I have finally made it to Rome….’ Fulfilling the dream continued when his next postcard arrived from the Roman baths in the English city of Bath.

Distance lent fondness to the memories of Tim Lundy in that card he wrote many years before from Amsterdam. Presumably it has now slipped from his memory that he also wrote enthusiastically to me on the city’s red light district. Now that is an aspect of entheos which was went beyond my job description.  I hope that he did not mean to imply that the delights of Sodom and Gomorrah  were also part of our history discussions.

Now THAT would have been real education.