It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, as the saying goes. While Dickens may well have forgiven me for snagging his line, he probably would not have lasted a week in that windblown, tide-lashed little hamlet caught on the crooked tooth of False Bay where my woman and I tried to make a stand against the world. Hell, he would have gotten his ass kicked on the first night in Plankies, or brutally ravished by a marauding troop of rogue baboons, or worse.
Indeed, ‘twas not a place for poofs or poets (though I somehow managed to make do). Relatively unspoilt by the madness men have come to call civilization, it had a long-standing reputation as a makeshift haven for hermits, hooligans and all manner of refugees from the city wanting to raise a bit of hell. Back in the day there were no streetlights, no malls, no banks, no cops. At night, the stars blazed overhead with a holy fury that lit up your blood. The mountain rose like a butcher’s block over the sea by day, dulled by the dust the howling southeaster whipped up off the gravel roads. Barely a thousand permanent souls called the place home, with the vast majority of mish-mashed holiday houses standing empty throughout the year. It felt like a cross between a frontier town and an abandoned summer resort, a deserted movie set where a zillion zingers played out every day and night, if you were down with the scene and you knew where to look. It was rough as fuck and sweet as spit. We were all outlaws back then at the start, ragged pioneers staggering through a strange land, gatekeepers to a precious realm we could not entirely comprehend but would defend with our lives if it came to it.
If that sounds too good to be true, in a way, it was. It could get pretty lonely out there. People mostly kept to themselves and did their own thing, which wasn’t much. Everyone just seemed happy to be the hell away from it all. Folks had a way of introducing themselves to each other over and over again when they happened to venture out to the seedy bars at night, having been just too goddamn wasted to remember all the times they’ve met before. It was the strangest of tribes, bound by desolation, but we all knew we were on to something special. I’d been swimming against the Tide my whole life, and being out there was like coming up for air. I guess I’ll never know exactly why, but sitting it out among the dopeheads and the dust made me feel more alive and freer than I’ve ever been.
From the get-go, my woman and I had no problem filling the gaps left by the now absent pillars of the system. We went off-grid as far as we could. I had huge rainwater tanks and a greenhouse set up and we grew our own food. We got some lion shit from a big cat sanctuary and put it out along the parameter of the garden to keep baboons and porcupines away. Apart from working as a photographer out ever so often on the road - doing travel stories and portraits of so-called celebrities whom I knew nothing about - I began moonlighting as a pretty successful cannabis farmer. I developed a few new strains and named them after literary heroes in iconic works of fiction (McMurphy and Holden Caulfield would kick your ass to the other side of Sunday). I dived for what little seafood we needed whenever I felt like it - permits were for city geeks - and shot pheasants with a high-powered air rifle. I freed my inner hillbilly and drank whiskey and made bonfires in the backyard just for fun. We got ours while the getting was good.
In the end, however, it couldn’t last. It was always just a matter of time before suburbia’s dreary dogs came looking for us. Within a few short years since our arrival, the town was systematically overrun by respectable citizens of all kinds, fine upstanding working-class types and clean-cut families from the city looking to raise their darling kids in the goddamn country. Property prices soared. To our absolute horror coffee bars, pet shops and pre-schools sprang up all over the place like a rash. The vast stretches of velvet green surrounding us were staked and ripped up by bulldozers to make space for sensible double-storey homes. The fireflies fled from the fynbos. The unkempt soul of the place was slowly nailed to the ground by white picket fences, dying fierce and proud without so much as a sigh.
My woman and I did what we could. We began driving around late at night in my rusty pickup, bombed out of our minds, yanking out “For Sale” signs on empty lots wherever we could find them. It seemed to kind of work for a while, but they would always appear again after a few days like poison fucking toadstools. With neighbours came fences, and concerns, and complaints. In no time at all the trusty ol’ rifle only came out to chase off the drones - flown from afar by some rich little shit in his mommy’s leather lounge - that were buzzing way too low overhead while I was tending my outdoor crop. We ranted and raved and plotted and planned, but it was no use. It soon became clear that we had our backs against the wall and there was nothing for it.
At the same time, in a rash pincher move of cruelest fate, my photography gigs began drying up and my woman lost her job. It didn’t take long for our meager savings to disappear. Somewhere along the line she got hooked on pills trying to deal with the unique brand of hell that ensued while I paced around for months on end in the furthest corners of my mind like some snarling, wounded animal. The walls were finally closing in and God only knows it wasn’t fucking pretty.
One drunken, strung-out night, after working the whole day in the city on some low-paying studio job I should never have taken in the first place, I crashed my bike into the mountainside on the way back. I was hurt, but I somehow managed to get the thing started and make it home. Later on, as I was sitting in the garage grimly assessing the damage to myself and the machine, I glanced at my woman squatting quietly across from me, her mouth bruised by cheap red wine in the grow lights’ eerie fluorescent glow. From somewhere deep behind her opioid-glazed eyes she was crying out for me to be a man, not the boy who brought her out to that godforsaken fallen Eden in the first place, and I finally realised that the jig was up.    
The rest, as they say, is history. Driven half-mad by disillusionment and despair, we soon after departed for an Oriental neon jungle at the far side of the world in the hope that a random offer of gainful employment would dry us out a bit on the high and narrow and help us pick up what was left of the pieces. It turned out to be a world so perversely opposite to what we’ve come to know that it utterly defied belief, but somehow restored our faith in ourselves and each other. (But that’s another story altogether.)
All being said and done, on the eve of our departure I went for a walk with my camera on the deserted Hangklip road, a gnarled gravel beast that led to a notorious watering hole a few clicks out of town. The road was set to be tarred within a few weeks, and I wanted to say my goodbyes before this battered ol’ boulevard running through the heart of one of the wildest places I’ve ever known got buried in the name of SUV’s and sedans. As I gazed down the lens, I couldn’t help but recall what some prick architect from the city told me one night over his sauvignon spritzer at Miems: you can’t stop progress.
Sure enough, buddy, but just be careful that progress doesn’t stop you. But each to his own, I guess, and the best of luck to one and all, especially now that the wolves in shepherd’s clothing are finally driving the herd - kept so busy on the Farm that they can no longer tell their asses from their fucking elbows - to the edge of the cliff with a fine mist of fear at their backs.
In the end, whatever you are running away from or hurtling towards on this godawful modern-day production line we’re living in, no matter how brave or wise or cruel you are, I’ll bet my bottom dollar that it is no longer there to be had in any far-flung corner of the earth. It doesn’t lie at the bottom of a bottle or at the end of a joint, either. On the crazed trip down the rabbit-hole that swept me off the beaten track, I’ve come to learn that the real sacred wilderness lies somewhere deep within, a place so mysterious and free that few dare to venture there anymore, where angels and devils sit side by side on Salvation’s porch, swigging fire from the same tin cup and howling at the moon.

Photography, words, narration © Copyright Jac Kritzinger.

Music © Copyright Albertus van Rensburg.