Skywatch Friday – sunset Cathedral Peak range

Thanks again to Melinda for “introducing” me to Skywatch Friday. You can see more Skywatch photos here.

This photo was taken about 4 years ago when I made a 3 week trip to South Africa with MissN to spend time with my father who was dying of cancer.  The three of us spent a few days at Cathedral Peak Hotel in the Drakensberg.  Cathedral Peak had been one of our favourite places when we lived in South Africa, and the scene of our ascent of Cleft Peak (3281m and I will never forget that altitude!) on a 4 day hike/bushwalk in 1986 before we emigrated to Australia.

So I took my father (who had been to Cathedral Peak Hotel with my mother at our suggestion) there for a few days and we had a rewarding time.  The sunsets were especially spectacular and “biblical” in the sense that they evoked memory images of Bible story picture books from my youth, and this photograph captured that atmosphere – that sense of the transcendent communion between heaven and earth by means of a pure light which breaks through the clouds.

This is the sun setting behind the Inner and Outer Horns in the Cathedral Range, which comprises mainly the 4 free standing peaks adjacent to the main escarpment – Inner and Outer Horns, and the Bell and Cathedral Peak which are over to the right out of this photo.

Inner and Outer Horn

“1 will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.”
Psalm 121 (I don’t often prefer the KJV!)

And this is my dad and MissN in the hotel pool just hours before the above photograph was taken.

It was a healing time.  Not an easy time for any of us, but I am very pleased we shared it.

Tags: Cathedral Peak, Dad, skywatch Friday, sunset