COBALT RED; the need to walk mountains; PHYSICALITY artist retreat; Elgin Open Gardens; Wendell Berry (1934-2026) Congiunta
Good Morning
Reading Siddharth Kara’s COBALT RED (2024) takes you inside the blood-for-cobalt economy. Upfront Kara states that “.. across twenty-one years of research into slavery and child labour, I have never seen more extreme predation for profit than I witnessed at the bottom of global cobalt supply chains.”
As is suggested in the many reviews of Cobalt Red, we are all implicated in this tragedy. All smartphone batteries require a few grams of refined cobalt, all tablets require up to 30g of refined cobalt. Electric vehicles require in excess of 5Kg of refined cobalt. Millions of tons of cobalt will be needed to achieve the COP26 elimination of fuel powered vehicles goals for 2040. Not to forget the rechargeable batteries that store our solar generated power.
Cobalt is typically found in nature bound to copper, and the copper-cobalt deposits in the Congo stretch along a four hundred kilometre crescent from the southern DRC town of Kolwezi to northern Zambia, forming an area called the Central African Copper Belt.
I am halfway through COBALT RED and have not yet reached Kara’s call for action. The reader learns from the author that the working and living conditions do not have to be that way but that the supply chain is so convoluted, freeing the tech barons from feeling responsible for the hellish lives of cobalt miners.
No surprises that the US voted against correcting the historical undersized mapping of Africa. In closing my sharing of this book, here is one of the many paragraphs that struck me. “A lone girl stood atop a dome of dirt, hands on her hips, eyes cast across the barren land where giant trees once ruled. Her gold-and-indigo sarong fluttered wildly in the wind as she surveyed the ruin of people and earth. Beyond the horizon, beyond all reason and morality, people from another world awoke and checked their smartphones. None of the artisanal miners I met in Kipushi had ever even seen one.”
Thought leader Nokwanda Khumalo pronounced in an interview on SAFM a fortnight ago that “no one is coming to save us”. The intention methinks is not to frighten us but to bring to mind that we are the primary drivers of our lives.
Aire.libre tells us why we need to walk mountains. ‘For generations, mountains have been places of passage, reflection and connection. Places where people walked with intention, gave thanks, listened, and found meaning through the journey itself.
Something shifts when we spend enough time moving through a landscape. The pace of thought changes. Attention returns to the body, to the ground beneath us, to the weather, the light, the distance. What felt tangled begins to loosen. The mountains ask us to inhabit the present more fully, and somewhere along the way, we find our center again.’ www.airelibre.run
Take your life firmly in hand, be adventurous and reap the benefits of walking the mountains with us this summer, dates in PS below. Enquire HERE FOR CONTACT.
We are calling artists to join PHYSICALITY, a weekend art retreat, which includes monotype print making, commencing on the afternoon of Friday the 2nd of October 2026.
Artist and teacher Jill Trappler’s writes ‘I will be taking a slow approach to the weekend focused on the physicality of image imaging. On Friday afternoon we will work while walking and exploring. On Saturday we will work in the studio from what we gather on Friday. On Sunday I would like to introduce monotype print making. You are welcome to join any or all sessions. Time to ease into spring with a soft, lightness of touch.’
Ample time to be had for each artist to have one on one’s with Jill Trappler.
At this time of year we retain the old canopies of the previous year’s Gunnera to protect the new growth during these potentially frosty months. Pictured above. Our Gunnera beds are firm favourites with visitors.
2026 marks the 26th year of Elgin Open Gardens, weekends of 31 October and 7 November. This year eleven gardens will be on show, including two that have not shown for some years. A stop in Houw Hoek includes both the gardens of Wildekrans Country House and neighbouring Outspan.
Wildekrans Country House as listed on www.elginopengardens.co.za
‘An established one hectare informal garden set against the dramatic Houw Hoek mountains. Historic leiwater flows through the property giving it a unique energy – home to abundant Gunnera and diverse frog life. A rambling and tranquil experience amongst numerous contemporary sculptures. Country style food, art and farm shopping at The Barn. Gate donations to the Bot River Education Foundation.’ Do visit.
Poet Wendell Berry passed away this week at the age of ninety two. In his long life, Berry never used a computer, he was worried that what the technology was improving may not outweigh what was being lost with its adoption. (Samuel J Abrams)
Reading Wendell Berry’s The Peace of Wild Things (2015) never fails to soothe and is always a good pick-me-up.
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
With love
PS – Sign up now to join hiking groups on these dates: 🏞️
Sign up now to join groups on these dates: 🏞️
• 📅 11 September 2026 – Weekend Walking
• 📅 21 September 2026 – Green Mountain Trail
• 📅 05 October 2026 – Green Mountain Trail
• 📅 07 December 2026 – Green Mountain Trail
To walk with your own group, book these dates: 🏞️
• 📅 14 September 2026 – Green or Blue Mountain Trail
• 📅 19 October 2026 – Green or Blue Mountain Trail
• 📅 26 October 2026 – Green or Blue Mountain Trail
• 📅 9 November 2026 – Green or Blue Mountain Trail
A 10% discount is offered on groups of ten and 7% on groups of six.
Follow @greenmountaintrail for trail news.
PPS: Book the Friday 2nd October PHYSICALITY art retreat by reply email. info@greenmountain.co.za
PPPS: A curious and heartwarming discovery told me that The Peace of Wild Things is included in the second edition of Tools of the Trade: Poems for new doctors (Scottish Poetry Library, 2016). ‘A copy of the first edition was given to all graduating doctors in Scotland in 2014 and 2015, and with support from RCGPS and the Medical and Dental Defence Union of Scotland, to all graduating doctors in 2016, 2017 and 2018. We are very grateful for the individual donations which funded the cost of this anthology, and to the Deans of the Scottish medical schools who made it possible to give the books to their graduating students. Scottish Poetry Library
