DELORIS KOAN | We have to shift the dolosse of the mind

I thought it would never come, but the words floating on the south-easterly breeze shocked me.

Big Nev Wilkins, enforcer of us surf rats in the 70s, and race director of the historic 52nd running of the Discovery Surfers’ Challenge, or simply “Surfers” to us, was exhorting the field at the start of this weekend’s race to protect and conserve the beautiful marine and coastal environment they were about to charge, trot, walk and hobble through.

After a very touching prayer, he launched this new environmental appeal — Nev style — the words popping a bit on the sound system and cool south-easterly wind: ”There are bins at every water point. Pleee-ase, I beg you! Once you have finished with the plastic bags [water sachets] put them in the dirt bins.”

A big nod to the glorious environment through which those thousands of takkies and one trekking pole point would churn through on this excellent Saturday afternoon.

Two courageous women approached me a few years ago and asked that I report the devastating trashing of the entire coastline by this very race.

I had done this race once or twice and noticed the hundreds of plastic sachets on the road, blowing in the sand.

Why had I not said anything? But when they articulated the problem, it all fell into place. A dreadful act of littering was taking place in the good name of the Surfers.

I watched the first finishers from the surf off Corner as they loped across the beach 52 years ago.

Race legend Dougie Kunhardt would load all of us groms on his construction truck and ride us out for the surf adventure of our lives — to Yellow Sands and Queensberry Bay point.

Doug is a dedicated conservationist, and he keeps a healthy eye on what goes down at the Cefani and Kwenura rivers and for that simple, unacknowledged fact, I admire him.

And he is a friend whom I see when I visit mates at Larney Cefani.

These sachets became an obsession. First, Nev was and is adamant that there is no alternative.

The first section of the race, from Yellows to Gonubie, is rugged and it gets hot. People need water. It is a safety issue.

But issuing a potential 60,000 sachets with not enough warning against littering, the critics said, was not the answer.

Alternatives were presented — carry your own like it was at the start, none of this sachet sissy stuff, carry a litre bottle and refill it, have it in a designer waist belt or trail pack like every other trail runner does, or get your family, squeeze or friend to hand you water at Sunrise-on-Sea; do what you gotta do.

But Nev and his committee opted to set out bins and had teams of cleaners to make sure no sachet leaked into the environment.

And they went at it properly. But I was never convinced it was a proper solution mainly because I did not hear enough about the conservation ethic, the reason why the race is held there. The coast.

It was always about winning or getting the Tee — you do not get a Tee from Nev and team unless you get to the end. Won’t lie, I like that. It gives that item value, some sweat equity.

But there is still not enough acknowledgement or education about the main actor in the performance — the gorgeous place which will be hosting you, the forests, the sandy beaches, the trickling streams, the shiny gullies, the ku-gompo-ing surf, the grey misty clouds, the headlands reaching out achingly close, yet placing before you a menacing, gruelling natural obstacle course where every little point set up as your next personal totem is reached.

So, there I was, the only one walking with a stick, joining all the 65-year-olds for our early, honorary 15-minute head start.

Lamb was there, so was Niel Henderson, who is an athlete, unlike the rest of us semi-retired surfers, and the forever young Mickey Witthuhn.

And who should be ambling along to join me but big Div, known to so many, who tried to extol me to join him in the full walk.

But I was working and a walking wounded. I was there for the stroll, the experience, the jorl.

After his, for me, groundbreaking appeal, Nev quipped: “I have a hundred people on my back, I just wish they were women and not men.

“So, I just say to you, please throw the plastic bags in the dirt box. There is plenty of water so don’t waste it.”

Well who cares how we get there, as long as we are getting there.

So off we went, and what a joy to have the field to ourselves for what turned out to be quite a distance.

We were already around the point and on the beach when the leaders came bounding along.

I was thrilled at how the closure of the road around Yellow’s Point has seen nature return.

Instead of the churned, braided, smashed and muddy flats, a mystical path is appearing, giving a stunning backdrop to the huge swells which rise out of the deep to rumble and unload onto the dolerite bricks.

This is ku-gompo super plus!

Back on the trail, it was so edifying to see all the locals, people I know from surfing, from struggle, from journalism out on the beach waiting to cheer authentic participants on, my chinas Janette and VJ and their grandy, the Manthes and Dave Ridge.

Then lots of howzits from my colleagues Mfundo Piliso, editor of Go! and Yondela Ndlebe, our marketing guru co-ordinator at the Dispatch and Go! Ah, now this is how to meet the community on the frontline.

Later comms get graunched, and so help me, people at Go! (Wendy and Cheryl) who don’t hear from our runners start getting ready to call the calvary!

I love it that they are not letting our people get taken by the wilds.

Later Mfundo and Yondela appear in guerrilla-styled Tees to prove they are still alive and victorious. I have a little pulse of pride at our mense getting out there and rocking the milkwoods.

Lots of chatting near Kwelera village, the runners are going by, and soon it is time to head on and I realise, not one piece of race litter!

I hear my name and it is a race organiser with bag in hand saying, if I did not hurry I would be a DNF (did not finish).

But I have no intention of finishing. My race plan is to get to Gonubie Hotel, turn right and go home.

Up ahead I see the first water point. But again, I hear voices, my name being called and this time it is two fit women, also bags in hand.

They are the official race sweeps, meaning I am officially out of the race.

So no Tee for me. Meh.

I reach the station, a gazebo and staff from Red Alert bringing along a few bags of trash.

But first I encounter Rob Rankin, a topless Sunrise-on-Sea man clutching the bagpipes.

The pipe major of the East London Caledonian Pipe Band says how lekka it is to see the beach so clean and being cleaned up and we proceed to do an inspection while he belts out Scotland the Brave in my ear.

My soulful Scottish gran Lilith McMillan would be dancing in her grave.

Time is passing, and I need to get to the climate disaster dune, says the crazy climate reporter I live with.

Rainbow Valley is fast becoming Rainbow Crags. The sea has chowed the coast.

The dune is steep, trees have fallen, and there is a steep bouldery section to get the runners down to the pebble beach — itself steep and woinky-boinky.

But first I see two pieces of litter in a stunning little cove. Two! A cheap gel and the Surfers sachet.

And this is when the gong strikes. Yes, this looks like wilful trashing. But hey, only two and we are almost five kays in!

This race is incredibly clean. Big ups to you, Nev and team, you have made good with your promise.

I get to the last point before it is too steep and see where bums have slid and I think, ah, old climbing skills, and start to ease in, soon finding myself face down in the sludge, a triangle of rock poking my belly.

And I see two more sachets but these are not deliberate — they probably fell out during all the downclimbing action.

I get down and am busy photographing a big old tree lying on its side, its boughs making an accusatory gesture at us, the obscene Anthropocenes.

And there is a voice. Along comes a woman who heads to the steepest section and zips down like a pro.

It’s Kim van Kets. Our legendary extreme runner, adventurer, explorer and one of a growing stratum of Eastern Cape women writers on Facebook, together with Tori Stow from Bathurst and Jane Burnett from Makhanda.

These women are putting the best to the test with outstanding essays, prose and commentary.

It’s online and it is literary. I am adding Janette Bennett to this list for her superb “Under the Milkwood”, real-life journeys of discovery and reinvention.

Kim stands under a near vertical mud crag with dry white husks of sand dribbling and flying off the top and we chat.

So lekka. I snap a pic and on I scramble. I have to walk into the ocean to get around the fallen tree and how the gazonkels did the runners get through this?

I look up at the layers of pebbles to see an oke bending over, bag in hand.

It’s Nick Pike of The Dawnie. Gosh, you just turn a stone here and there is another writer.

He was doing river crossing race duty at Gonubie mouth but has stretched his civic duty around the corner to Rainbows.

He knew I was coming along, but had not seen me so here he is, my mate.

Nick heads back to Gonubie and I finish off our chat, have a banana and my first drink of water, and set off around the last little headland thinking about how I am going to swim the now flooded river mouth.

I have my phone in two roll-up waterproof bags but my little backpack and stick will just have to get soaked … but what is this?

Here comes Nick, surfboard underarm. He paddles over, takes my stuff, shirt included, so I can swim across in my shoes.

What a mate!

We look at my final tally of sachets, 12, and I see a few more pics online. So if it is 20 or 30 or 40 that is an incredible reduction of sachets landing up in the environment.

But, despite this valiant and effective effort, this is still leakage.

Plastic sachets are spawned by the fossil fuel industry which was so keen to turn our Wild Coast into an industrial wasteland.

I would be interested in the official race numbers, and how the other half of the race went.

I did check on the Gonubie Turdy on Thursday night, and it was running pale and livid.

A team of contractors, one in gumboots, was standing in that sewage river created by the broken Kwelera-Gonubie Wastewater Treatment Works erecting an impressive 6m-wide bridge for runners to cross.

I feel for the race organisers who tried so hard to have the spill fixed.

But that is how it goes these days — corruption has hollowed out budgets.

But this too shall pass and I have no doubt that Surfers will outlive the current order, but I beg you, with 100 men on my back, to please do the right thing and stop being such sissies about sachets.

For this is a magnificent and historic trail run, a celebration of sporting prowess, resilience and the mother of all coastlines which has raised us all.

Who doesn’t want to say not a single sachet fell on the beach because not a single sachet was given out?

We have to shift the dolosse of the mind.