The Story of Companions of the Natural World

In the hot summer of 1995, when living in Africa became a daily battle against racial violence, my family and I immigrated Down Under, leaving our hearts, families and culture behind. We found a safe, friendly home among Australia's gum trees, but my heart never quite seemed happy to settle in a world of scents and sounds so different from the African bush of my youth.

Why not bring your yearning for the known to everyone abroad who shares that African heart, a friend suggested. Everyone knows a natural world that is uniquely their own; why not share the beauty of my world with others indeed?

And so, Companions of the Natural World was born - nameless for many years, captured in every book I wrote and woven into children's series, always kept fresh by sharing the traditions I grew up with. Then a garden grew around the longing and reminiscence; a garden that inspires, soothes and brings calm to others in my writings and now Reflections.

Here, among the trees and flowers my husband and I tend with love, stories are born; memories reach me with a force that brings alive the myths, legends, traditions, antelope and veld of my birthplace so far away, yet so near.

Years from now, I hope people won't simply remember facts about animals and the natural world.

I hope visitors to my site will remember that, because of my reflections, they began paying closer attention - to birdsong at dawn, to ants carrying impossible loads, to the wisdom in an elephant's memory, to the quiet strength of a hippo beneath still water, or the memory scent a rose shares when past its prime.

If that happens, I will have helped people rebuild a relationship with the natural world and, perhaps, rediscover a gentler, more curious way of living through that relationship.

It is my honour to share wisdom from a place to pause, to see your life anew and find the road to your own natural world.

My reflections are for you

Hester