IT’S EARLY AND I CAN’T FEEL MY FACE.

There’s a shroud of mist, like icy television static, hanging a foot off the Ingeli Forest floor and I’m pedalling into it. Menacing legions of ashwhite trees surge out of the fuzz, branches like bayonets searching for skin. The smell of fresh clay fills the air and a clean strip of single-track stretches ahead. If we stay on the track, they won’t get us. Airship Orange says nothing – he’s an old Trek mountain bike that I named after a spectacularly average indie band from my hometown of Benoni. They were last seen on MySpace in 2005 – about the same time Orange and I fell out. Back then I suffered from an affliction called downhill syndrome that compelled me to throw him off steep ledges. Sometimes I was attached. He sustained bent levers and cracked handlebars. I got six stitches along my shinbone. We called it quits. Now, 10 years later, here we are, alone in a forest. He looks great. Those levers straightened out nicely. He’s got new cables and bright orange grips. I still have that scar. I don’t have the same legs though. Six years of shuffling between a desk and a coffee machine isn’t exercise and my calf muscles have shrivelled up like a pair of old brinjals. I’m puffing already. We emerge from the small, stark plantation – eucalyptus trees on death row, destined for the sawmill. Forestry is the lifeblood of this area, but much indigenous woodland still remains and Ingeli has a lion’s share. It makes up a large part of the WezaNgele region – one of the largest afromontane forests in the province and is home to towering hardwoods, forest elders and ferns, and birdlife like nowhere else. We plunge into it. Stones crunch like cereal and giant yellowwoods creak and lean in to see who’s coming. The single-track splits around a sign. Left arrow – blue square – moderate. Right arrow – two black diamonds – extreme. In case it’s not clear, below that are the words ‘Commercial Suicide’. What do you say, Orange, for old time’s sake? We go right, and fast. Sonic the Hedgehog fast. The familiar turns strange. The track whips left and right, over one, two, three slatted wooden bridges. The trees blur into a green tunnel. The air stiffens and the ground goes into hyper drive and I swear I can see a string of gold coins ahead of me. One wrong move and I’ll end up eating Fruits of the Forest by the spoonful, or wrapped around a tree like a bacon oepsie. But it doesn’t matter because the wind is also tearing a smile into my face. We’re flying again, Orange! And then we’re not. A hill. More accurately, a merciless logging road that rises out of the timber towards the Ngele mountains. I click down the gears and pedal but my relationship with the horizon suggests otherwise. I’m Sisyphus, eternally