GREEN LUNGS
Durban - At Dave’s Gate, a pod of early-morning trail runners enter the lower section of Durban North’s Virginia Bush, a forested 38-hectare green lung that is home to birds ranging from black sparrowhawks to Knysna turaco and small mammals including mongoose and blue duiker.
Local resident Dave Ward put in the gate to stop the little mammals from getting out into the dangerous roads of the surrounding suburb. It’s one of many community initiatives to keep Virginia Bush a paradise.
Two organisations with massive overlaps, Riverside Trails and Friends of Virginia Bush, have been hands-on in clearing alien vegetation, maintaining infrastructure and preventing crime.
“We help the (eThekwini Municipality) management identify things that are going wrong and we help where we are needed,” Riverside Trails founder Buzz Bolton told the Independent on Saturday.
“Also, we inspire confidence among the public. If we can go in, they can go in.”
Some of the trail runners are so fond of Virginia Bush they want to one day make themselves part of the ecosystem.
“They have said that one day they want their ashes scattered there,“ said Bolton.
More specifically, down the Golden Mile, a section of twists and turns leads down to Froggy Pond.
“On spring mornings, there is a lot of dew on the leaves and they sparkle like crystals,” he said.
A bench called Malcolm’s Seat has a view to Moses Mabhida Stadium and Durban Harbour.
The trail runners have named the top of a steep section Everest and built a staircase of poles, stakes and pieces of cut-off tiles to stop erosion.
Combating erosion is also behind the erection of bars to keep out their close cousins, cyclists, whose tyres don’t impact well on the delicate paths.
“There’s one called Twenty-One that we jump over,” said Bolton. “You feel 21 years old again when you jump over it.”
The park’s management has come to the trail runners’ rescue by having made Ankle Alley more passable, including making steps.
“There had been a few 360s and sprained ankles.“
Vagrant Path gets its name from the trail runners having come across a group of illegal shacks whose inhabitants the police ordered out.
“We collected a truckload of rubbish afterwards,” said Bolton.
Then there is Puffer Alley where the trail runners once discovered evidence of drug smoking: a squashed plastic Coke bottle.
Names of other landmarks relate to incidents, such as Wasp Alley where Chrissie Jeffrey once had a brush with the resident insects.
“All of a sudden I was stung and I had to seek medical treatment,” she recalled.
“It was quite serious but now I don’t even think about the wasps when running. It’s a gone memory.”
Her husband Alex’s accident is immortalised in the name Slippery Bridge.
“There is a bridge made of wood. With the wet weather it gets rather slippery and full of moss and so on. Yours truly decided to run across it instead of walking gingerly as most people do. It’s at an angle and I slipped and went into the side and fell into the little donga. Ever since then we’ve called it Slippery Bridge,” he said.
In addition to being a trail runner, Grant Harper of Friends of Virginia Bush is an active plogger, an activity that combines jogging and picking up litter.
Other community efforts involve ridding the ponds of invasive Kariba weed through biocontrol by introducing a weavil that eats it.
Plans to start educational walks for children and group walks are expected to start within a month.
The Independent on Saturday