The fishing line becomes the axis mundi [axis of the world] so that self-knowledge becomes the knowledge of the tug, the feel in the line that runs between the human hand and the animal soul in the invisible depths.
- James Hillman

The blue mountains are constantly walking.
- Dogen

The depths of the Zambezi are invisible, you cannot see down into them. The water is the mud-brown colour of a hippo, as impenetrable as a hippo is. Anything could lurk beneath the surface, a long-lost dinosaur as easily as the strange shark fish with teeth that stick out sideways like razored bayonets. The river is home to the largest crocodiles in Africa, one for every five metres of water, Johan says. No one should fall overboard here.

If, instead of looking down, you look up and follow the river as it stretches and shimmers away from our boat, the colour changes. The Zambezi is no longer mud-brown but blue, a dazzling blue with the brilliance of the sky caught in it.

And far, far away, over there on the Zim side is another blue - the pale hazy blue of the mountains.

Perhaps the cheetah who used to live in Kutali before they crossed over to Zimbabwe now roam in those mountains, but we are never going to reach them. The mountains which frame our horizon and give depth to our vision, are not just in another country they are also forever walking, forever receding. And we are forever walking, or floating, away from them. But, still, I keep thinking about them. In China, mountains are seen as yang, hard and male, whereas the rivers are feminine, wet soft yin (fluid but strong, soulful, seeking, life-giving like the women here on this boat travelling and fishing.) Together mountains and waters make wholeness possible, uniting yin and yang attributes in the same way as they form each other, the heights causing rain to fall, the waters carving out or depositing
landforms. “The mountains and the rivers are the earth in process, essence, action, absence, they roll being and non-being together…mountains and rivers without end,” says Gary Snyder or the Mountains and Waters Sutra, one or the other.

I like remembering this. It justifies my thoughts being focussed on faraway blueness instead of fishing. My mind is apparently naturally philosophical, its flights of fancy have nothing to do with the fact that killer crocs don’t live in those lovely safe mountains. But Kathy is fully present and fully focussed on fishing. She has a tug on her line that links her human hand to an animal soul in the invisible depths and, within a few skilful minutes, she brings her tiger fish in. Her smile, so wide, so joyous, is its own world axis; it tugs us all in.

We are all smiling, we are all reeling a tiger fish in.

Kathy weighs her animal soul and releases it to the depths again.

And, in the distance, the blue mountains keep walking.