���߲ݴ�ý

It was too deep and risky to drain, doctors said. They couldn’t believe I’d survived.

That hematoma meant I couldn’t bear weight on my right leg, so I was discharged in a wheelchair. I had to learn to walk again. It could have been worse: If I had hit the ground at a slightly different angle, walking would have been physically impossible, rather than just a Sisyphean effort.

First, I took a single step, clutching the physiotherapist’s arm. And then, at home, taking an hour to trudge the span of a room. As a travel writer who’s happiest on the move, I found the new pace of life post-accident stifling. My husband assumed caretaking, helping me walk and celebrate the small wins, filming them to send to family.

“A step on the stairs unaided!”

“Down to just five pain pills today!”

In those first weeks, I couldn’t imagine that just five months after my accident, I would put on those same hiking boots that had saved my ankles from snapping, this time on the opposite side of South Africa, in the Eastern Cape.

The five-star safari hotel had invited me on their inaugural walk on the , a multi-day hike in Big Five territory, named after the 13 resident cheetahs for which the private reserve is famous.

I had accepted the press trip invitation before the accident and used it as motivation for a faster recovery. I had no intention to ever “get back on the horse” as the idiom goes, but travel writing is my passion. I yearned for it.

Samara’s first cheetah, Sibella, defied death. She was mauled by hunters’ dogs and left broken and bloodied. She was lucky to survive after intervention by the De Wildt Cheetah and Wildlife Trust. When she set foot in Samara in 2003, she was the first cheetah to do so in 130 years.

I wondered if she, like me, knew how close death had been.

Over four days, our small group of travellers trekked 30 kilometres. Accompanied by our expert guides and trackers, we crossed rewilded plains and traversed thorn thickets, stepping in the footprints of lions, spotting both black and white rhinos, all while searching for cheetahs.

Here I was, the slowest land animal, seeking out the fastest. I spotted a tortoise. Well, maybe not the slowest.

Safaris are not new to me, as a South African. But there was something special about this experience — not just that I had the gift of walking in Samara, but that my boots could crunch through dry earth again. I fished out thorns embedded in their rubber soles, recalling how I’d done the same with my scalp for days following my surgery.

On our second night, the fine weather allowed for fly camping. We spent the night on comfortable, raised cots, out in the middle of the reserve, with not even tents between us and the sky. A familiar pain jolted me awake as the severed nerves in my hip made their presence known. I peered through the branches at Orion’s Belt, gleaming, the clearest I’d ever seen the constellation.

Across the camp, the guides took turns keeping watch by the crackling fire. I stared at the star-strewn sky, awestruck. When my body broke all those months before, I thought I was dead. My pain said otherwise. For the first time, I welcomed the feeling. Still alive. Still here. I couldn’t believe my luck.

The next afternoon, we achieved our goal, approaching two exquisite cheetah brothers on foot. They had a fresh kill, splitting the flesh jointly with their powerful jaws. Our proximity didn’t disturb them.

We watched them for an hour until the light began to fade and we made our retreat. I thought of Mary Oliver’s words: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

“This,” I answered. “This.”

Tayla Blaire travelled as a guest of Samara Karoo Reserve, which did not review or approve this article.