Table Mountain Pine Cone Ink

Two weeks we had with the hills of Cape Town—Table mountain, the 12 apostles (12 buttresses but really 18 peaks), Lion’s head, Signal hill—time enough to get into a few cracks and crevices of our own. We’re a family that loves a good hike, even if age does present such gorges as we encountered (Platteklip, photos of which are below, or Skeleton from Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens) as indomitable stair-masters. Leaving us behind, our blithe boys ascend like antelopes—or, more like it, since Antelopes ascend nothing except maybe the dunes at Cape Point, Himalayan Tahrs which have no business being here but are anyway, not unlike many people, on many parts of the planet. *cough*

ANYhoo, a bit like the Tahrs are the pines at lower reaches, Northern hemispheric invaders and escapees from timber plantations, which one feels therefore easier about chopping for Christmas trees, or, seeing as we left South Africa long before Christmas, using for pine-cone ink.

Local consciousness about the destructive role of invasive species exists strongly in South Africa right alongside the even stronger desire to preserve the precious, unique native, endemic flora of the Cape Floristic Region: fynbos, pronounced fein-boss–about which more later. So all the more the importance of taking from places like Table Mountain only that which didn’t belong in the first place, like pine cones.

It’s no surprise that the colors of the world were once the only colors of our dyes, inks and paint palettes. A mercury sulfide mineral (cinnabar) was vermillion in southern Europe and China; in Egypt and elsewhere, lapis lazuli was ultramarine, orpiment made yellow, malachite made green, gypsum gave us whites, and lampblack, or the soot we use in India to make kan-mai/eyeliner, was black. The toxicities of many of these materials determined or restricted human use. Kumkuma was never vermillion except in color consonance and the “karpoora namam” of Lord Venkateswara in Tirupati remains camphor to this day, streaked with a kasturi (musk) tilakam—safe, sacred, scented. Along those lines with pine cones, which became a non-toxic way for me to keep a little of our time hiking Cape Town’s hills with me in a jar. Ever had experiences so joyous you wanted to bottle them and keep them for always? Like that.

I believe what I collected were Pinus elliottii or slash pine cones, though I’m not completely certain (we were distracted by a boomslang which suddenly looped down from the branches of another nearby tree). Any pine would work though, as likely would any other tree bark known to be used for its color, such as the Tanner’s Cassia. Wildcrafting guru Pascal Baudar has a recipe which I followed: a cup of cones, a cup of water, 2 teaspoons washing soda. Boiled, simmered, jarred. Trace pinus gum still sticky in the cones substituting for gum arabica (or honey) of the old inks. The scent of the trees. The boys quipping: “tiny boots, fall back!”—pride in having exceeded their mother in strength and size. The sun burnishing, the cape wind whipping, fynbos swaying, the Atlantic breaking—all this in a rich red-brown that may have no archival quality, but will stay with me always.

I’ll have an account up soon of all we did to get to Cape Town, Kruger, and back, up Table Mountains as many times as we went up and in as many directions–and down.