26/08/2026
The first time I saw Stone Owl Cottage, I had the strangest feeling.
I had found home.
Not simply a beautiful place to visit or somewhere I could imagine spending a weekend.
Home.
There are moments when something inside us seems to recognise a place before our minds understand why.
That was how it felt.
There was something about the stone, the wood, the trees and the mountain air. This little rock cottage seemed to belong exactly where it stood.
And somehow, I felt that I belonged there too.
But Stone Owl Cottage wasn't mine.
So eventually, I had to leave.
Before I did, I gathered stones from around the cottage and placed them in a circle on the porch. In the centre, I put a pine cone.
There was no ceremony. I simply wanted to leave something behind.
A circle of stones.
A pine cone.
And a wish.
I took a photograph before I left.
No one looking at it could have known what it meant to me.
But I knew.
I hope I come back.
I hope one day I can call this place home.
There is something beautiful about circles. They have no beginning and no end. They hold things. They gather things together.
Perhaps that was what I was doing without knowing it. Giving a feeling a shape. Marking the place where something inside me had whispered, Here.
And perhaps the pine cone belonged in the centre too.
A pine cone carries what cannot yet be seen.
The possibility of roots. Of something that, given the right conditions, might one day grow.
I left that day without knowing what would happen.
The stones stayed behind.
So did the pine cone.
And I carried the wish home with me.
Then, eventually, something I had hardly dared to hope for became possible.
Stone Owl Cottage became mine.
Today, it has become more than the home I wished for.
It is a place I get to share.
People arrive carrying their own stories and their own reasons for needing to get away. They light the fire. Wander beneath the trees. Listen for the wild horses. Follow the path to Battery Creek Falls. Sleep beneath the mountain mist.
And, for a few days, this place becomes theirs too.
Maybe that is what home is.
A place where something in us recognises that we belong.
All those years ago, I left a circle of stones on a porch and drove away, hoping that one day I might return and call this place home.
I did.
www.stoneowlcottage.co.za
