When I walk in the forest I always have a feeling of history, of time passing but little changing. In our bit of the forest this is not strictly true as it was, unfortunately, forested until about the 1950’s so we have lost the really big old trees. You can still see one of the cutting pits where the wood cutters dug a hole over which they laid the trees so they could saw them and most of the paths we have would have been access paths.
Elsewhere in the Knysna forest you can still see some of the really old Outeniqua Yellowwoods that are over 600 years old and it is well worth a trip to see them. If you find it hard to imagine what a 600 year old tree has been through there is a slice of one with points of history highlighted on it on Thesen Island near the Turbine Hotel.
There is also more modern history in the forest if you visit the old Gold Mining town of Millwood, there is a very nice Blog on it here which has been much more poetically written than I can manage!
Knysna came into being because of the forests and it is believed the name Knysna is actually from the Khoikhoi words ‘Xthuys Xna’ meaning meaning ‘place where the wood is’. So although most people think about the sea and the beaches when they think of Knysna don’t over look the other half of Knysna and visit the forest.
Path into history
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