Judy Bryant explores the The Snake Eagle Thinking Path, an unusual contemplative walk outside Matjiesfontein If my first 20 minutes in Matjiesfontein were anything to go by, this was going to be a fun weekend. I had driven for over two hours from Cape Town for the inauguration of an amazing artwork, and drew up alongside a row of classic cars, sporting pastel tail fins and chrome bumpers.These were arrayed in front of the Lord Milner, a splendid Victorian hotel, topped with a gleaming white turret and a fluttering British flag.As I gazed at the vast Karoo landscape, a red double-decker London bus rumbled up. A stout man dressed in a black suit and blowing a bugle leapt out and asked me to join the party to welcome the art.story_article_left1Anni Snyman and her brother, architect PC Janse van Rensburg, are among the founder members of Site-Specific Land Art . They have been working together since 2009, when they collaborated at the AfrikaBurn event in the Tankwa Karoo on a geoglyph (typically a large design on the ground, generally longer than 4m, made from rocks, stones, trees or gravel).The most famous examples of geoglyphs are the Nazca Lines in Peru. Others are in the denuded rainforests of Brazil; in Australia; and parts of the Great Basin Desert in the US.The Karoo project, the "Snake Eagle Thinking Path", is in honour of a breeding pair of black-chested snake eagles resident in the area.Starting in August 2014, 30 volunteers made a total of five trips of five days each to work on the hamlet's outskirts.In partnership with the local community, they marked out a continuous 1.5km footpath composed of hundreds of white-painted circles.The aim is to attract global attention via Google Earth to the fragile semi-arid biome of the Karoo, and to bring tourists to Matjiesfontein to walk the meander.story_article_right2Tip to tip, the work is 170m x 57m, and the continuous line covers a distance of 1.5km."Every dot looks different, and it's a bit like life," said Snyman. "You walk from one dot to another, one experience to another. To walk the eagle is to know where you are in your life, your story."The heart of the snake eagle is formed by two intertwining shapes that symbolise not only the food of the eagle but also the flow of water in the nearby Matjies River, as well as the air currents that keep it aloft.It is impossible to split the essence of an eagle from the wide expanse of sky that it inhabits, said Snyman. Nor should a snake be imagined without the ground, vegetation and water of its home.Longed-for rains fell and the surrounding fields were ablaze with dazzling orange, purple and pink flowers when the geoglyph was inaugurated last month.After the Saturday speeches and party, on the Sunday, at 5.30am, the loud clanging of an old bell roused everyone for an inaugural Thinking Path walk at sunrise."It's an amazingly contemplative experience, you note every dot like a mantra," said Gordon Froud after his walk."It is all about collective effort," said Katty Vandenberghe, a digital media artist who documented the building process. "There's the physical site and the online site - even if people can't be here physically, they can still experience it."IF YOU GO...The path's resident custodian and guide is Ebrahim Adams. Call 073-869-4081...