It’s been ten days since we arrived on the lush shores of Lake Atitlan, in Guatemala’s mountainous west, via a ride with the chicken bus driver from a Talladega night. His was vehicle number two of five during our two-hour journey from Antigua. His school-bus chariot lived up to its flame paint job as over sixty of us crammed into seats so wide they left just six inches of aisle in the middle of the thing—with Mayans, Mestizos, and two clueless Gringos sitting six across, clutching onto seat bars for dear life as the driver rocketed within inches of every turn, all the while the nice English-speaking gentleman next to me remaining calmly focused on his Latin American edition of the New York Times.

The whole time, the driver’s assistant, dressed in a dusty White Sox cap, stood on the steps by an open doorway and smiled in good-humored conversation with the amped pilot. They’ve gotta lose a few of these guys a year to the G-force. They must. The Guatemalans were really good to us, pointing out where we needed to go, slinging bloated backpacks under dashboards. We owe major karma to them. Without their kindness, we’d likely have been lost in Nicaragua this afternoon rather than standing on a raptor’s perch overlooking one of the world’s most beautiful lakes.

After a hard day of hiking, my buddy Andy and I just saw what we both agree may be the most incredible view we have taken in along our many life travels. Imagine being on a restaurant patio with soft bongos and Latin guitar in the background. Before you, five miles across a placid azure lake, sits a 10,000 foot volcano. On its left, in a valley five miles long, sits a blanket of satin white clouds, rich dollops hanging over the foothills just above the lake. To the right, a five-mile spread of small mountains, their pointed peaks purple-black from the scarlet glow of the setting sun just behind. Atop the grand behemoth, a small puffy cloud perfectly encircles it in the fading blue twilight, as if some holy headpiece were required for this perfect Sunday evening.

We had just returned from conquering – okay, surviving – our ascent of this very marvel. It is not the highest in the Guatemalan neighborhood—the one next door is 1,000 feet higher—but 10,000 feet is not bad for a day’s climb by two guys who had committed the prior evening to watching World Cup Soccer amid a crowd of beer-drinking fans. I’m proud to say I outpaced Andy and a young German venture capitalist who exudes so much fitness he had gone so far as to purchase a gym membership for his month of Spanish study here – This is where I also admit that, today, the German’s intestines had just emerged from a two-day bout with Montezuma´s Revenge.

Prior to our hike, we had been instructed by our Lonely Planet travel book and the locals to hire a guide. Finding one is seldom a problem, as there are a flock of them awaiting one’s arrival at the ferry boat dock at Volcan Atitlan’s base. There is a common warning on the street here: If one doesn’t spring the ten bucks for local accompaniment on the steep ascent, one will likely be robbed by bandits along the trail. Although the rest of Guatemala has a reputation for random and violent crime, it is also well known that the country’s police force has made it a priority to keep Lake Atitlan safe for a burgeoning tourist industry.

Our conversation with a couple of guideless English climbers who had in fact been victims of banditry, however, did reveal that criminal activity was alive within these hills—albeit in a more benign form than guide book lore. When these bandits found that the hikers had no money, they kind of scratched their heads, looked at one another, and replied, “Well then… Give us your sandwiches.” Was this the work of bandits or an informal labor union? Regardless, our American teachers’ salaries made us wealthy guests in a foreign land. We hired Jose as our local guide and headed up the mountain.

The first few thousand feet consisted of a ride in the back of a pick-up truck. From there, we were dropped into a corn field, which rose several thousand feet up the side of the volcano. I wondered if the risk of a lost crop to rolling lava flows from a major eruption every twenty or so years is offset by the returns reaped from the loads of free fertilizer regularly dispersed by the mountain’s rich volcanic ash. The recent wreckage of a town in the valley below, however, revealed the perils faced by the valley’s economy. Entire neighborhoods were torn to bits, half submerged in the hard black rock that had consumed them while in its glowing and flowing form. Across the lake was another town torn asunder by the elements, this one’s houses, even a cement playground, thrown into a now-shallow river by mudslides triggered by torrential rains. Yet the locals carry on with all forms of boxes and bags on the backs of trucks, rickshaws, motorbikes, and persons, rebuilding atop the old as their ancestors have done for eternity.

On we climbed, moving from field to forest, the lack of switch-back trails so commonly found in the United States now apparent more than ever as we clambered for roots and tree branches to pull our way straight up the side of a rocky face, past the tree line onto a solid rock perch, where we found ourselves on the roof of an emerald and sapphire world.

Lake Atitlan is breathtaking, big enough to make opposing shores seem distant in the mist, and dotted with enchanting towns all around. Each has its own ambient niche, often connected only by ferry service and the watery reflection of three active volcanoes that ring the flooded valley forming this crystal blue, thousand-foot-deep lake.

Spanish language schools are everywhere and cost a mere $135 per week. They include one-on-one instruction and a family home-stay with three meals a day. How can it be that affordable? We Americans are clearly blessed with the currency of a strong economy. Mayan Indians are also everywhere, clad in their brightly stitched craftsmanship from head to toe—the men, too, with one brightly patterned vest over another brightly patterned shirt on top of another brightly patterned pair of pants, all underneath the light beige of well-tended straw cowboy hats.

The place is also surprisingly hip, with high-speed internet cafes, discotheques, and big-screen World Cup Soccer mixing with the goat herds, motor rickshaws, and Mayan craftswomen carrying colorful loads on balanced heads to sidewalk markets. The motor rickshaws are imported from India, yet they carry the Thai nickname, tuk tuk—a fun tidbit of commercial history to be explored.

Gazing down from our heavenly peak at the sparkling dots of humanity sandwiched between the emerald and sapphire landscape, West Guatemala seemed like a super place for an extended stay. Nicknamed the “Land of Eternal Spring” for its ever-pleasant weather, it is also a great spot for Spanish language immersion on the cheap. Perhaps a whole summer here would be a wise way to go if one truly wanted to make inroads with Spanish, on a weekly budget one could easily blow on a Saturday night in the States.

(6/23/06)

Volcan Paddle

Volcan Storm

The Chicken Bus

The Zocalo

5:30 A.M., we make our way groggily to the curb to catch the once-a-day minivan from Lake Atitlan in Guatemala to Chiapas, Mexico. You can imagine our annoyance when, at the next stop, the curb was bare and the scheduled pick-up still in bed. Five minutes, ten minutes, twenty minutes the van idles while the driver disappears into a hotel to wake this guy up. We had been running bleary eyed through dark streets with stray luggage when it seems we could have had the driver powering up our kitchen coffee maker.

Finally, a forty-something-year-old Mestizo, with rumpled clothes and hair, emerges from the gate with a large worn backpack. There is a loud PLUNK as it is slung through the back door of the hold. I think, finally, we are on our way. Then the guy disappears again into the hotel and another three minutes pass. Another large duffle bag. PLUNK. Then another. I glance over the seat to notice that, with the help of the driver, he has rearranged our Gringo bags so that they are on top and his are on the bottom. Finally situated, we are off on our eight-hour journey. About an hour in we stop for gas. The guy disappears into the bathroom for another good twenty minutes. The driver patiently waits. We throw one another an inquisitive look. What the heck is going on? And what might this guy be packing?

Also on board is Lincoln, a 55-year-old expat from California who has taken up Mexican citizenship to make his mint in local real-estate. He is quite a character. Claiming to be good buddies with Bill Walton, the former basketball star, he seems to know other heavy hitters all over the United States, yet he has abandoned the USA altogether to strike his own gold in Mexico. He, too, notices the odd behavior of our rumpled passenger, and the fact that our stuff has been placed in an inconspicuous mound around his own in the hold. The van stops for lunch. The three of us and the driver sit down in a Mexican truck stop cafe. Lincoln orders a large steak, strikes up good natured small talk with our fellow passenger in Spanish, then steers the conversation toward our inquiry with a sly smile: “So, what’s in the bags, man?”

Our new friend returns a knowing smile and jumps from his seat for a trip to the van. I think to myself, have I just unknowingly entered some Colombian drug club? A minute later he reappears with several plastic bags in hand. Plunk. Plunk. Plunk. He unwraps them one by one. Out of each emerges a statue; heavy, blue-green, intricately carved, pure jade; thousands of dollars of the stuff, pulled from deep within the Guatemalan Earth where the finest jade in the world is made by the fiery compression of two continental plates. The Guatemalan government is well-aware of the value of this treasure, and for this reason, transport of raw jade across its borders is illegal.

My brain wraps itself around the fact that this guy isn’t a drug runner coming down from a reckless binge. He’s an artist, using diamond saws to turn the second-hardest substance in the world into the likenesses of early Mesoamerican folklore. Out of his stash he pulls the primitive round head of an Olmec Indian and then the intricately detailed square head of an Aztec jaguar. Then, for a good laugh, he pulls out a picture of Bill Clinton in his San Cristobal shop.

It was a mere twenty miles back that he had transferred this weighty loot across his carefully chosen border—a single raised red and white crossing gate on a two-lane highway crossing the hilly frontier. The driver of our connecting van waltzed from Mexico to our Guatemalan parking spot to assist our former driver in the transfer of the artist’s bags. The few border guards milling about what appeared to be seamless commerce on both sides of the border took no notice as we passed under the “Welcome to Mexico” sign, our unchecked passports in hand. This guy clearly had them all paid off. And three children’s college educations paid off, too.

(7/21/06)

The Preacher Man

Hill Taxi

It’s New Year’s Day, and I’m in Dublin. Flat broke from a week of converting the failing dollar to the high flying euro, but consoled by pints of Guinness that have broken high double digits at this point. There is a saying that it is impossible for two Irishmen to walk into a pub and order just one pint. This is due to the fact that it is terrible etiquette to purchase just a drink for oneself. Beers, cigarettes, and whatever else you may consume in a pub are gifts that are to be exchanged and re-exchanged for the even greater gift of gab. A pub filled with good conversation is termed “good for the craic” (pronounced crack), and we have yet to find an establishment that has proved otherwise.

Perhaps this is due to the fact that the Irish are a stew of characters from all over the North Atlantic, who sip away days in the dark warmth of brightly painted pubs harbored from the shifting rains outside. Their brogue makes their wit as light as it is dark, and if you can match them for a few rounds of good-natured jostling, the ideas that then pour forward are a testament to a people for which literature and conversation are a high art. All art depends on benefactors, of course, and the fact that Ireland is now the “Celtic Tiger” of Europe has maybe spun hours in the pub out of control. Dublin is now more expensive than London. The average Irish person enjoys an income far above most of the world, and as its high tech economy makes it the crown of the EU, its citizens are snapping up fast jobs, fast cars, and fast living.

Couple this with the free fall that priestly indiscretion has wreaked on the Catholic Church, and you have a full blown social extravaganza in a country where birth control was illegal just a little over a decade ago. Along with the cheerful banter yet to be overcome by the rising tide of materialism are chipper Irish women in mini-skirts who, still matching the men word for word in the pubs, have donned a scanty style thoroughly un-Catholic and to whom the Polish woman we are staying with roles her eyes with the word “Irish!”

The mists part about every three hours for a spot of sunshine between the rain drops. On every lawn, hill, wall, and unused driveway there is green. Everywhere—in the crevices of bricks, in the crooks of trees—the island is an eternal spring green, accented by brightly colored doors and brightly colored pubs. Though the internet is lightning quick, half the pubs don’t even have music—for it gets in the way of the craic. Outside their front doors in Galway, old men are jumping off the public dive into the December Atlantic, while young men watch soccer matches in the pub, women are loaded with shopping bags, and the population shakes its good natured head at the fact that, this Christmas, slews of Irish did their shopping in New York.

Ireland has an income tax like the United States—low—and a sales tax like Europe—high. The Irish speak English and sit between the two continents. Ireland has severed itself from the English pound, going Euro all the way, yet it remains connected to the States as well: 25% of Americans are of Irish decent, while Irish who have spent time in the States are in every pub. I feel very at home here in this very familiar place. This may be due in part to a bit of family history I learned in the past week. My people come from Waterford County, an early Viking settlement from which the Ostmen raiders would pillage the rest of the island. My middle name, Foley, in Gaelic means “plunderer.” Many of my youthful indiscretions are beginning to make sense.

I cannot help but marvel at the fact that my predecessors emigrated from an Ireland that was dirt poor in 1848 and that had also been so for several centuries prior to that fateful day my great-great grandfather had his final run-in with an English tax collector and moved to the United States. Ireland remained poor right on through my own college days. Yet in ten short years, the tech boom has turned England’s former whipping post into the Silicon Valley of a continent.

The rustic Guinness Brewery I remember from a visit five years ago, with its hops-covered wooden floors and homey tour guides, is now something akin to Disney World, gutted and redesigned by an architect better known for big city art museums. On the field where not a hundred years ago Irishmen were gunned down for nothing more than playing their native games, an immense Super Bowl caliber stadium now stands to celebrate those very Celtic sports.

Perhaps most intriguing is the Spire. In the middle of O’Connell Street, across from the old post office that stands like a Roman ghost, where in 1916 Irish freedom fighters were crushed with English shells, a metallic needle, no more than ten feet at the base, shoots 300 feet into the air. It is free standing, made with some new feat of engineering that allows its sharp point to shimmer far above the rest of Dublin. As one looks at the chipped yet grand pillars of the old post office, one can still see the scars of war. Turn around, and the sun’s rays illuminate the polished metal of the Spire like an electrified wand; so bright, I thought, that on a clear day standing on the English coast, one could detect a glint on the horizon to the west.

(01/02/05)

Awoke yesterday to a warm day of sunny splendor – one of the first in these Chi-town parts since balmy last August – and figured it a fine time to test out my new kayak on a serene waterway that would pass a lazy day. Since the Chicago River is only a hop, skip, and jump from home, I called my buddy Andy and recruited him for an urban paddle. We started off the day at the local Hari Krishna breakfast joint, grabbed a few beers from the fridge, then threw our craft in the water, forty blocks from our endpoint beacon, the Sears Tower, its two white-pointed spires rising like goal posts from its 110th story, which caps downtown. Having just been upgraded from toxic to merely absurdly abused, the river was a metallic, chocolate hue with a fragrance that was not all together repulsive in the yet-to-explode Chicago humidity.

We set off, past a shanty town of wintered-up lake boats, among whom dwell a few hearty souls who call their floating digs home; around a large and ominous dark, gray, and rusted cabin cruiser, piloted by a bunch of barbequing, black concert t-shirt wearing, good ol’ boys straight out of some meandering scene from Apocalypse Now; then onward past the many under-bridge dwellings that a unique assortment of folks call home. One had a queen sized bed under it, one an entire boxing gym – punching bag, dip bar, and stationary bike – arranged in a concrete living room on the brink of an eight foot drop to the current below.

There were some signs of animal life, including a few geese with goslings – though I must admit, the quietest bunch of the species I’ve ever crossed—and a healthy population of ducks contently floating among the discarded drink bottles, basketballs, dodge balls, soccer balls, and amorphous petri blobs of shmung. We continued to float past two new and gated industrial-condo communities with surprisingly few fired-up grills; past the loading docks of Costco, Office Max, and Home Depot; past glass boxes of corporate offices with stacks of white signs declaring “No Docking!;” and on to the meat of what made this city.

I’d heard my dad talk about the wacky industry on this river. When I was a kid and his paycheck came from Procter & Gamble, he’d come up here to have a look at their riverside soap factory. Across the water was this metals recycling plant, with a grinder that could supposedly gnash a ‘78 Chevy to confetti in seconds. Apparently, now and then the thing would get the hick-ups and—BOOM!—send a huge chunk of metal hurling hundreds of feet into the air and across the river into some unsuspecting neighboring factory’s roof. As we crossed 3000 North, I began to hear the hum of the few die-hard companies that still churn ahead of us. They got loud fast, and as we passed the next bend, in a wide stretch of dead river, there she was in all her glory, probably having an easier time of it with the fuel-efficient car bodies of today, but loud as ever as a conveyor belt laden with piles of discarded metal did her feeding.

Slowing river current, ever-rising roar, walls throbbing in angry breaths that coughed out shredded metal: We paddled like hell to get past that thing. Then, onto the hundred-foot piles of rusted confetti no one seemed to have a use for, brown twisted tributes to tetanus taller than most Illinois hills; past the gurgling cement plant encased in the shell of an old towering steel factory – two buildings side by side, skin and roofs entirely made of sheet metal, each a block long and a hundred feet high, the tin housing of a conveyor belt running along the top of each – not so loud, but immense.

Past the old swinging bridges with gears bigger than most life forms and a weighted hundred-foot high black iron railroad drawbridge, on top of which some brass-balled spelling bee flunky compensated for his deficiencies through painting in five-foot letters the courteous warning, “TRANE!” Past caved-in docks, twisted rails, decaying pilings, and 4×4 foot cement erosion control cubes stacked against the steep shore and bursting at their beltline. Under weathered draw bridges of a distant era with quaint lookout houses still bolted to their sides, municipal employees enjoying a very mellow watch.

Around the next corner the water grew wide, a quarter mile maybe. On the left, huge open air warehouses sat on a barren flood plain; and beyond… the sound of rock and roll music – say that again!? Eyes squinting, we spotted a red-tour bus on the far right shore. We rounded the bend. A bar sat on the bank, leaning decrepitly over the water, an array of colorful window panes swung out over the water like the cabin of some jovial pirate ship marooned on a sandbar. Not a boat at its dock, yet hordes of people above, hanging out the windows, on the roof, ambling about floors as untrue as a water-warped deck. We took one look at one another, tied on, and climbed up.

Immediately, we were greeted by two lovely lasses who picked on us incessantly for our redneck entrance and non-Cinqo-de-Mayo-like Aussie and Gilligan hat wear. We’d paddled right into a Mexican-American holiday. Nonetheless, our campy spirits paid off, as the med student and the PhD in philosophy hung with us for many Coronas under the sunshine of the city’s first truly spring day. The med student, a six-foot Punjabi beauty, kept asking inquisitively of Andy, “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” They weren’t sure but carried on, one increasingly interested in the other. “Thailand, yeah, been there, love it!” and on and on and on. Seventy bucks on drinks and he utters his last name… “Plonka?! Plonka! You were my teacher!!! Back when I was a JUNIOR!… We thought you were gay.” He was a student teacher at the time, actually. She was now 23.

Things got wilder when the band Rusted Root appeared at the circus tent on the street in front. PhD girl had an actual Aussie boyfriend who made a late entrance, so at the ripe hour of 10:00PM I gave Andy a wink and shoved quietly off in the boat, alone. I should have just bobbed there seated in the thing, as many a cute reveler leaned out a window with raised glasses in approval of my floating steed. Nonetheless, I was out seventy bucks, flat broke (as was the ATM), and Andy was too. But heck, he had a future doctor/former student as company. He’d make it home. I pushed off into the darkness, which isn’t really darkness anywhere in this town, the perma-glow of the human race ever steady. I could only connect the dull glint of four of the Big Dipper’s dots. The cement mill was asleep, as was the monster; though a few other smaller neighbors chugged on.

The cell phone rang – I know, not exactly getting back to nature, but we might have needed the poison control center at some point today. So, fully charged in my pocket, I pulled it out. “Dude, come back!” As gorgeous as she is? No way! Find your way home, bonehead. It rang again. And again. And again. The Punjabi beauty’s voice: “Freshwater! I’ve got his phone number, now come get your friend!” I should have left him. Nonetheless, blasted integrity kicked in and I doubled back through a sea of bobbing bottles to pick his sorry butt up.

A lingering dockside kiss and he jumped the railing to the boat. Two bottles of brew from below deck and his story: “Ok, here’s how I view it. At first, I was cute, cool-guy-in-a-boat, hook-up for the evening; then I was former-teacher-gotta-jump-on-this conquest; then she realized she actually really likes me – and with that comes an early night. So, alas, I have a phone number.” And, wow, was she cute! And of course, women have telepathy. So, as we dug in our paddles, the spirited glow of a good night pushing us zig-zaggedly along, the cell phone rang, other interested lady friends of ours wondering where the heck Andy was for the evening – in a kayak of course, paddling an obstacle course of refuse, under an urban moon.

(05/06/2003)

Damen Avenue Bridge

The Monster

Pre-Monster

Post-Monster

The Scout

Traveling via rickshaw is an amusement park ride. But, be warned, there are no safety bars on the Indian subcontinent. Hold on and prepare for a trip into a video game. Forget terrorists. They’re minor. It’s cows, trucks, buses, whirring rickshaws, marauding pedestrians and a family of four on a moped that are likely to turn out your lights around the next bend. The rain was so deep last night our driver had to double back through random alleyways before we drowned. No headlight, then the electricity all over town went out. Drops gushing sideways through the canopy in buckets, oncoming traffic splitting in a mad last second rush around us, all moving objects, save for cows, laying on the horn – bovines being the quiet unmolested random sacred islands drifting where they please, with all currents shifting within inches of their horned heads. Wow. Forget sky diving. Just go for a drive in India.

8/15/2003

A Mosque

Whereas most buildings in India reflect the deep reds and browns of the country’s clay and sandstone, most mosques glow brilliantly in the tropical sun, their white-washed simplicity standing crisply against the cacophony of the subcontinent’s pluralism. This was a big one, with three onion domes and two fifteen-story towers at each end. We were actually on a school campus in Bhopal, a madrasa where teenage boys live and study an Islamic education. Inside the mosque, which opened wide on a courtyard, a few boys were randomly scattered at low-lying desks, bobbing their heads to the rhythms of recited lines from their open Qurans.

In the middle of the courtyard, at a rectangular pool, a small group of boys was taking in a relaxed evening bath. They passed around a bucket, pouring water over happy heads, sticking toothbrushes into the pool and back into lathered mouths. The ritual seemed as much about mellow hang time as a bath, a chance to cleanse the teenage spirit along with a sweaty day. One of the boys caught sight of my camera, smiled, and attempted to throw his friend in the pool.

Evening slowly passed along, and we probably could have let it pass in its entirety right there, as a soft nasally voice floated from a high speaker somewhere beyond and above. It was the evening call to prayer. I’d come to realize over the past weeks that a number of Muslims consider prayer to be a private time among their own. The folks here were a smiling and welcoming crowd. However, we wanted to respect what customs we’d come to understand, so we exited our peaceful respite and moved on.

A Hindu Temple

Boarding a bus outside the mosque, we headed for a Hindu temple in the suburbs. The doors swinging open at a curb by the temple gate, we were greeted by a sea of little smiles, all pushing a handful of flowers to our adult heights. A bit disoriented by the floral cornucopia before me, I was then told by our professor that the flowers were an offering for puja and that I needed to buy some. No sooner had she spoken when a bold boy opened my hand and closed it around my purchase.

I’m embarrassed to admit that I traveled to India without even knowing what puja was. As I walked up the driveway toward the temple, I found myself in the company of a number of families. The women were dressed in the bright colors of their formal saris, the men in khaki dress pants and collared shirts. A middle-aged gentleman motioned for me to step through the gate ahead of him and his wife. As we filed through the temple courtyard, he engaged me in small talk to pass our time in the crowd.

Immersed in our conversation I had fallen behind my group, only then realizing I didn’t know exactly what I was expected to do next. The temple was the size of a modest chapel. Built of what looked like smoothed adobe, it was painted a mustard-yellow with white trim, with red rectangles on the four sides of a steeple above the door, and white reversed swastikas spaced out in red circles around its outer trim.

The nice gentleman seemed to understand I was a lost duckling and took me under his wing. We made our way around the side of the temple, where two small marble shrines sat in small open shelters, opposite each other in the courtyard. Small groups of worshippers were lining up in front of each, their floral offerings in hand. The gentleman directed me toward the shrine to Lord Shiva, represented by a smooth, phallic shaped statue of dark gray granite centered in a small round pool of the same stone – a reflection of the union of the male and female spirit.

One by one, worshippers climbed the few small steps to the shrine, leaned toward it, and tossed their flowers onto the large aromatic mound that was accumulating with the crowd. Placing hands flat together in a reflective silent prayer they then bowed for a moment of respect and moved on toward the temple.

When it was my turn to step up, I couldn’t help but notice the cloud of delighted bees buzzing drunkenly around the floral treasure. “Careful,” said the gentleman, “don’t get stung.” I was raised on Catholic schooling and therefore banking on the notion that an act of human piety, whatever the faith, might find a soft spot among the stinger-laden busy bodies whizzing before me. On this day, I guess, I’d behaved.

I followed the gentleman and his wife up a set of stairs to a veranda outside the temple, where each person reached up, grabbed the string of a large brass bell hammer, and gave it a bold clang before passing inside through wide open doors. Within, white marble walls were etched with Sanskrit and English scripture, the words “Don’t be too prideful” echoing past advice passed on by my own Jesuit teachers.

I was then instructed to hold my hand out before the temple guru, much the same way it would be done with a Catholic priest at communion, and was handed a ball of sweet rice. The rice apparently embodies a deity making an offering to you in return for your own floral offering to them in the courtyard outside. Instead of the guru then placing black ash on my forehead with a thoughtful finger mark of the cross, it was red turmeric placed thoughtfully in a short vertical line. He then one-upped his Catholic counterparts by marking both my ears and neck. The Catholics perhaps strike a balance with this artistry through the adornment of the priest himself, whose bountifully decorated robes stand in sharp contrast to the meager loin cloth that serves as the attire for most Hindu gurus—picture Gandhi with wavy hair and a thick beard. This guru delivered my sacrament with a wise and warm smile.

A Buddhist Birthplace

The next morning we caught another bus, this time to Sanchi, a tiny village that sits at the base of a long 300 foot hill. It was at the crest of this hill, 2,300 years ago, that the emperor Ashoka sparked a legacy of grand structures dedicated to the new Buddhist religion. Today, only three of the more than a dozen monuments still exist. Few history books even make mention of the spot in their global survey of the faith.

Yet, before us, interspersed among winding paths, were three structures that testify to Buddhism’s strong role in India’s past. Behind granite gates akin to the wooden ones found at the entrance ways to modern cities’ Chinatowns, these stupas look a lot like partially buried planetariums built of granite cobblestone, and are every bit as big. They are memorials. It is believed they contain within their cores the partial remains of the Buddha himself.

After meandering around these architectural wonders, we knocked on the door of a retreat house adjoining the site. A young man of no more than thirty emerged to greet us. Six feet tall, with horn rimmed glasses matching his buzzed black hair, he donned the orange and brown robes worn by monks the world over. It was obvious, on this hot and placid afternoon, he was not expecting guests. In true Indian hospitality, however, he offered us tea. Having just drunk quite a few pots over lunch, we politely declined.

It was clear that both parties wished to make an effort to accommodate the other, so we kept his offer for a tour to a short jaunt around the compound while he shared tidbits in broken English about their branch of the faith. His sect is now based on the island of Sri Lanka far to the south. He is now the lone proprietor of this ancient site, serving a four-year term as flame keeper for the now empty birthplace of his global faith.

A Universal Spirit

Just before our rural highway faded into the Bhopal suburbs, our driver pulled over to offer us a twenty-minute visit to a small village. We mulled it over. Would we be disrupting the calm of a traditional day with our cameras and Western ways? He reassured us that the residents were plenty used to visitors. Having just immersed myself in the inner-workings of three faiths, I wasn’t sure if I was prepared to ingest anything new in my already loaded Western head. At that moment, an old woman stepped out of a doorway with a welcoming smile. She greeted all of us heartily, slapped Ben on the back, then pointed knowingly with a shared
laugh toward the approaching monsoon. The children’s posse then found us, and we were soon afloat in a sea of excited youth. The beauty of children is the lack of veils that culture has yet to place over their personalities. Their varying antics, expressions, and unbridled curiosity provided for me a mental pathway toward a common bond. Much like that old lady sharing a laugh over the weather with Ben, I realized that at the heart of a vast array of religions and cultures, there is an elemental spirit that makes us all very human.

(Summer, 2003)

Indian Graffiti, Agra

Train Porter, Chennai

Jain Shrine, Madurai

Jain Carving, Madurai

Lake Superior was the darkest I’ve ever seen her waters yesterday. A greasy black, her rolling swells so heavy with slush they could not release themselves in their usual frothy white breaks along her shores. Just dark and slowly rolling. Swollen in her containment. Angry. There was a ship out there. An old freighter of the same vintage as the Edmund Fitzgerald. A black ghost with ink-like smoke crawling out of her stack.

I waited for an eruption, but none came. As the cloak of night set in, she settled, awaking the next day to her deep winter blue once again. Had I witnessed for the first time a passive-aggressive bout?

As morning wore on, the small circular blooms of ice began to form and merge as they always do on calm days. Like a slow moving pack they congregate, then seem to breed their way in a blanket across the harbor – usually across about half its surface, depending on the wind; on a really cold day, the whole thing. It was shaping up to be a really cold day. Seeming to sense this, the town otter was busy getting done what fishing he could before the blanket hardened. Perpetually at play, he was a dose more serious than most afternoons.

Toward eve, two bald eagles came gliding down Eliza Creek to the harbor. These two were hunting together and, as the forest gave way to town and beach, they raised their six foot spans and came to perch on the frozen sand.

The otter was diligently engaged in his underwater world. I wondered if the eagles could see him through the hardening slush. Or hear him maybe. Or smell him. They seemed to know he was there. He was big. They were immense. He broke the surface, looking for a fast breath, realizing probably that any chance of finishing his tasks was fast being sealed up by the ice.

The hunting duo caught eye of him immediately. He also caught site of their fast swiveling heads and quickly slipped under the ice – a thick float of the stuff, with only one real opening that I could see. The eagles saw this too, their necks cocking their yellow eyes into dart-like focus in lightning movements that seemed more like those of a caffeinated robot when compared to the slippery smooth movements of their expectant prey below. One flapped its way out onto the ice floe, while the other stayed perched by the stream’s mouth, no doubt the source holding this doorway open in the ice.

Jane Boggio, a Scandinavian beauty turned pseudo Southern Bell via marriage, was standing on the road above the beach. She was raised here. A sweet woman, made somewhat lonely I think, by the Yankee spirit Lake Superior has no doubt refused to release in her. She watched the scene unfold for a minute in morbid curiosity. It’s amazing how the awe of nature here never ceases to inspire. I’ve never grown bored with it.

The otter was no doubt plotting what he was gonna do when he burst through that hole. Had he had time to scout his options? I thought about how pressured lungs hurdle time to move faster. Would he be pushed to hallucinate a remedy to this fiasco? Were his improv abilities snappier than the skills of the two perched in the lighter medium above?

He burst up through that hole. White heads flicked around and were angling to move. Wings raised, chests hurling forward, they suddenly stuttered in stride. Their white heads swung backward around. The otter shot from the water over the ice, as his aquatic tail passed its action to his sharp clawed feet. Like a brown lightning bolt, he crashed body and soul into a large stand of bushes up the beach. They were dense and plenty twiggy enough to keep those two away.

I looked behind the eagles to see what had broken their stride. There was Jane, one foot forward from before. An unconscious honed look of movement in her eye. She had barely budged from her place on the road, but they saw her, through the eyes in the back of their heads. She’d given Mr. Otter that one second window to his second chance.

All four of them were pretty magnificent at that moment. The hunters then brandished on their faces the frustrated look that they’d been unnecessarily foiled. But come on guys – an otter’s a cool animal – one of the more fun-loving species I’ve ever watched. I think you’d find their love of revelry contagious. Keep yourselves happy with the fish.

(01/01/03)

The Rocks, Eagle Harbor

Superior Sunset, Eagle Harbor

Lac LaBelle Channel

Superior Heart, Smith Fisheries

Beach Bonfire, Eagle Harbor

The Calm Before the Storm, Eagle Harbor

High Noon on Superior, Bare Bluff

The Waterline, Eagle Harbor

Sand Hill Stroll, Highway 28

Superior Jump, Manitou Island

His five-hour odyssey through the jungle-enshrouded former capital of the Mayan Empire was a mini-epic. No formal education mentioned in an afternoon loaded with precise history, archaeology, anthropology, environmental science, and a laundry list of nailed dates no teacher I work with could whip from the heat of a 90-degree day, Juan made us feel like we were accompanying a modern day Indiana Jones down a vine choked trail to the heart of a lost mythology. From our first view point, jungle-enshrouded mountains lay before us. From the next, pealed back earth revealed the steps of thousand-year old pyramids.

We climbed the few sculpted behemoths that archaeologists have hacked from nature’s grip, ascending their steep stone steps to the jungle canopy. Shaking vertigo at each summit, the sharp edges of the few recovered limestone peaks would materialize from the forest, dispersed among the thick collection of lush green mounds—their still-buried brethren—that protruded from the jungle floor for miles around.

120,000 Mayan lived here at the time of Rome’s fall. No European city came within a third of Tikal’s size during this period. The Mayans also devised what remains one of the most accurate calendars on Earth, only to be recently surpassed by the atomic clock. What is likely their tobacco and cocoa is buried alongside the pharaohs in ancient Egyptian tombs.

Yet, in 900 A.D., this great city mysteriously collapsed and was abandoned. No real evidence of the Mayan’s demise is buried in the thick carpets of earth that have swallowed their history, save for three parched layers that point clearly to a drought. Experts have speculated that one dry season in a corn-based culture could be survived, perhaps two. The evidence points to three in a row.

Whatever led to Tikal’s demise, its grand temples have not sat unoccupied. Today its tenants are swinging monkeys, busy toucans, stealth jaguars, and a rich biome of creatures among which flutter 535 species of butterflies. Yet the ghosts of humanity’s dominance are still very much alive – in the intricately chiseled art; a solar calendar made of welterweight slabs, anchored by a small skyscraper pyramid; and the engravings of a complex hieroglyphic language whose meaning was lost when Catholic priests threw the libraries of their native competitors into a roaring bonfire fueled by European conquest.

As we lounged for a good hour at Juan’s encouragement on the summit of Temple IV, it was hard to fathom how such an immense human accomplishment could be lost so quickly to Mother Nature’s work. The fact that a mere 1,000 years can turn a brilliant city into a mountainous jungle makes one look hard at their own people’s place in time. Had it not been for a nineteenth-century gum tapper, swinging from a tall tree branch by the opening of what appeared a dark cave, Tikal might still be buried beneath nature’s cloak. A keen eye catching a stucco fleck is what led to the recovery of this ancient world.

We would learn later that Juan carries the highest score ever received on the Tikal National Park Guide Exam. And our dumb luck allowed us to score him as our own. Juan was a gem. As was Dave, the ex-pat South Floridian resort owner, who had us spotlighting tarantulas in his garden after dinner, revealing how these furry arachnids will tamely walk along a hand and arm once lured from their holes. And Lou, the ex-pat baker and small-boat tour captain who, while pointing out twenty species of exotic bird life from his bouncing boat, spiced the time with stories about his time as a Washington D.C. mail man, including the day he demanded an autograph as he put forward the court warrant he’d been charged to deliver to a laughing John Lennon.

What is it about funky backwaters and the colorful characters they attract? Perhaps funk is the intersection of history and art. Peeling back a few vines in the Guatemalan jungle, the history is alive with ghosts. The residents of El Remate today seem to sense their ancient presence. I’m convinced it’s what lures them as much as the forests or the lakes.

(7/21/05)

Relic

Jaguar Temple

Someone pulled the fire alarm today – likely some student more willing to face the winter cold than their impending exam. No time to grab jackets from distant lockers, 1,600 teenagers funneled onto the school’s front lawn in a shivering mass. Cursing the transgressions of their anonymous classmate, kids clinched their shoulders as a flurry of exposed arms attempted to burrow into shallow pockets. It was a sea of miserable teenagers. Save for the five youngsters gathered in a relaxed circle on the periphery of the tightening mass, engaged in laughter-laced conversation that seemed oblivious to winter wind on bare skin. Upon closer inspection, it made perfect sense. They were the dogsled team. At 40oF, the weather was balmy!

A week prior, these five upperclassmen and this tag-a-long teacher had awoken to the howls of a dog yard. Raising bleary heads from the depths of doubled-up sleeping bags, we found the rays of the North Minnesota sun dancing across the white blankets of frozen breath that had crystallized on our bedding. An intense day and night of instruction at Outward Bound’s base camp was complete. Our adventure was to begin.

We loaded up the sleds and dragged them to the dog yard. Our entrance was greeted by a chorus of leaping yaps as fifty canines jumped atop their doghouses to shout “Pick me!” With just enough leash to sniff their nearest neighbors, some galloped in circles around their tethers, while others raised front paws in excited waves as reared bodies pulled against taught ropes. A contest was on to display which twelve were most prepared for the day’s adventure. It was a jubilant frenzy, dotted with a few lookers in luxuriant coats who, well aware of their good genes, laid front paws atop doghouses so they could poise on hind legs and wag cheerful tails.

Luckily, the choosing was left to our guides, who then handed each of us a harness and sent us over to suit up the lucky picks of the day. Upon recognition of making the trip’s roster, bubbling canine excitement quickly heeded to the task at hand, as each dog calmly assisted a city slicker’s rehearsed yet laborious attempts to get them into their harnesses. With the sound of a final clip, seasoned muscles would shoot back to life as each dog dragged their future driver to a sled to get on with the day’s run.

One dog attached to a lead, then two, then three; it seemed the sleds would be torn in half by the yapping huskies and malamutes that were now tugging against the anchors that had been smartly clipped around thick trees. Four, tug; five, tug; six… clip-WOOOOSH, as sleds rocketed forward behind the ecstatic barks of a full team’s run, human drivers leaning left then right around forested turns, staring wide-eyed as sleds were then hurled down a steep hill toward the shoreline of an ice bound lake where humans and dogs settled in for the long-haul across the region’s frozen highway.

Our team had reached this wintry outpost via a fortuitous introduction made by my childhood friend, Patrick. Having pursued the outdoor career we’d both dreamed of as kids, he had invited me to a dinner with Julie Hignell, the first woman to make it via her own power to the North Pole. She volunteered to visit the Chicago Public School where I teach, hit it off with the kids, and offered six scholarships for five lucky students and their teacher to partake in a five-day dogsled adventure across the Minnesota Boundary Waters with Outward Bound.

In the hands of the finest teachers in the outdoor adventure world, my chief task, other than mini-van chauffeur and wood chopper, was the recruitment of a five-student team that could immerse itself in a modern-day chapter of a Jack London novel. Urban natives, most of my students had seldom stepped foot off city pavement. Our trip would not just place them around a forest campfire, but send them bounding on snow and ice behind winter-worshipping cousins of the wolf. Frigid days would not end with a warm bed and dry roof. Rather, dying embers of a Yukon Stove would signal a cold walk to a sleeping bag heated only by hot water bottles placed within wool socks. It was a situation that no teenager (or adult) could well handle alone. A well-balanced team was essential. After much pondering, I recruited the following roster:

Brian Meza: Senior Class President and socialite extraordinaire. The kid is literally friends with everyone. Even gangbangers of every stripe seem to place him on their “don’t mess” list. With three varsity letters to boot, what would six running dogs be but a few more athletes on
another new field? Brian would be the rallying spirit behind the team.

Oyute Amarbayer: ROTC captain and seamless logician. Tall, fit, and supermodel buff, she carries an unassuming competence with which other kids simply jump in line when she issues an instruction. A recent immigrant from Mongolia, I think she may be a descendent of Genghis Khan himself.

Briseida Guerra: Calm observer and model student. Her quiet attention is always brought to an easy smile amid the teenage antics rattling so noisily around the room. Yet, every time she’s called on to answer a question, she’s on. Her quiet diligence and easy humor would both absorb and temper the frenetic energy of a teenage team.

Olaleke Allibalogun: Class comedian and ethnic bridge builder. A recent immigrant from Nigeria, in two years he has travelled from a faint grasp of English to seamless movement between his mother culture and the hip-hop lingo of Chicago. Olaleke’s well-timed humor is also dispersed without fail. On such a taxing adventure, this gift would be gold.

Sairabano Makhani: Old soul and sharp intellect. A Muslim from Pakistan, she had never before spent a night out from under her family’s roof. Her parents thought she was crazy to go on such a trip but left the decision to her. She opted in, with little experience in sports and little exposure to snow. Her drive, however, only settles for success, and her keen mind and wisdom would lend a mature focus to a young team.

Team in place, we arrived in Minnesota for training by Outward Bound. For a day and a night we were schooled – on knots, dogs, and winter survival—before sleds were loaded and we were off on our adventure around the chain of lakes that forms the Canadian border. By the end of day one the temperature had dropped to well below zero. The cold was looking to challenge us as much as the miles.

We built an igloo of sorts to shelter ourselves from the arctic wind and placed hot water bottles between the frost and our bodies and minds. Undeterred, the thermometer continued to drop until it fell to -40o the second night. Removing a glove for mere seconds to tend a zipper or knot resulted in a tingling numbness zipping over white skin. Yet the dogs were unfazed. Following their jubilant cues, we coupled diligence with a smile and carried on. And over evenings around the fire, we learned from one another.

Saira had been at school in Pakistan when the attacks of 9/11 occurred. She recalled vividly how her fellow classmates had cheered when the planes hit the World Trade Center. She knew at that moment she’d been raised differently, and that her fellow countrymen were wrong. She also shared her desire to be a writer, and her plans to study both journalism and medicine as a means to fulfill both her and her parents’ dreams. Olaleke reflected on the academic plight of African-Americans and how his own African upbringing and values stood in sharp contrast to those of others with whom he shared a common ancestry but whose families had been thrown down slavery’s destructive path many centuries before.

Briseida reflected on the fact that she had never really noticed the stars before in Chicago, and how in Minnesota they danced in a bright carpet over the black night. Oyute talked of her many jobs outside of school and the down payment she had just placed on a new Nissan Xterra. Brian reflected on the forty years of rock and roll music he had collected on vinyl records and his desire to become a history teacher.

In five short days, six very different team members bonded on a level that only Mother Nature can provide. We chopped enough wood to fill a small truck and withstood some of the coldest temperatures the Lower 48 ever see. And we did more than just survive. We returned to Chicago with the embers of adventure well kindled in our souls, having in our possession a new power that was perhaps best summed up by Olaleke during an exchange with a skeptical classmate over his pursuit of a new idea. “Are you kidding? I just dog sledded through minus 40 degrees – I can take on the world!”

(2/21/06)

Mush!

The Elements

Three Course Meal

Polar Plunge

Next stop on our honeymoon: Singapore. Modern, wealthy, hushed—and the word clean simply doesn’t do justice to just how sparkling every last inch of this city-state is. Chinese, Indians, and Malays efficiently weave their way through immaculate subways and a world-class economy, harmoniously working together through a shared British past while deferring to their benevolent dictator leader.

Printed on the airport wall in bold letters was, “Death to all drug traffickers under Singapore law,” while the subway brandished grisly pictures of a corpse with the warning, “Jaywalking kills.” Yet the place was friendly and pleasant, with plenty of well-heeled jaywalkers to put my rebellious inner American at ease.

The well kept secret of the region, however, is the country next door – Malaysia is a laid-back gem. Though its constitution is rooted in Islam, its heart is rooted in easy smiles that state clearly, “We can all get along.” As in Singapore, Chinese, Indian, and Malay neighborhoods sit side by side, their architecture, food, and aromas mingling with the relics of ancient Hindu, Muslim, and Christian empires. Unlike Singapore, Malaysia has a funky liveliness in the air, accented by groups of rickshaw drivers lounging about town plazas between fares, and alleyways filled with street vendors hawking a rainbow of wares.

We began our stay in the country at Tony’s Guest House in Malacca – the ancient trade center and former outpost of Hindu, Muslim, and European Empires. Today, Malaccans spend their time in a relaxed nostalgia for by-gone days while the world’s busiest shipping lane now churns right by. Tony is retired, and though he often tells his bemused neighbors that he is just collecting firewood, he actually spends his days turning these scraps into a unique painter’s canvas while also running a guest house, chatting up tourists, and serving coffee to his fellow retirees who, he jokes, are bored out of their skulls. In our tidy room hung two of his works on worn boards – one of a tree frog peering from a limb and the other a naked gunmen assailing another nude guy who is clearly much more endowed than he. Tony was a character.

Passing our first morning with him over a three-hour cup of coffee, Tony chatted us up about America, world issues, and the events in his backyard: “Here, we have a sizeable middle class and everyone gets along. We have a retirement system and health care. My Indian and Muslim friends come to my house for Chinese New Year, my Muslim friends and I go to our Indian friends’ houses for Divali, and my Indian friends and I go to our Muslim friends’ houses for Ramadan. Though I can’t figure out why Muslims feel they have to pray five times a day…Who are they showing off for? I am Buddhist. Heck, I could be praying while sitting at this table right now. What good is the next life if you cannot enjoy this one?”

Tony’s sentiments were echoed by a Malaysian boat captain who led us on a river tour through the heart of Malacca – although, rather than sharing his thoughts in the privacy of his kitchen, he used his microphone to share with the whole neighborhood his theory about Muslim men’s propensity for tricking their women into embracing the merits of multiple wives. No one seemed to be offended, an attitude perhaps voiced best by a middle-aged Sikh gentleman with whom we later shared a bus ride. Comparing Malaysians to the laid-back Canadians he went to college with in Nova Scotia, he stated, “Malaysians are a lot like the folks in Halifax. Simple people who just like to drink and kick back.”

Yet one can’t help but notice another Malaysia just a few hours away in Kuala Lumpur, rooted not so much in a different political outlook as a thriving economic engine that has sprouted some of the tallest buildings in the world. As in Malacca, Muslims are clearly the silent majority, their strong influence even reflected in the Islamic curves of the towering skyscrapers that are built upon the many oil investments coming from the Middle East. Yet inside the five-story marbled shopping malls within, mini-skirted Westerners and hijab-clad Malays browse comfortably alongside one another in front of Victoria’s Secret and the food court pizza counter.

We read about race riots in Malaysia in 1968, and the conciliatory efforts of a populace that seemed eager to mend and move on. We also found in the country’s newspapers a resurgence of support for Islamic law and the exclusion of citizens who fall outside the Muslim faith, a sentiment also described candidly by a fellow traveler who described her mom as an English Rose and her dad as Malay. I couldn’t help but notice how Malaysian and American support of racial tolerance seemed to rise and fall at similar periods in time. Our day-to-day interactions with Malaysia’s diverse populace, however, seemed to embody a healthy tolerance that I hope is not compromised by America’s recent missteps on the world stage and at home.

Our own observations in Malacca and Kuala Lumpur sum up our view of Malaysia in the following terms – funky and worldly, pluralistic and opinionated, relaxed and looking forward, diverse and rooted in one’s own kind; Islamic; and in an everyday sort of way, tolerant. If Turkey serves as Islam’s gateway to the West, it is clear that Malaysia is its gateway to the East.

7/30/08

Public Service Announcement, Singapore

Singapore Strip

Confucian Temple, Malacca

Malaccan Gate

Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur

Over the past few weeks, my wife and I have been awoken each morning by our clock radio broadcasting the plight of Myanmar’s democracy movement – specifically the torture and murder of 400,000 Buddhist monks. For us, Myanmar’s plight has struck a very personal chord.

This past summer we got married and hopped on a plane for a honeymoon adventure across Southeast Asia. We did not make it to Myanmar, for political conditions render it near impossible to gain entrance. We did however make it to neighboring Cambodia. It was there that we made a new friend. To protect his safety, I’ll call him Ponleak, which in the local language means strength and endurance. Ponleak is exactly my age, 35, and a former Buddhist monk.

We began our stay in Cambodia with a visit to the Killing Fields. It was here a mere thirty years ago that a ruthless dictator named Pol Pot led a gruesome massacre of innocents that would take one quarter of the country’s population. Today, at the center of the site, stands a three-story glass pagoda piled high with the skulls of the anonymous masses.

With the passing of another decade and the dark episode now embodied within a towering memorial, we wanted to imagine that the country has come to terms with its past and moved on. Such a realization would also make it easier to move on to our primary reason for visiting the region – the ancient temples of Angkor Wat. Nonetheless, Cambodia’s still-dark present would soon reveal itself via a former Buddhist monk.

We found ourselves sharing a taxi with Ponleak as a means to cut the cost of our five-hour journey to the ancient temple city. With hours to pass and the smooth lull of the country’s only paved road, we would hear the unhurried story of a Cambodian exactly my age. When Ponleak was 14, his peasant father had two choices: Let Pol Pot impress his son into his genocidal army, or hand him off to a Buddhist monastery for hiding as a monk.

In a country where public education does not exist, the latter option allowed Ponleak to become the only educated child in his family. He learned six languages and passed eight years of quiet reflection over hundreds of books. History, politics, economics, religion: Ponleak clearly knew them all, with a grasp of language and critical thought that could easily make him a graduate of an esteemed college in the U.S.

In 1993, following the fall of the Soviet Bloc, the United Nations finally stepped up to ensure fair elections in Cambodia. Yet, just five years later in 1998, when elections were due once again in a fledgling democracy that had recently been gutted of its educated class, the UN chose not to partake. The results were predictably bleak, and as keepers of the country’s knowledge, Buddhist monks like Ponleak felt obliged to act. They became activists for honest democracy.

These monks were quickly hunted down, and Ponleak’s best friends were killed. Ponleak escaped to Thailand where he spent the next three years mourning for his friends while his family mourned for him. He lamented to us his ordeal. “They thought I was dead…They performed the funeral and all. It was very hard to spend my time there… I had lost my best friends.” The most surreal aspect of Ponleak’s story was the warm aura and good humor that was ever-present throughout his telling of it. Many travelers call Cambodians the “Irish of Asia,” and I began to see why.

The Cambodian government proclaimed Ponleak a “false monk,” and in what was perhaps an exchange for amnesty, Ponleak finally decided to trade in his saffron robes for civilian clothes and to return to Cambodia. We hired Ponleak for our personal tour of Angkor Wat the following day.

If you’ve seen an Indiana Jones movie, you’ve glimpsed Angkor Wat. Like many temples built by a sister culture in Myanmar, it is without a doubt one of the ancient wonders of the world, on par with the great pyramids of Egypt and the towering pillars of Greece. Like these marvels, Angkor Wat was built by a brilliant civilization that slowly rose and quickly fell.

We spent a day meandering through these mythical ruins with Ponleak, as he alternated between detailed history lessons leaping forth from carved corridors and his own political reflections on the country today. “I want you to learn about the grand past of my people. But I also want you to see the real Cambodia for what it is today. I want to write about it, but I have no access to things like computers or the time in my day. This is one reason why I share them with you – so that you can write about the things that I say.”

The recent atrocities in Myanmar have pushed me to deliver Ponleak’s request. Like the Christian monks who preserved the wisdom of ancient Greece and Rome through the Dark Ages, Buddhist monks across Southeast Asia are doing the same with this region’s own brilliant and imperiled knowledge. They cannot do it alone.

9/20/07

Boulevard of Khmer Dreams

Cruisin’ the Levee

Mekhong Reflections

Angkor Sunrise

I was hit by a tornado once. I usually utter this statement around a campfire or dinner table following the interruption of a warm Midwestern day by a warning siren or an earth-colored storm. It’s surprising how many folks have seen the dark hues of twister-inducing clouds without ever having actually experienced firsthand the raw fury of a funnel – which usually seems to touch down in the next town, county, or state, leaving only its ominous potential in the memory of a retreating front. My own experience with a twister began with a jar of peanut butter during an epic bicycle ride across the United States.

It was late, past midnight, and my buddies—Patrick and Rodney—and I had been riding our bikes for a good four hours. The weather was hot and muggy, yet a lot better than the 106-degree day we’d spent loafing around in pools of sweat in a small town Minnesota park. We’d taken to riding at night four days prior in North Dakota, when the crushing heat made it clear that the only way across the Great Plains on a bicycle was when the moon pushed the thermometer beneath ninety.

Six months earlier, we’d made a pact that we’d ride from Seattle to Maine. An admittedly nutty idea while sober, it sounded brilliant during the college keg party at which we’d cooked it up. To ensure our commitment would not soon fall prey to a clouded bravado, we quickly drummed up $14,000 in pledged donations for a hometown charity to wed us to our goal – only to be delivered upon completion of 3,600 miles.

Which is why, instead of maybe throwing our pedal-powered steeds in the back of a pick-up truck or a passing train car to bypass a gnarly day, we were bound to ride, thick or thin, through Mother Nature’s whims. When we reached North Dakota’s western edge, she had turned on the broiler. So rather than jump face first into an oven, we rode third shift across the darkened pavement of the heartland – a tolerable way to work through the humid miles – until each night at around 4:00am, when the falling temperature worked its way to the ominous “dew point.”

It was at these moments that this little studied meteorological term would manifest itself in a pent-up display of its grand importance – as the random temperature on a given day at which vapor becomes water. On a tame Ohio morning, one might find the dew point’s work in the form of sparkling droplets on a lush green lawn. On the Great Plains, however, it made its nightly entrance via thundering clouds that rose like spirits from the dark landscape, riding spider webs of lightning that rolled in from the horizon with a mere thirty-minute warning at best. It was at this time that we’d strike for low ground and weather the storm, then rise with the sun in search of another small town park to whittle away the daylight hours.

Day one of this routine was relaxing, then exhilarating. Day two was tolerable, then exciting. Day three saw my last change of clothes soaked in sweat and any vestige of rest lost in a puddle of my own perspiration – and this was before the storm set in. Day four saw half-hearted jokes returned with middle fingers raised from wet grass. By the time I had run out of peanut butter during a midnight lunch break atop a soft mulch pile in a hardware store parking lot, all patience was lost.

“Hey, Rodney, you got that second jar of peanut butter in your saddle bag?”

“Come on Freshwater, that thing’s in the bottom of my pack…”

“Dude, I’m hungry.”

“Alright already, if you insist, I’ll tear this thing apart and get you the stupid peanut butter!”

“Oh wait, never mind, there’s still some in the lid from this upside down jar.”

But it was too late. Rodney had already emptied out half his bag for naught and the fight was on. I can’t remember exactly what we shouted at one another, just that the words jarred front porch lights and decelerated a passing car. We caught ourselves, looked around, then at one another: “Man, we need to go to sleep.” In silence we then rode out of town, until we came upon a rest area in the highway’s grass median, threw up our tent, and passed out.

I don’t remember the storm’s approach, just that we’d awoken standing up as a gale-force wind pulled our tent from the ground. Patrick was actually still asleep, shaken awake by Rodney’s and my “What the?!!” as we threw our bodies full force into the nylon floor to bring it back down to the earth. A loud crack and the tent’s poles exploded, as fabric shrunk like saran wrap around our bodies and a freight train began to charge over our heads. Louder and louder it roared. Rodney, having the misfortune of the screen window glued around his face, was our eye into the storm: “IT’S LIKE RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, MAN!!! YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO LOOK!”

Still louder and louder it grew. Images of a blade of grass flying through a telephone pole blew through my head as I wondered if, this time, my time had come. Any second it could hit, another second, then another. I heard a, “Ross, man!” hurled through the wind. “I’m really sorry man!”…“Me too!” as an “I love you guys!” shot from Patrick’s side of our destroyed tent. More seconds. What would we do?

“The brick outhouse! The brick outhouse! We gotta make a break for it!” Patrick tore open the tent and the three of us clawed our way through a river of water into the storm; breaking into a crawling run for the privy door, which, through the grace of God, we were able to pry open, roll through, and bolt closed. Then we looked up. Hell’s Kitchen was brewing through the skylight in the ceiling. Patrick gazed into the hole in the ground, wondering if it was worth it to live or die. Rodney pondered Patrick’s dilemma, then burrowed into a corner with a “Dude, if we die, maybe it was meant to be…” I grabbed another corner and Patrick quickly staked out his own.

Time carried on in a surreal mix of the immediate moment and minutes ticking by. At some point the roar petered into silence and exhaustion turned to sleep. A few hours later we were awoken by the latch’s click and a towering figure behind a large belt buckle and ten-gallon hat. “You boys alright?” Sure. We’re alive.

We inquired about the storm. “Oh, it’s gone… But not before it turned the Fargo Dome into Fargo Stadium.” Registering this feat of nature, we rose to inspect the aftermath in our own camp. The bikes, weighted by 70 pound packs, were miraculously still there – unscathed by the timber that had come crashing down all around them. As ironic were the many other trees that stood idly in the morning breeze, their branches bearing no witness of the 180 degree turns they’d taken in the storm’s winds.

We collapsed under the sun’s crisp rays, a feeling of rebirth lightening our bodies and our minds. Eighteen hundred miles under our belts and eighteen hundred left to go. Yesterday, our goal seemed to have burned up with the plains. Today, it was reborn with a new life of possibilities.

(7/11/08)