Last November, Disty, Chip, and I took a mini van from Luang Prabang. We splurged on this, wanting to have a more relaxed and comfortable trip than what we’ve experienced on the bus. We were picked up at our guesthouse by a van that then went to Chip’s house and on to the North bus station. There we picked up another van.
In our silver Mitsubishi van, there were four rows of bench seats: in the first bench sat the driver and a middle-aged woman. In the send row sat the male German tourist. I was sitting by myself next to the left-hand window in the third row that had a small folding seat section on the right that allowed access through the side sliding door; and Disty and Chip were sitting in the back bench.
About half-way through the six hour drive, the driver stopped and picked up two young women who were standing on the other side of the road. They didn’t seem to speak Lao, and they were not very sociable. They sat next to me—one on the bench to my left and the other on the jump seat. They were apparently were very tired and they spread out like liquids and filled every available crevice of space in the van. The one on the jump seat fell asleep with her head flopping backwards occasionally into Disty’s lap. The other was draped all over me. It was interesting how unfamiliar their behavior seemed to us. Though my my exposure to Lao people is somewhat limited, their indifference to personal boundaries seemed culturally different to me. They were very entertaining but made the ride much less comfortable.
About an hour after we picked them up, we stopped to eat. The young woman sleeping on the jump seat failed to wake and when her friend shoved her and she woke,she didn’t move, leaving Disty and Chip trapped for a while until her friend pushed her out the door. After lunch, they returned to sleeping. The two mysteriously got off about an hour out of Oudomxay, and we enjoyed the luxury of space for that last part of the ride. The van let us off on the outside of the bus station, just 1/4 mile from the stairway to Wat Phou That and the site that we had selected for the library.
We had let our friend and former-monk teacher Bounxay’s brother-in-law Phommy know what day we were coming and what time we expected to leave Luang Prabang. Our plan was to call Phommy when we got to town. As we were dropped off, I called Phommy and tried to explain where we were, but I think my limited Lao failed us. He thought we were somewhere in the bus station. However, moments later Bounxay’s sister pulled up on a motorcycle with delicious baked treats. How she found us, whether she was looking for us, or whether the baked goods were even intended for us, we’re not sure. But it was wonderful to see her, and she called Phommy to let him know where we were. Moments later Phommy pulled up in his pickup truck, we put our bags in the back, and we drove down the block to the guesthouse which Disty had read about that had the good internet. We got two rooms, and this became our home and office for the next four days. Directly cross the street from the guesthouse were the steps to Wat Phou That and Andy’s future library.
In our silver Mitsubishi van, there were four rows of bench seats: in the first bench sat the driver and a middle-aged woman. In the send row sat the male German tourist. I was sitting by myself next to the left-hand window in the third row that had a small folding seat section on the right that allowed access through the side sliding door; and Disty and Chip were sitting in the back bench.
About half-way through the six hour drive, the driver stopped and picked up two young women who were standing on the other side of the road. They didn’t seem to speak Lao, and they were not very sociable. They sat next to me—one on the bench to my left and the other on the jump seat. They were apparently were very tired and they spread out like liquids and filled every available crevice of space in the van. The one on the jump seat fell asleep with her head flopping backwards occasionally into Disty’s lap. The other was draped all over me. It was interesting how unfamiliar their behavior seemed to us. Though my my exposure to Lao people is somewhat limited, their indifference to personal boundaries seemed culturally different to me. They were very entertaining but made the ride much less comfortable.
About an hour after we picked them up, we stopped to eat. The young woman sleeping on the jump seat failed to wake and when her friend shoved her and she woke,she didn’t move, leaving Disty and Chip trapped for a while until her friend pushed her out the door. After lunch, they returned to sleeping. The two mysteriously got off about an hour out of Oudomxay, and we enjoyed the luxury of space for that last part of the ride. The van let us off on the outside of the bus station, just 1/4 mile from the stairway to Wat Phou That and the site that we had selected for the library.
We had let our friend and former-monk teacher Bounxay’s brother-in-law Phommy know what day we were coming and what time we expected to leave Luang Prabang. Our plan was to call Phommy when we got to town. As we were dropped off, I called Phommy and tried to explain where we were, but I think my limited Lao failed us. He thought we were somewhere in the bus station. However, moments later Bounxay’s sister pulled up on a motorcycle with delicious baked treats. How she found us, whether she was looking for us, or whether the baked goods were even intended for us, we’re not sure. But it was wonderful to see her, and she called Phommy to let him know where we were. Moments later Phommy pulled up in his pickup truck, we put our bags in the back, and we drove down the block to the guesthouse which Disty had read about that had the good internet. We got two rooms, and this became our home and office for the next four days. Directly cross the street from the guesthouse were the steps to Wat Phou That and Andy’s future library.
***
The next few days of last November were filled with an unexplained flow of events.
***
This past week, I was walking in the woods and I saw a Monarch butterfly. I began thinking about the Monarch’s journey from Carlisle, Massachusetts to Mexico. They have been born to make the journey—using the sun and earth’s magnetic fields to navigate, each generation heading further along to make the long migration, reliant on winds and light as they push themselves southwest. They are travelers. And we are travelers, reliant on what we believe to be will and good planning, but in the end on things we are made to do by forces beyond our understanding.
Recently, I’ve been rereading John Muir’s wonderful piece “A Wind-storm in the Forests.”
“We all travel the milky way together, trees and men; but it never occurred to me until this storm-day, while swinging in the wind, that trees are travelers, in the ordinary sense. They make many journeys, not extensive ones, it is true; but our own little journeys, away and back again, are only little more than tree-wavings—many of them not so much.”
***
We unconsciously held onto the earth during our journey to Oudomxay, as events swept us forward to places we never would have gone were it not for forces we could not control or understand.
***
We are now in Bangkok and Cooper has joined us. In addition to knowing Disty since they were very young and me since her first day at college, Cooper is Andy’s godmother. She is the third board member of Wat-Library Network, the non-profit we have put together to build and maintain our little library and more. She is our "seow." In Lao, this word means something like a "life-friend."
Cooper arrived very early this morning from New York, and we will spend the next couple of days in Bangkok before heading off to Luang Prabang to meet Chip; my niece Rosanna, Andy and Chip's first cousin, and her friend Dustin, who have been traveling in India; and Andy’s friend, the ex-monk Phet, who is now a tour guide in Luang Prabang.
We will all leave Luang Prabang together on Friday, June 20, 2014 by minibus. We will arrive on Friday evening in Oudomxay. There we hope to meet up with my Lao son, Aik. If there is enough light when we get to town, we can go to see the library.
Were Andy to be alive, I probably would not know about this far away place, about the stone steps leading up to the magical Wat Phou That, about having a Lao son, about the smell of the bougainvillea hanging from the trees along the stone steps, or about the gentle and charismatic Satu Peng who is the head monk of the Province and the dreamer who drove the building of a library in honor of our lost son.
Then again, were Andy alive, I wouldn’t need to be flying toward him, seeking one last vista of life in his sky-blue eyes.
No comments:
Post a Comment