The Jungle is not a place for humans. Nothing really prepares one for the hot passion of death floating in the green air of thick jungle. The mountains of Northern Laos stink of wild existence - viscious life is bursting and writhing out of the fecund earth like a legion of merciless maggots devouring a 4 day corpse.Thankfully, I am not alone. An 18 year old guide and I are on a ravine route to a 400 year old tea plantation nestled deep in the forested bousom of the lolling hills. The leeches...(shiver) - waving their clinging bodies like the thumbs of seedy hitchikers at dusk invade my mind. The boy is stopping me with a soft arm movement, slowly pointing at a bee hive the size of three footballs just on a tree nearby. Gazing at the silent hive, I am being grabed, softly but strongly, by a mahogany arm. As I am pulled towards him like a dangling climber, he slowly relaxes his stretched expression, pointing again, just at my ankles, where a deadly viper sits in a springing coil. Drawing his thumb across his neck, Hollywood style, he says "dead for sure. poison too much. town too far" and beaming a white smile we are trudging on.
In my deepest moments of relief, I return to God - resurrecting him momentarily - if for no other reason than for having someone to express my gratitude to at a level beyond words.
--
An Akha tribe lives and works the tea plantation and has been doing so for generations. Wandering the gravel paths through the lichen rich trees, I recieve a handful of seeds from an elderly harvester for propogating my own plantation (in Marty's basement). I learned a lot about tea, about how to pick the best leaves, about how good it tastes after not dying in the jungle, and how it can still ones nerves for things like returning to the jungle.--
After our return from the hills and through a terrifying thunderstorm in Phongsali, I pack up. The only way to describe the air in that town was desperate and evil. The people were good natured but there was a sort of darkness, a burned out hollow that moved through the streets like an angel of death.
A bit further down the road, 16 hours by bus, I find a bit of relief in an old heritge rich city called Luang Prabang. Filled with orange clad monks, tourist vendors and cradled by the Mekong river - a good place to drink tea and put on some weight with fruit smoothies and chicken baguettes. Sometimes it's not so bad to be effortlessly on the beaten trail. From here on through the rest of my time in Laos, I took the road most traveled by.
Still, after this, an emptiness lingered in my idle mind. I needed something to reignite me, to remind me...something...for the next post.
