Mae Hong Son's serene lake
Journeys along the Thailand-Burma Border
“I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over- a burning desire to go , to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from any here.” – John Steinbeck in “The Urge to be Someplace Else”
And so it was that I found myself one cold December morning riding at the back of an open pickup truck, the wind on my face, up through the misty mountain trails of Mae Hong Son at the Thai-Burmese border. There we were all seated on a mat spread across the floor of the truck, shivering at every burst of moist wind that only gets chillier as we climbed our way up the slopes. To shield my face from the cold, I draped it with a shawl that I kept holding on tightly lest it gets blown about by the wind. Yet, after a while, I decided to let go of it gladly, no matter how biting the cold is, and let myself be swept in by the wind and sunshine, and the stirring beauty of mist and green.
There, before me, are verdant mountains rising up to the sky filled with ferns and pine trees, and here and there are bamboo groves lying hidden on patches of shadows swathed across the valley. As we moved deeper into the mountains, there would be more other shadows I would see and, too, I would learn that amidst this tender beauty, the forest has held secrets and borne witness to deep and abiding sorrows.
Moments before, we rode pass by villagers on single file hunched on the ground, their bodies in synchronized motion toiling the rice paddies, and every so often we see gaudily-painted Buddhist shrines on the roadside where smoke from burning incense sticks would waft through the air. We have set out from the town at eight in the morning, while it was still draped in slumber and fog, and as whiffs of mist drifted over on to the nearby lake and up across Wat Jong Kham and Wat Jong Klang, the twin temples of the Buddhist monks in saffron robes, some of whom as young as six or seven, whose heads are shaven, and who at nighttime would fly lanterns with lit candles shooting up into the sky in blazing flares to the cheers of the crowd. Continue reading
The Winged Life 
