The sun is coming out soon. The fog will cease, and the team of clouds will retreat, leaving the trees and low bushes stand in their wooden grey and brown, sometimes yellow, sometimes orange. Their dense green lush their tops, or skirt low to their leafy stems. What a morning, gently greeting the jungle campers. That morning, with hearts of an explorer, we trot into the reserved forest, just beyond the backyard of my uncle’s house. My father traced the vaguely familiar steps of childhood; I journeyed with care, not knowing what to expect. What can I expect? In a few minutes only, we reached the small stream, its rather flat banks well blanketed with algae, bidding out steps caution. In a hop, we crossed the stream, and continued uphill where in another minute brought us to the open top. The hill is rather low, compared to my expectant heart.
Across the gravel road, the front line of a thinning forest stood facing us, as if they were standing in a line of defense, ready to do anything to prevent anymore human intrusion. We came to the edge of defense, strolled casually past the line, lamenting in my mind the helpless bodies of wood that bear the marks of red painted “X”, demarcating the line of trees that are to cease being cut, while the gravel parades before it. Beyond the defense, lives a completely different world.
No bridle paths, donned with clear cut planks to ease our walking, but fallen leaves of brown, black, dark red and occasional green, carpeted all the face of the hill, covering branches of old that were to crack and collapse at the slightest foot stomp. Trees, sometimes the size of my thigh, most of the time the size of my forearm, rooted at their spot, close by their neighbours. There were almost always a couple of rattan twining caressing tree to tree, enough to prevent us from walking by without swaying a few parang chops. When the marking ropes ran out, it was time to trace our way back to the open.
Now we’ve pitched the tent on the open hill top. Father fetched water, and we made coffee, hot and soothing very well for lunch with bread while we sat under a shade. “Isn’t it great to be able to camp out, so that we abandon our cares and worries, and give all our attention and energy to the here and now?” Father said, with a hint of gratefulness, or perhaps a boyish delight, now mixed with the reality of age.
At about 3.30pm, we decided to have an early bath and dinner down at the stream.
The water spurts and bubbles gently above burning heat from a portable flame, in a while swims inside two chunks of dried boodles, two peeled onion bulbs, three eggs accidentally cracked open in their container.
The motley broth simmers with an oily glow at the surface, sitting nicely on a rock island midstream. In a dip, the noodles swim easily into our plastic cups, pushed gently by the branch-sticks (impromptu chopsticks made from nearby branches) we were using. What came later, was a difficult sensation to achieve elsewhere. Hot broth and noodles steamed itself through my tongue and palate, and glided slowly down my throat and further down where my chest was now swayed gently as the oncoming current swept coolly past the rest of my body. A river cuisine no restaurant can ever offer.
At times like this, father and I were reminded of a song we both love, a song I used to awe in bafflement:
You think I'm an ignorant savage
And you've been so many places
I guess it must be so
But still I cannot see
If the savage one is me
How can there be so much that you don't know?
You don't know ...
You think you own whatever land you land on
The Earth is just a dead thing you can claim
But I know every rock and tree and creature
Has a life, has a spirit, has a name
You think the only people who are people
Are the people who look and think like you
But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger
You'll learn things you never knew you never knew
Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon
Or asked the grinning bobcat why he grinned?
Can you sing with all the voices of the mountains?
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?
Come run the hidden pine trails of the forest
Come taste the sunsweet berries of the Earth
Come roll in all the riches all around you
And for once, never wonder what they're worth
The rainstorm and the river are my brothers
The heron and the otter are my friends
And we are all connected to each other
In a circle, in a hoop that never ends
How high will the sycamore grow?
If you cut it down, then you'll never know
And you'll never hear the wolf cry to the blue corn moon
For whether we are white or copper skinned
We need to sing with all the voices of the mountains
We need to paint with all the colors of the wind
You can own the Earth and still
All you'll own is Earth until
You can paint with all the colors of the wind
Colours of the Wind said it all. Location is not just a location anyone can simply own and claim. It is a place, a place filled with people with their meanings and languages, a place with life of nature, waters of nature, rocks of nature; of God. I sighed in my heart.
Night came with occasional drizzling rain, making their rhythms on our tent fly right beside our ears. We sipped hot coffee inside the already heated tent. Father laid down to rest beside me, covered with huge drops of sweat, I laid on my sleeping bag beside him, not ready to sleep yet, not even a hint of drowsiness; all alert, all awake and thinking. With my eyes closed, the distant town played its band of large and small engines, toots of horns, whizzing of wheels, a steady and restless rotor. My left side took in all of that. Also now, the hillside aroused its magnificent orchestra of a thousand bug clappers, bird hooters, screeches, whistlers….; a constant midnight concerto.
I will never understand how did such a time came that I should hear this massive “naturally occurring” juxtaposition, each side declaring their own rightful characters. It will not creep inside an album, but it has shouted a question in my head. I came from the city, I hate the city; I came to the jungle, I’m afraid of the jungle. I couldn’t sleep, my ears heard the whole night of torment.
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Sharon Chong. May 7, 2008
:o)
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