New Adventures at Dawn Kiam

After breakfast at the retreat center and a talk with one of the women helping this month, I felt sleepy walking back to Dawn Kiam. Having had a busy few week previously, I thought I deserved a nap and for that purpose stopped off at a friend's kuti at the base of the hill between the retreat center and Dawn Kiam (the same hill that has the jan paa trees of a previous episode, so I’ll refer to it as Janpaa Hill). In the early afternoon it was getting hot & the nap wasn’t so comfortable anymore. Drifting in and out of sleep, I heard a noise like something burning. Looking out, all I could see was a long spindly tree jumping about in a strong wind. So I laid down again, until I heard the burning noise coming from a direction that wasn’t the dancing tree. Uh-oh! This whole place is tinder dry. What's going on!

I followed the sound and then the smell of smoke and then the sight of smoke to Mr. Pring’s land just southeast of SM International (SMI) and west-northwest of where I’d been napping. A fire to the northeast of us, almost a kilometer away, had begun to spread west. (Mr. Pring said that it had been burning for a few days already.) At first, Mr. Pring was reconciled to losing his land, since there wasn’t much water around and he was alone. That seemed like a bad idea, so I sent him to the retreat center for help and myself ran off to Dawn Kiam to get help from our crew.

When we got back, I crashed through the underbrush towards the fire, yelling at the others to hurry up, which turned out to be tiring, foolish, a waste of time. The winds had shifted and the fire was now moving more towards the southeast, that is, towards our beautiful Janpaa Hill and maybe Dawn Kiam itself. In short, we were behind it and in no position to do anything useful. Anyway, Mr. Pring's land was looking safe — for now — and it was our land that looked in danger, plus Ms. Pikul's property that lay between Mr. Pring's and Dawn Kiam.

In fact, Ms. Pikul's land was already burning. A couple days later, I had a chance to see the northern section of her land. It was just dry "communist grass." Fire backed by a strong wind can move through that at 10 meters per minute. Then it ran into her abandoned conconut palm grove. The trees hadn’t been harvested in years so there was plenty of grass & shrubs — now dried out from the lack of rain — to go up in flames fast.

For a while the winds and thus the fire, doomed to burn a swathe through Ms. Pikul's land, seemed to be heading more or less east towards Janpaa Hill. The hill is very dry and could go up in flames very fast. Frightening!

This hill has become a part of my life, as with the trees of Dawn Kiam. Everyday I walk past it, either to the east going to the retreat center (SMI) or to the west on the way to Suan Mokkh. Every once in a while I climb it's jagged limestone which seems more a pile of rocks, boulders, and slabs, than a proper hill. Caves and chasms in the hill are the home of the bats I’ve grown found of, whether from peeing in my face as they roost in the top of my kuti or swooping up mossies around our heads as we meditate in the pre-dawn or streaming through a tunnel of trees at the start of their evening feed. While I don’t know any of them personally, their species is another part of this endangered landscape. All this can turn to ash if the winds blow the fire across the road separating Ms. Pikul's property from the narrow strip of land at the base of the hill. If the fire crosses this road, there's nothing we can do to stop the wind blowing it up and over the top. From there, Dawn Kiam would be a goner, too.

With help from people doing this month’s retreat, we chopped down the shrubs and small trees lining the east side of the road. A few dozen buckets were ready to face the fire (probably ineffectually if it came with a strong wind). But again the tricky winds shifted and blew the fire towards DK itself. Fortunately, Mr. Chaub, one of the foremen overseeing construction at SMI and whose team had built the kutis in Dawn Kiam, had foreseen this and thus had cleared away some of the vegetation along the small road between Dawn Kiam's northern boundary and the south end of Ms. Pikul's property.

But the wind was strong and the fire raged. Flames would shoot up 30, 40, 50 feet into the air as they climbed and consumed first this tree and then that tree and then another, remorselessly. As the flames reached the top of each tree, a shower of sparks and burning debris would shoot up and be carried by the wind, sometimes over our heads. This was terrifying, as it could bring the fire 10 or 20 meters behind in seconds, perhaps to unreachable places in the underbrush or on the side of Janpaa Hill. In past years, when fires consumed the land to our east (1992), south (1993 & 1994), and southwest (1995 & 1996), such sparks had landed in Dawn Kiam and set dry grass or leaves on fire. Fortunately, they could be put out then. But this year?

It was hellishly hot, even though the fire hadn’t reached where we were on the two roads. No clouds in the sky, no moisture in the earth, just a hot sun directly overhead baking down on us in the early afternoon. I spent part of my time walking among the retreatants advising them to cover their heads with wet cloths and to make sure they drank plenty of water. (By the end of the day, I was one of the casualties of too much sun — had a nasty headache.

We probably would have been goners, without the aid of the fire trucks that showed up from Chaiya and Pum Riang. First they put out the grass and brush fire that briefly threatened the southeast corner of SMI. Then they helped us patrol the road. Our buckets couldn’t reach in to flames like their hoses could. Of most use was a powerful pump the firemen brought. We plugged it into one of our canals, which fortunately had plenty of water because Ajarn Poh had rebuilt our dam a few weeks ago, and various volunteers hosed down the trees closest to Dawn Kiam. Two small fires started to the west of the SMI road, threatening Janpaa Hill, but the trucks doused them quickly. Still, some of us had to go in with axes and hoes to turn around burning logs so that the water could reach all the hot stuff.

The chairman of the Chaiya Municipal Council, which provided one of the trucks and a plow ( helpful for clearing brush on the side of the roads) and the Nai Ampoe (District Officer) who oversaw the other trucks and their crews spent much of the day and evening keeping an eye on things. The firemen would have left too soon otherwise. Every time they thought of packing up, another tree would burst into flames and require a hosing down. This went on until about 10:00 pm, when the winds calmed down. Finally around midnight they felt it was safe to leave, having given a pretty good soaking to the brush and trees nearest to Dawn Kiam.

After that, it was up to us to keep an eye on things for the rest of the night.

All of us are fine, although some of us got too much sun this day and inhaling smoke isn't any fun. But I haven't had time to do anything else, nor will be much time the next two days. My body is pretty tired and will need a day's rest... soon. The same applies to the others, both monks and laymen.