Day 5: Thursday 7 May 1998
The back-hoe showed more of its power this morning by clearing the land west of the disputed bend in the road. Trees — none of them very big atop this rocky limestone shelf — were ripped up and swept further away from wandering sparks. Ugly and unfortunate, but we consider it to be a necessary precaution. A decent area of trees still live on Ms. Pikul's side of the bend, but there eastern edge is being eroded by the creeping fire. There isn’t much water around there, so it has become the most worrying spot. From there, it's just a few 15 meter leaps by sparks to the base of the hill and conflagration.
Some of the monks spent a few hours in the blazing dry heat of the late morning putting out two fires at the northern end of Ms. Pikul's land, near Mr. Pring's pond. That left them exhausted, and one dizzy, but they had recovered by tea time and we had our usual boisterous chat.
While over at Suan Mokkh to send the first bulletin of this series, I noticed the wind picking up and the air outside darkening. Looked up at the sky: there were clouds, a fair number of them and rather dark. Rain?
Not so lucky, yet. The wind was too strong and blew them off to sea, where we have seen lightening flashes so far this night. Things have cooled off a tad.
Still, looking up at the bright moon overhead, the clouds are much more numerous than previous nights. Further, the winds & breezes are increasingly coming from the southwest. This is usually a sign of the monsoon changing, which has been tardy and confused this year. A clear change usually happens within one week, usually the second of April in these parts. Not this year. We’ve been teased by some winds from the southwest, but nothing sustained. And no rain.
Ms. Pikul is remaining stubborn about deepening the ditches. She says she doesn’t care about the road, which is a relief and improvement. However, she maintains that the ditches are on her land and she won’t let us do anything to them. Legally, she has no ground to stand on, since our deed will show that Ajarn Poh was scrupulous to a T in digging the ditches in the first place. The local powers that be and some of her relatives think she's wrong. Nonetheless, it wouldn’t be cool to force anything down her throat, especially now that the situation is looking pretty safe.
Nonetheless, a few of us patrol through the night. After evening tea, three of us went out to move the remaining pump (the other had "died," we were told) so that we could reach the southwest corner of Ms. Pikul's land, previously unsearched. We didn’t find much action there, either, to our relief.
So we swept back and forth for a while towards the middle
After three nights of this, some of us have developed quite a sense for where fires are still hidden beneath the ash. Often its the smell, which is fresher when the source is very close, rather than drifting on the wind for 20 - 30 meters. It has a certain rich pungency that I rather like. (Is that perverse?) Another clue is the heat coming up from the ground, sometimes felt by the feet, sometimes by the face. Dig around with a stick, hoe, or machete and one finds hot coals. Call in the hose.
We have been pondering the meaning of back-hoes. Very powerful, they can dig in one scoop what it would take a full-grown monk many hours to do with a shovel. They can knock down a swathe of trees casually. They can put in a road quickly that removed would leave a scar for years. Powerful and convenient for certain kinds of work. Powerful and fast. If you made the right decision concerning the task a back-hoe is used on, then perhaps no regrets. But if you made the wrong decision, it happened so fast there wasn’t any time to rethink it or pull it back.
In our case, the back-hoe is being set to work by the not-so-transparent decision making process common at Suan Mokkh, common in Thai Buddhism. What if we disagree with the use it is put to? Too late to change the decisions? So far, our voice (Dawn Kiam Sangha) is listened to. We don’t necessarily make the decisions but have some ability to modify them. So far, I think we can live with them. We shall see … and debate …
Another nagging reality is that we are trapped, so far, in a vicious circle of controlling and redefining physical nature. The developmentalist mentality that dug the drainage canal next door set the whole series of crises and fires into motion. Ever since we have been trying to compensate by digging ditches, building a dam, and trying to maintain water levels. Without that drainage canal to suck water out of our soil, and that of neighbors, the water levels would be plenty high to maintain the forest. But too high — and here's the catch — for raising cattle or growing palms, the agriculturist preferences of our immediate neighbors. Who gets their way? Who has power?!
Where does this mentality come from? In Ismael, by Daniel Quinn, a book I’ve been reading this week, this mentality is traced back to the rise of agriculture in Mesopotamia 10,000 years ago. Ismael/Quinn links it with Cain’s murder of Abel and the genocide that "Takers" have committed against "Leavers." The rise of agriculture meant the development of a way of thinking that sought to control Nature, manipulating the bits we want and getting rid of the bits we have no use for, even if they are beautiful trees, animals, or other human beings.
Other writers, such as Ken Wilber in Up From Eden, connect the rise of agriculture with the ability to think in time. To protect one's self image far enough into the future to see oneself harvesting the fruits of long labor and enjoying them.
We aren’t the only ones who must compensate. Before the canal was dug, about ten families in the village to the south planted rice every year. (Rubber is the main crop in these parts.) The year after it was dug only a few tried. By the next planting season these had given up, too. By lowering the water table in the old swamp, the canal dried out their rice fields too, even though it was almost a kilometer away from them.
"Pruu Juud" is the name local people gave to the once rich fisheries swamp that was drained by that canal. Juud is a kind of reed that makes soft mats, hand bags, and other useful household stuff. The villagers used to come collect it and weave it in such useful things. No more! They now plastic stuff from the market. The trees and grasses of the swamp provided herbal medicine. And it was a rich source of fish protein year round. No more! And less playgrounds for our lovely water buffaloes. How many beings have lost out for the greed and stupidity of a few.
Why? To make profits for somebody's construction company. To make kickbacks for some government officials. To open up land for cattle grazing. To enhance the local connections and power base of a certain political party. To control nature according to the hubris of modern man. To kill and destroy.
Last year during the Rains Retreat, we were kept awake many nights by the all night work to dig a monster pond in the middle of the remains of the swamp. This pond is a couple hundred meters square, but not very deep, perhaps two meters around the edges and one meter in the middle. Drain gates are in the middle of each side. We and locals have speculated about what it is for, but we never could find out why it was dug.
Our best guess is that it was yet another project of a sick bureaucracy that is mainly interested in its own pockets and power. The value of this project to local people or the ecosystem seems not to have been a consideration. The opinions of villagers and monks were never sought. Rather, the takes that various officials and cronies would get from the budget is probably what mattered. This is standard practice, no matter if funds come from taxes, the UN, the World Bank, Japan, USA, or wherever.
Since it was dug we have seen no activity around this pond. No sign of fish. No planting of trees. No further work. This only confirms the conclusions of the above paragraph. Our hope is that Nature will slowly wear down those walls and that plants and trees will take over again. We are negotiating with the local Fisheries Officer who is in charge of this land. We hope he will let us protect at least some of the land, that next to Dawn Kiam, from further burning and digging.
A dam we are building will reverse some of the damage caused by the canal and will flood this land more like the old days. Or so we hope.
But human authored changes don’t always work out the way we want. The price we pay for hubris, for ignorance and out-of-control "me" and "mine."
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