The Counting Bird 

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been riding along and been overcome with joy.  I pull up alongside Andrea and exclaim as a child might, “We’re riding our bikes in Bagan!” - “We’re in the delta!  In Myanmar!” - “ We’re crossing the Irrawaddy!” - “We’re riding in Sukhothai!” - “Do you realize we’ve ridden straight across Thailand!” - “We’re riding next to the Mekong River!” - “I love it here!” - “I love our bike trip!” 

Our bikes have not needed maintenance and we’ve had no flat tires.  Not a drop of rain has fallen on us.  Yes, it’s been too hot but other than that it’s been a perfect trip.  I don’t take any of this for granted even though we prepared as well as we could.  Instead I feel very grateful.

I love riding in S.E. Asian countries.  There is always a lot to ponder even when we are in the middle of proverbial nowhere.  We’ve been here before but somehow it’s mostly all new to us.  It’s a different trip as unique as the first.  As I ride I find that I’m not thinking about life in general or deciding what type of windows to install in my garage remodel back in Portland.  There isn’t enough space in my brain to consider such faraway stuff, not when Buddhist crematories must be explored.  I do think about Molly being pregnant with twins and hope all is well.  Everything else is here and now and my mind is constantly stimulated by everything I see.  

I think the most important thing to do while riding is to greet people along the route.   In Myanmar I was aware that every single person, whether they were on or in a vehicle, walking, working in fields, whatever, needed me to either wave, smile or say hello (preferably all three at once) but what they needed most of all was for me to look at them directly in their eyes.  They all look directly into mine.  They wanted this personal contact with the rare and unusual foreigner.  I tried very hard to meet everyone’s needs but that meant meeting a lot of eyes every day and the roads are full of people in Myanmar.  I actually felt bad if there was a person saying hello to me on my right side at the same time as one on my left and as I whizzed past trying to avoid potholes I had only enough time to acknowledge one of them.  I hoped the few I missed didn’t feel bad that I hadn’t made that personal eye contact with them.  

In Thailand there are far fewer people near the road.  Thais have seen more foreigners and are also a bit more reserved which means they don’t require as much acknowledgement.  But as we get further from towns I get the sense that people are surprised to see us.  Here in a far corner of Isaan it’s best for us to initiate contact with anyone we see.  As it turns out Thais love to be acknowledged.  They light up at our smiles, a wave and a, “Sa wat dee!”  Almost all respond with a friendly greeting.

We are in a part of Thailand where the wai, the greeting of holding palms together at the forehead in a sign of respect, is still widely used.  It’s so nice to say hello to a young kid as I pass and he or she immediately responds with a wai.  One cannot misinterpret this greeting; it is one of respect. 

As we go further the dry scrub forests are more untouched and mysterious.  Trees growing on solid rock are stunted, gnarled.  We see nearly no one and there are fewer vehicles on the roads and the roads are rougher, almost forgotten.  Since it’s quieter my attention turns more to the sounds I hear.  There are a half dozen birds that have odd, mysterious calls that tell me I am someplace very different like when Dorothy and her three companions in the Wizard of Oz enter that place they were unfamiliar.  They walked wide-eyed, on guard, anticipating anything.  Similarly, I ride on wide-eyed.   

I often stop on the road to marvel at the sound the “Counting Bird” makes.  I’ve given it this temporary name until I know what kind of bird it actually is.  I have never seen a Counting Bird.  I’ve tried to figure out where the sound is coming from dozens of times (for decades!) but still no sighting.  It’s a one note bird, a repeated note, a hauntingly hollow sort of note every second or even faster than that.  I have counted more than three hundred of the notes in a row!   I’m the one doing the counting, unlikely the bird is.  I love that a bird has come up with such a unique and creative song - a one-note song!

It’s such an intriguing and mysterious sound that I have often wondered if it’s really a bird at all.  It could be a lizard or tree frog.  That would explain my inability to see it in the trees, however I’m really not a birder.  Whatever it is it speaks to me in mysterious speak.   It sets the tone for riding through the unfamiliar landscape and I look at all the strange trees, bushes and huge black boulders and scare myself thinking that if I had to, for some reason, walk cross-country through it I would probably die.  There would be snakes, scorpions and spiders.  Snakes, scorpions and spiders, oh my!  And thorns, lots and lots of thorns.   

Heart

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This leads me to think about all the Cambodians who decided to walk through these exact sorts of forests attempting to escape Pol Pot’s killing fields.  I have a Cambodian friend back in Portland who with her entire family did just that.  She told me she was a little girl at the time but she remembers having to eat large bugs, roots and whatever else they could find along the way.  Often they had to travel at night and be quiet.  I can’t imagine how hard that must have been.  There are so many people in the world who have had to do really dangerous things in order to simply survive.  Again I feel incredibly lucky to be riding my bike without worries.  We are not worrying about where we will stay at night, not worrying about finding food and certainly not worrying that others are hunting us down!  I hear the Counting Bird somewhere out there as I ride and I start counting the ways I’ve been lucky in my life. 

I remember spending winters with my father in Minnesota when he was in his late 90’s.  I’d cook dinner for him and his favorite meal was salmon, mashed potatoes and maybe some green beans - “A Dad Meal” - I still call it.  He would sit down giddy with excitement that he was so fortunate that he didn’t have to figure out how to cook the meal and it was being served to him by his companion for the winter, his youngest son.  At some point in many of those meals he would stop and ask, “Do we really deserve such a meal?”  I don’t remember either of us ever coming to a definitive answer but I’m sure we each quietly and in our own way thought about all the millions of people who didn’t have it as good as we did and we hoped for the best for them.  We didn’t know why we were so lucky but we never took it for granted either.   

Riding, riding, the mind wanders.  I thought it stayed here and now but apparently it is free to briefly consider this or that and even go all the way back home after all.

Maybe on this day and in this place the reason I’m thinking of Pol Pot’s escapees is because it seems we are starting to get close to the vast scrub forest/jungle area where Laos, Cambodia and Thailand meet.  It’s still a wild place and a very poor place.  The houses we see along the road are shacks made from reused scrap boards.  I think of my family’s road trips to Florida from Minnesota every winter for vacation when we drove through some of what must have been the poorest parts of America in the 1950’s.  The houses there looked the same with unpainted boards for walls and rusty tin covering the roofs.  

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Since we have decided our trip will end early I have lots of Clif Bars we need to eat.  I saved them for times when we would need quick energy climbing big hills, deep into our trip.  Now they have lost their special purpose and are nothing more than dead weight -  edible bars we share at our snack spots along with peanuts, oranges and water.  

Our once-a-day snack stops are fun.  We eat with gusto and upend bottles of water.  We look around at where we are or how the shelter was constructed.  We observe the nearby vegetation.  We look at the rest of our route for the day and consider how far we are from our hoped-for destination.  We watch ant highways and sweat lines.  We stare at our feet and their Keen tan lines.  Sometimes we don’t talk much at all and just listen to what the birds have to say.  

A butterfly, friendlier than normal, alights on Andrea’s shoe gaining our attention.  Then it seems as though it wants something from me.  It keeps flying directly at my face so I take out my iPhone and start filming it in slow motion thinking that that would be the only way I would ever have it visible in a video.  The butterfly flies around our shelter as I hold the phone up with two hands trying at all times to keep it in view.  A better video would be of me making this video: My arms jutting upwards at the sky and then down at the ground then over there and quickly over there and not looking where I’m going I run into the structure and then, stupidly I even dash out onto the road!  I have never tried to follow the flight of a butterfly but I find it very difficult.  I keep at it for some time realizing I must look as if I’m having a seizure.  Andrea is laughing and I am laughing and I wonder if that passing truck driver is laughing too.  It’s too hot to be gyrating my body like this.  I quit filming the butterfly but it continues to be interested in us.  It must be our salt encrusted skin and not our scintillating personalities but we like to think its spirit is something we once knew and it has finally found us.  The mysteriousness of this place is profound.

Then we pack up and ride on toward more thoughts.  

lovebruce