The Way of Wanderlust (39 page)

“Now, we are friends,” he said, gesturing toward the mingling soldiers. “But a few years ago, we were shooting at each other.”

He then walked down and clapped his Thai counterpart on the back, and before I knew what was happening, I was being herded along with a contingent of Thai and Cambodian troops to a prime photo spot in front of the tower's entrance. One Thai and one Cambodian soldier were dispensed to take photos, and the rest of us put our arms around each other's shoulders and smiled.

“We'll call this ‘Tourist at the Peace Temple,'” the commander said, and as his words were shared and translated, the soldiers nodded and laughed.

After a half hour of cigarette-sharing and photo-snapping, the commander led us back down the trail to a roofed, open-walled meeting area with a table where he bade us sit and brought us tea. He then disappeared for a few minutes and reappeared with a dozen of his soldiers, including the six who had accompanied us to the temple. When all had been seated, he stood and gave a speech, which Mr. Kim translated, welcoming us and telling us what an honor it was to have a foreign guest among them. He also spoke about the history of the conflict over the border temples and how happy everyone was to have peace in the area now, and how they hoped the only visitors in the future would be tourists—he smiled at me—and not soldiers.

He sat down to applause and I rose and gave a brief speech, through Mr. Kim, saying how very honored I was to be welcomed at this ancient and important site, and how tremendously moved I had been to see the Cambodian soldiers talking so harmoniously with the Thai soldiers. I told them how very inspiring that was to me, and how that kind of peace and understanding between people was the prime reason I traveled and why I believed so fervently in the power of travel to transform the world. I said I would always treasure my photo of the Peace Temple and my visit with them.

I sat down and all the soldiers burst into smiles and applause, and then, quite unexpectedly, a very young-looking soldier at the end of the table got up and began to speak. His voice quavered at first, but as he continued to speak, the words flowed out of him with a pure passion.

“I am just a simple soldier,” Mr. Kim translated. “I have not traveled far or seen much in my life. But today is a very special day for me.” He looked directly at me. “Our honored guest is the first foreigner I have ever seen in my life, the first foreigner I have ever met. I am so excited and happy to have met you and talked with you. I cannot quite express what this means to my life. This makes me think how big the world is, and gives me a kind of hope. Please when you go back to your village, tell the people about the soldiers you met at Ta Krabey. And tell them about the peace you found here. I will never forget this day for the rest of my life.”

He stopped, looking embarrassed, but his comrades burst into applause, and I leaped to my feet, pressed my hands to my heart and said, “
Agung! Agung! Agung!
” Then I asked Mr. Kim to say that I would definitely tell all my fellow villagers about the kind soldiers I had met at Ta Krabey and the inspiring peace I had found there. And that I too would never forget this day.

Mr. Kim dropped me at my hotel in Siem Reap at 5:00
p.m
., and we parted with assurances that we would see each other again. I had thought I would visit Angkor Wat one last time, but instead, I decided to have dinner at the hotel and spend the night in my room. I had a day's worth of flying ahead, but even more important, I wanted to end my stay in the place where Cambodia had come alive for me, in Banteay Chhmar. So I sat in my room scrolling through memories of the days just past, until one scene stopped me.

On the second morning of my stay in Banteay Chhmar, I awoke before dawn to explore the main ruin where Sarun had taken me the day before. I made my way by flashlight along puddle-pocked paths to the eastern entrance and admired the bas-reliefs of warriors and dancers again. Then, just as day was breaking, I followed a footpath to the right that led past the collapsed wall and into the heart of the temple.

Alone in the ruins, I lost all sense of time. I picked my way over mossy rocks, extricated myself from clinging vines, slowly stepped up and over stairs and crumbling walls, butt-slid down precarious inclines, then turned to find a beautiful carved maiden encased in a tiny niche, an intricate carving of a Buddha under a bodhi tree, an ornamented head here, a shield-bearing torso there, a half dozen bodhisattvas buried among grasses and leaves.

I moved deeper and deeper into the ruin, sloshing through puddles, slashing through vines, clambering over toppled stones, avoiding millipedes, swatting at mosquitoes, parting branches, and plucking persistent stickers. At one point I stopped for a swig of water, and when I slapped at the whining mosquitoes that danced on my neck and hands, I slipped and slid over some tumbled pieces of rock, grabbed at branches to stop my fall, and landed just in front of a bas-relief of warriors, maidens, and fish alive in stone.

Sweat poured into my eyes, and as I mopped the stream with a sopping bandanna, I saw a stony face—lips, nose, eyes—at the top of a tower of tilting stone. I fumbled with my camera, and rain started to fall, first a pitter-patter on the forest canopy and then an insistent downpour that penetrated the branches and leaves.

I stood in the downpour and felt electrified, closer to the wild heart of life than I had been in a long time. I was sweaty, dirty, dripping, exhausted, utterly alone in the wild and connecting with things so far beyond me I could barely comprehend them.

Part of me was transported back to this same stony spot eight centuries before, gazing in wonder at that tower face in pristine splendor, wrapped in the awe this kingly complex compelled. And part of me was exploring the woods behind my childhood home in Connecticut, wondering at the stone walls I found there and the thrilling sense of communion with older histories and hands that they bestowed.

I thought of puzzles: the puzzle of the GHF archaeologists attempting to restore the ruins piece by piece; the puzzle of this enchanting, elusive country—its glorious ancient past and agonized recent past, the promise and peril of its present; and the puzzle of my own ruins, from the woods of Connecticut to the wilds of Cambodia.

Why was I here? Why had I chosen this path?

Now, in the jungle gloom of my Siem Reap hotel room, a glimmer of understanding grew. This is what I do, this was as close to the wild core of me as I could ever hope to get: I follow the compass of my heart, venturing off the map, making connections, asking questions, going deeper, trying to penetrate the essence of a place, so that I can understand it better and bring back precious pieces to share. Piecing together the puzzle of Cambodia was a way to piece together the puzzle of me.

I thought of the soldier at the Peace Temple, of the speech he had made and how he had waved and waved as we had driven away. I thought of Mr. Kim, Sarun, Sopheng, the towers of Banteay Torp and Ta Prohm, the Pol Pot Baray, the unforgettable face in the jungle, my stilt house home. Here I was, a temporary traveler on a spinning globe, alone yet connected to every single one of these: a piece in a puzzle of a journey whose design I would probably never know, but whose path had restored my sense of the whole, in the ruins of Banteay Chhmar.

This essay was inspired by a memorial service for a great friend and fellow writer, editor, and adventurer named Lynn Ferrin, who passed away in 2011 at the age of seventy-three. I had known Lynn for almost three decades, and the death of someone so close to me personally and professionally, the first death of such a close friend and colleague, spurred me to think about her legacy, and my legacy, and the point of what we do with our days. It gave everything a new clarity and perspective. Viewed in this context, the questions we should be asking suddenly seemed very clear: Why not dedicate ourselves to the highest goals? If we truly honor the planet and ourselves, is there any other choice?

IN THE FALL OF 2011,
I attended a memorial service for Lynn Ferrin, a great friend and a great writer, editor, and adventurer who passed away at the age of seventy-three.

The service began with a procession of friends reading excerpts from Lynn's own travel articles. Three of the pieces read were stories that she had written for me, for a quarterly travel magazine that I edited for many years called
Great Escapes
. All three of these pieces—one about exploring Morocco on an equestrian tour from Meknes to Fes, one about searching for tortoises on a grueling expedition to the rim of Alcedo Volcano on the Galápagos island of Isabela, and one about riding by horseback across the plains of Inner Mongolia—were magnificent; they were not only beautifully evoked descriptions of particular travel experiences, they were also meditations on the meaning of those experiences and by extension, on the larger meaning of life.

In the years since then, the lesson that service reaffirmed has resonated within me: Every piece of travel writing should be about the meaning of life. It doesn't have to be the central theme of the piece—it
shouldn't
be the central theme of the piece—but it should be a filament of the story. To my mind, this is the subject that great travel writing—like great travel itself—is ultimately all about: What is the condition of our journey, what is the point, what do we learn from each trip, what pieces of the vast puzzle do we bring back with us, what notes and hints and intimations about the broader picture of it all.

If, as a writer, you approach travel writing thinking this way, you can see how just about any story—whether a piece on the best taco stands in Taxco or an exploration of off-the-beaten-track Bhutan—can be about the meaning of life. It's up to you, the writer: If you give yourself permission to think that big, to put your subject in that context, you create a richer, deeper, more meaningful experience for your reader. Your piece is about the best taco places in Taxco—and about the place of tacos in the larger worlds of Mexico, and eating, and humanity; about the role of craftsmanship in food preparation; about the importance of passion and adherence to high standards in any craft; about the value of the passionate enjoyment of a simple meal. All of these are filaments that tie us to a much larger story—the purpose of our lives, the meaning underlying our journeys every day, at home and away. These are filaments that only we as writers can spin, and to do so, we have to prod ourselves, and give ourselves permission, to spin them.

The greatest travel writers I know bring this larger sense to their writing, as did Lynn. She infused her pieces with the wonder that was at the core of her life's journey, with the big-heartedness, big-mindedness, and sense of limitlessness that graced her days. She dared to bring these gifts to her writing, to reach far and dream big in her stories, to write about the meaning of life. And because she did so, she touched all of us in big, and deep, ways.

This is what we all need to do as travel writers. We need to dream big, think big, fling out filaments that tie our travels to a wider perspective. Our work matters only as much as we make it matter, and we need to write pieces that matter. We need to honor ourselves and our readers in this way. We need to honor the act of writing and the act of connecting—connecting with the world when we travel, and connecting with our readers when we write. In the same way that we look for the interlocking pieces of the whole, we also need to be those pieces—we need to interlock, article to article, reader to reader, becoming a part of the vast puzzle we seek to understand and replicate.

Now, as I think back on all the writers and writings that have enriched my life, I understand the truth that has paved and inspired—and still paves and inspires—my way: If we can make great travel writing, we can extend our world and our life beyond the limits of our temporary stay; if we put the words together right, we can transcend, connecting the precious pieces of our puzzle—curiosity, passion, dream, adventure, wonder, gratitude, love—into wanderlust without end.