Home From Home

I am home in the little village at the foot of the mountain, having travelled more than ten thousand kilometers (6214 miles) from a much larger city at the foot of another mountain—a city which is also home.

Home, they say, is where the heart is but, for me, home is also where I hear the hum or clatter of insects, where I can smell the perfume of local flowers, feel rain fall and raise a nose-full of petrichor, and watch the moon track across the skies.

On the journey back to this particular home, the moon tracked with me, barely moving from her position just to the right of the left wing of the Airbus A350, a constant companion as a night of mountains and jungles, seas and cities, and nations and people passed below.

I had originally hoped to share more of our visit to Thailand with you. Photos of anything that caught my attention, such as these blues and bananas I did manage to share (click on each of these to see/read the whole):

Or vignettes of observation, copied from my notes, such as this:

But, in the end, I had no SIM card and little time to send anything anyway. It was a joy to be able to share time with family and friends, some of whom we’ve not seen since we left, back in 2019, and it was an interesting experience, not to be able to reach for my phone.

Crucially, travelling with a fascinated two and a half year-old is a different form of connection—tiring, true, but endlessly rewarding.

Passion fruit are clearly bad apples. Placing toilet paper in a bin, rather than down the loo, is a constant source of question and affirmation: ‘Thaïlande ?’. The flowers of Plumeria (or frangipani), needed to be picked and passed to tiny hands, over and over. An array of wonderful smiles are sometimes reciprocated, but usually met with a twist of a shy head, instead. Every sound elicited ‘C'est quoi ça ?’ What is that? Whether coucal or cicada, jing-jok or tokay, all was new and noticed.

Which meant I noticed all, anew, once more. And that was delicious. To see the world this way, always fresh, is to live as we should. Too often, I have witnessed others who no longer see just how incredible our planet is, just pass through, eyes down or, more commonly, glued to a screen, earbuds or giant headphones blocking all.

Some years ago, I remember talking about the wonder of being able to fly, just how special that is, to enter a tube of metal and head above the clouds, crossing time and space. At the time, I had a fear that, the more I flew, the more I would take it for granted but, I am happy to share, that has never yet happened. Each flight is magical to me, more so to now be able to share things with Ailsa; even if that means little to no sleep (she was okay, sleeping relatively well both ways).

Recently, I’ve seen several articles and letters talking about how the age of adventure is over, how we are now all tourists, rather than the explorers or adventurers of old. I find this sad. The whole topic is overladen with issues of colonialism, of “finding” an undiscovered country—never mind those who have lived there for millennia—and of being the first (white man?) to plant the flag/take a photo/share to Instagram. Added to this, I also believe it is simply wrong to suggest that there are places people have never been, or places no one has shared with the wider world in this modern era. The world is full of wonder.

True, there are special locations which become something other when the selfie hordes descend. One such place has appeared near a location very special to me, tourists (all seemingly either Thai or Chinese) standing in the middle of a twisting , tree-lined jungle road to get just the right shot. Does it matter? Yes, and no. That place is special because it was protected, the very trees they seek to photograph are there because they were in danger of being removed for the road, until they were ordained by Buddhist monks, turned into monks themselves. This ensured they stayed, tall and proud and ancient, clad in their now-faded and dirty orange robes, stretched around thick trunks.

Do the trees care about those who seek that now-ubiquitous photo? No, I doubt it. What is far more important is that the local area is protected—the tourists are irritating, yes, but there are now leopards once again in the forest above. The gibbons are thriving, the jungle is alive and calling, rather than removed and turned into hill after hill of Monsanto corn, as it is in other places nearby. Development in the area is considerable, but there is space yet for growth, and those protections, both sacred and governmental, are hopefully going to continue to ensure the jungle thrives. Perhaps, next, it will be a tiger caught on a camera trap?

There is still adventure, there is still wonder—just watch a two and a half year-old.

Summer

Earlier today, I cross-posted this beautiful essay by Susie Mawhinney of A Hill and I. This is the second walk Susie has shared in response to my Ancestral, Wild Empowerment post on the subject. I am so very grateful she has done so. If you did not read it, I really think you should—her words are backed up by incredibly evocative photography, and all is sprinkled with a magic of her own.

A hill and I - Summer

The first walk, Spring, can be found here:

A hill and I - Spring

If you have a walk of your own you would like to share, do please let me know—simply send me a DM on Notes, or comment below. Everyone is welcome, and I am open to all manner of ideas you may have about how you’d like to do this!

Finally

I would like to say normal service will resume here as soon as possible but I suspect that is unlikely until a wee bit later in the season. We have a week here in France, then a train ride from Grenoble to Inverness, with a couple of weeks up in Scotland visiting family and friends. As my time is likely to be limited once more, I will do my best to keep sharing things with you (summer is always a quieter time in the world of letters, simply because everyone gets outside), but I can’t promise it will work!

My weekly dose of fiction, Death in Harmony, however, WILL continue! It is, in fact, already scheduled until after we have returned from Scotland.

I hope you are all enjoying early summer and perhaps the weather where you are is a little kinder than in this corner of the world, where it apparently rained pretty much the whole time we were away. (The hamlet of La Bérarde, not too far from here, suffered from excessive rain and snowmelt, creating a vast torrent of water, mud, rock and alluvial debris, inundating and burying the buildings, where it didn’t just wash them away. Yet another victim of our rapidly altering climate. This time, very close to home.)

Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other, the rain may fall, and the floods may come, but I remain confident we can support one another nevertheless.