All Alone In The Moonlight

Labor Day is the unofficial New Year's Day in America.  No one actually refers to it as that, and no one really thinks of it like that, but in effect, it is a truly transformative moment when one life ends and another begins.

Dad is drafted into the Attic Patrol to bring down the winter clothes.  Mom starts cleaning the house from stem to stern.  The air itself takes on a magical quality with the sunlight sparkling and just enough break in the heat of summer to cause young creatures to suddenly bolt in all directions at once.  And for a boy of 13, it is the moment he realizes that all his plans and resolutions for the summer months are left unfulfilled with only three days left to make good on his dreams.

And this particular Labor Day weekend, the boy also realizes that it is the end of childhood and that the specter that has been haunting him all summer is named Responsibility.  In three days, he would enter high school and life would never be the same again.

We lived on a farm that year about three miles outside of a bustling metropolis called Moulton, Texas, with an overflowing population of 679.  I always wondered if the ninth person was a widow, because otherwise, someone was going to lose at the Dating Game.

That Saturday morning brought the realization that time was running out.  Not only would the freedom of summer soon come to a crashing halt, but the brutal winter of the Texas hill country was just around the corner.

Determined to enjoy those fading moments of liberty, I made a pack with two bologna sandwiches, an apple and a half-frozen Coca-Cola, grabbed my trusty Browning .22 rifle with boxes of short rounds, and collected my ever-present companions Charlie Brown and Lucy - a pair of Dachshund book-ends - and set off in search of adventure.

First stop was the field behind the house.  It was 20 acres of endless imagination, and there were six of them spread out at my fingertips.  A boy with 125 acres at his disposal was not just a king, but a god.  It was the literal clay from which worlds could be fashioned, populated with creatures of every description, and all of which lived and died by my command.

This field had a small hill at one end and had dirt berms snaking across it, ostensibly to control erosion, but I knew the truth: they were the hiding places of legions of imaginary enemies begging to be vanquished.  It had also just been plowed, liberating great clods of earth that were the building blocks of dreams.

My faithful hounds and I realized the threats hidden behind those berms and we quickly dropped to our bellies behind the hill and carefully wormed our way to the high ground.  Once we obtained the peak, we could spy the legions of mysterious creatures arrayed against us.  Spread all across this alien world, they were milling about on the berms, attending to alien business that was as impenetrable to us as a book of Mandarin faiery tales.

Taking careful aim, I squeezed off a couple of dozen rounds, watching as their alien bodies exploded into great, satisfying puffs of offal.  My faithful hounds waited until the order, then sped across the rough terrain to engage the enemy in hand-to-hand combat.  Their yelps and barks told me that victory was at hand, and I triumphantly leaped to my feet and charged the alien strongholds.

A satisfying victory under our belts, we pressed on to the next adventure.

This one came in the form of a hole.  Not just any hole, but an armadillo hole.  Lucky for me, my trusty hounds were bred for just this sort of adventure, and on cue, they dived beneath the ground with only their joyous voices being heard as if coming from the very stones themselves.

I sought our the back door and waited.  It didn't take long.  Soon enough, the head of a living armored vehicle appeared just in front of me with the sounds of exuberant Dachshunds at its hind-quarters.  When the entire creature had been exposed, I sprang at it like a sunburned leopard, grabbing its tail before it could beat a hasty retreat.

I don't know if you've ever had the chance to examine one of these creatures up close.  From the neck down, they are God's own battle tanks, covered with dense plates of articulated armor, and sporting claws that would frighten any right-minded individual.  From the neck up, though, they were almost comical - small,oval ears twitching to and fro, little brown marbles installed like afterthoughts under a Neanderthal brow ridge, and a long, slender snout with two large nostrils that could be individually steered like chameleon eyes.

After what seemed hours of examination, we released the mysterious creature, who bounded into the tall grass and vanished before our eyes, and forgotten almost as fast.  There were other worlds to conquer!

Next stop was the graveyard for the disintegrating hulks of four Ford Model A cars.  These were ancient relics of some vanished civilization, left to rejoin the earth from which they had emerged.  So old they were, that their wheels had collapsed and their hulks rested belly-down on the ground.  The remaining glass in their windows were fogged like the eyes of old men and any paint that had once glossed their fenders had long since abandoned their posts.  They were now the domain of the biggest, meanest-looking yellow-and-black spiders you would ever want to avoid.

My trusty hounds had stirred a grasshopper into flight, and he flew directly into the web of one of these fearsome aliens.  We hunkered down and watched with battling emotions of fear and fascination as the struggling critter was set upon by the alien.  A lightning-fast bite quickly paralyzed the hapless hopper, and then the alien set about wrapping him with dense threads - turning, turning, turning - until there was hardly anything to identify the victim.  A chill landed at the base of my spine and crept like molasses in January up to the base of my skull and settled in for a session of shivers and involuntary shakes.  We beat a hasty retreat from the sight of this horrific and ignoble end.

It was now time for lunch, and that could only mean one thing - The Twins!

Down by the creek were a pair of the most enormous oak trees I have ever seen.  Easily 50 feet tall with canopies that spanned globes, they stood about 100 feet apart like sentinels at the gates of Heaven.  At the base of one was a sizable limestone boulder, looking as if the roots had squirted it out of the earth at that exact spot, and through some trick of weather and geology, was shaped almost perfectly like an arm chair.  This was my throne, from which I could survey the entirety of my realm.  To one side was the creek, which to me was not just a creek, but actually a mighty raging river cutting through my kingdom thousands of feet below.  To the other side were the vast fields and hills of my domain.  I dined upon great hunks of roasted beast and swilled the wine of victory.  I cast my crumbs to my faithful hounds and issued forth new laws upon the land.

When I had supped and rested, I tossed the Coca-Cola can across the great canyon and imagined it to be the citadels of infidels.  I squatted down behind my throne, took careful aim, and laid waste to the usurpers who dared to impose on my domain.

In those times, there were eternities in a moment.  Life was anything I imagined and freedom was a constant companion.  Magic filled every molecule of the atmosphere and I could conjure empires of dirt and castles of oak.  Scale was an arbitrary definition that I could expand or contract at will, and I could play any role in my worlds that I chose and my faithful hounds would drop instantly into role at my command.  I was man, king and god.  I held the power of life and death in my hand.  But it was all like grasping at water - at once tangible and ephemeral - as real as my throne and as fleeting as morning mist.

The Storm Front

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Some time back, I waxed poetic about Texas northers as a metaphor for world events.

Texas northers are like nothing I've experienced anywhere else.  You can see the storms approaching for hours.  The sky bifurcates, with a part being hot, humid and sunny, and the other part being black as night with a greenish cast and ominous lightning flashing in all directions.

You can tell they are coming in a hundred different ways.  Cows in the field will all line up with their hind ends pointing in the direction of the approaching storm.  The cow flies, normally heavy on a hot Texan summer afternoon, suddenly look like shimmering blankets on the backs of the cattle.

The air gets deathly still and heavy.  It's like trying to take a deep breath in a Turkish sauna.  It is so thick and hot and laden with steam that it fills your lungs before you can take a deep draught of it.  Walking through it is like pushing yourself through cream of mushroom soup with the heavy smell of mold and mildew laced into it, and the humidity is so high that you sweat profusely just sitting on the porch.

At some point, the storm line appears on the horizon, looking like Sauron's evil spreading over Middle Earth.  The rain is so heavy, it forms a solid curtain of silver gray that the eye can not pierce.  The line of clouds itself is so straight you could draw a surveyor's bead from it: in the leading edge are low, smooth clouds that curl down in the bow shock, and behind them are towering thunderheads that seem to stretch to Heaven itself.  Lightning leaps across the heads then stabs down at the Earth, momentarily casting a strange blue light over those things which have been engulfed by the advancing drapery of doom.

Far across the endless Texas horizon, you can see the fields of grain bow down to the relentless fury.  The line is so sharp that if you could stop the storm for a moment, it would be possible to stand half in and half out of it.

That line of subdued grain comes toward you in a way that seems both slow and plodding and blindingly fast.  Because of the vast views, you can watch the storm line come across miles of sorghum and corn. Now you catch a whiff of pungent wet Earth - the smell of hot, dry soil suddenly doused with unbelievable amounts of ice water.

Occasionally, at the leading edge, a cloud will curl back on itself, and within moments a tornado has formed. All around its tip, crops are flying up in a cloud of debris, whipping around the sky in a furious parade of destruction.  Just as suddenly, the tornado dissipates and the plants float, almost lazily, back down to the ground.

One minute, the storm seems miles away - hardly a threat.  The next, the line of doom is marching across your fields towards the house.  The cows seem to freeze in place, bracing for the impact.  The hot still air kicks up into a slight breeze, then turning to a furious cold wind.  The temperature drops ten degrees in seconds.

And the rain...

A moment ago, you thought you had time to refill your glass of lemonade.  Now your only thought is to find a wall against the driving rain.  The wind carries the drops sideways, first this way, then that.  Sometimes, you see gravity itself shut down as the drops fall upward for the briefest of moments.

The sky turns the most hideous shade of yellow-green as you dash for the tin barn to escape Nature's wrath.  Inside the barn, the noise is deafening, as hail pelts the tin.  Through the doorway, you watch as pearls fall from the sky and pile up like manna.  You shiver from the sudden cold and the good dousing you got running the few short feet to shelter.

Outside, it seems as if the world is ending.  At noon, the sky is blacker than midnight.  Through the various doors and windows of the barn, the rain seems to fall a different way in every direction - from the east over there, from the west over there, and on the north windows, torrents so heavy as to block the view past the panes.  By the south door, a fan of dampness spreads out on the cement floor as the mist swirls in the opening and settles down.

Inside your gut, the feeling is overwhelming.  You are hit with a sudden burst of fear and excitement, like a case of butterflies on steroids.  You have a powerful urge to run in circles and whoop and holler, though you have no clue why.  The air itself is charged - even the chickens out back are raising a furious racket, with roosters crowing and the hens clucking like Life itself depends on it.

Then, as suddenly as it began, the rain slows to a gentle drizzle.  The wind dies to a calm fall breeze.  The animals quiet down and that feeling of boiling emotion in the pit of your stomach ebbs away.  The pearls of hail have already started to melt and the clouds slowly loosen their choke-hold on the sunlight.  Green gives way to black, which parts to blue.

When you emerge from the barn, the world seems renewed, fresh, clean.  Even the dirt seems less dirty (though one step into the red Texas mud will ruin that illusion).  The sky appears scrubbed clean and the air itself has an effervescent quality, like the molecules themselves are sparkling.

In the fields, the plants are all bowed in the same direction, as if a giant foot had trampled them.  Look closely and you see a dozen fountains of dirt as the field creatures kick residue from their homes.  The grasshoppers, silent before the storm, are now clacking like crazy in all directions.  Across the fields, a tenuous cloud of insects forms just over the tops of the plants as they stretch to the Sun to dry their wings.

Here we are...

We see the storm approaching across the fields.  We've known for a long time it was coming.  The air is just starting to stir and all the signs are of impending cataclysm.  It's time to run to the barn.  The storm is here.  The fear and panic will start to rise shortly.  The animals, whose memories are dangerously short, will give in to the fear, but we have seen this before and can calm that simmering kettle of emotions in our bellies so that we are able to marvel at the power of Nature, rather than flee the temporary maelstrom around us.

The sky is turning, the wind picking up, the lightning leaping all around.  The storm is here.  It will pass, of course, but we must go through to enjoy what's behind it.

We've seen this coming from a long way off.  We saw the line of clouds, the angry tornadoes, the wall of rain.  We've made our preparations as best we can and taken shelter in the barn.  Nothing left to do but marvel at the dangerous beauty of what we call Life.  Many will be hurt, some will die.  There is no accounting for the seeming randomness of Universe.  Sometimes the rain falls up.

All is as it should be.

Down On The Farm

Being a seventh generation Texan, it just wouldn't be right if I didn't have a farm, even living on the far side of the Universe from home.

A while back, I bought 7 hectare (~17 acres) up in the mountains.  Beautiful place on the side of a hill with a view of three volcanoes and a couple of distant cities.  The previous owner had quite a spread, and for whatever reason, decided to break it up into parcels of 3.5 hectare and sell it off.  He even cleared the land down to the money-trees (fruit and jati, or mahogany).

When I first went up there, the land was cleared down to the dirt with a couple hundred jati trees, some avacado trees, several durian, and a metric ton of bananas.  This past weekend, it was already overrun with chili peppers, corn and cassava bushes.

The volcanic soil here is amazing.  I tell folks that if a woman stands in one place too long, she'll get in the family way pretty darned quick.  I've seen this type of thing down in Cental America, as well.  You can clear a patch down to dirt, and in about three months, it's overrun again.

Getting to the place is quite an adventure in itself.  Once you get to the end of the line, then keep going about another 8 miles and you'll be there.  You have to walk the last kilometer or so, because the road stops at the neighbor's horse barn.

As usual, everyone in Jakarta bails out into the country on the weekends, so the road up the mountains was at a dead stand-still starting just before the foothills.  We didn't want to wait, so we paid an ojek $5 to lead us up the hill on the back-roads.  Great investment!  Not only did we blow past all the traffic, but got a rather scenic tour of small villages, as well.

When we rejoined the main road, it was just in time to see two tour buses run into each other.  They had jumped into the opposing lane to try and run around the last bit of jam, but the one in front locked up to avoid killing a motorcyclist, and the second one smacked square into the first right next to us.  Rather exciting.  Keep in mind this is a tiny two-lane blacktop that puts the word "switch-back" to shame.  Everyone runs that road like they are Mario Andretti, passing on blind turns and cutting across hair-pins.  It's truly frightening, so I concentrate on the scenery and pray like it's the Second Coming.  So far...so good.

After about an hour or so, we came to a medium-size village on the main drag.  At that point, we turned off and started down a road that makes driving on the Moon look like a picnic in Kansas.  We drove through half a dozen smaller villages full of rice fields, strawberry patches and flowers.  It reminded me a bit of the back roads in Holland, only not as flat and a lot more gritty.

After a while, we came to a turn-off that lead up the mountain.  If the road we turned off was the Moon, then this one made the Moon look smooth.  The pavement ended after an hour or so, and it actually got smoother at that point.

We passed tiny villages, a lumber mill, and scenery that makes me gasp every time I see it.  Driving within inches of the mountain's edge, you can look down into a vast valley covered in dense jungle.  Occasionally, you see some monkeys, if you look sharp.  Up the hill in the opposite direction, there are mahogany trees six feet in diameter and nearly 200 feet tall, and an undergrowth of smaller trees covered in orchids.

Finally, the road just ends.

The neighbor has a beautiful spread with orchards, a horse barn, a couple of houses, and a bunch of ducks.  we parked here and talked with the caretaker for a bit while we waited for the motorcycles to show up.  When they got there, we mounted up for the last leg of the journey.

The footpath was slick as a weasel.  It had just rained an hour before we got there.  We managed to get up the hill and level off on the path to the farm.  Finally, none the worse for wear, we rounded the bend and came onto our land.

After the engines cut off, you realize just how far you are from anything.  It's so quiet, you can hear your blood cells bumping into each other.  Just some birdsong and the hum of hornets the size of sparrows, and a light breeze in the leaves.

I stood for a minute, sucking in the clean, cool air.  You can't find a spot anywhere in Jakarta like this.  And with the recent rain, the earthy smell and flower scents were overwhelming.

The caretaker had planted corn, so there were rows upon rows of it down the side of the hill.  The jati trees stood tall and straight as arrows, with their strange puffs of leaves way up at the top.  They were nearing 20 cm in diameter, and would be ready for harvest early next year.  There are about 150 of them.  There's also five golden jati trees.  They're protected and you have to have a government permit to cut them commercially, but you can cut and use them on your own land.

I picked up a good walking stick and started off down the hill.  At the first banana tree, I stopped and picked a hand of pisang ambon which are little suckers just bigger than my thumb, and really sweet.  They were warm from the sun and perfectly ripe.

A little further and I checked the durian.  Wasn't ready yet.  Maybe another two months.  Curious fruit, too.  It can get to the size of a rugby ball, covered in a very thick, hard shell covered with large, mean spines.  It smells like a pair of old gym socks full of rotten onions, and it's delicious.

When it's ripe, the husk splits open, giving you a fighting chance to get at the goodies inside.  If you don't end up in the hospital, then what you find is about four or five flesh, pale-yellow, worm-like things inside.  Each one has a singe, large brown seed in it.  You peel the worms out and start snacking!  It has the consistency of a thick custard and a similar flavor, though it's completely unique, like nothing I've ever eaten before.  If it's overripe, it has a slightly bitter taste and will get you drunk.  In fact, it's unseemly for unmarried couples to be seen eating it together in public.

Next stop was the avocado trees.  The fruit was still small and green, and hard as rocks.  By September, they'll be the size of softballs and rather good, though the flavor is not the same as the black Hass variety back home.  Still, they make pretty good guacamole.  From the looks of things, I'll be making guacamole for the entire neighborhood, come the time.

At the bottom of the hill is a river with ice-cold, clear water.  It has plenty of lele, which are small catfish.  Very popular around these parts.  There are a couple of other varieties of fish, but I haven't learned the names of them yet.

Later, I plunked down in the shade with my bananas and ate my fill.  For good measure, I added a mango and part of a papaya, as well.  I just relaxed and let the wind caress me with its chilly tendrils.  Through the trees, I could see the outlines of the mountains in the distance, and the large valley stretching out into the haze.  I drank in the smell of sweet Earth and listened to the birds I couldn't find, and whose songs I have never heard before.

I dreamed of the house I will build at the top of the hill.  The top will be level with the footpath, and the house will sink three stories into the ground, with the entire downhill side being nothing but glass.  From the top, I will have an elevated walkway that will run out to a landing in the tree tops.  At the base will be a fish pond and swimming hole.  The view will face the rising Sun and offer a commanding perch over the surrounding jungle.  There will be chickens and goats, and a horse, of course.

Since there's no grid there, everything will be solar-powered, and water will come from a well down by the river.  I'll put up a four-foot stone wall around the living area, but the rest will be a controlled kind of wild.  The chickens will eat the bugs and the goats will clear the undergrowth, and both will be on the menu, as well as good home-made goat cheese.

I mapped it all out in my head, while my wife took photos so I could design the place.

As the sun set and the air cooled quickly, we saddled up the motorcycles again.  Back down the horse barn.  There we sat with the caretaker, who loaded us up with all kinds of strange and interesting fruit.  I also bought five macadamia saplings from him for $2 (all together).  We ate and joked and hung out until dark, then it was back down the mountain and back to the crazy rat race that is Jakarta.  At the tea plantation, the air warmed up again, and soon the fog of bus exhaust and the roar of motorcycles were assaulting us again.

Won't be long, though, and I'll have my house on the farm, and later, my retirement home.  With any luck, I'll be buried there, too.

You can take the boy off the farm, but you can't take the farm out of the boy.