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Published: December 18th 2006
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We spent most of the morning preparing our provisions for the trip to the substation and moving our things out of our cold shower and no toilet paper rooms and into Kanda’s room for storage.
We met up at the office and Kanda left us with a video camera and a camera trap with the task of figuring out how to make it work. Although we came close, we never did figure out how to set it (and she didn’t know since it had only been used once), so we ended up taking a small film camera to use in the trap.
Two young rangers, Men and Bitah, came over to help us load up. We packed our stuff in the back of the truck and another ranger drove us all to a trailhead by a viewing tower overlooking grasslands. I could just imagine the field filled with elephants.
I love Thai park ranger camos - they’re regular camos with figures of birds interspersed, as though their camophlage can hide them from wildlife. One ranger carried a pack full of food (including the whole chicken) and the other carried an armload of folding sleeping pads.
We hiked
through the grasses and immediately saw fresh elephant dung and thrashed paths through the tall grasses. Nearby were bones from a dead sambar deer - someone’s prey. We crossed streams and puddles and pools of water. On the path, Kanda spotted some fresh feces of an unknown carnivore, so she stopped to pick it up in a feces sample bag and note its location. The trees nearby were marked with mud and torn bark from the rubbing of a wild pig.
The forest seems to have its own aesthetic. In just a short hike, we passed through several different types of terrain, with huge twisty vines growing up through the forest. As we passed over a stream on the tops of some bouncy logs, I dunked my left foot into the pond, overcorrected and then dunked my right foot in.
As we left the deciduous forest, we entered another grassland, complete with buildings! This was no roughing it backpacker experience. A simple but large cabin on stilts was situated to the right, with a bonfire circle and a volleyball net on the left. Under the cabin, a ranger sat stoking a fire and preparing dinner. Another strummed on
a guitar.
We have entered Thai ranger land! So far it kind of resembles a summer camp with no rules, run entirely by boys. This is great. Next time I go camping, I’m definitely taking a Thai ranger with me. They carry all the heavy stuff, make the fire, fix the dinner, do the dishes, and even lead the songs!
We unloaded and checked our leech socks for ticks, but I won this round with an actual leech in my shoe! I shared my leech with everyone so we could pose for leech photos, then released him to the wilderness.
While they worked on dinner, we headed off to set the camera trap at a good intersection. We wandered through knee high grasses and then stomped our way through taller grasses. As we approached a lake, a sambar deer barked out a warning call to his friends and they scattered. Closer to the lake, the ground was pocked with animal footprints - elephants, deer, gaur, and...CLOUDED LEOPARD! Kanda took measurements and recorded its location.
As we pushed on through the grasslands, we passed through a field of tall spears of grass backlight an emerald green and
fringed with red. We re-entered the forest and crossed another stream until we found an area that appeared to be an animal superhighway. Paths led to it from several directions, but the ground was too dry for fresh tracks. Not far from there, we found the clay lick. It was still damp with footprints from many animals, including another cat track.
As Kanda moved deeper into the clay of the lick, the ground became more gooey and she started to sink. Although she got herself out, her shoes were left behind and she was left standing in the clay lick in her leech socks. She fished them out and we returned to the animal superhighway intersection - a perfect place to photograph animals on their way to the salt lick.
She set up the camera trap about knee high on a tree facing the center of the intersection. We photographed ourselves about three times (both on purpose and on accident) and returned to the ranger station for dinner.
When we returned, two pup tents had been set up for us in the field. The rangers usually sleep in hammocks on the top floor of the station. Dinner
was delicious - rice, soup, omelette, hot dogs and vegetables. But there was a reminder about where we were - there was also a gun on the table. Then we joined them at the bonfire where two guys were playing guitars and two more were singing along. We sat on narrow benches and listened as they crooned away to various Thai folk songs and some they’d written themselves. The sky darkened and the sounds of the forest surrounded us.
Kanda went to get the sticky coconut rice in bamboo we’d bought the night before at the market and she put the three chunks of bamboo on the fire to warm it up. As we ate the rice with our hands, it was another one of those perfect moments that cannot be done justice in writing.
The guitar players then switched to their English repertoire and played some songs we knew and we joined them. As Wendy and I stretched for the high notes on Desperado (you know it - the part that goes “let somebody L-U-U-V you…(shrill) Let somebody L-U-U-U-V you,”) the universality of music really struck me. I’m in a forest in Asia with men who have guns who cannot speak with me, but we can all sing Desperado at the top of our lungs and truly enjoy the moment.
As we went to sleep in our tents that night, I dreamed of elephants, Clouded leopards and shooting stars. Outside our tent, one of the ranger’s cell phones rang the standard Nokia cell phone ring. They have amazing cell phone coverage in the jungle!
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