Back roads

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As I wander away from town, the paved roads fade to hard packed red earth and the bamboo which lines the road becomes densely clustered and shoots up fifty feet in the air. Segments of fallen bamboo husks litter the road, curled into browned squid-like carcasses, broad-backed and muscular. There is a huge dog marking his territory in the roadside reeds. His white and black cowl, Asiatic eyes, and aggressively lean size suggest Siberian husky and wolf blood. He smiles at me and trots off. The town's no-nonsense concrete architecture also dissolves, replaced by small straw-thatched roofed huts. One family compound is often comprised of four or five huts, interconnected or set closely together. Chickens and a couple roosters socialize in the yard and the road, sometimes sunning themselves in rows on the porches. Small children, often alone, perch on the edge of the concrete road barrier enjoying some small treat, and stare at me with big, brown eyes.

The road snakes around the hill's curves, always climbing, and with each step the Viewfinder shifts. I am breathless with the natural beauty here. The hand-drawn guest house map indicates Akha villages on this road, but I am shy about entering on my own, uninvited. Instead, I stay on the road, and am content to gaze out over their valley. There are bright, poinsettia colored birds flitting through their corn, and mammoth indigo butterflies chasing each other around their orchards. Beyond their gardens, the ridges' spines stretch like a many-limbed slumbering dragons draped in green. The distant tree lines are varied and unpredictable, with towering leafy jungle trees standing solitary on the horizon. The leaf formations resemble Chinese ink paintings; it appears as if wispy clouds have become tangled in the ambitious branches. A collection of tea plantations veined by thin, red roads form the sloping carapace of a giant tortoise, right in the middle of the valley. The earth feels very alive here, as if there are immense, wise creatures cloaked in forests, watching over the contours of the valley. Animism feels like common sense.

I inhale one last swallow of the sun-drenched expanse and turn back toward town. On the way down the hill, I pass a woman in traditional garb working in her yard. Her face is framed on each side by the vertical row of silver bells affixed to her headdress, and her baby strapped to her back in a kind of papoose. Akha girls, all with blunt-banged pageboys and blue uniforms, are returning from school, and avert their eyes before giving me shy, curious smiles. They're followed by older women with tiny frames, deeply lined faces and vermilion teeth ruined by betel nut juice. After the whispers of the wind in the bamboo, the last steep steps back into this tiny town feel like an entrance to a major metropolitan area. There is music blasting from the residence of one of the few people in town who has a radio. The constant hum of motorbike engines, women at market stalls and scurrying, laughing children engulfs the soundscape like a flash flood, and I am back in the thick of it.

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