Avatar - The Word for World is Forest...

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“The important thing is not the finding, it is the seeking, it is the devotion with which one spins the wheel of prayer and scripture, discovering the truth little by little. If this machine gave you the truth immediately, you would not recognize it,”

- Ursula K. LeGuin
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When I was a young man I was stationed in Thailand in 1973, serving with the Air Force. I lived in the small town of Takhli, north and a bit east of Bangkok. I arrived in March of '73, not knowing quite what I was getting into. I was a GI. I went where I was told and pretty much did what I was told.

I worked as a photo lab technician, running film processors, printers and doing copy work of the images produced by the F-111 pilots flying missions over Cambodia. We worked 6 days a week, 12 hour shifts - and there wasn't a lot of down time. When there was time off it was spent sleeping, maybe going to town for a Chinese movie (Bruce Lee!) or if Sunday was the day off we could go to the Takhli Gardens (Tahkli Ga-den) where local bands played rock and roll (sometimes good, usually mediocre to bad) and dance, drink and hang out.

In December of '73 we stopped bombing Cambodia. Suddenly my work went from 6 days on to 2 days on and 5 off. I went native. I rented a small bungalow in town for $25 a month (I think I was making about $200/mo) and spent my time reading, going to Bangkok or taking the bus east into the hills and visiting monasteries, or going to the ruins in Ayutthaya or hiking out into the local rice paddies with my camera and a few of the local dogs (snake alarms).

I spent a great deal of time laying in my front porch hammock, eating and sleeping while I was reading. Just out front of my complex was a kwiteau (Thai noodle soup) stand run by a woman by the name of Nit. Nit made the best kwiteau... I'd eat at least 2 bowls, maybe 3 and I had to be her best customer. I could send one of the little kids down with some money, give them a baht and Nit would bring my soup plus the spices in their little jars, fish sauce and a soda (orange spot!). The traditional kwiteau comes with luk chins, little pork meatballs. The slang for kwiteau with luk chin was monkey ball soup. Made with flat noodles, bean sprouts, green onions and shredded bamboo shoot - and of course monkey balls- it's ubiquitous and pretty standard street fare. And I love it.

But I digress... (again)(still, always)(I think I think and talk with a lot of digressions too...)

Anyone with a television couldn't miss the previews for the new Sci-fi flick Avatar. I went and saw it today with my kids. Wow. Don't miss it if you have a love for good movies.



Before the release of the movie the previews I saw made me think of Ursula K. Le Guin's wonderful classic novella, The Word for World is Forest.



I read the story (a Hugo Award winner) in a copy of Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions, a wonderful and challenging collection of science fiction and speculative fiction. Ellison is a master and his Dangerous Visions collections were great introductions for me to many authors of the genre. More importantly were the ideas entering my head. Politics, environmentalism, religion, spirituality, science, love, hate...

But Le Guin's story was a standout. It struck a note in me I had never heard. Well, at least didn't recognize...

Life is sacred... it is what is. I mean physics tells us that none of this... this whatever is around each of us, our space, our home, our environment... none of it exists. There is no matter, there is electricity and lots of space - what Michio Kaku calls the cosmic foam (or Custard as some I know prefer to call it) - that seperates molecules in their spinning and whirling dervish existence. But, here we are, tapping on keys on our qwertys, making sense or not. Life is all around us and I'll be damned if it ain't, 'cause it is. And I think we treat our home like shit. And that is the message of Le Guin's tale and of Avatar, the movie.

"We don't get it."

And we are the poorer for that. A disconnect like we have manufactured for ourselves away from the natural world is a dangerous thing. Especially if, as a culture, we are incredibly immature.

In reading reviews today I was looking for others who saw the Le Guin connection. And there are plenty. But there are other influences as well. Avatar is the epic tale, the iconic hero story, with a happy and good ending. If you were cheering for the tall blue folks and their big trees, of course.

That immaturity I speak of? It's plain and simple. We're spoiled. We have too much. We don't share and we don't play well with others much anymore. To those who would say "of course we care you hippie moron!" I can only say that in a world where 30,000 people die each day not from old age but from starvation and malnutrition, we obviously don't care. At least not enough as far as those 30,000 people go.

In Avatar we cheer for the natives and dislike the human invaders. We go against our own.

But not really. What we do by cheering the natives in Avatar is acknowledge humanity's indigenous roots. We have been humanoid for a long time. Like... a realllly long time. We've been civilized (and I truly do use the term loosely) for just a blink of time in our long existence as humanoids.

I've never really understood this arrogance we display... like this... this stuff we have, makes us any different than the us we were when we slept in caves and huts. And that's a scary thought. Not that we're like our native selves but that may have been like we are. Yuck...

Personally, I think we're devolving. I think we used to care more, before we discovered stuff. I believe we once loved sunsets more than mirrors, that we knew and respected the beauty, bounty and power of the natural world.

My images of nature are just that for me. For me trying to capture the raw, eternal beauty of this earth, our sole sustenance, is a duty. I remember well the day I stood for the first time in a crowd and spoke on bealf of the wild. I haven't turned back.

I will be reducing the prices on my prints from RedBubble in the next week or so. I'll post a new blog when I do.






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“To be matter of fact about the world is to blunder into fantasy -- and dull fantasy at that, as the real world is strange and wonderful.”

- Robert A. Heinlein

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Pics from the archives...

What sets worlds in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions.

Life is plurality, death is uniformity.

By suppressing differences and pecularities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death.

The ideal of a single civilization for everyone, implicit in the cult of progress and technique, impoverishes and mutilates us.

Every view of the world that becomes extinct, every culture that disappears, diminishes a possibility of life

~ Octavio Paz
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The best thing among all of my experiences as a young adult was travelling. And Uncle Sam took care of the travelling. I was able while in the military to visit foreign lands like Thailand (1st pic), Texas and Idaho...

Exposure to different cultures is broadening to personal horizons. Or at least is an opportunity to broaden one's horizons... I've met those who had no desire to recognize cultural ways and mores different than their own.

Thailand gave me an opportunity that I embraced. I loved my time there, I was impressed by the differences between their laid-back steadiness and environmental common sense and the driven shallow chaos of American consumer society.

Pic #2 is a publicity shot from the early '80s taken for the Central Valley Stuntmen's Association.

Pic #3 was from the 1985 Wassama Roundhouse rededication, just north of Oakhurst (CA). The pics (4 - 9) following are an Aztec dance group that performed the opening ceremonial. I remember that it was a beautiful day. The elder, I was told, was the group's teacher and this would be his last trip north from Mexico. I do remember the woman's name... Maquil Xilchotl. Also present at this at this event were Chumash dancers from the Santa Ynez Reservation, including Uncle Tony Romero. I arrived early enough to get the Roundhouse and grinding stones photographed without any visitors to clutter the landscape. I was able to visit with the dancers as they prepared their plumed gear and I have a whole series from this day's events.

All of this series of pics are scanned from prints. I suspect I will be spending years pouring thru my old negatives and slides and having them high-res scanned onto disc. When I get these scanned from the orginal film I will (well... maybe...) replace them. Still, the quality is good enough temporarily.

of caveats, big trees and etc...

In thinking about this project- the blog and writing about Opal Creek - I felt a need to stop with the writing of my trip to Jawbone and give some background of how I came to be offered this tremendous opportunity. I'm not going to take you back to the womb but as an adult I feel certain steps, actions and encounters prepared the way.

I was in the Air Force from 1970 until 1974. My 4 year tour started and ended in Texas and was instrumental in my maturing. I was very fortunate and avoided VietNam and drew a year's duty in Takhli, Thailand. I was a 23 year old white guy who had never been east of the Mississippi River. I had heard from the older guys in my squadrons who had gone to Thailand that it was worth expending some effort in finding duty there and while stationed in Clovis, NM at Cannon AFB the chance arose and I volunteered. I worked in photo reconnaissance as a lab tech, processing strike film from F-111s. I had been trained in two photo fields; first as a photo equipment repairman and then as a photographer/lab tech. We were a mobile unit, all modular, self contained with generators, air conditioning, even our own water tanks. We could be set up or torn down in about 6 hours. We could process color or black and white film, do printing, copying, had a maintainance shop... except for the occasional whacking of the top of the head ducking thru the low doors of the walkways connecting the trailers it was a sweet set-up.

When I left the states in 1973 it was early March, springtime. When I landed at Takhli RTAFB, Thailand it was summer. It was still March but when the transport plane doors opened it was bright and it was hot. And hot is an understatement. Everything outside was so bright it looked like it was all overexposed by at least one full stop.

I adapted quickly and loved my stay. I made many Thai friends and lived off-base as much as possible. I ate the local food and disdained the chow-hall (except on Sundays, when it was hamburgers and fries...). I loved my fried rice, monkeyball soup and panang curry. To walk the main strip at dusk with the lights coming on, the bands warming up and the street full of people and food vendors... and the delicious aromas... wow. Satays and chik-a-bobs (shish kebab) fresh off the bbq grill... mmm... and top an evening off with some bahmee wan... mmm...

We worked right next to the flightline and many a night's break was spent having a meal and cig on top of the trailers watching the rice bugs under the street lamps and enjoying the quiet without fighter jets blasting their engines coming or going or being tested in the revetments. The sound of incoming F-111's was the sound of work. Pilots would stop in and drop off the film from their bombing runs over Cambodia, we'd process it and every hour or so run the developed rolls down to the de-briefing room where the pilots would score their strikes. Most pilots were nice enough guys - for officers - and only a few were real cowboys. Interesting bunch those pilots.

But I'm digressing. When in Thailand I had an epiphany. It was a very real, palpable experience of connection. So different was that culture from that of hometown USA I experienced an intense empathy and love for the Thai people and their beautiful, hot country. My conscience bloomed and the notion of helping to bomb short, poor, brown people became unacceptable. Though while I was convinced by those older and wiser to not rock the boat, to "enjoy my stay" and simultaneously stay out of trouble, my "career" as an activist had sprouted.

The first hints of my blooming activism appeared while I was attending Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria, CA. I had seen a Native American fella around campus and introduced myself one day. We became good friends and through him I met Grampa Semu Huaute. At the same time my brothers in arms - Marty, Al and Jim - and I had begun doing Sweat Lodges and we were having a blast. Young, healthy and full of ourselves, we accepted the gift in the spirit it was offered and would hike miles into the mountains of the Los Padres National Forest to be able to sweat next to running water and spend time in the hills and woods. We also participated in the protest by the local Chumash of then Cali governor Jerry Brown's plan to locate an LNG port at Point Conception, west of Santa Barbara. To the Chumash and other tribes Pt. Conception is the Western Gate, the point where the souls of the deceased depart for Shimilaqsha, Chumash realm of the dead.

Around 1980 I moved to Fresno and hooked up with Fresno Wildlife Rehabilitation. Cathy and Dave Garner had a shoe-string budget, great hearts and a wonderful program with lots of good volunteers helping them and the wildlife out. I raised baby birds, cared for injured adult birds, learned how to feed a dove and a hummingbird... helped the Garners at their place in the country... major props to Dave and Cathy because now, 20+ years later they are still going strong. (well probably not as strong as back then but I won't even get into the "old age" schtick, lets just say they are still active and leave it there soz I don't dig my self a deeper hole with folks I admire as people, friends and as people who make their dreams work for them)

And here, to pause a bit... you can probably see that as my conscience is blooming, the influences around me are becoming very nature oriented. And the nice thing? As a photographer a lot of this is recorded on film and I'm loving the anticipation of digging into my slide files and digitizing many of those images and bringing them online. There is a story to tell here, and as a fellow Oregonian who has shaped my view of the land and whose writing I admire greatly, Barry Lopez says, in his essay Landscape and Narrative:

The power of narrative to nurture and heal, to repair a spirit in disarray, rests on two things: the skillful invocation of unimpeachable sources and a listener's knowledge that no hypocrisy or subterfuge is involved.

I try and avoid the hypocrisy but rest assured there is no subterfuge here.

More in a bit...