FIELDS of GREEN
Sometimes the best exploration is in your own backyard. Such was the case earlier this week when we took the chance to head across the rice patties that extend to the horizon off our small tile porch.
I cheated a little and Google mapped the 32,000 foot satellite view of the jagged rectangle that extends roughly 2 miles North and a mile on either side of our little “house in the rice” bale duma.
We are situated on one of the short sides of this rice rectangle in the village of Penistanan Kaja.
Most of the locals here work in Ubud in the service industry, are crafts artisans, or tend to the fields that surround our home.
There are several rental houses in our village and near us in the fields…. plus the aforementioned small hotel that has become Teri’s Sunday morning retreat; so there are other Bulay (word for white people here which translates into mutants) randomly wandering around.
After our first full week here the locals are starting to realize that we might be more than overnight visitors….certainly the small hotel realizes that by now.
We see guided trips head out past our house each day…. taking foreigners into the beauty that the terraced sawa revels only when your walking through them.
So with the digital map imprinted in my mind we put sandals to path and embark on our own traverse of the terraces to find what the other side holds.
Each patty is in a different stage of growth and it is a mini study in developmental horticulture as we move past fingerling fresh starts into full blown acres of the deepest greenest shag carpet like rice fields you ever wanted to lay down and roll in. Teri reminds me of all the snakes hiding beneath so I stick to the narrow path foot worn over thousands of years buy billions of souls.
As we reach the other side the rice expanse ceases to rise and slowly transitions into a forest of palm and coconut. We have been slowly climbing as we head North and the water filling the many small channels that feed the rice has grown in volume and strength. The fields near our house are at the very end of a slight and gradual slope that leads the water we walk past now slowly and methodically though a giant maze feeding and nourishing each patty as it travels South. It is a mastery of channels and trenches controlled by gravity, small wooden flow-gates, and the local banjar (water district) that makes sure everyone gets water they need to keep their crops heathy.
As we walk further into the forest people are bathing in the now gushing water channels after a hard days work in the fields. We meet up with a man who lives in a village on the opposite side of the expanse from our house. A short impromptu language lesson takes place as we walk through the forest closer to his home. He offers to his new friends a drink in his home but we continue our walk ending on the main paved road leading into the Northwest end of Ubud. A 100 yards down the road finds us at Fly Cafe a spot we have visited before on scooter and we meet several of Teri’s teacher friends there for dinner.
It is night by the time we leave the Fly and Teri’s trepidation about a night traverse of the now blackened fields has become vocal. With headlamps ablaze and quick feet we beat a path home in short order without seeing any snakes larger than any we had encountered before. Something I’m informed later we will not be doing again in the dark.
