Edith Mirante in Chin State, Burma

 

THE OPEN ROAD

peace, love, happiness & understanding

August 4, 2022

 

ADVENTURE TALES!

 

I asked some friends to send in stories of adventures they had. First to reply was Edith Mirante, who is a member of the Society of Women Geographers:

 

The Society of Woman Geographers was established in 1925 at a time when women were excluded from membership in most professional organizations, such as the Explorers Club, who would not admit women until 1981. It is based in Washington, D.C., and has 500 members.

 

The society was organized by four friends, Gertrude Emerson Sen, Marguerite Harrison, Blair Niles and Gertrude Mathews Shelby, to bring together women interested in geography, world exploration, anthropology and related fields. Membership was restricted to women who had “done distinctive work whereby they have added to the world’s store of knowledge concerning the countries on which they have specialized, and have published in magazines or in book form a record of their work.”  

 

—from Wikipedia

 

Here’s what Edith wrote:

 

Being an adventurer is intrinsic to my personality. I’ve always sought the “unsafe path” and accepted the dangers & misadventures that come with that. I try to use those reckless proclivities for good, investigating human rights issues and environmental crises in remote, sometimes war torn, regions — especially the frontiers of Burma (Myanmar). My three books, Burmese Looking Glass, Down the Rat Hole and The Wind in the Bamboo are adventure stories as much as political & historical narratives. 

 

=======

 

In the Pines, Burma

 

I had gotten used to riding on the back of small motorbikes, which had only recently replaced study mountain ponies in Chin State, a rugged, mostly roadless region of western Burma (Myanmar.) I managed not to upset the balance — or fall off — even on convoluted dirt tracks and rickety bamboo bridges, as I researched the region’s environmental issues in 2016 with the assistance of some motorbiking local enviro activists.

 

Mining (nickel and other minerals) was of particular interest to me. I had read in a local news outlet that Valvum, a village reachable from Tedim town was the site of “ongoing coal mining work managed by a Japanese company.” Low-grade, highly polluting coal is mined in some areas of Burma and with coal’s disastrous climate-changing effects for the whole world, the Valvum operation was certainly worth investigating. 

 

Gunning the bikes up and down narrow, rock-strewn trails, we got to Valvum mid-morning. I drank tea with some women who were smoking cheroots in a dark, smoky house. Burma was enjoying a period of relative freedom for civil society after decades of brutal military dictatorship. But those changes were recent and I was concerned about possible scrutiny of our visit, whether by government agents or mining company thugs. So I tried to make sure I wouldn’t be getting anyone in trouble by visiting the mine. A village representative reassured us: “It is no problem to go there. They are expecting you there.”

 

Past the village the swerve, wobble and roll of our bikes disturbed the silence of khasi pine and rhododendron forest until a fence appeared and a couple of mine employees waved us through the gate. The owner, a 70 year old Japanese eccentric married to a local woman, was away, they told me. But they were happy to show me the operation: “Here are the four ovens where we make the coal.” So it turned out to be not a coal mine at all. This was a charcoal making project. The words for coal and charcoal are very similar in Burmese, as in English. 

 

Although charcoal is used for household cooking throughout Burma, this product was apparently for export to Japan, where special charcoals are often used as air freshener, commanding high prices for small amounts. I was certainly relieved that it was not a coal mine. But I learned that this charcoal business was having its own environmental impact: depleting the area around Valvum of four types of trees, described in the local language as thal sing, lim sing, nai sing and se sing. 

 

I mentioned that bamboo, a plentiful and thoroughly renewable resource, could be used instead for export quality charcoal. In Japan bamboo charcoal is prized and costly, for incense or just displayed in a bowl to purify the air. Chin State reminded me of Appalachia in many ways (the rhody forests, the Christian hymns resounding in mountain churches, those blue ridges, hollers and mines.) One place’s pollution or deforestation is another part of the world’s clean breath of air. 

 

Leaving Valvum we reached the main road, where I had to wrap up in scarves like a nomad raider to keep the dust out of my lungs. Six years on, that entire region has become a horrifying conflict zone. Since the Feb. 1, 2021 coup in Myanmar, entire towns and villages have been burned across Chin State by the shock troops of the regime. Civilians fled to neighboring India. The young environmentalists I knew and other activists fight back with guerrilla tactics, as armed convoys invade their land. The pine forests are now resistance strongholds. 

 

—Edith Mirante, 2022

for more about Chin State:

https://www.projectmaje.org/chin_report_2021.htm

*

 

VW Bug in Mud

 

We had this bright idea to take a short cut on a road that faded from gravel to dirt to mud. “Maybe if we go fast enough we can get through that big puddle.” Nope. We were stalled with wheels spinning, car body resting in muck. Did I mention we were ten miles from anywhere…my baby sister was with us…it was dusk? Well, we gathered a heap of flat rocks, lifted the car high enough to place pavers under each wheel (playing mighty Archimedes with a dead tree we plucked from the ground), laud down stones to fill the ruts, revved it, and roared onward…arriving home to the frightened family around midnight. A sturdy lesson in foolishness and self-reliance.

 

—Kim Stafford

*

 

a seagull conversation    

 

on a chilly autumn afternoon

with the barest minimum of experience

I’m cautiously paddling a kayak 

around and among a group of small islands 

off the jagged coast of Connecticut

gently encouraged and accompanied by

an athletic younger brother and his mate 

each in their own kayak 

maneuvering with skill far superior to my own

 

at the moment 

I have unintentionally wandered out of their sight  

suddenly alone in an unfamiliar domain

I calm a rising concern with assurances 

my partners are almost certainly 

on the far side of the next small island 

or the island just beyond 

 

meanwhile 

I contemplate the territorial agreement 

the local cormorants and seagulls appear to have made 

occupying alternate perching rocks 

twelve to fifteen feet apart

that surround the island I’m slowly moving past

 

clenched postures and cold stares make it clear

agreement has also been reached 

that my presence is entirely unwelcome

 

as I round the narrow end of the island 

one of the gulls hunkered on a rock just ahead 

confronts me with the abrasive, demanding cry 

that seems to express the hardcore seagull personality 

 

after a tense moment, I try to soften the mood

with a modestly accurate but gentler seagull impression

 

the gull’s harsh scream in response 

is a furious reply to a personal insult 

 

my attempt to back away with a shorter, less ragged cry

brings a jagged challenge to deadly combat

 

my third pass at making peace is cut short

by a piercing shriek that must be a crippling curse 

 

and the gull lifts its wings and rises from its perch 

 

I pause and drift for a moment

resting the double-blade paddle across my lap

and watch the departing gull fly slowly but deliberately 

in a remarkably straight line away from the nose of my kayak 

 

I’m just beginning to consider the possibility 

of feeling guilty about disturbing this gull in the first place

when the bird makes a tight turn mid-air

precisely reversing its course

now heading on a line directly toward my kayak 

 

in the time it takes to think: what the hell? 

I see a slender rope of firm black and white matter 

almost two feet long and growing 

descending from beneath the bird’s tail 

 

swiftly lengthening and steadily on-coming 

this two-tone cord of seagull rebuke  

is truly surreal and completely unnerving 

 

as the gull and dangling cord close in    

I panic and thrust the right side of my paddle into the air 

hoping to deflect the incoming projectile 

 

my awkward parry is completely mistimed

and the sudden movement sends the kayak tipping wildly to the left 

I manage to right the boat but a generous amount of ocean water 

has washed into the kayak’s snug seating compartment 

 

the frigid ocean stings as it soaks into my pants

but I can’t take my eyes off the approaching nightmare cord 

which the gull suddenly releases 

dropping it into the water a couple of feet in front of my kayak 

 

relief begins to flood my mind before I realize  

this cunning seagull has very nearly

sent me tumbling into the icy autumn Atlantic

 

later that evening, in warm dry clothes  

comes the bottom line:

if the intruder’s pants are wet 

the seagull’s point is made 

 

—Nick Eldredge   2022

*

 

I’ve had an adventure or two in my day. Most of them a long time ago. I lived in India for a couple years. I was a gold miner in Northern California. I had a job where I was paid for sleeping. Another job was testing beet pulp pellets for hardness, durability and fine particle content. Once, when free climbing in the Wallowa Mountains, I found myself on a rock ledge from where I could not go up and could not go back down. Somehow, I lived to tell the tale. But that is not the tale I’m going to tell now…

 

I was awakened by a phone call in the middle of the night in the Fall of 1998. It was World Class Oddball Ken Campbell calling from London. “Johnny,” he said. “Would you like to enroll in the School for Phils?” “I don’t know, Ken. What is the School for Phils?” Ken explained that the little voices inside his head were telling him that it was important to usher in the Millennium by performing The Warp every weekend of 1999, and that he needed to train up a team of Phils, because if someone tried to play the part of Philip Masters every weekend for a year, it would kill them.

 

“When does the School for Phils begin?” “One week from today.” “It’s tempting. I’d have to quit my job…” “Are you in?”

 

A week later, I found myself in a smoke-filled basement in Camden Town. There were about six guys, besides myself. Oliver Senton was giving us a briefing. He had played the part of Philip Masters. According to the Guinness Book of  World Records, it is the longest part in the longest play in the English language. After a few days, enrollment in the School for Phils had dwindled to one. Me.

 

The Warp is a play unlike any other. It’s Neil Oram’s autobiography, from 1959 to 1979, in roughly the same way that Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is autobiographical. As in Kerouac’s book, the names have been changed, but the events recounted actually happened. At least this was Neil’s version of what happened and he was completely sincere when he said he didn’t make anything up. Neil Oram has the most astonishing memory of anyone I have ever met. When he wrote his play in 1979, he could remember conversations he had fifteen and twenty years earlier.

 

Rehearsals couldn’t begin until I was “off book.” It took me four months to learn my lines. I started every day at 8 a.m., seven days a week, and worked on my lines till midnight. When I got tested, it took more than eight hours to say my lines, with someone giving me just my cues. The other actors all knew their parts. We only rehearsed for five days, with everyone lining up to do their scenes with me. When we performed the play at the Roundhouse, the performance began at 8 pm on Saturday and ended at 7 pm the following day. I was onstage the whole time.

 

A play that is more than 20 hours long sounds like it might be boring. When Ken directed The Warp there was not a dull moment. He was a comic genius, the funniest man I have ever known. I don’t know how Neil felt about this, but Ken directed his earnest account of his life journey for maximum laughs. 

 

The first time I saw the play, I was playing a small part, Ralph Beak. He doesn’t come onstage for at least the first twelve hours, so I got to watch the first half of the play as an audience member, and it was the most exhilarating theatrical experience of my life. The energy that the actors brought to every scene was incredible! There are dozens of characters and more than 120 scenes. In every scene the actors were trying to outdo the previous scene. After eight hours of this barrage on my nervous system I was in a state of ecstasy. I felt like I had died and gone to Theater Paradise.

 

I had a little time off from line-learning, when our theater company would perform Macbeth in Pidgin English at the Piccadilly Theatre on London’s West End.

 

I performed the part of Philip Masters in The Warp three times, in early 1999, before returning to The States. At the end of the 23 hour-long performances, the audience stood up and shouted and cheered for about ten minutes. It’s the only time in my acting career that I got to feel what rock stars must feel when the crowd goes wild.

 

—Johnny Stallings

*

 

Reflections On the Art of “The Adventure”

 

The Oxford Dictionary suggests adventure might be a “daring enterprise,” describes adventurism as a “tendency to take risks,” and offers up synonyms such as “audacious, brave, reckless, valiant,” and “risky.”

 

Defining adventure seems very subjective and individual to me. Certainly one person’s daring is another person’s ho-hum. I do feel (for myself) it requires “loose ends,” cannot be over-planned, must include improvisation and unknowns, and necessitates I be “in the moment.” Thus I might say our entire life is an adventure as we navigate the surges, eddies, and constant strivings that are elements of being alive.

 

Rather than describe one specific episode of bravado, I’ve conceived a list of possibilities I hope will touch many:

 

—(Here’s the big one) Being with “me”…phew! (Can you relate?)

—Family reunions (‘nough said)

—First stroke of brush on canvas

—The turn of a thought

—Being member of Johnny’s dialogue group

—Hiking in bear country

—Being a part of OHOM circle of friends

—Making new friends

—Imagining in new ways

—Prison

—Going to the library/book store

—Writing first word of poem/essay

—Stepping onstage in front of an audience

 

Here’s a few more:

 

—Agreeing

—Listening

—Changing

—Loving

—Smiling

—Commitment

—Birth/Death

 

And as a last thought:

 

—This moment!

 

Conclusion: we all, at every moment are engaged in the living act of

“The Adventure”

 

Peace and Love To All

 

—Abe Green  2022

 

(Note to readers: peace, love, happiness & understanding now comes out on the first Thursday of every month, instead of every other Thursday.)