The following reflections stem from my three-day stay in Hin Lad Nai Village, also known as "Lazy Man Village," nestled in Mae Wang District of northern Thailand. The village leader, Swae, generously shared many memories about his connection to the land, grounding my previous ideas about indigeneity into something real and tangible. We arrived at the end of December, during the dry season, just after the rice harvest. Had we visited during the rainy season, we certainly wouldn’t have experienced such leisurely days.

As a leader, Swae has actively shared the stories of Karen land across many platforms and is in constant fighting against the government, advocating for more rights for his people. He also manages his family and participates in various village activities.

But why do I still write this? Because I’ve experienced it, because I’ve participated, because the tears that welled up and the deep emotions I couldn’t suppress—besides telling the story, I have no other way.

To me, indigenous wisdom ultimately circles back to how we live and inhabit this world. All research, perspectives, and expressions distill into the daily rituals of tea and rice. Our first teachers in living are our families. Inheriting their lifestyles and habits—through imitation and observation—is almost unconscious, what we might call "familial karma."

But what if these inherited ways lack respect for Earth’s other inhabitants, or are built on exploitation? Do we comply, consoling ourselves as victims of circumstance? I refuse.

Someone once wrote in a field journal, 'Being adopted into a household, I gained another family.' I feel the same. Living with Swae and his family, I had the opportunity to learn a different way of life.

For me, I didn’t come to this land as part of a study or to use their lives as material to complete my knowledge. I came searching for a new home, a place where I could truly live. If living with them doesn’t change the trajectory of your life, what will?

If we all inevitably must live, or must choose how to live, then the spirit of indigenous peoples needs to be learned by more people. This has nothing to do with blindly chasing identity politics. Being ‘indigenous’ or belonging to a particular tribe doesn’t automatically mean anything. The spirit of indigeneity can only be revealed through daily life and practice. It is a way of thinking about home, something deeply relevant to all of us. We all need a home.

Indigenous spirituality isn’t about performative identity politics or bloodline claims. It’s a daily practice of relating to land, water, and stars—a responsibility network connecting humans, animals, and plants. These relationships exist between the body, the land, the waters, and the stars, rooted in specific languages, stories, and traditional teachings. These relationships place humans within a network of responsibilities shared with other animals and plants. They are both ancestral and newly born, rooted in specific territories and peoples. Because of their diversity, we might even more accurately refer to them as ‘Indigeneities.’

This diversity of relationships breathes life into particular knowledge systems, governance structures, and ritual practices. They are preserved in collective memory and open paths toward the future.

I hope my words can convey to you the strength I have gained—the strength of homeness.

The drive from Chiang Mai took an hour uphill. My mind still churned from last night’s argument with my friend, 'You can’t just be a researcher—you must live it.' As we ascended, the scent of roadside forest shifted. Nearing the village, smoke tinged the air—a funeral pyre.

Swae welcomed us at dusk, explaining the flames: a villager had taken his life that morning, his belongings now burning. The journey started with death first.

We crawled through the village in his truck, arriving at his wooden house straddling rice fields—windowless, expansively simple. Over dinner on thick floor mats, Swae traced each ingredient’s origin. When he asked if we are going to do a formal interview, I declined, opting for conversation. I confessed my friend's argument.

'I have a friend who was born in a village in Guangdong called Haijiao Village, the village closest to the sea, and it is very beautiful. His father is a captain and also a fisherman. My friend works in photography and writing, always documenting his homeland. Although the people depend on the sea, it often feels more like a reluctant necessity—a feeling of ‘I have no choice but to live by the sea’. Even though the family bonds are tight, from a young age, his parents would tell him, 'I hope you can go out, leave, go earn money, and make life better.' This might be the kind of confusion that young people in rural areas often face under the impact of modernization.'

Swae listened, then replied,

'His anger stems from childhood—being pushed away when he craved embrace.'

From Swae’s father’s generation onward, the Karen recognized the futility of "escaping." Now, they root their children’s spirits at home.

I shared with Swae the sense of deprivation I felt as a city child. In my memories of growing up, almost all of my knowledge was about human-made and cultivated things—how to use electronic devices, the television, the iPad. How to consume and buy what I need, the playgrounds in my neighborhood, and, of course, the rules of human society and the knowledge that came with it.

But I had almost no opportunity to connect with or learn how, as a human being, one of many species on Earth, I am intimately tied to other animals, plants, the land, the water, and the sky. How they influence one another. These environmental memories for me are almost a blank slate, or perhaps I should say, they existed only as objective facts in biology or environmental studies, without any emotional connection or practical experience.

Why do I always feel life is dull and limited? Why do I always feel lonely? Because I had neglected the many co-inhabitants with whom I share this world. Like a child forced to leave home, perhaps there are still traces of connections once tight in my memory. But in the day-to-day of city life, in the constant interaction only with people or human-made things, I fell into a loss of memory.

After dinner, we gathered around the crackling fire, strumming a Karen lute as Swae unraveled the secrets of trees.

For the Karen, trees are living threads woven into their cultural fabric. When a child is born, the father rises before dawn and ventures into the forest. He selects a spirit tree, ties a bamboo box containing the newborn’s freshly severed umbilical cord to its branches, and in that moment, the child and tree become kin. The cord stump, left to dry and darken, eventually falls off naturally. Only then does the father return to check if the bamboo box has also detached.

There’s a saying here: If the box falls freely, the child needs little guidance. If it clings, the father must shoot it down with a branch—using his non-dominant hand. Should he fail after many attempts, it signals the child will require patient nurturing. Swae chuckled, then grew solemn: 'This ritual isn’t about the child’s character, but the father’s lesson—to release his own frustrations, not project them onto the young. Children, like those bamboo boxes, absorb what we hang on them.'

'They’ll learn from more than just us,' he added. 'The sun, stars, and peers will teach them too. Care deeply, but loosen your grip.'

Once the box drops, villagers beat the tree’s trunk with sticks, petitioning it to bless the child’s spirit. Elders then tie ceremonial ropes to the bark. 'This is both cultural wisdom and science,' Swae insisted. 'Trees sense our breath, cycle it into air. They are our second mother, our oldest friend. When the bamboo box decays, insects return it to soil. We’re born of trees, fed by trees, and in death, we feed them. The circle closes.'

By the fire’s glow, Swae felt like my father recounting the ancestor's story.

As embers rose, I confessed a quiet sorrow, 'Cultures divorced from nature unsettle me. Even those born from environmental bonds can drift into abstraction. Knowing a plant’s name but not how it sustains you—that’s not kinship.'

'When I see a leaf,' he said, catching the flame’s dance, 'I will know it aids new mothers’ recovery. Our breath mingles with the trees’—a tangible bond, as real as science.'

The fire hissed. Somewhere, a bamboo box rustled in the dark, waiting to fall.

Humidity in the mountains at night curled the pages of my notebook. Swae tasked me with remembering that night’s dreams and tell his next morning.

Discussing "home" while moving between places feels paradoxical—yet here, environmental memory isn’t mere scenery, but intimate knowledge: the medicinal herb by your door, the creek’s song, the rice field’s cycles. Home is both physical and spiritual.

At dawn, mist and wind accompanied sunrise. I breathed deeply, exchanged glances with grazing buffalo, then returned to sleep. Mountain acoustics amplified the river’s voice, insects’ chatter—nothing like the silent urban waterways I knew.

When I fully woke up, Swae and his wife had already prepared breakfast and were waiting downstairs. He was playing the piano.

It was then that I noticed the half-barred section of the house had extendable seating wrapped around the wooden posts, allowing you to lean your whole body out. The bench felt both sturdy and flexible, grounding me in the space.

I sat across from Swae. He began asking about my dream from the night before, though I could barely remember it. I only recalled that after we spoke about it, he said, ‘I feel like we’ve known each other for a long time.’

I replied, ‘I feel the same.'

After breakfast, I stretched out on the broad wooden planks, their texture unlike the polished floors of my childhood home.

I often face a dilemma about whether to go outside or not. Staying inside, even with the window open, makes me feel cut off from the world. On the other hand, wandering outside and not returning home leaves me feeling tired and restless, unable to find any peace.

As the wind blows and I gaze at the forest across from me, I realize that the house is no longer an isolating barrier that causes me pain. Instead, it becomes a medium, connecting me to the surrounding environment.

The entire morning, while Swae attended a neighbor's funeral, we wandered around the area near the house. We are children waiting for our father to return. Without a guide, we are no different from the invisible and silent people in the fields. We lack the memories that should lead us, the language and knowledge to communicate with the land.

We are like newborns, babbling and stumbling as we begin to learn how to live.

At noon, we stepped into the kitchen to cook together. Swae’s kitchen is perhaps the most beautiful I have ever seen—open, airy, and seamlessly connected to the outside world. Many things are scattered on the floor, yet everything has its own sense of order. Most of the chopping and preparation happen right there on the ground.

Moving through the kitchen feels like dancing.

Every meal tasted so divine it made you want to sway into dance! Each dish brimmed with herbs, spices, and foraged ingredients, yet required surprisingly little preparation. Had I spoken Thai, I would’ve lingered with Swae’s wife (whose name I regrettably forgot) to learn her stories.

In the Karen community, women are the matrilineal heirs. During marriage rites, the woman holds the decisive voice. A suitor may present himself to her family, but if she rejects him, all advances cease. Should she accept, the man must first live with her family for at least three years, assisting with household duties—tending rice terraces, mending roofs, proving his worth through labor.

"You have to learn how many fields, how may animals to care in her family.", "you are the new comer, you are the new labor, you are the new member."

The objects they have in the home are relational to them. Wooden wind chimes hung are for water buffaloes’ necks. When they wandered into distant forest clearings to graze, their crisp notes carried through wind—people would then know where they are.

Following our starlit conversation the previous night, Swae revealed a small ritual practiced in their fields: bamboo weavings shaped into symbols of stars, the moon, and the sun.

Within the lunar and stellar motifs, seven compartments marked the moon’s cyclical phases—the number 7 holding profound significance for both the Karen people and the natural order itself. These bamboo symbols served as constant reminders for farmers to honour cosmic rhythms governing water sources, plants, soil, and the insects vital to rice cultivation.

Agriculture is the culture of land itself. As Swae explained this, his child leaned against him, studying the weavings with quiet intensity. The boy’s small fingers traced the patterns as if deciphering ancestral code. In that moment, I sensed that his father’s expressions and the silent power of these objects—ephemeral yet eternal—would accompany him through adulthood like whispered lullabies of the land.

Had these bamboo weavings been displayed in Karen tourist villages we didn’t visit, they might have been entombed in glass cases as “intangible heritage,” reduced to untouchable artifacts or commodified as exotic handicrafts. But without crafting them oneself, without embedding their creation into the ritual rhythms of fieldwork, one cannot truly relate to these objects—no matter how intricate their patterns. Craft, here, is no mere production of goods. As Tim Ingold observes, “What culture varies is, first and foremost, the skills of the human hand.” It’s the mediation between environmental memory and daily acts, a dialogue with the world that weaves material and spirit into one breath.

Before venturing into the forest, Swae guided us through his homestead’s periphery. Every plant held purpose. He plucked a leaf, rubbed it between thumb and forefinger releasing a medicinal tang: “This one aids postpartum recovery.” Another, coarser to the touch: “For the pigs’ digestion.” A third, velvety and astringent: “Stanches bleeding, dulls pain.” In the backyard, I found my salvation—lemongrass stalks whose citrus-scented aura repelled mosquitoes.

The conservation area of the forest stretches across 1,000 hectares, with another 1,000 hectares designated for the Karen community’s farming, forestry, and communal lifeways. Our destination now lies deeper within—the forest’s spiritual area.

To the children, the forest is a boundless playground. They discover nature’s secrets through play—like the leaf that turns ghostly white when rubbed between palms, its surface magically bleaching into body paint for skin. Families guide them through this living classroom.

On this small patch of land alone, there are more than a dozen different leaf shapes. If we do not understand the rhythms, patterns, and interdependencies of forest plants, trees, and insects—if we fail to see their richness—we might recklessly clear what we perceive as ‘weeds’ and replace them with what we think belongs.

We can learn much from trees—about renewal and decay, about death and time.

Take, for example, the strangling of trees. When a bird drops a seed, the new tree begins to grow, sending its roots down toward the earth. From the outside, it appears as though the outer tree is devouring the inner one. But in reality, the outer tree cannot survive on its own—it lacks strong roots and depends on the original tree for support.

Once the two trees become tightly entwined, the inner tree eventually dies. And with it, the outer tree loses its foundation. When strong winds come, the outer tree—despite its broad branches and vast structure—can easily collapse without the inner tree holding it up.

Yet, in its fall, it opens up a spacious clearing, allowing sunlight to reach the younger generation of trees nearby. Otherwise, its vast structure and sprawling branches would have made it difficult for the saplings to grow.

Along the path, we encountered the river beside our home once more—it flows down from the mountains, and the villagers use pipes to draw water for irrigation. Along the way, thin threads connect each tree, guiding us as well into the sacred ceremonial ground of the forest.

Every tree here is tightly wrapped in yellow and red silk ribbons. He led us to the largest tree— the mother tree of this forest. Sturdy and powerful, she appeared ancient and wise, surrounded by younger, more delicate saplings. Swae explained that the trees are connected to one another.

Later, in Yogyakarta, I read a book about volcanoes that also discussed this connection. By linking trees of different ages nearby, the mother tree can actually promote the growth of plant seeds beneath the soil. As the seedlings grow, they become part of the network of older trees, benefiting from their immense ability to absorb resources. At crucial moments in their lives, the older trees provide the young ones with nutrients and water, truly aiding their survival and flourishing.

The trees also provide sanctuaries for countless other dwellers. By connecting with neighboring trees of varying ages, the Mother Tree fosters the growth of saplings through subterranean networks. As young trees mature, they integrate into this resource-sharing web, drawing sustenance from the elders’ vast reserves. In critical moments, the old ones channel nutrients and water to the vulnerable, ensuring their survival.

Swae had brought his children here to witness this covenant.

I am not someone who believes in religion or rituals. While others made their devout wishes, I stood aside, lost in thought—just as I did during every service in high school.

I don’t believe in the grand spectacles carefully crafted to evoke emotion—churches, temples, hymns, chants. I question the words in the Bible: if I cannot feel them, why should I believe? My experiences have shown me how religion has often been used as a tool for political and ideological control, the perfect justification for oppression during colonial times.

'All faiths must root themselves in the laws of nature,'

Swae said, his voice a gentle authority that dissolved my doubts.

I read from another article from Ritual Perspectives and Dimensions by Bell Catherine, "ritual is a form of cultural communication that transmits the cognitive categories and dispositions that provide people with important aspects of their sense of reality.”

We formed a circle around the Mother Tree, palms upturned and downturned, hovering millimeters above each other’s skin. Eyes closed, the forest’s breath became our liturgy: rustling leaves as choir, mycorrhizal whispers as scripture.

'listen to the sound of river, please forgive, reborn like the tree.'

After the ritual, we were guided back to the Mother Tree. The moment I touched her, I felt all the memories she had witnessed on this land—pain and blessings alike—flowing into me. That energy surged through my body, transforming into uncontrollable tears. I held onto her, unable to stop.

And so, I cried for half an hour.

In that moment, I understood why this land is called The Crying Place. Crying marks the beginning of new life—when we are born, we cry. When we are moved, when we connect, we cry.

Beyond the forest, Swae led us to his orchard—a wilderness indistinguishable from the jungle itself. Dozens of fruit trees and vegetables grew in anarchic harmony. 'I hardly do anything,' he shrugged. 'Eat a mango, toss the seed. Let chickens till the soil. Healthy land knows its own needs.'

His Arabica coffee trees bore the label Lazy Man Coffee—a jab at modernity’s obsession with busyness. Business, he noted, is the enemy of balance. Overcultivation fractures nature’s rhythms; true laziness means trusting those rhythms. He intervenes minimally, for we’re but transient participants in cycles older than calendars.

Throughout this piece, I don’t want to overemphasize the identity of the Karen people. Their connection to the forest and nature isn’t exclusive to a single ethnicity or identity—it is a daily practice. Swae said that every forest is alike. If we are willing, we too can form a deep bond with a piece of land.

The ritual mentioned earlier was actually a tradition proposed just twenty years ago. It is not something that must be bound to an inherited legacy of ‘blood and soil.’ Many times, I resent tradition because it so often becomes an excuse for avoidance and the perpetuation of harm. When I think of tradition, I think of the unconscious repetition of familial wounds, the fears of past generations, rigid belief systems imposed from above, and the reinforcement of power and control.

But the tradition Swae showed me felt different. It was more like a rhythm and structure one must learn and follow upon entering a land—one shaped collectively by all who inhabit it. You are in me, and I am in you. Like an old tree wrapped by new ones, change is inevitable. Renewal, regeneration—tradition is never static but always open to transformation.

"On the way to the forest, we happened to run into many young people—probably around our age. Swae said that nowadays, many young people in the village choose to stay, continuing to live with the forest and work the land. But even so, they still feel lost. In a globalized world where it seems like everyone is expected to ‘go out,’ Swae’s approach is to keep one foot firmly planted in the village’s soil while the other ventures outward—to share the story of the land.

‘Protection’ is also a strange thing. When the land where Swae and the villagers lived was designated as a ‘national protected park,’ authorities used the excuse of conservation to prohibit them from farming and entering the forest. Their connection to the land was abruptly severed, yet the land was not truly protected.

In their struggle against the government and the forestry department, Swae often turned to modern technology—using tools like GIS to prove that their community had always lived here, that they had the right to interpret and define their own land.

On the last night, the firelight flickered across his face, his eyes shining as he smiled and said, ‘Sometimes, technology is also a way to reveal the truth.’"

Preserving tradition has never been about rejecting the ‘new.’ Indigenous worldviews and modern technology are, at their core, both ways in which humans attempt to understand the world. They do not have to be in opposition—there is no need for a battle to the death.

Before I left, Swae borrowed me a book. From it, I learned a new way to describe a feeling—solastalgia. Unlike the familiar nostalgia, a somewhat romantic longing for home or the past, solastalgia is the grief for a lost homeland.

As Swae walked us down the mountain, he spoke of his father’s elephant. Their practice of rotational farming was inspired by studying the elephants' movements. But later, as his father had to stay and protect their land, he no longer had time to care for the elephant.

Elephants can sense vibrations in the ground through their trunks and communicate with companions over 10 kilometers away using infrasound. Their heightened sensitivity makes them easily disturbed, even enraged. When violence occurs—when the great trees are felled—the sounds they perceive are far more unbearable than anything we can hear. It is not only humans who mourn the loss of home; elephants do, too.

Their habitat is shaped by a conflict between their historical understanding of the land and its current reality. Cities and plantations have stripped them of the forests they once knew. Like refugees forced to adapt to harsh new conditions, they have learned to forage at night to avoid humans, searching for food in banana plantations. This is the rupture in their mental maps—a disorientation, a struggle to create new memories because the ones they relied on have been destroyed.

As we descended, we followed the river, weaving through the forest. In the car, I drifted between sleep and dreams, sleep and dreams. For the first time, I realized that dreaming and dizziness might be my subconscious way of escaping urban reality—my passive resistance against the present.

And my dreams will never end. Neither will my resistance.

I feel as though this piece of writing has no real conclusion. In just a few days, I could not fully absorb or understand everything. I also realize that I cannot, and do not need to, recount every memory.

When the next rainy season comes, I will return—to this homeland of memory.

To learn more stories:

Intertwined with air

Siwakorn Odochao details his people's way of perceiving trees and humans as intimately connected, and draws on the air as the element that weaves between them. Through the co-dependency of humans and trees to prepare the air for each other, he elaborates on the relationship between air, health and environment.

https://wellcomecollection.org

The following reflections stem from my three-day stay in Hin Lad Nai Village, also known as "Lazy Man Village," nestled in Mae Wang District of northern Thailand. The village leader, Swae, generously shared many memories about his connection to the land, grounding my previous ideas about indigeneity into something real and tangible. We arrived at the end of December, during the dry season, just after the rice harvest. Had we visited during the rainy season, we certainly wouldn’t have experienced such leisurely days.

As a leader, Swae has actively shared the stories of Karen land across many platforms and is in constant fighting against the government, advocating for more rights for his people. He also manages his family and participates in various village activities.

But why do I still write this? Because I’ve experienced it, because I’ve participated, because the tears that welled up and the deep emotions I couldn’t suppress—besides telling the story, I have no other way.

To me, indigenous wisdom ultimately circles back to how we live and inhabit this world. All research, perspectives, and expressions distill into the daily rituals of tea and rice. Our first teachers in living are our families. Inheriting their lifestyles and habits—through imitation and observation—is almost unconscious, what we might call "familial karma."

But what if these inherited ways lack respect for Earth’s other inhabitants, or are built on exploitation? Do we comply, consoling ourselves as victims of circumstance? I refuse.

Someone once wrote in a field journal, 'Being adopted into a household, I gained another family.' I feel the same. Living with Swae and his family, I had the opportunity to learn a different way of life.

For me, I didn’t come to this land as part of a study or to use their lives as material to complete my knowledge. I came searching for a new home, a place where I could truly live. If living with them doesn’t change the trajectory of your life, what will?

If we all inevitably must live, or must choose how to live, then the spirit of indigenous peoples needs to be learned by more people. This has nothing to do with blindly chasing identity politics. Being ‘indigenous’ or belonging to a particular tribe doesn’t automatically mean anything. The spirit of indigeneity can only be revealed through daily life and practice. It is a way of thinking about home, something deeply relevant to all of us. We all need a home.

Indigenous spirituality isn’t about performative identity politics or bloodline claims. It’s a daily practice of relating to land, water, and stars—a responsibility network connecting humans, animals, and plants. These relationships exist between the body, the land, the waters, and the stars, rooted in specific languages, stories, and traditional teachings. These relationships place humans within a network of responsibilities shared with other animals and plants. They are both ancestral and newly born, rooted in specific territories and peoples. Because of their diversity, we might even more accurately refer to them as ‘Indigeneities.’

This diversity of relationships breathes life into particular knowledge systems, governance structures, and ritual practices. They are preserved in collective memory and open paths toward the future.

I hope my words can convey to you the strength I have gained—the strength of homeness.

The drive from Chiang Mai took an hour uphill. My mind still churned from last night’s argument with my friend, 'You can’t just be a researcher—you must live it.' As we ascended, the scent of roadside forest shifted. Nearing the village, smoke tinged the air—a funeral pyre.

Swae welcomed us at dusk, explaining the flames: a villager had taken his life that morning, his belongings now burning. The journey started with death first.

We crawled through the village in his truck, arriving at his wooden house straddling rice fields—windowless, expansively simple. Over dinner on thick floor mats, Swae traced each ingredient’s origin. When he asked if we are going to do a formal interview, I declined, opting for conversation. I confessed my friend's argument.

'I have a friend who was born in a village in Guangdong called Haijiao Village, the village closest to the sea, and it is very beautiful. His father is a captain and also a fisherman. My friend works in photography and writing, always documenting his homeland. Although the people depend on the sea, it often feels more like a reluctant necessity—a feeling of ‘I have no choice but to live by the sea’. Even though the family bonds are tight, from a young age, his parents would tell him, 'I hope you can go out, leave, go earn money, and make life better.' This might be the kind of confusion that young people in rural areas often face under the impact of modernization.'

Swae listened, then replied,

'His anger stems from childhood—being pushed away when he craved embrace.'

From Swae’s father’s generation onward, the Karen recognized the futility of "escaping." Now, they root their children’s spirits at home.

I shared with Swae the sense of deprivation I felt as a city child. In my memories of growing up, almost all of my knowledge was about human-made and cultivated things—how to use electronic devices, the television, the iPad. How to consume and buy what I need, the playgrounds in my neighborhood, and, of course, the rules of human society and the knowledge that came with it.

But I had almost no opportunity to connect with or learn how, as a human being, one of many species on Earth, I am intimately tied to other animals, plants, the land, the water, and the sky. How they influence one another. These environmental memories for me are almost a blank slate, or perhaps I should say, they existed only as objective facts in biology or environmental studies, without any emotional connection or practical experience.

Why do I always feel life is dull and limited? Why do I always feel lonely? Because I had neglected the many co-inhabitants with whom I share this world. Like a child forced to leave home, perhaps there are still traces of connections once tight in my memory. But in the day-to-day of city life, in the constant interaction only with people or human-made things, I fell into a loss of memory.

After dinner, we gathered around the crackling fire, strumming a Karen lute as Swae unraveled the secrets of trees.

For the Karen, trees are living threads woven into their cultural fabric. When a child is born, the father rises before dawn and ventures into the forest. He selects a spirit tree, ties a bamboo box containing the newborn’s freshly severed umbilical cord to its branches, and in that moment, the child and tree become kin. The cord stump, left to dry and darken, eventually falls off naturally. Only then does the father return to check if the bamboo box has also detached.

There’s a saying here: If the box falls freely, the child needs little guidance. If it clings, the father must shoot it down with a branch—using his non-dominant hand. Should he fail after many attempts, it signals the child will require patient nurturing. Swae chuckled, then grew solemn: 'This ritual isn’t about the child’s character, but the father’s lesson—to release his own frustrations, not project them onto the young. Children, like those bamboo boxes, absorb what we hang on them.'

'They’ll learn from more than just us,' he added. 'The sun, stars, and peers will teach them too. Care deeply, but loosen your grip.'

Once the box drops, villagers beat the tree’s trunk with sticks, petitioning it to bless the child’s spirit. Elders then tie ceremonial ropes to the bark. 'This is both cultural wisdom and science,' Swae insisted. 'Trees sense our breath, cycle it into air. They are our second mother, our oldest friend. When the bamboo box decays, insects return it to soil. We’re born of trees, fed by trees, and in death, we feed them. The circle closes.'

By the fire’s glow, Swae felt like my father recounting the ancestor's story.

As embers rose, I confessed a quiet sorrow, 'Cultures divorced from nature unsettle me. Even those born from environmental bonds can drift into abstraction. Knowing a plant’s name but not how it sustains you—that’s not kinship.'

'When I see a leaf,' he said, catching the flame’s dance, 'I will know it aids new mothers’ recovery. Our breath mingles with the trees’—a tangible bond, as real as science.'

The fire hissed. Somewhere, a bamboo box rustled in the dark, waiting to fall.

Humidity in the mountains at night curled the pages of my notebook. Swae tasked me with remembering that night’s dreams and tell his next morning.

Discussing "home" while moving between places feels paradoxical—yet here, environmental memory isn’t mere scenery, but intimate knowledge: the medicinal herb by your door, the creek’s song, the rice field’s cycles. Home is both physical and spiritual.

At dawn, mist and wind accompanied sunrise. I breathed deeply, exchanged glances with grazing buffalo, then returned to sleep. Mountain acoustics amplified the river’s voice, insects’ chatter—nothing like the silent urban waterways I knew.

When I fully woke up, Swae and his wife had already prepared breakfast and were waiting downstairs. He was playing the piano.

It was then that I noticed the half-barred section of the house had extendable seating wrapped around the wooden posts, allowing you to lean your whole body out. The bench felt both sturdy and flexible, grounding me in the space.

I sat across from Swae. He began asking about my dream from the night before, though I could barely remember it. I only recalled that after we spoke about it, he said, ‘I feel like we’ve known each other for a long time.’

I replied, ‘I feel the same.'

After breakfast, I stretched out on the broad wooden planks, their texture unlike the polished floors of my childhood home.

I often face a dilemma about whether to go outside or not. Staying inside, even with the window open, makes me feel cut off from the world. On the other hand, wandering outside and not returning home leaves me feeling tired and restless, unable to find any peace.

As the wind blows and I gaze at the forest across from me, I realize that the house is no longer an isolating barrier that causes me pain. Instead, it becomes a medium, connecting me to the surrounding environment.

The entire morning, while Swae attended a neighbor's funeral, we wandered around the area near the house. We are children waiting for our father to return. Without a guide, we are no different from the invisible and silent people in the fields. We lack the memories that should lead us, the language and knowledge to communicate with the land.

We are like newborns, babbling and stumbling as we begin to learn how to live.

At noon, we stepped into the kitchen to cook together. Swae’s kitchen is perhaps the most beautiful I have ever seen—open, airy, and seamlessly connected to the outside world. Many things are scattered on the floor, yet everything has its own sense of order. Most of the chopping and preparation happen right there on the ground.

Moving through the kitchen feels like dancing.

Every meal tasted so divine it made you want to sway into dance! Each dish brimmed with herbs, spices, and foraged ingredients, yet required surprisingly little preparation. Had I spoken Thai, I would’ve lingered with Swae’s wife (whose name I regrettably forgot) to learn her stories.

In the Karen community, women are the matrilineal heirs. During marriage rites, the woman holds the decisive voice. A suitor may present himself to her family, but if she rejects him, all advances cease. Should she accept, the man must first live with her family for at least three years, assisting with household duties—tending rice terraces, mending roofs, proving his worth through labor.

"You have to learn how many fields, how may animals to care in her family.", "you are the new comer, you are the new labor, you are the new member."

The objects they have in the home are relational to them. Wooden wind chimes hung are for water buffaloes’ necks. When they wandered into distant forest clearings to graze, their crisp notes carried through wind—people would then know where they are.

Following our starlit conversation the previous night, Swae revealed a small ritual practiced in their fields: bamboo weavings shaped into symbols of stars, the moon, and the sun.

Within the lunar and stellar motifs, seven compartments marked the moon’s cyclical phases—the number 7 holding profound significance for both the Karen people and the natural order itself. These bamboo symbols served as constant reminders for farmers to honour cosmic rhythms governing water sources, plants, soil, and the insects vital to rice cultivation.

Agriculture is the culture of land itself. As Swae explained this, his child leaned against him, studying the weavings with quiet intensity. The boy’s small fingers traced the patterns as if deciphering ancestral code. In that moment, I sensed that his father’s expressions and the silent power of these objects—ephemeral yet eternal—would accompany him through adulthood like whispered lullabies of the land.

Had these bamboo weavings been displayed in Karen tourist villages we didn’t visit, they might have been entombed in glass cases as “intangible heritage,” reduced to untouchable artifacts or commodified as exotic handicrafts. But without crafting them oneself, without embedding their creation into the ritual rhythms of fieldwork, one cannot truly relate to these objects—no matter how intricate their patterns. Craft, here, is no mere production of goods. As Tim Ingold observes, “What culture varies is, first and foremost, the skills of the human hand.” It’s the mediation between environmental memory and daily acts, a dialogue with the world that weaves material and spirit into one breath.

Before venturing into the forest, Swae guided us through his homestead’s periphery. Every plant held purpose. He plucked a leaf, rubbed it between thumb and forefinger releasing a medicinal tang: “This one aids postpartum recovery.” Another, coarser to the touch: “For the pigs’ digestion.” A third, velvety and astringent: “Stanches bleeding, dulls pain.” In the backyard, I found my salvation—lemongrass stalks whose citrus-scented aura repelled mosquitoes.

The conservation area of the forest stretches across 1,000 hectares, with another 1,000 hectares designated for the Karen community’s farming, forestry, and communal lifeways. Our destination now lies deeper within—the forest’s spiritual area.

To the children, the forest is a boundless playground. They discover nature’s secrets through play—like the leaf that turns ghostly white when rubbed between palms, its surface magically bleaching into body paint for skin. Families guide them through this living classroom.

On this small patch of land alone, there are more than a dozen different leaf shapes. If we do not understand the rhythms, patterns, and interdependencies of forest plants, trees, and insects—if we fail to see their richness—we might recklessly clear what we perceive as ‘weeds’ and replace them with what we think belongs.

We can learn much from trees—about renewal and decay, about death and time.

Take, for example, the strangling of trees. When a bird drops a seed, the new tree begins to grow, sending its roots down toward the earth. From the outside, it appears as though the outer tree is devouring the inner one. But in reality, the outer tree cannot survive on its own—it lacks strong roots and depends on the original tree for support.

Once the two trees become tightly entwined, the inner tree eventually dies. And with it, the outer tree loses its foundation. When strong winds come, the outer tree—despite its broad branches and vast structure—can easily collapse without the inner tree holding it up.

Yet, in its fall, it opens up a spacious clearing, allowing sunlight to reach the younger generation of trees nearby. Otherwise, its vast structure and sprawling branches would have made it difficult for the saplings to grow.

Along the path, we encountered the river beside our home once more—it flows down from the mountains, and the villagers use pipes to draw water for irrigation. Along the way, thin threads connect each tree, guiding us as well into the sacred ceremonial ground of the forest.

Every tree here is tightly wrapped in yellow and red silk ribbons. He led us to the largest tree— the mother tree of this forest. Sturdy and powerful, she appeared ancient and wise, surrounded by younger, more delicate saplings. Swae explained that the trees are connected to one another.

Later, in Yogyakarta, I read a book about volcanoes that also discussed this connection. By linking trees of different ages nearby, the mother tree can actually promote the growth of plant seeds beneath the soil. As the seedlings grow, they become part of the network of older trees, benefiting from their immense ability to absorb resources. At crucial moments in their lives, the older trees provide the young ones with nutrients and water, truly aiding their survival and flourishing.

The trees also provide sanctuaries for countless other dwellers. By connecting with neighboring trees of varying ages, the Mother Tree fosters the growth of saplings through subterranean networks. As young trees mature, they integrate into this resource-sharing web, drawing sustenance from the elders’ vast reserves. In critical moments, the old ones channel nutrients and water to the vulnerable, ensuring their survival.

Swae had brought his children here to witness this covenant.

I am not someone who believes in religion or rituals. While others made their devout wishes, I stood aside, lost in thought—just as I did during every service in high school.

I don’t believe in the grand spectacles carefully crafted to evoke emotion—churches, temples, hymns, chants. I question the words in the Bible: if I cannot feel them, why should I believe? My experiences have shown me how religion has often been used as a tool for political and ideological control, the perfect justification for oppression during colonial times.

'All faiths must root themselves in the laws of nature,'

Swae said, his voice a gentle authority that dissolved my doubts.

I read from another article from Ritual Perspectives and Dimensions by Bell Catherine, "ritual is a form of cultural communication that transmits the cognitive categories and dispositions that provide people with important aspects of their sense of reality.”

We formed a circle around the Mother Tree, palms upturned and downturned, hovering millimeters above each other’s skin. Eyes closed, the forest’s breath became our liturgy: rustling leaves as choir, mycorrhizal whispers as scripture.

'listen to the sound of river, please forgive, reborn like the tree.'

After the ritual, we were guided back to the Mother Tree. The moment I touched her, I felt all the memories she had witnessed on this land—pain and blessings alike—flowing into me. That energy surged through my body, transforming into uncontrollable tears. I held onto her, unable to stop.

And so, I cried for half an hour.

In that moment, I understood why this land is called The Crying Place. Crying marks the beginning of new life—when we are born, we cry. When we are moved, when we connect, we cry.

Beyond the forest, Swae led us to his orchard—a wilderness indistinguishable from the jungle itself. Dozens of fruit trees and vegetables grew in anarchic harmony. 'I hardly do anything,' he shrugged. 'Eat a mango, toss the seed. Let chickens till the soil. Healthy land knows its own needs.'

His Arabica coffee trees bore the label Lazy Man Coffee—a jab at modernity’s obsession with busyness. Business, he noted, is the enemy of balance. Overcultivation fractures nature’s rhythms; true laziness means trusting those rhythms. He intervenes minimally, for we’re but transient participants in cycles older than calendars.

Throughout this piece, I don’t want to overemphasize the identity of the Karen people. Their connection to the forest and nature isn’t exclusive to a single ethnicity or identity—it is a daily practice. Swae said that every forest is alike. If we are willing, we too can form a deep bond with a piece of land.

The ritual mentioned earlier was actually a tradition proposed just twenty years ago. It is not something that must be bound to an inherited legacy of ‘blood and soil.’ Many times, I resent tradition because it so often becomes an excuse for avoidance and the perpetuation of harm. When I think of tradition, I think of the unconscious repetition of familial wounds, the fears of past generations, rigid belief systems imposed from above, and the reinforcement of power and control.

But the tradition Swae showed me felt different. It was more like a rhythm and structure one must learn and follow upon entering a land—one shaped collectively by all who inhabit it. You are in me, and I am in you. Like an old tree wrapped by new ones, change is inevitable. Renewal, regeneration—tradition is never static but always open to transformation.

"On the way to the forest, we happened to run into many young people—probably around our age. Swae said that nowadays, many young people in the village choose to stay, continuing to live with the forest and work the land. But even so, they still feel lost. In a globalized world where it seems like everyone is expected to ‘go out,’ Swae’s approach is to keep one foot firmly planted in the village’s soil while the other ventures outward—to share the story of the land.

‘Protection’ is also a strange thing. When the land where Swae and the villagers lived was designated as a ‘national protected park,’ authorities used the excuse of conservation to prohibit them from farming and entering the forest. Their connection to the land was abruptly severed, yet the land was not truly protected.

In their struggle against the government and the forestry department, Swae often turned to modern technology—using tools like GIS to prove that their community had always lived here, that they had the right to interpret and define their own land.

On the last night, the firelight flickered across his face, his eyes shining as he smiled and said, ‘Sometimes, technology is also a way to reveal the truth.’"

Preserving tradition has never been about rejecting the ‘new.’ Indigenous worldviews and modern technology are, at their core, both ways in which humans attempt to understand the world. They do not have to be in opposition—there is no need for a battle to the death.

Before I left, Swae borrowed me a book. From it, I learned a new way to describe a feeling—solastalgia. Unlike the familiar nostalgia, a somewhat romantic longing for home or the past, solastalgia is the grief for a lost homeland.

As Swae walked us down the mountain, he spoke of his father’s elephant. Their practice of rotational farming was inspired by studying the elephants' movements. But later, as his father had to stay and protect their land, he no longer had time to care for the elephant.

Elephants can sense vibrations in the ground through their trunks and communicate with companions over 10 kilometers away using infrasound. Their heightened sensitivity makes them easily disturbed, even enraged. When violence occurs—when the great trees are felled—the sounds they perceive are far more unbearable than anything we can hear. It is not only humans who mourn the loss of home; elephants do, too.

Their habitat is shaped by a conflict between their historical understanding of the land and its current reality. Cities and plantations have stripped them of the forests they once knew. Like refugees forced to adapt to harsh new conditions, they have learned to forage at night to avoid humans, searching for food in banana plantations. This is the rupture in their mental maps—a disorientation, a struggle to create new memories because the ones they relied on have been destroyed.

As we descended, we followed the river, weaving through the forest. In the car, I drifted between sleep and dreams, sleep and dreams. For the first time, I realized that dreaming and dizziness might be my subconscious way of escaping urban reality—my passive resistance against the present.

And my dreams will never end. Neither will my resistance.

I feel as though this piece of writing has no real conclusion. In just a few days, I could not fully absorb or understand everything. I also realize that I cannot, and do not need to, recount every memory.

When the next rainy season comes, I will return—to this homeland of memory.

To learn more stories:

Intertwined with air

Siwakorn Odochao details his people's way of perceiving trees and humans as intimately connected, and draws on the air as the element that weaves between them. Through the co-dependency of humans and trees to prepare the air for each other, he elaborates on the relationship between air, health and environment.

https://wellcomecollection.org