Word: wat
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...late autumn night of the full moon at the end of the Buddhist Lent for as long as anyone can remember. "I've seen them since I was a little girl," says Pang Butamee, 70, who lives in a flood-prone hut on the river's edge. Nearby is Wat Paa Luang?an elegant, 450-year-old temple and one of the most popular spots to watch the fireballs. "I've seen them come up from the river, and also from canals and dams," she claims. "My mother and father saw them, and their mothers and fathers...
...fireballs, however, are a hoax, it is one conceived and perpetuated on a grand scale. According to Phrakhru Pichai Kitjaton, abbot of Wat Paa Luang, the temple houses written records of monks witnessing fireballs hundreds of years ago. And each year, anything from 200 to 800 of the fiery orbs are sighted along a 100-kilometer stretch of the river. "Are they real? Does it matter? Faith is the thing," he says, with a Mona Lisa smile...
...might be right. Within 15 minutes of my first fireball sighting, thunderhead clouds that had been threatening ominously suddenly bore down with full force. The heavens opened, and fierce gusts of wind turned the rain horizontal. At Wat Paa Luang, the fireballs were forgotten in the stampede for shelter. A soaked mass of humanity huddled under flapping tents, as the booms and bangs and drawn-out rumbles of the tempest sounded more and more like the admonitions of an irate demigod...
...because it wasn't human?has roamed a subterranean universe known as the Muang Badan for thousands of years, slithering through a vast network of caves and tunnels. The main thoroughfare?the Naga superhighway, if you like?is said to run from Kam Chanode in Udon Thani province to Wat Paa Ahong, a temple on the riverbank more than 100 kilometers away in neighboring Nong Khai. Pilgrims, I was told, visit Kam Chanode to anoint themselves with water from the Naga's pond...
...those we face today--especially problems of deforestation, water management, topsoil loss and climate change. The long list of victims includes the Anasazi in the U.S. Southwest, the Maya, Easter Islanders, the Greenland Norse, Mycenaean Greeks and inhabitants of the Fertile Crescent, the Indus Valley, Great Zimbabwe and Angkor Wat. The outcomes ranged from "just" a collapse of society, to the deaths of most people, to (in some cases) everyone's ending up dead. What can we learn from these events? I see four main sets of lessons...