Wanderlust in the Time of Coronavirus (A GeoEx eBook)

Wanderlust in the Time of Coronavirus

The Infinite Wonders of Our Everyday World

I reached the end of the path. To my right was the wide, paved driveway that led to the main street, but then I noticed to my left a narrow, hard-packed dirt path that paralleled a rock wall twice my height. The sounds of the gamelan were coming from somewhere beyond that wall. The wall disappeared into a densely vegetated interior, with a couple of red-tiled roofs visible in the distance. I figured that if I followed the path, eventually it would lead to a break in the wall where I could enter and discover the source of the gamelan music. I wanted to see the orchestra with my own eyes. So I set off down this winding path, following the sinuous curve of the wall and the music’s tantalizing rise and fall. I startled two workers who were on their way to restore a magnificent old house set among the paddies on the other side of a stream that paralleled the trail. They laughed and welcomed me to the forest. After 15 minutes of ambling, I came to a lush setting where palm trees, twining vines, giant ferns, and slick bushes with propeller- like leaves tangled the air. Still, there was no break in the wall, and the gamelan music was sounding fainter and fainter. I stood in the shade of that jungly patch, puzzling over what to do, wondering if I would ever find the break in the wall when suddenly it hit me: I had already found the break in the wall; it was in my mind. Listen! I didn’t need to see the orchestra—my wish had been to hear the gamelan. And there it was, all around me. What more did I want? I walked back down the path and the sounds of the music swelled in the shadowed air. When I reached a point where it seemed loudest of all, I stopped and closed my eyes. Gongs, flutes, and drums gonged and trilled and boomed in layered patterns, lapidary high notes skipped like diamonds across a pond, bong-gong-gong-booming low notes reverberated in my ribs, rising and falling and rising, staccato and slow, each note like a drop of water from heaven, submerging me in a pool of otherworldly harmony. Time stopped. After a while—ten minutes? twenty?—the music ceased, and the forest echoed with its silence. Then the harmonies flowed anew, and suddenly I felt released. It

was time to move on; I had a taxi to catch, a plane to board. I realized that all day I had been regretting my imminent departure, despairing at having to lose this blessed place. Now Ubud had answered that need, bestowing one last lesson that would allow me to leave: I didn’t need to see the gamelan to hear its music, and I didn’t need to be in Bali to have Bali in me. It was already there, gonging and trilling and booming, rice paddy blooming, and it always would be. I set my journal down and reflected once again that the wide world’s wonders are everywhere, without and within. The glories of the gamelan surrounded me anew, and I closed my eyes, to savor the view.

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