Fishing

Woken by the early call of a rooster, not so much cock a doodle doo as cock a doodle, oops, the last sound falling as if in apology for disturbing the quiet air. Then, rising from the river below, the puffing of a boat engine, the sound of parting waters as it passes upstream.

From the balcony wisps of mist cling to the hills as they begin to find shape within the morning air, blue tinged under a clear sky. Voices and laughter drifting up from the boats as the day begins.

A group of teenagers in Buddhist robes walking along the river bank, smoke from their cigarettes incongruous against this attire, as the wind flows down the valley, tinged with an early chill.

An hour passes on the clock, a few moments here, along the bank a queue snakes up from the jetty, waiting for the morning boat back downstream to Nong Khiaw.

Speaking to a local I ask about the road I'd heard about, she tells me that it's already here, but rough, winding and undulating its way through the hills. But change is coming. There's talk of the Chinese built dam upstream reducing the river flow even further, taking away the river. "And if there's no river then who will come here?" She asks me. I have no answer, hoping that the scenery would be enough, but a part of me doubts this. Even after a few years I sense the changes, if you remove the boat, replace it with a convoy of mini buses, then what's left?

And, as always it seems, I wonder about these changes. Already dams further upstream have diminished the river traffic , closed off old routes and succumbed to the dominance of bus and lorry. But it's a nuanced equation, too much for my early morning head to delve deeply into. Besides the sound of a boat passing on the river, a small dog curled up by my feet and the scent of my 3rd and final coffee distract me from such thoughts. I'm here now, as I was before, and the future is beyond my power to see or change. But rarely has the phrase, " Ah, but you should have seen it before…" carried such a chill.

Later, sitting in a riverside restaurant, drinking a bottle of beerlao as the afternoon heat begins to dissipate, looking downstream where there's a possibility of hills caught fragile and uncertain upon the air.

I hear sound of Norman MacCaig's voice sounding in my head, as I heard him last time also, his words echoing within this panorama:

"this frieze of mountains, filed
on the blue air –
Stac Polly,
Cul Beag, Cul Mor, Suilven,
Canisp –
a frieze and
a litany."

Looking downstream I'm transported half a world away and decades previous to this one, that sense of awe and wonder which, for me, is the legacy of mountains. But here the shapes feel more precise, their geography fixed upon another map, names spoken in a particular voice, the imprecise geography of the self...

Beneath, upon the water, a gathering of boats, a scatter of people seated around as the hidden sun shoots shafts of light through a gap in the hills, colours touching the edge of the clouds, the southern hills solidifying as dusk approaches; tones captured in watercolour between blue and grey, rising above the rocky shoreline and scrubby vegetation between where I sit and the river.