The Ordination of a Tree: The Thai Buddhist Environmental Movement

2. The Forest, The Village, and The Ecology Monk

2 The Forest, The Village, and The Ecology Monk In the past, Nan’s natural resources were so abundant that if you walked in the forest you would trip. When you stood up, your mouth would be full of bamboo shoots and your hands full of mushrooms. Looking back at what you tripped over, you would see a python slithering away. —Folk saying in Nan Province1 I first traveled to Nan Province in the far east of northern Thailand in July 1991. Two weeks earlier at a nongovernment organization (NGO) meeting at Chiang Mai University I had met Sakchai Parnthep, who ran his own NGO to conserve indigenous seeds of Nan and worked closely with Phrakhru Pitak Nanthakhun on his environmental programs. Sakchai, in his early thirties, idealistic and dedicated to preserving Nan’s culture and natural environment, was in Chiang Mai seeking support for Phrakhru Pitak’s second tree ordination, this time to sanctify a community forest for ten villages. He invited me, along with all the NGO workers present at the meeting, to participate, and even offered to let me stay with his family in Nan city for a few days. On July 8, I boarded a bus for a six-hour ride from Chiang Mai to Nan to meet Phrakhru Pitak Nanthakhum (see Plate 5) and to join in the tree ordination. As the crow flies, Nan is only about 200 kilometers (~120 miles) from Chiang Mai, but it is impossible to travel that route directly. The bus winds its way southeast through Lamphun, Lampang, and Phrae provinces where the mountains are lower and more passable, before heading north again to Nan. 29 30 The Ordination of a Tree Through Lamphun, Lampang, and Phrae the road is relatively flat, stretching past wet rice paddy fields and small villages. Nearing Nan, the road begins to climb and twist. I grew to dread this bus trip over the next few years; the rises, drops, and sharp turns made my stomach churn, especially if I got stuck toward the back of the bus. The scenery was spectacular, however. On that first trip I was glued to the window gazing in awe at the broad vistas across the mountains and valleys of the province. Nan is one of the most mountainous provinces of northern Thailand. Its small area of 11,472 km2 is tucked between the Thai provinces of Phrae to the south and southwest, Phayao to the northwest and Chiang Rai to the north, and northern Laos to the east. With a population of only a little more than five hundred thousand, Nan has a low population density, which emphasizes the sense of wilderness of the mountains even more. Compared with Chiang Mai, Nan retains a backwater feel. Relatively few foreign tourists visit, and few Thais from other provinces have ever been there. Despite its contemporary remoteness, the province has a rich history. Its first recorded king dates to the fourteenth century. Over the centuries, the principality of Nan came under the suzerainty of Phayao, Sukhothai, Phitsanulok, Chiang Mai, Burma, and Bangkok. Nan nevertheless preserved its own identity and pride, claiming both a strong tradition of spirit lords who helped protect the region from invading armies early on and enforced morality among its rulers (Wyatt 1994, 1079), and a reliquary “believed to enshrine a relic of the Buddha’s mortal remains” (Wyatt 1994, 1080) that became one of twelve major pilgrimage sites for northern Thailand (Keyes 1975). The people of Nan remain proud of their distinct past, maintaining an emotional affiliation with the semi-independent principality of historical Nan that is much stronger than that with the modern Thai state. As the history of Dok Dang Village that follows shows, the province—and its natural resources—has been pulled rapidly and firmly into the nation-state and its economy over the past century, a pattern typical of locations across Thailand. Watching the mountains roll by as the bus made its way to the capital city, I gradually realized why the views were so stunning. Few trees blocked my sight. The hills were green from the rainy season growth of cash crops, mostly feed corn grown in near vertical fields on every slope. Occasionally I would see a reservoir or stream, the banks of which were brown from low water levels, despite recent rain. Small villages and wet rice paddies filled the valleys, but Nan Province is mostly mountains. The historical subsistence agriculture of its people, who include Northern Thais, Lao...