Compass Readings

It’s hard to resist the comfort of wheels. We’d moved from temple to temple for three days, companionable drivers shadowing our steps, but it was a release to tread the humid roads alone for a while as the red dust bronzed our skin.

Preah Neak Poan was moments away when the first splash of rain hit. It sifted through the trees and found us, made contact. Bradley took a photo before stowing the camera away. A boy, maybe 12, sold me a skewer of mango, delicious in the heat, before I stepped onto the raised wooden walkway to cross the lake. The step echoed in the still.

A switch flicked – a sprung booby-trap – and the forest came alive, water throbbing around us. The deluge of rain was relentless, unforgiving. It tried to uproot us, an oil-slick on rough wood; a challenge to the uninitiated. Mango slipped in my hands as our feet skittered on the yielding wood, threatening to topple us into the surrounding lake. Our bronze burnish was snatched away in siphoned streaks, a toll for passage.

The only shelter in sight was a muddy platform towards the end of the walkway – turning back wasn’t an option. We staggered on, ready to make the leap. The mud felt more permanent than the man-made walkway, a familiar grip underfoot. We ate the mango, standing awkwardly on the odd haven of the muddy bank, surrounded by water – watching as it hit our skin only to steam away again.

Everything so far had been glorious hard stone, faded facades, brittle rock faces with gentle expressions, wary of loss. Life crept in as trees angled through holes wrought by time; reached through doorways, found a path to the sun. These trees dismissed history – welcoming buildings as warriors to defeat, suffocating temple walls, defying obstacles with patient persistence.

The water held the power here. It pooled around us, a lake of hidden mysteries. Ahead, the temple sat exposed, an oasis in a flood. The purifying pools winked knowingly. The rain retreated in its own time. We had been cleansed, granted a rare gift.

We returned to the walkway with a cautious jump to explore the temple, to admire up close the benign grace of the pools, their intricate symmetry. Behind us, the walkway gleamed. I eyed it warily, a tentative gladiator against a formidable foe.

The sky turned a thunderous purple, the sun a fiery coal. It would be a spectacular sunset.