5. Roots

My brain can’t process what my eyes are seeing.  It’s so new to me.  I look up to the top, back down, and then across the breadth of the tree in front of me.  It’s huge!  I take a few steps forward to get a closer look, and I rub my hand along its smooth bark.  “It’s soft,” I say, surprised.”  “Yes,” my guide says.  “It’s a silk cotton tree, and the one over there is a strangler fig tree.”  I look to where he’s pointing and shake my head in disbelief.  “I don’t even know what to say…  In America there are some places with gigantic trees, but it’s the roots on these big trees that make them so unbelievable.  The fact that I’m surrounded by them in the middle of the jungle makes it seem surreal.”  He nods his head in agreement.  But as a tour guide, he’s been here too many times to count, and he seems unimpressed.  “Why don’t you take your pictures and I’ll wait for you over there?” he asks.  I look to where he’s pointing.  “Okay.  I’ll see you in a little bit.”  I walk around the area looking for unique camera angles.  These trees and the temple that houses them, Ta Prohm Temple, is one of the temples I was most looking forward to visiting while in Cambodia.  I bet all the tourists here had the same thought.  I know that getting good images without people walking into my frame will be challenging.  I walk to a vantage point I like and wait and wait and wait for the people to clear before taking my images.  It’s a very slow process, and I have to repeat this pattern with every new camera angle.  Beads of sweat roll down my back from the oppressive 100-degree heat and humidity.  “This temple was built by King Jayavarman VII in the late 1100s,” my guide says as he suddenly reappears at my side.  “Hello again,” I say.  “I’m sorry.  I know this is taking me a long time.  Why don’t you talk as I keep shooting?  I’ve still got work to do.”  He continues.  “When the temple was occupied, it was used as a Buddhist monastery and a university with more than 12,000 people living here.”  “Uh-huh,” I say, more interested in what I’m seeing through my lens.  “When the French discovered the temple in the late 19th century, they decided to conduct only a partial restoration.  The trees, entwined with the ancient walls as you see them now, were left alone.”  “It’s really beautiful how they are so blended together,” I say.  “Let’s walk over here.”  He continues talking as I lie on the ground and point my camera up at the roots of a tree.  My frame captures its base and branches all the way up toward the sky.  “That ground is very dirty,” he says.  “Please be careful of bugs.”  “Uh-huh.  I will.”  The view is too pretty for me to rush my shots, so for now, I don’t care about bugs.   I actually wish I were in a hammock so I could lie here for a while, but I can’t…  I take my images and stand up.  “Isn’t this the temple where there’s a carving of a woman whose face sticks out between some tree roots?” I ask.  “Yes.  Come with me and I’ll show you.”  I brush myself off and follow him under a collapsing door frame into an area where the walls of the temple are mostly intact.  The ceiling is very low.  As we weave down a maze of hallways, it seems as if the ceiling is getting lower and the space is getting darker.  Then we stop walking.  “It is there,” he says.  “On the left.  You need to go under that concrete block to see it better.”  I look at the small space that he’s referring to and the collapsed walls around it.  “Seriously?”  “Yes, if you want to see it.”  I do, so I hug my camera close to me and scrunch through the small opening toward a safety partition that won’t allow me to go farther.  “Do you see it?” I hear my guide ask from behind me.  “I’m looking…”  My eyes scan the roots, and then I see her face and smile.  “Yes, I see her.”  I bring my camera to my eye and frame her face, which is embedded in the tree roots.  She looks ethereal, and I like the way she is partially hidden.  I pull my camera away from my eye and look at all of the roots and ground covering the area.  The temple looks well camouflaged, and it makes me wonder how many more “faces” are hidden behind the trees roots enveloping this temple…