Our flight out of Bangkok was relaxed and easy. Our new giant bus, also on the two-decker Scanda model, pulled into the Wiang Inn midmorning. This place is much smaller in scale than the giants we have become accustomed to.

The air here in the north is cooler, probably because we are at about 1,800 feet. We also arrived in the rain and it was refreshing.

After a break we rode to the edge of town and into the park-like grounds of foundation, the Mah Fah Luang. We were greeted by an American woman (married to a Thai man, she said) named Rebecca . We sat under a
shelter and soaked up the beauty of the grounds, especially the trees, while she briefed us on the work of the foundation. It was begun thirty years ago, with conservation in mind: conservation of trees, of hill people culture, and of a way of life. Children selected by teachers in the villages were brought here to live
and attend local schools. Each spoke a different language, and each was cast into the shocking position of meeting electricity, a modern world, and schooling, all at once.

We met two young men who had seen it through. They had lived in little houses on the grounds, learned to keep the trees and plants and to work on the collections. The centerpiece is a Lanna temple, huge and beautifully fashioned from timbers, and stocked with authentic Buddhist pieces from the area, mostly dating from 100 years ago, more or less. What a difference from Wat Phra Keo! No gold here, and no glass, and no ten-foot demons in Technicolor, either.

The main temple is tall and to me, almost Zen-like in the simplicity and verticality of its mass. I particularly loved the broad entrance steps and the great column in the center of the building, rooted in sand.

The grounds (about 75 acres, we were told) is one-third water, one-third planted garden, and one-third forest. To my eye it was every inch laid out by a master planner, a landscape architect if they use that term here. There were many shrines about, unpainted, and small temples and other buildings. The conference center where we had tea was to me much like a Japanese tea house, post and lintel construction and plain white plaster panels, each plate glass window opening on a rectangle of landscape, perfectly framed. I was knocked out and inevitably taken back in time to Findhorn, thinking, if they ever got it together, it should look like this now...who was "The Old Man of the Trees", anyway? I can't get his name back now, but he was in his nineties when I met him at Findhorn in 78.

I was also put in mind of Endangered Peoples and I shared that title with the others in the group. No one recognized it, though.

But the two young men: Surothat (guess), a Karen, and Attapong (another guess), whose tribal group I did not catch, went on to earn degrees and become trilingual. One, Surothat I think, earned a degree in Public Relations. Attapong earned another degree and I can't find that note now. One of them said he had had to learn the language quickly in order to cope with the teasing they got in school, in the town. They spoke through Rebecca and another interpreter in response to our questions. Attapong said the most important thing he learned was "to work with people".

All of us were impressed that these young men could have come down to a modern world and seen it through. There were questions, about how they could fit in when they visited home, how often they saw their families, how they saw themselves..J just kept thinking, "World citizens now." At anyone time there were fifty such students, and I don't remember if any were women.

We toured the temple interior and heard of how these materials were bought up. They were hard to find thirty years ago, so many had already been snatched away from their homes in the forest by collectors. And, once again, cut apart in order to sell the parts most collectors wanted, such as the Buddha's heads. These altars, and their praying demigods before them, were night and day to their gilded cousins in the capital. If not done by artisans who believed they were surely done for congregations who believed...their faces are lively, the bodies in motion, really seen, as great sculpture always is, no matter how formulated the image has become...well, I loved the place and I really didn't want to leave. Surothat I think is now the person responsible for their care and display. I got his picture as he locked the doors up and came down the stairs.

This foundation began with visit of the Queen Mother's, she of the commoner origin, the mother of both Ananda (he who died in mysterious circumstances in 1947) and Phumibol, the present king. She had been impressed during her visit with the isolation and need of the hill peoples, their lack of medical care, and the total ineffectiveness of whatever education they were receiving. In time the work of the foundation embraced not only conservation and human development, but agricultural development" patterns of use, surviving art, preservation of rituals and ritual objects, boats, tools, and kitchen implements too.. .above all, preservation as far as it can be done, of culture. Whew!

What impressed me most of all was the work in training and maintaining these students in a milieu actually devoted to giving it new life, not just another Williamsburg.