Magic

Magical moments can occur wherever one lives. Whether it’s in a big city or in a rural setting, magic can happen in the flight of a plastic bag or in an endless sky sunset. In Tanzania, a drive home could be magical for me. Actually, throughout our whole time in Africa, there seemed to be an underlying sense of wonder and awe, in both the amazing and the despairing.

There was magic the first time I saw giraffes in the wild. It was an utterly unforgettable moment that occurred as we were driving into Arusha National Park to climb Mt. Meru. At this point we’d only been in Tanzania for a couple of months and, since it was our first time in a National Park, we were preparing ourselves for a sighting. But you can’t really prepare yourself adequately for seeing that sort of thing – wild animals in the wild. Our eyes were peeled out the window of our vehicle and before my mind could catch up with my eyes, to the right of us was a huge clearing and – moving in perpetual slow motion – giraffes!

In future safari rides, Scott and I would get a lot closer to giraffes than we did that morning, but the distance between us and them added to the surreal effect of seeing these magnificent creatures. The color of the scene seemed enhanced as if a computerized magic wand had been swiftly waved in front of us, yet there also appeared to be a dreamy blur around the edges, like the wavy distortion of heat rising from the hood of a car. It felt unreal. But it was true; the giraffes were there and we were seeing them. That moment unhinged something in me, something deep and childlike – an unfailing belief in magic.

Whenever I travel, magic comes to me in unexpected bursts. I suddenly feel overcome with gratitude for whatever is surrounding me and wish my mother could be experiencing the same thing I am – seeing what I’m seeing, doing what I’m doing. That’s who I usually think about – my mother, or Scott (if he’s not with me).

Toward the end of our stay in Bhutan, Scott and I traveled to Khaling with our friends Shauna and Julian to attend a Tshechu, a religious festival where attendees dress up in their best kira and gho, watch mask dances, and gamble. We were accompanied by one of Julian’s co-workers who was from the area. After a short stay at the Khaling Tshechu, as Scott and I were being dropped off in Kanglung, Julian’s coworker informed us that there was another important religious gathering going on at the Kanglung Zhandopelri, so we stopped by the temple in lower market in the quickly falling darkness.

When we got there, I spotted Lopen Sonam, one of my fellow teachers at the primary school. Lopen Sonam was once himself a monk and has a son who’s a reincarnate, so he’s heavily involved with the temple and very in touch with Buddhist practices and rituals. As soon as he saw me, in his limited English, he asked me where Sir was. I explained that Scott was with friends from out of town and that he’d likely find me soon. Lopen Sonam led me into the temple where people were seated on the floor in rows, ushered me into the front row, and then found his reserved space where he started to perform actions that held no meaning to me but were second nature to him – pouring sacred water from one bowl to another or distributing dried flower petals to places where they belong. Across a small space that served as the aisle were other rows of people facing my row. I was alone but surrounded by people; seated near me was someone I recognized as being a student at the college.

Words were spoken, prayers said, and before I knew it, a mask dancer started moving down the small aisle. I had never before been so close to a mask dancer, especially inside such an intimate space. During tshechus, mask dancers perform outside in the temple courtyard. There are many dancers and they spin in circles constantly revolving as one body, as if each is a planet orbiting the sun. That night, inside the Kanglung Zangdopelri, there was one dancer and I was in the front row seeing – and feeling – in close proximity his bare feet stomp the ground with each fall of each jump and each step. The others in the front row with me tried to scoot back us as much as we could in order to give the dancer more room, but there were rows of others behind us and we could only go so far, so we leaned back as much as we could. There was a fear of the dancer, in his ever circling spins, losing his balance and using us to cushion his fall, but he never did. Inside the temple, the lighting was low and the air thick from butter candles. Surrounding us were rich colors, swaths of silk, and representations of Buddhist deities.

It was the end of a tiring weekend and I remember thinking that I had a slight cold coming on, and the breeze that came from the swooshing costume of the turning mask dancer made me feel chilled. I pulled used tissues from the sleeve of my toego and wiped my nose. The moving air around me made me feel weak but exhilarated – when else would I feel the wind emanating from the movement of a Buddhist mask dancer? I remember at one point, the dancer was spinning so quickly, his costume’s skirt blew out to a perfect perpendicular angle from his legs, and inside that 90-degree space that was created between, the girl who I recognized as a college student was sitting with a hunched back talking quietly into her cell phone. If the stomping bare feet or the cold breeze wasn’t enough magic, than that image, permanently etched in my memory, was more than I could ever hope for. In Bhutan, we were constantly surrounded my religion, but that was the only time when I literally felt it.

*

Last weekend and into the whole week, Juneau lived up to its true identity of existing in a rainforest. It rained, a lot. But that didn’t stop up from putting on raingear and getting outside. We drove across the bridge, leaving Douglas, and continued out the road in Juneau. Scott wanted to get to a beach. We turned left off the road at a place called The Shrine, a beautiful stretch of coastline where people live, get married, pray and go for walks.

We didn’t do as much walking as we wanted to. We did more watching. Whenever we could, Scott would find a place to come out of the trees and look over the water. We weren’t looking for too long before Scott saw a whale spout. I looked off into the distance in the same direction and within minutes, another spout. And like the first sighting of giraffes, that first whale sighting since returning to Southeast was a reawakening of something, a reminder that magic not only exists in Alaska but surrounds us all the time; we just have to be conscious of it. I felt like a little kid. I sighed in awe. This is why we’re here, I thought. Not for the whale spouting itself, but the fact that on an average rainy Saturday, we had the fortune to witness it, again and again.

For a brief moment, being in Juneau was alright, because it wasn’t about where we were specifically – all that mattered was that we were in Southeast. We frequently saw whales in Wrangell, and we could do the same here. And for some silly reason, that’s amazing to me.

After those initial whale sightings, we walked down to the beach and out onto the rocks. We spotted more whales in the far distance, but what was closer was a large group of sea lions.

They kept coming closer and closer to inspect us as well as to scare us off with their loud barks. We stayed for some time though and I was just so happy to be in raingear, that I had it at all, in the rain.