Post from Tim:
On the bus to Nha Trang, the rice fields stretched on for hours. We passed by flat square after flat square, each separated from the other by a short earthen dike. The rice was in various stages of growth. The flooded fields were being prepped for planting while the tall green ones were nearly ready to harvest. Like they have been doing for hundreds of years, farmers in conical hats hunched over and worked the land by hand.
A constant wind blew against our bus and against the rows of thigh-high rice. As if stroked by an invisible giant hand, the fields undulated perfectly from one side to the other. The deep waves arched like a cat being stroked.
The line from America the Beautiful suddenly popped into my head:
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain.
For the first time I understood the beauty of the image, of real waves crossing fields of wheat in the heartland of America. (I'm not a farm boy, so I'd never seen anything quite like that before.) My head rocked gently off the bus window as the sublime irony soaked in.
After 31 years, I'd found the truth of a nationalistic American anthem by traveling through Vietnam - through the rice fields of Communist country and former enemy.
A constant wind blew against our bus and against the rows of thigh-high rice. As if stroked by an invisible giant hand, the fields undulated perfectly from one side to the other. The deep waves arched like a cat being stroked.
The line from America the Beautiful suddenly popped into my head:
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain.
For the first time I understood the beauty of the image, of real waves crossing fields of wheat in the heartland of America. (I'm not a farm boy, so I'd never seen anything quite like that before.) My head rocked gently off the bus window as the sublime irony soaked in.
After 31 years, I'd found the truth of a nationalistic American anthem by traveling through Vietnam - through the rice fields of Communist country and former enemy.