Ta Prohm

    In upstate New York, near where I live, are the remnants of an old canal line that transported cement and other goods through Delaware and New York in the 1800's. As a kid, running through woods and climbing along the old stone walls of the canal - now locked in the tight grip of tall oak and maple roots  - was my idea of a jungle exploration: fraught with danger and discovery.
     

High Falls, NY

Trekking around the Cambodian temple of Ta Prohm in late June, 2011 I felt the same fascination for exploration that had endured in my pubescent wanderings, except on a more sublime and awe inspiring scale. 

Ta Prohm

   


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One of the marvels of Angkor, the temple of Ta Prohm was built in the 12th century by King Jayavarman VII as a Buddhist monastery/university, and abandoned in the 15th century.

Lost to the jungle until its rediscovery by French archeologists in the early 20th century, Ta Prohm saw 500 years of neglect; this allowed for the marvel which is Ta Prohm to take shape, for Ta Prohm is not a marvel by mere architecture or size, as Angkor Wat, but rather a treasure in the subtle and delicate union of human ingenuity, nature and time.

Ta Prohm Temple from Travels with Charley on Vimeo.

Unlike the Oak and Maple trees that wrapped themselves around the old canal of my home town, the trees in Cambodia were alien to me; their roots more like tentacles from a giant squid, strangling the temples from which they clung to.

Strangler figs merge with stone at Ta Prohm, creating a work of art half a Millennia in the making. However, fig trees are the real spectacle; soaring high above the site, their gigantic buttress roots cling to the tops and sides of temples like wooden spider webs. 

It's not supprising that the 2001 movie starring Angelina Joli, Laura Croft: Tomb Raider, was partially filmed at Ta Prohm. With the union of nature and temple, one can easily get lost in fantasies of being the first to find this hidden jungle ruin.

 Amongst the tourists, there was a monk dressed in a bright orange cloak, poignantly wandering through the stones of this ancient monastery.

My mind began turning over the spiritual significance of this site; spiritual for the monk in its Buddhist history, spiritual for me in the profound reminder of nature's omnipresent power - in the end, no matter how well we build something, the intrinsic qualities of the land and nature will always prevail.