February 16, 2026

The Buddhist monks did not pass our way on their 108-day, 2,300-mile walk from Texas to Washington. They did travel through some small South Carolina towns on a due-east course to Columbia before pivoting north to Charlotte. At Greensboro they again turned sharply east then zigzagged northeast into Virginia, passing through Richmond.

They brushed by our old hometown, Lake Ridge, before a final sprint (at hiking pace) into Alexandria and Arlington and into Washington last week. At George Washington University last Wednesday the monks’ leader, Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara, led a crowd in a “global loving-kindness meditation.” He made brief remarks:

“We are so deeply grateful for all the support we have received throughout this journey. Your love, your kindness, your presence—all of it has carried us forward. May we continue our walk for peace in our whole lives, not just for these 108 days, but forever. May we help peace bloom more in the world, one step at a time.

“This physical journey may be reaching its destination, but the walk for peace continues always—in each of us, through each of us, for all beings everywhere. Thank you so much for walking with us. May you and all beings be well, happy and at peace.”

I missed most of the news reports but picked up snippets here and there. The D.C. rally summoned memories of the 1968 antiwar marches, when crowds chanted “All We Are Saying Is Give Peace a Chance.”

The monks repeated probably hundreds of times on the walk the central message of their lives, which is the central mission of their Buddhist faith, the quest for enlightenment, the meaning of existence, release from suffering and human passion, nirvana. We translate all that readily in English as “peace.” Good enough for the monks, good enough for us.

For sure, most of the thousands who stood in the cold watching the 19 monks pass and fell in to walk with them aren’t Buddhists. The term “peace walk” struck a chord with Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, agnostics, and atheists, probably because they recognized in the monks’ crusade something they had been taught, maybe in Sunday school, or simply instinctively believed.

We don’t have to dig deep. As the ICE riot police arrest American citizens and non-citizens, as U.S. Navy aircraft blow up fishing boats in the Caribbean, as Russian missiles rain on Ukraine, Americans are beaten down by the pervasive bleakness of public life. News reports have found that Trump is down in the polls. The New York Times commentator Ross Douthat announced that “Trump has lost the country.”

Millions still fly Trump flags and wear those red hats. But then all those millions who followed and cheered the monks felt something, a sense that “peace,” serenity, relief from the rampages of the federal government against innocent human beings, isn’t a dream.   

Just over a month ago we hiked nearly a mile through Hamad International Airport at Doha in Qatar, a kind of fantasia of world travel. We stared at a glistening rainforest and massive sculptures of human and animal forms and other works of art, immaculate shops and restaurants and airport facilities. Separate prayer rooms were available for Muslim men and women. Doha supports operations by some 60 international airlines.

Hamad showed off something alien to us, a sense of Muslim culture, taste, a dazzling flair for the richness and excitement of international travel, an exotic, non-Western consciousness of joy at the experience of moving through the world.

Within a week we stood 9,000 miles from home before Buddhist memorials and stared at the elegant, glistening gold statuary and hulking stone forms of Buddha and his hierarchy of gods and prophets dating more to more than a thousand years ago, to which the monks of the Texas-to-D.C. peace walk owe their heritage. In Cambodia’s capital we removed our shoes and hiked the steep stairs of the Phnom Wat temple and inhaled the fragrance of incense burned in reverence for that ancient faith.

A few of us sat before three monks in the temple in the town of Oudong. We listened to their lyrical chanting as they conveyed a blessing and tossed lotus and jasmine blossoms over us. We climbed 400 steps to the summit of the temple and looked out at the vernal landscape, dotted with likenesses of Buddha and the farms and small villages he presides over in serenity and calm.

From those places we picked up, without truly understanding, a sense of the depth of Buddhist perceptions of the mystery of life. Then we listened to the Texas monks as they answered the same reporters’ questions over and over, about the need for peace, the search for peace, and come away baffled about their meaning, about the ultimate significance of peace—a state of mind, of purpose, of being, in our lives.

It may come to us more easily if we look again at the rage boiling over in the country, not just of political activists we see on TV every night, but also among the ordinary people who joined the Trump parade in the last election and now see what it has really done to them and to the country. 

So the monks who hiked half of America in the dead of winter may have left a mark for a while with the non-Buddhists in this non-Buddhist country. “Seek peace,” they said over and over, clearly and decisively, in the languages of all religions and creeds.  

Peace. How to discover it. Through hard weather huge crowds, thousands carrying signs, many in tears, received a message, both universal and intensely private. It will be, already has been dismissed by the hard-minded cynics, we know who they are; for others, it may penetrate to the soul.  

February 9, 2026

The snow disappeared after a few days in the sloppy, dirty stage. It came to five inches here, more than enough to cripple this town for three days. So the landscape was white, briefly. It’s winter, after all. Sunlight arrived, then faded behind pale, tired clouds. Then it rained.

It’s a season of bad news. Some of it followed us, in the middle of the Southeast Asia trip. Sandy went to a hospital in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The doctor and her staff were skilled and helpful. We have a nice photo.

Still, the two weeks of sunshine and smiles roused us. We gained heart watching Vietnamese and Cambodian people working their farms, shops, open-air fresh food markets, full of energy and purpose, improving their lives in those still-developing countries.

The trip overrode the bleak national news and the local stream of medical anecdotes, the senior citizen emergencies, appointments, procedures, tests, test results. At home the natural order plays out: we readjust, as if we never left the chill, the bare landscape, the dark mood.

Then a woman at the YMCA, riding a spin bike, saw the “Happy Trails” on Sandy’s teeshirt and asked is she a hiker. Sandy pointed at me. The woman walked over. “I saw the ‘Happy Trails,’ I had to ask, because I’m hiking the Appalachian Trail,” she announced, smiling.

“North or south?” I asked.

“Northbound. I still have New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine—New England.”

We talked a bit about the AT, what I know of it, provisioning, hydration, rest, Maine’s 100-Mile Wilderness.

“I’m Bricey,” she said. “I’m planning on starting again around April. I should get you to come with me!” Her bright eyes flashed. She got back on the bike.

The AT. A “bucket-list” thing for some outdoorsy people. I used to do one-day 20-mile stretches of it, north and southbound, from Virginia’s Markham trailhead. Either way it was climb, climb, climb. Now I only want to get through the cold without slipping on ice. And the AT experience isn’t what it used to be. Thousands are on the trail half the year. At some points columns of hikers back up. Campsites and shelters fill up. The full AT hike costs more than a trip to Europe.

But Bricey is setting goals and pursing them. It wasn’t just talk. She had done Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, or “Rocksylvania,” up to Connecticut.

She was probably a couple of decades younger than me, early- or mid-fifties. Not a newbie, but still full of pep and determination. She had tramped the trail, felt the exhaustion, the daily pain. The hard parts hadn’t stopped her. She wanted to finish, to climb Mount Katahdin, the northern terminus, and find joy in her achievement.

We said “good luck,” she pushed hard on the bike. If I see her again I’ll decline her invitation to join her. Regretfully, more or less. But I keep my membership in the Virginia Happy Trails Running Club (Sandy’s teeshirt).

It’s been two years since I entered a VHTRC event, but the club is going strong, now calling for volunteers for the Reverse Ring, a 71-mile ultra-trail race in Virginia’s Massanutten Mountains in late February, when it’s still cold. I finished it twice, that was ten years ago.

Trail-running/hiking is still out there. It’s a kind of therapy, a positive thing that offers a sense of taking on something hard and, you hope, completing it. Some jog city streets or parks, enter 5K and 10K races, take aerobics and yoga classes, pursuing personal fitness goals. Same thing.

Fitness is how we battle physical decrepitude: heart disease, high blood pressure, loss of muscle mass, osteoporosis, which threaten relentlessly as the years pile up. The fitness path is an inward mission, pursued for self, for those close to us. The point is achievement beyond health: the satisfaction—the thrill—of accepting a challenge, overcoming hardship, discomfort, pain. Like Bricey and the AT.

Another mission calls us to step forward for others, beyond self, for humanity.  The prerequisite is a commitment to help, to be of use, teaching, coaching, working at a food bank, Habitat for Humanity, raising funds for charity. It may mean doing difficult, time-consuming things. It may mean, in some way, sacrifice.

We may well venture here beyond signing up for a church charity event. Every quiet waking moment offers the potential for epiphany.  We could one day feel a calling outside ourselves, some mystical or spiritual awakening that gives birth to a social conscience.

That could be recognition that nobody pays people to shoulder most of the country’s social needs. Every church committee, every food bank, every charity, depends on volunteers. Volunteers visit nursing home and assisted-living residents, bringing them joy by being present.

In this city Habitat has built more than 400 homes. It helps low-income people with financing to purchase them, enabling them to escape shabby, overpriced apartments in dangerous neighborhoods. Much of the construction is a volunteer mission: raising walls, shingling roofs, painting, cleaning, the unskilled grunt work.

Stepping forward for others can build on personal achievements. You can do your fitness class or play your pickleball match, then put in time at the food pantry or teach English as a second language. You go home tired, but you’ve created goodness for other persons. 

We make our lives richer by going out of ourselves, overcoming self. In America here and now, the need is urgent, critical, it never ends. “Public service” now is an alien concept in our lowlife federal government, which looks perversely, obsessively inward. We all know it.

We need our YMCA exercise classes, our 5Ks, our ultra-trail challengers. Bricey will inspire others to seek greatness when she summits Mount Katahdin. We all can find our way to inspire. We can be with those who need us, to lift their spirits as we lift our own.   

February 2, 2026

After thirty hours of flying we made Chicago’s O’Hare airport. From the airport tram we saw the snow. The doors opened to a blast of frigid air. Travelers wore thick coats.

We suddenly missed the tranquil, ancient rhythms of Southeast Asia, the placid, mile-wide Mekong, the pungent richness of the Sa Dec market, the gentle smiles. It was summer to winter. I thought of a rush of strained metaphors: light to darkness, humility to arrogance, serenity to chaos.

Two days later the ice came. Kari, the young woman who lives across the street stopped by to check on us. She’s a busy executive for a local events contractor. She invited us to stay at her place if we lost power. We talked about family. She cares for her fiancé, a cancer survivor. Her daughter is heading to USC, her son is at the local technical school, both working hard.

“Call me if you need anything,” she said. She smiled as she left.

Before the sleet started we stopped at Home Depot, Harris Teeter, and Walmart, looking for propane canisters. None left anywhere. The bread and milk shelves were bare, fresh vegetables mostly gone. The shelves were stripped clean at markets throughout that massive chunk of the country, Oklahoma to Maine, plus most of the Midwest and Southeast. As we left Aldi we saw folks standing in the cold at Ace Hardware waiting to refill their propane.

I tried fastening a tarp over the van to protect it from the ice. If left uncovered the frozen stuff would build up on the windshield, freeze the wipers, and coat the entire body. It had happened many times in Virginia.

I draped the tarp over the van’s hood. The wind picked it up and blew it off. I found some twine and tied the tarp to the van door handles. It flapped in the breeze. Twenty minutes later I looked out the window. The tarp lay on the driveway. The wind howled.

Just then Tommy jogged by. He looked at the van, at the tarp. “Want to keep it in my garage,” he asked. “My wife is out of town.” He lives a dozen doors away at the foot of a steep hill. “Sure,” I said.

“Give me fifteen,” he answered. He jogged on. In fifteen or so minutes he was back. We drove to his place and parked the van in his garage.

“It can stay here through the storm,” he said. “I picked up 150 pounds of salt at work. I’m spreading it on the street.” He gave me a lift back up the hill.

The frozen rain rattled on the roof through the night, coating roofs, lawns, roads. Morning arrived gray and dim. The mercury rose to 25F in daylight, then fell to the teens in darkness. We watched news clips of deserted downtown streets glistening with ice, cars and trucks skidding, tree trunks fallen on homes, utility teams struggling to repair damaged power lines.

Our pale winter failed as a metaphor for the horror of Minneapolis, where masked ICE thugs stomped through the streets after murdering two people.  A tiny minority of Republicans sputtered their “concerns” after the killing of Alex Pretti, then went silent.

Our minor-league storm faded quickly, the sky back to blue. Minnesota’s cruel winter resonates through the country, now a season of political gangsters using deadly force to persecute men, women, children, citizens and non-citizens, arresting, abusing, killing. Trump, Noem, Miller, etc., spattered the airwaves with lies, echoing the brownshirts of 1930s Germany.

Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick J. Schiltz pointed out that ICE has violated 96 court orders since it started operating in Minneapolis, “more in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.”

On our laptop we scrolled through the nightmarish updates, the slanders of Pretti, the callous rationalizations. Then we heard scraping of a shovel on concrete. Peering through a window we saw Tommy shoveling the rock-hard ice from our driveway. We invited him in for coffee.

We visited for a while. He’s an electrician, late thirties, working the night shift at the nearby South Carolina Inland Port, a veteran of railroad work in Chicago and shipyards in Charleston.  He has ties on his dad’s side to New York’s Queens borough, where my mother grew up. His wife is a Charleston girl, they have two small daughters.

He took joy in his stories about fixing things, the massive cranes that lift containers onto railcars at the Port, the engines, the giant transformers, the computers. He explained how he learned his trade. He told us how he recognized faulty electrical work by contractors in his own new home, and read the riot act to the builder.

He taught us what to watch out for in the performance of our HVAC system, how to steer clear of the salesmen who call regularly selling pricey electrical upgrades we don’t need.

We talked about running. He’s training now for the Cooper River 10K, a big race over the Cooper River Bridge in Charleston. He finished near the front of the pack in the Thanksgiving 8K. He said he’ll sometimes run the neighborhood streets at 2:00 AM after getting home from work.

We sat back and enjoyed the moment as this smart young guy told his story, full of achievement, adventure, promise. He might stay at the Port, he might move to the nearby BMW plant or the big General Electric facility here.

He got up to leave. “I need to get to some chores, then maybe run a little,” he said. We said so long and closed the door behind him. Then we heard scraping. He was heaving ice from the driveway, finishing the job.

The visits with these two generous young folks soothed our spirits, led us beyond the present moment. The country is wracked with Republican corruption and lies. Like the winter chill, that must pass. But good people are present, here and everywhere, guided by grace, goodness, faith. We can hope, we must hope that, in some mystical way, they will create the future.

January 26, 2026

It was our time to go to Angkor Wat. We left Siem Reap for the site in predawn chill, carrying flashlights. The bus carried us within a mile of this ancient place. We hiked a rocky path, stepping gently in silence through the darkness. For a short few hours we left behind the bitter coarseness of our time.

Cambodia, like most of Southeast Asia is a land of Buddha. His image, and the gold spires and sharp gables of his temples preside over every village, town, market. He stares benignly from public buildings and private homes. He calls his people to sacrifice, to meditate, to find wisdom in his divinity, in his way.

Moving northwest through the central plain from Phnom Penh, the forests become thicker. Mountains emerge along the Thai border. In the province of Siem Reap the devotion to the Buddhist pantheon becomes more intense. To the east of a wide lake called Tonle Sap, through which the Mekong River passes, is the land of Angkor. Here, the temples of Angkor Wat, Ta Prohm, and Angkor Thom form the nexus, the center of the Buddhist soul.

The Angkor sites celebrate belief, faith in the continuum of life. Around every massive sandstone corner, serene images of gods and goddesses gaze at each other and at men, women, elephants, snakes, monkeys and other creatures. Angry demons scowl and snarl.

The Hindu king Suryavarman II started construction of Angkor Wat in 1132 as an earthly home for the Hindu god Vishnu. Suryavarman died around 1150. Three decades later a Buddhist, Jayavarman VII, led a Buddhist revolution. He captured the temple and converted it to devotion to Buddhism, although he permitted Hindus to preserve their shrines.

For Cambodians Angkor Wat (“temple city”) is the national symbol, the centerpiece of the nation’s flag. Unlike other Buddhist temples, Angkor Wat is oriented to the west which, some archeologists say, shows that Suryavarman planned it as his mausoleum.

Five massive towers rise to three levels and enclose a series of galleries. We learned that the walls of three galleries display Vishnu’s three cosmic eras. One gallery is devoted to the human world, another to heaven and hell. The site, surrounded by a moat, occupies more than 400 acres, with the temple complex at the center. Nearby are six “libraries” which experts believe were used to house documents.

Our guide, Ting, a young man of vast expertise, pointed out that carvings on the walls show the four stages of the Buddhist mind: compassion, joy, love, equanimity.

The Ta Prohm temple, originally called Rajavihara, meaning “royal monastery” and Angkor Thom, or “great city” sites are close by, within a couple of miles, complementing and reinforcing the intensity of Buddhist devotion. Many of the Ta Prohm towers emerge from massive, octopuslike roots of gigantic trees that grew beneath them hundreds of years ago. 

Angkor Thom, once called Nokor Thom, is thought to have been Jayavarman’s capital. The temple space is roughly two miles wide (Angkor Wat’s area is one mile), and is enclosed within a 30-foot-high wall. Archeologists believe that more than 100,000 people once lived inside. Inscriptions reveal that some 4,000 elephants were used to drag the giant stones from quarries 30 or more miles away.

The Angkor Thom complex includes Bayan, Phimeanakas, and Magalartha temples. The Bayan is a Mahayana Buddhist temple, reflecting the faith of Jayavarman VII. The Bayan, according to the information offered, gives “material support to the energies of the kingdom.”

The walls of Angkor Thom are engraved with thousands of exquisitely chiseled human figures that tell the story of the Angkor kingdom. Cambodian and Chinese soldiers are engaged in combat. Men, women, and children are depicted in every aspect of life: working, fighting, entertaining, eating, caring for others. The images show men fishing for carp as long as a canoe. A crocodile devours a man fallen from a boat.

We found one etching of a woman in childbirth being coached by a midwife. Another woman is apparently primping, gazing at her own image in what looks like a mirror while another arranges her hair. Women in flamboyant costumes and headdresses perform the traditional Apsara ceremonial dances.

Over days, we walked the Angkor causeways and paths, across the broad courtyards and stepped around the massive blocks that over time slipped from the towers. We looked up, wondering, at the four faces carved in the gate towers at Angkor Thom. At Angkor Wat we moved deliberately through dark chambers. We climbed the stairwell built for tourists and wandered across the broad porticos on the third level.  

Sometime around 1600 the Angkor area was attacked by Thai invaders. The capital at Angkor Thom was moved to Phnom Penh. Wars were fought, armies came and went. The name “Siem Reap” marks the victory of the Khmer nation over Siam. Europeans discovered the site, explorers visited, awed by its breadth and beauty, created through the sheer power of religion, devotion to the sublime mysteries of the Buddhist faith.

By mid-morning hundreds of visitors thronged across the site, awestruck by the vastness, the silence, the absolute, implacable permanence of the place. They lined up to climb to the third level, many glancing backward nervously. Looking west, sunlight dazzled the forest out to the horizon. Here, we imagined, is where the monks of 12th century gathered with King Jayavarman and his people to seek Buddha’s blessings.

Fourteen centuries passed until we arrived, armed with our brochures, cell-phone cameras, our audio devices and admission passes around our necks, knees respectfully covered. We noted the scaffolding installed here and there for restoration work. A monk sitting near a column conveyed a blessing on a man kneeling, head bowed.

We caught our breath in wonder at the sense of immortality, of abiding beneficence and goodness of this place. We descended to the temple floor, then made our way back to our own time, our own world.

January 19, 2026

 We crossed the border into Cambodia in the middle of the night. At dawn we looked out at the intricately curled gold spires of Buddhist temples, which dot the land and convey blessings on all who seek them. We thought we knew about the curses, then learned how little we knew.

Phnom Penh, the capital, is a modern, fast-moving city. The name means “mountain of Grandma Penh,” honoring a wealthy woman, Madame Penh. The legend holds that she found a four-faced Buddha floating in a river. She retrieved it and had a temple built, called Phnom Wat, to house it at a place that is now the center of the city. The four faces of the Buddha signify earth, wind, water, and fire, the fundamental elements of life.

Phnom Wat, atop a hill reachable by 89 stairs, shows the intensity and beauty of the faith. We removed shoes and hats and stared awestruck at the delicate sculptures of the angels, many fashioned in brilliant gold, who guard the sacred images. 

Long before Phnom Wat, over a stretch of 1,000 years, various strains of Brahmanism and Buddhism had supplanted Hinduism as the dominant religious faith in Cambodia. More than 95 percent of Cambodians are Buddhists. Today it is endorsed as the official state religion.

The Theravada Buddhist tradition of Cambodia weaves ancient beliefs and practices into every aspect of life. We learned, as all Buddhists know, that Buddha is not a person, but the embodiment of true enlightenment, or understanding of the meaning of existence. Following Buddha is the vocation of every young man who joins the monastic life, a life of meditation, study, and discipline.

We visited the National Palace, Silver Pagoda, and National Museum, a complex of stunning structures that showcase the depth of the nation’s Buddhist traditions. The king, Norodom Sihamoni, succeeded his father, Norodom Sihanouk, in 2004, after a career of government service. The monarchy is an elected ceremonial post with no political power. 

The king, a 73-year-old bachelor called the “quiet king,” follows the Buddhist way. At his coronation he declined to wear the king’s traditional gold-and-diamond crown and did not take his seat on the throne.

We headed north on the Mekong to Kampong Tralach and Oudong, Cambodia’s former capital and site of the country’s largest monastery, home to about 200 Buddhist monks.

We waited with other tourists for a blessing by the monks, whose soft chanting, in some mysterious way, conveys serenity and peace. They ended the twenty-minute blessing by tossing lotus blossoms and jasmine among us.

The next day, in Oknhatey, we walked a dusty road past dozens of family tombs holding the ashes of families’ members. We visited an elementary school filled with joyful kids who sang “Jingle Bells” and “You Are My Sunshine” in crystal-clear English as their teacher, who speaks no English, smiled.

The students’ enthusiasm showed no awareness of the Cambodian genocide of 1975-1979, which their grandparents survived—or perhaps did not survive. The fanatical Khmer Rouge army that seized power on April 17, 1975 murdered roughly two million, possibly as many as three million Cambodians and others.

It occurs to me that in 2026 no room for further horror remains. Since Cambodia we lived through the Serbian and Rwandan genocides of the early 1990s. But Americans did not know what was unfolding in Cambodia in those nightmarish years. We worked at recovering from Vietnam. We didn’t want to hear about Southeast Asia.

The Khmer Rouge aimed to recreate an agrarian society. They banned money and business, shut banks and schools, and emptied the cities by force-marching their populations to rural areas to work on farms. Educated people and ethnic minorities were killed. Monasteries, churches, and mosques were looted. Thousands of Buddhist monks were killed.

Today the visitor can’t avoid what took place in more than 100 “killing fields” around the country and at a Phnom Penh prison called S21 where Khmer Rouge soldiers, many of them 15 or 16 years old, savagely tortured men, women, and children who wouldn’t confess to being CIA agents or other trumped-up falsehoods. More likely they stared in silent terror.

We visited the awkwardly named Choeung EK Genocidal Center about seven miles from downtown, where dozens of mass graves were found in 1980, after Vietnam deposed the Khmer Rouge. Evidence found—bones, skulls, clothing fragments—revealed that thousands of victims were executed there, often with hacking tools to save bullets, the bodies then dumped and covered with lime.

A loudspeaker was hung on a large gnarled tree to blare Khmer Rouge music to drown out the cries of victims. The killing sometimes went on until late at night.

Simultaneously, others were brought to S21 for interrogation, torture, and death. The prison superintendent was a former academic who required strict recordkeeping. Thousands of head-and-shoulders photos of victims were taken. Today they remain posted on the prison walls, the faces showing they knew what lay ahead.

We walked the S21 grounds. An elderly man sat under a tree, telling his story, as our guide translated. He talked about torture, fear, of watching family members killed. He survived because he knew how to fix typewriters. The Khmer Rouge bureaucrats needed their typewriters.

We ponder these things now. It’s been 46 years. The Khmer Rouge leaders are dead. A few, just a few, were put in prison for life. The country is struggling to move forward. The school children are singing joyfully. The monasteries are quiet, serene. The people are looking again to Buddha, seeking wisdom.