Franklin's Angkor

To the list of time-honored traditions that go with this time of year, right alongside floating candles, yams with rosemary, and pictures with Santa, I’m now officially adding a 21-kilometer roadrace amidst Cambodian temples. For the fourth consecutive first Sunday in December, a few friends and I lined up at the start line in front of Angkor Wat to do a lovely early morning circuit of my favorite monuments on the planet.

The annual trot has become a comforting ritual. For some reason an old Grateful Dead lyric comes to mind:

In another time’s forgotten space
Your eyes looked from your mother's face
Wallflower seed on the sand and stone
May the four winds blow you safely home
Roll away the dew

Whatever that means. I’ve sung that tune countless times to myself, never really caring what it means, but somehow today it seems a fine description of the route taken by this magnificent race course.

We start out protected by a canopy of big trees lining the road that winds through the gigantic archeological park. Leaves drop around us as we settle in to our pace. The first five kilometers include a short out-and-back leg that makes the entire loop come out to be the right distance, which means we get a quick look at the leaders as they sprint by us on their way to finishing in under 90 minutes.

Not long after we leave behind the 200-meter-wide moat that surrounds Angkor Wat, we’re encountering kids by the side of the course. Most are hugging their moms’ legs out of shyness, or staring quizzically, as if to say, “It can ring like fire if you lose your way.” Soon a few have gotten brave enough to wave, and by the third or fourth water station, lots of the volunteers picking up the water bottles that runners cast aside are kids.

Every year I particularly look forward to a certain corner, just about at the halfway point in the race. The running route goes left, but if you were to turn right and go a few hundred meters a lovely reservoir known as Srah Srang (“Royal Bath”) would emerge from the forest. Perhaps this place lies just outside the formal boundaries of the park? or maybe the water source remains important to the locals, just as it was when they dug it out 800 years ago? Whatever the reason, the intersection marks a village, and so is busier with spectators than any place along the way other than the finish. A long receiving line of waving, smiling Cambodians awaits us there, extending their hands to be slapped, cheering in a mixture of Khmer and English. I can’t help grinning as I run past. The energy we take from that corner sticks with us for weeks.

And the temples just stay as great as ever. As I’ve said several times, you just can’t ruin these ruins. God knows people have tried. First we run by Prasat Kravan, the Cardamom Sanctuary, whose five brick towers have been restored to their original height but are missing what were once some impressive innards, likely carted off by thieves long ago. Further along is Ta Prohm, traditionally the coolest of Angkor’s untouched temples… until this past year, when the Indian archeologists began “improvements” to protect it from being loved to death. Then there’s Ta Keo, and the Victory Gate, and the Terrace of the Elephants, all of which have a few warts when seen in harsh sunlight, but at that hour—we’re passing by at around 7:30 in the morning—are just about the finest combination of sand and stone anywhere.

Finally the four winds blow us safely home. The race ends where it began, but of course we’re not the same people we were when we started. Another year has gone by. We’ve had a spiritual journey: answered the call, rung the bell, chanted the mantra, emerged from the whale’s belly, rolled away the dew. In the endlessly interpretable words of the Dead:

Some come to laugh their past away
Some come to make it just one more day
Whichever way your pleasure tends
If you plant ice you're gonna harvest wind