PROLOGUE
GUNUNG AGUNG EXPLODED WHEN I WAS ELEVEN YEARS OLD. That was the first time I ever
heard of Bali. I knew about it because I read an article in the National Geographic
Magazine, issue of September 1963, Bali’s Sacred Mountain Blows Its Top.
Geologists explained the eruption as the result of a weak spot on the earth’s crust
where the Eurasian Plate rides over the Pacific Plate and forces it down into the
magma of the subduction zone. I later discovered that the Balinese felt plate tectonics
to be only the proximate cause, while the evils done by men and women were the deeper
reason. After twenty years of living in Bali I can understand their point.
But at the time I felt geology explained it well. I was in seventh grade and living
with my parents, my sister, two brothers, and our dog in Los Angeles, on the North
American Plate, on the eastern edge of the Ring of Fire, floating west over the
magma towards Indonesia at five centimeters per year.
I found the article in National Geographic fascinating. Balinese had long considered
the volcano dormant, I read, but on the morning of 17 March 1963, at the height
of a ritual known as Eka Dasa Rudra, while worshippers thronged the Besakih
mother temple high on the mountain slopes, Gunung Agung awoke. Hindu priests called
to the Gods for protection, reluctant to abandon such an important ceremony, and
although the Besakih temple itself was spared, a lahar in the nearby town
of Karangasem killed 1,500 villagers. The account of the eruption was horrifying,
and for an eleven-year-old, wonderful, and I reread it several times...
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