Filed December 10, 2025
Brother of the Deep Forest: The Day Everything Tilted
There are encounters in life that feel less like accidents and more like pages torn from a book you didn’t know you were already in. Yesterday was one of those days. It began as a simple pull, a gentle intuition from my wife, and ended with a meeting so profound I’m still trying to find language big enough to hold it.
For more than thirty years, my wife had heard whispers of a man who lived deep in the forest. A recluse. A former monk. A figure with long, matted hair who drifted through the edges of temples like a rumor. She had tried to find him before. Her brother, also a monk, had heard stories too. And yet every attempt ended the same way, footprints fading into the jungle, a path going nowhere.
But yesterday she woke with a feeling. No reason, no prompting, just a quiet certainty that she needed to go to a secluded forest garden near the Cambodian border.
This alone would have been unusual. But the timing made it surreal.
We are currently living through a genuine border conflict, with active military maneuvers between Thailand and Cambodia. Heavy artillery echoes through the valley each day. Our village sits under mandatory evacuation because of its proximity to the front. And yet… we stayed. Something told us not to leave. And when my wife said she needed to go deeper toward the border, not away from it, I trusted that instinct too.
So while artillery rumbled like thunder, we rode south, toward a place even closer to the conflict line.
Fate doesn’t announce itself.
It whispers.
And if you listen, you end up exactly where you’re meant to be.
Into the Forest
The road narrowed into gravel, then into something barely deserving the name. A rutted two-track threaded through protruding boulders and thickening forest. Eventually, the trees opened just enough for us to see a scattering of makeshift outbuildings. A camouflage tent. A lean-to shaped like a small shrine.
My wife stiffened. “Army,” she whispered. “Let’s go.”
Before we could retreat, a voice called out from below.
It was a man known as Black, a friend she hadn’t expected to see there. He ushered us into the darkened interior of the lean-to, a kind of miniature temple, cluttered with Buddha statues, offerings, relics, and smoke-stained artifacts. There was even a phin, a pear-shaped lute, leaning in the corner.
And then I saw him out of the corner of my eye.
A figure emerged slowly from the sunlight outside,
an ancient man wrapped in silence and time.
Long white beard. Necklaces and amulets draped across his chest. A silk wrap. Hair so long and matted it almost reached the ground in heavy knots.
He looked hesitant at first, almost wary. My wife began speaking softly, explaining who we were, and I watched him soften, bit by bit, as if recognizing something he hadn’t expected.
That’s when the air changed.
A Recognition Beneath the Skin
From the moment I came to Thailand, I’ve felt an uncanny familiarity with this land. It’s as if the soil recognized me before I recognized myself. Monks have told my wife they’ve seen me before. Several invited us into areas where laypeople aren’t normally allowed. One sak yant master, unprompted, tattooed powerful Yants on my arms, saying he had been called to do it.
I’ve stopped trying to explain it. Some things don’t fit into language.
But yesterday… I felt something I’ve only felt once in my life, when I met my wife.
I recognized him.
Not with my eyes, but with something older.
Soul-level recognition.
He walked us to a sacred bamboo-lined shrine and gently placed his hand on my inner elbow, guiding me. A warm current passed through me, physical, undeniable. Artillery boomed in the distance hard enough to shake the earth, but inside that forest something else was happening, something far more powerful.
We removed our shoes, stepped onto a raised wooden platform, and he sat before us. He prayed. My wife asked softly how I felt.
I told her the truth:
“I recognize him. He is my brother.”
She translated. He nodded.
Then he told her he had dreamed of this moment, and had dreamed of me the night before. He looked straight into my eyes and said, in English:
“I love you.”
Li of the Deep Forest
His name is Li. Once a highly regarded monk, revered in the region.
But others pulled him away from the priesthood, into the military, covert roles, darkened paths he briefly touched on, but never elaborated. Whatever he lived through eventually pushed him toward solitude, toward meditation, toward the quiet life of a forest hermit.
The monks of the nearby forest temple entrusted him with the care and protection of this sacred land. Over three decades, he has shaped it into a living sanctuary:
- Shrines hidden beneath the canopy
- Trails winding into herbal gardens
- Pots simmering with ancient concoctions
- Small temples layered with offerings and incense
- And a simple dirt-floor blocked room where he now lives
This is where we sat for hours. My wife and Black spoke with him in Thai. I listened, absorbing the cadence and energy even when I didn’t understand the words.
Every so often, Li would disappear into the shadows of his hut, digging through bags and tins and satchels, emerging with another offering.
A bracelet from his wrist.
Sacred ceramic Buddha tiles.
A blended oil carried in a sealed silver-capped tube.
And then… a treasure so unexpected it left everyone speechless:
A golden bell amulet from the era of King Rama IX.
He placed it in my hand as if returning something that had always belonged to me. He said as much to my wife — said he’d been waiting for the owner of the amulet to arrive.
He read my palms. Rubbed herbal whiskey into my skin. Prayed over me, blowing breath from his lungs onto my crown in the ancient healer’s way. Then he massaged my head, my feet, my face — an act my wife said someone of his status would never do for an outsider.
But I wasn’t an outsider. Not to him. Not anymore.
When the Day Ended, We Were Not the Same People
Some experiences refuse to fit inside the lines of ordinary explanation. This was one of them.
We arrived in the deep forest as two people seeking a sense and maybe even refuge from a world shaking itself apart. We left as four, changed, connected, expanded.
I began the day as one man. I ended it another.
And I believe the same is true for my wife, for Black… and for Li, the brother I somehow found after a lifetime of not knowing he was missing.
There are days that divide a life into before and after. This was one of mine.
#Buddhism #NortheastThailand #Recluse # Hermit