Not Too Wild This Time

"No one ever said: the Great Indoors” was found at a spread of Hummer H3 ad. Flipping through some more pages of Bestlife (May 2008), you will find: “There’s only one way to find out if your vaccinations really work” from Range Rover. Both of them showed their mighty trucks being harassed by the wilderness. One was parked in a sunny ditch at the foot of San Juan Mountains, Colorado, and the harsh Tibetan Plateau pampered the other one. Then I remembered someone had promised me to take me out to experience nature first hand.

“But I don’t do camping!” I said back then. “If I need any emergency midnite ice cream and extra pillow, there would be no room service button to press!” I defended myself violently.

Gayle, my mate of honor, whom I later found out that he really swept the forest floor like a gale, replied “First we do trekking. But to motivate you, there shall be something nice at the end of the road. Let’s unveil short waterfalls trips first.”

“But we’re still not going camping right?”

“No, we are going to just enjoy the view and return the same day.”

“Phewww”


When we finally reached the area, I was somehow shocked by how pristine the landscape was. The entire small mountain was blocked for strictly eco-tourism. It was called the Cigampea at Gunung Bunder (Mt. Round) just half an hour higher than the city of Bogor, West Java. Inside the protected park you will find six or even seven different waterfalls, camping grounds, pine forest in sulfuric meadows (aptly named Kawah Ratu, the Queen’s Crater).


With only about 500 m hike, it wasn’t difficult to find Curug Ngumpet (Hiding Waterfall). We needed to go around a wet cliff before hearing the water splashing on the ground beneath it. This ticked the Indiana Jones spirit inside me, that I thought I never had (true that I believed only the spirits of Halston and Gianni who would guide me through my darkest nights).

It was somehow secluded, a perfectly romantic spot, with sunbeams falling on the perfect clearances. Too bad some group of photographers and love birds were there earlier than us. Ahh, the fresh air (and the wild snake which just crossed our path). Yikes!



The second waterfall was the mother load, Curug Cigampea. It was almost 300 m tall. Sidetracking to a smaller waterfall on its right side, it was as if you’d get two waterfalls at the price of one.

Secretly, I thanked the local government for putting on paved walkways to ease our 1 km descend to reach the falls. It was tiring but then again it was safe as they had railings and flat stairs to welcome your journey. But yes it was awe-inspiring when finally you reached the bottom of that hill. One would feel nothing but so small against this natural setting.



Curug Cigampea was crowded as it was the end of the high-school final tests season. Ahh, another fresh vantage point. I had never realized that even the locals nowadays already ditched GT Mans and Riders (famous local underwear brands) for the trendier distro produced boxers (but briefs are sexier when wet!!).

Then Dr. Doolittle seemed to possess my Gayle for a while, as he was able to feed the monkeys by hand. I will never forget how he would gaze at the dominant male as if calling it to get closer. And when it arrived, they were as if talking in another language. The dominant male looked tamed before him. But still, just as a precaution, I never had the intention to get anywhere near them on that stream.



I sat there for a while. Just replenishing the good energy that I needed to refuel for my sanity. The mist was indeed mysterious. But Cigampea seemed to welcome us in its cradle. It wasn’t scary but Cigampea wanted to be handled with respect.

Warning Sign on the spot:
1. Please leave before 4.00 PM
2. Leave immediately when it started to rain
3. The same goes for landing mist
4. Keep clean and take care of your garbage



After a while, Vanindya was tired as hell. We didn’t want to imagine the ascend to the area where we came from. Huffing and puffing like some fish out of the water, we finally made it back. Only to be treated by the most glorious welcome: A group of bare-chested army cadets running in unison down the mountain road.

“Mama, mama can you see…”





Can’t wait for another trip,





Prof. Utonium

Copyrights: Opening Image. Vanindya Vidiastuty © 2008
Other Images. Prof. Utonium © 2008

Nature Photography inspired by Techno80 © 2008

Saung Kiky. Part 1

The rain had just stopped outside my window. The pedestrian sidewalk was no longer visible. A waterway, the street in front of me had became. Slowly the flow of water was moving to the north towards the sea. And as if nature had just calmed itself, these serene sounds of the breaking waves buoyed my mind as well. The sun started to regain its strength. Inhaling my cigarette, my memory wandered off to a place that I just visited not too long ago, in fact it was just only yesterday: Saung Kiky.

I was just wondering of how far did we need to ascend on this rather steep and narrow path upon Gadog, Puncak area. And then about ten minutes later, my companion directed me to the right, prior to descending from the car and opening the gates. It was just an unmarked green gate of a simple house. There was this path leading down from the point we parked, there we would find this sparse open-air hangar type of construction. Two embak-embak, female employees, were chatting while sorting and packaging freshly bloomed chrysanthemums. One man was rearranging Christmas bloom pots. We looked rather confused before another man came down from a green house.

“Can I help you with anything?”

“We have an appointment with Pak Kiky”

And then this humble gentleman named, Pak Kiky, the proprietor, greeted us from another green house and asked us to join him up there.

We were awestruck at the beginning. In front of us laid thousands of ready to harvest chrysanthemums in white, yellow, pink and red according to their beds. We said our how do you do-s and then he walked us through his green houses. There was a nursery in which you would grow your seeds into a ready to plant stage. There were this empty cultivated beds, half grown chrysanthemum beds, ready to bloom beds, and finally the ready to harvest beds. Each bed of earth rows are clearly labeled, marked and dated.

“We harvest everyday in here,” he said.

“To keep us busy, we need to create the entire lifecycle here in the plantation. As you see, we start from there, and then the next day we will tend the next bed, in order for us to be able to harvest everyday”.

He talked about a certain dealer that wished to buy 300 bundles of chrysanthemums per-day but he was only able to supply 50 of them. The market are out there, he said.

“Your friend here,” he pointed to his friend, my companion driving up there.

“Is the guy who has the keys to the markets, but he doesn’t have any land to work on. So if you guys are interested, please go ahead. Big cities need more than what we can provide daily” he said referring to Bogor and Jakarta.

It was of course a very interesting proposal. While the walk only needed about 10 minutes around the 4,000 meter-square area, the talk in-which-I-am-most-humbled-about took two hour and a half.

He was describing, or lecturing if you will, of a very simple but deep farmer’s philosophy: give back to nature whatever you take from nature.

“You see that little barn down there? That’s were we keep our lambs. We use the manure from the lambs to give nutrients to the land and to the flowers. And then we use the money from the flower to buy that paddy-fields down there, to grow our own organic rice.”

“Organic? You mean no pesticides?”

“That and dirt-cheap organics I mean”

(To be continued in Part. 2 below)

Saung Kiky. Part 2

“For pesticides we are using certain vegetables that wouldn’t kill pest, just repel them out of our range. And we also introduced certain bugs that would consume those pests. We just harvested about 2.5 tons of rice. And the waste from the rice, dedak, will then be distributed as feeds for the farm animals, including our geese, ducks and our fish down there. Wild grasses are also cut to feed the lambs”

“I saw you were using planted water hose to systematically water your plantations?

“Oh that, yes, it’s true. We have our own spring in here. And the water is trapped in that basin over there, some of them will be diluted with nutrients in which will be pumped up there to the green houses, and we have an auto-timer for that”

“Oh wow, so how many farmers do you hire here?”

“Just the two gentleman you saw earlier”

“Are you crazy?”

He wasn’t crazy I suppose. He was just purely and ingeniously resourceful. We passed a goose den before reaching the saung to chat further. “These are my security guards.” he said. “These geese will cry if they see any unfamiliar faces, like what they’re doing now, the same goes if some predators are on the loose such as mountain cats or foxes, and they will also alarm you, if any natural events such as earthquakes and mountain eruption will occur”

And then I sat my fat ass on the bale-bale. I was facing vast rice terraces as my buena-vista. It was cool and mellow as the rain had just stopped there. I felt so calm and relaxed there. The air was a combination from the sweetness of fresh air, grass and dirt aroma, and of course a whiff of manure smell from the barn not too far from the saung.

“I am not the owner of this place. The owner is a very busy person down there in Jakarta. He was giving me this place to run. And I am responsible to make it work and expand. As if he was giving me this fishing-rod. I am the one who is fishing, but I am also responsible to share the fish with him”

“Many people today are screaming about the price hike of fertilizers. We don’t have to, we have our own fertilizer farm down there. And using natural pesticides are way way cheaper than those chemical ones. They also don’t harm the land and the plants and there wont be any danger for you to consume them.” he continued.

“Imagine our fertile nation. How can we face any lack of food, any lack of tempe (soybean cake)? Gone are the times when all farms were self sufficient like this one. Thirty years ago, someone started forcing us to consume ready-made things for the farms such as those seeds, fertilizers, and even pesticides. Now we are too dependent on other nations. Look at Japan, with only 40% of their lands are being used, they can still supply rice for their own rice-eating nation and even export them here” he stopped to lit his cigarette.

“We hire villagers in times of needs, sometimes we supply them with food on top of that. Crime often happen if you are hungry. That’s what we are trying to avoid here. Not only for your stomach, every week we are having this pengajian (religious gathering) in here to supply our food for thoughts and for our hearts. And as a manager, I need to be efficient yet trustworthy to also be a role model for my employees.”

It was total eye-opener. As if an extension of some sabda (words) from the Lord, Pak Kiky's lecture were both heart-warming and as I mentioned, eye-opening. Even the geese that quacked insolently before, then gathered themselves naturally and just relax their long necks on top of each other's back.

That seemingly humble place was actually a very effectively ran farm. They waste not and they sell the surplus. Very smart.

Then he gave me the permission if I wanted to bring some school kids up there to feel the farm and to help him out for a day. Why can’t people like him be our agriculture minister?

It definitely worked for Saung Kiky.



Rolled up jeans, bare feet, country-styled,





Prof. Utonium

Natural Order of Learning

Another wrath from the sky. The earlier one in December had cost me a lot already when my engine was flooded just five hundred meters from my abode. People predicted that the big flood would not surface in another 5 years. Wrong. It was right out of my doorstep, just another year from the last one. And to reach my doorsteps, trust me, it had to be very big. Sometimes I wonder, what have we done so wrong to receive these angers? Can we do anything –at all- to help fix the harms done in the past?

For sometimes now, my self and a good friend of mine, had been discussing about an alternative education system for our youngsters. As he is a father of a two-year old boy, he is going to have to make that decision faster than we would imagine. What type of education shall his son receive soon? Then he mentioned something wonderful. It wasn’t anything radical or brand new, in fact several foundations had already established the kind of methods we were talking about around the outskirts of Jakarta and Bandung. It is called sekolah alam or natural learning.

The objective of such school is to have an affordable education system with nature as its greatest learning source. As most major schools and especially international ones had been Americanized by air-condition installments, state of the art laboratories, expatriate educators, fancy teaching equipments, fantastic gymnasiums and even Rp. 50,000,- a meal cafeterias, we were trying to re-embrace the soul of the school foundation itself: Teaching and Learning.

Learning doesn’t have to be expensive. In those sekolah alam you may find no formal classrooms, only open air saung (huts) and some simple administrative buildings. Sometimes they would take the blackboard outside and gather-round under a canopying tree (very Jesus-like eh?). Or they would plant herbs and vegetables from seeds, grow fish and poultries, all for the consumptions of the school and the neighboring communities. They were taught to be dependent on nature, not from what’s available on the isles of the supermarket. With this they need to learn how to be creative, how to grow, how to save, and how to appreciate nature.

An interesting note came from a natural school in Ciganjur, South Jakarta:
“The kids are encouraged to freely explore his/ her surrounding. They are not forced to wear any uniform. Diversity in here is seen as a basic-right of any individual, in which needs to be acknowledged and respected. We are sure that the uniformity doesn’t have to be seen from what are they wearing, we would stress more consistency in their good wills, conducts, behaviors, and also their never-ending passion to learn and of course their curiosities”

I personally think that this is a very good step in re-acknowledging nature. Modern thinking and modern ways of life pampered us thus far. In fact in supporting our lifestyles, sometimes it was seen as “okay” to develop humanity while destroying our own natural resources. Look what happened lately.

Imagine that the earth is our own head and the trees and the grass that grew naturally is our own hair. And then we drill and suck the blood out of our head. And then we thrust concrete beams into the depth beneath our skulls. And then, we need to burn our own hair to create land openings for real estates. And imagine having head-lice that run freely, habit, and create their generations of families on top of our head. Wouldn’t you scratch your itches too? Would you shake your head in hope that all those lice will just fly away? Wouldn’t you go under the shower to wipe out all the bugs? I wouldn’t blame nature if it seemed to be so angry to us. A little bit of love may go along way for our future.

Ancient scriptures might clearly state that we as human beings have the rights to command all living things on earth. Just because it doesn’t qualify as neither animals, plants or human beings, sometimes we forgot that our planet is a living organism too. The air moves, the water runs, and the earth shakes. It needs to be acknowledged as we acknowledged other living things. It needs to be taken care too.

My friends, along with our rights, responsibilities also came with them.




Glad to be back,





Prof. Utonium