White cau season in the sky

Having traveled through many lands; having stopped under a canopy of yellow mustard flowers like the sun dripping down onto the fields; having been absorbed in watching the white flowers blooming on the hillsides of the Northwest like a misty painting, but never have we felt our hearts as light and vast as when standing in the middle of the forests in the West of Quang Tri, where the flowers of the Bauhinia tree fell like thin snow. A beauty that is not ostentatious, not imposing, but gentle like a fairy tale hidden in the silence.

It was an early summer morning, when the wind still carried the cold mist from the Truong Son mountain range, we went with Kray Luong, a Pa Co friend, along the Ho Chi Minh trail, the western branch, along the mountain range starting from Huong Tan commune through Huong Linh, Huong Phung, Huong Viet communes and then to Huong Lap commune - the mountainous district of Huong Hoa. This season, the forest was still cool and moist. Cogon grass and reeds on both sides of the road rustled as if telling stories of the past. Kray Luong said: "You've come at the right time, you will see the white bauhinia flowers falling all over the ground. We Pa Co people call it the season of falling clouds".

Pa Co and Van Kieu people in Huong Phung commune enjoy the Bauhinia flower season.

We laughed, thinking it was a figure of speech. But when the motorbikes had just passed a bend at the beginning of Huong Tan commune, opening before our eyes a hill covered with white flowers, we were truly speechless. The leaves of the Bauhinia trees were in full bloom, each cluster of tiny flowers, five slender petals, pure white. The sunlight penetrated through the young leaves, covering the flowers with a layer of light like mist. Some petals were leaving the branches, slowly falling, lightly touching the ground as if afraid to awaken the sleeping things.

Stopping under a large Bauhinia tree, none of us said anything. There was only the sound of the wind blowing, carrying a light scent of flowers. The scent of Bauhinia is not strong. It is as faint as a breath, only when we really stop and relax our minds, can we feel it. A scent like the morning dew on the tips of leaves, like the water from the source of a stream flowing across a dream. The dream was white. There was the scent of Bauhinia flowers. There was a woman sitting weaving at a loom, a child letting each petal drift down the stream, there was the sound of a mouth-pipe rising up the mountain pass. And in that dream, the flowers still fell - falling not to show off, not out of regret, but as a natural acceptance, as the law of heaven and earth...

Early in the morning, when we said goodbye to the village here, we looked back for the last time at the smooth concrete roads. On our shoulders, a few bauhinia petals were left. None of us brushed them away, but wanted to keep that little bit of the flavor of a land, a season of flowers, and a way of life that was not competitive but profound.

Not a flower sold in the market, nor is it listed in luxury flower shops, but the Bauhinia flower exists silently, deeply, and proudly in the private realm of the mountains and forests, like the Pa Co and Van Kieu people here, quiet but persistent, rustic but profound, living in harmony with the earth and sky...

Source: https://cand.com.vn/Chuyen-dong-van-hoa/mua-trau-trang-tren-lung-troi-i765903/