Harry began his journey in Southeast Asia. A woman named Linh Truong, who had been born and raised in Vietnam but who now lived in Los Angeles, visited Solfield the previous year. She was overwhelmed by her experience, and she wanted to share that experience with her friends and relatives still living in Vietnam.
Linh had taken many pictures of Soul Mound during her stay. And she had picked up a copy of a diagram Paul had created and made available to visitors which showed the dimensions of the mound. Linh took the diagram with her when she went home for a visit later that year, and over the following three weeks she and some friends and relatives carved out a small-scale replica of the top of the mound on a hill outside her village.
Harry contacted Linh after seeing her story and photographs on the Solfield website, and he decided that her village would be the perfect place to start his adventure. So after the summer solstice celebration, Harry and Anne, along with four other people, flew to Vietnam. One of the women in the group, Edith, had been a travel agent for many years. Edith took care of all travel arrangements - she acquired passports for everyone in the group, made all airline reservations, and planned the travel route.
The group flew into the southern city of Ho Chi Minh and stayed in a hotel that night. The next day, they awoke early and began their two-hour journey to Linh’s village, which was located near the Dong Noi river not far from the town of Da Hoa. When they arrived, Linh was there waiting for them. She had informed everyone in the village that Harry Phillips, the man who had built a mound just like theirs in America, was coming to visit and to see the mound they had built.
Harry and his group arrived on a beautiful summer morning. It was, in fact, the first time Harry had ventured outside the continental U.S. The entire trip from Portland had been a whirlwind for him. Harry had always been strongly affected by the way various places felt, the energy and environment and climate and so on. So when he stepped off the plane the day before, and particularly as he got out of the van and walked into Linh’s village, the experience was both exhilarating and disorienting at the same time.
Harry’s disorientation faded quickly, however, when he saw the faces of the children who ran up to greet him. He kneeled down and exchanged handshakes and even some hugs with the children, ignoring the many curious adults who kept their distance and watched quietly. Harry knew then and there that his journey, wherever it led, would have as much to do with the children he met as it would with the adults. Harry is and was and always will be a child at heart, and the choice between polite greetings with cautious grownups and playful hugs and smiles and games with their children was an easy one for Harry to make. He was there to play, first and foremost. But he didn’t know that until his first morning in a small village in South Vietnam.
Over the next year, a similar scene would play out over and over again: Harry arriving in a town or village and immediately being drawn to the bright smiling faces of five- and eight- and twelve-year-olds running to see who this strange man was that had come to visit them. It took until that first morning for him to finally realize that it was the children that would be leading the human race forward. It was the children who still remembered the playfulness and joy of spirit. They would be the ones to find the way forward, not the skeptical, frustrated adults who thought they already knew what life was about.
Harry spent that first day touring the village, visiting homes, sharing food and drink with his hosts, and talking about what life in the village was like. After lunch Linh led the group out across a field to the mound they had built. Linh and Harry walked at the front of the group, followed by Anne and Edith and the rest of the Solfield crew, along with 30 to 40 villagers, most of whom were children.
As they approached the mound, Harry could see that it was slightly smaller than the one he had made in his backyard. It was lined with stones and pieces of colored clay. As he walked closer, he saw that the colored pieces of clay had been placed in patterns on the vertical surfaces.
Harry stopped walking when he was twenty feet away and stared at the structure before him. He had thought about this moment for weeks, wondering what the mound would look like, what sorts of unique touches the people in this part of the world would add to it. Harry grew tearful as he turned and looked back at the villagers standing behind him. The children ran past him and up onto the mound, climbing triumphantly to the top.
Harry wanted to say something to Linh and to the rest of the villagers, but no words came to him. Linh seemed to understand. She smiled and motioned for Harry to climb onto the mound. Harry walked over and placed his foot on the bottom step. He looked down at the blue and red and yellow and green pieces of pottery arranged in simple patterns and shapes and spirals. The joy he felt was unlike any he had felt before. He climbed the rest of the way to the top of the mound and joined the children who were already there. He sat down next to them and they all looked down at the adults standing together down below.
Harry realized that there were many more uses for such a structure than he had thought. All along Harry had viewed Soul Mound as a place for adults to immerse themselves in contemplation and prayer, meditation, spiritual discussion, reading, etc. But as he looked at the faces of the children sitting to either side of him, he realized that those were his ideas, his priorities. But each person had their own priorities, and so there were unlimited uses and meanings for such a structure. And he was seeing that now.
Harry and his group spent several days at the village, eating and talking and playing and singing. Linh served as an interpreter, allowing Harry to converse with those who spoke little or no English. He found that the adults were very curious about the mound, the reason he had designed it the way he did. They said they felt tremendous power in it, in its shape, and many of them told him they felt a strong draw to it each morning.
Harry told them that he had been inspired to convert a pile of dirt in his backyard into a place where he could sit to watch the sunset, or to read, or to just “be”. They understood what he meant by just “being”, and they agreed that their mound had become their favorite place to do so.
So there it was: Harry confirmed to himself that the mound was his message. And he hadn’t even been the one to deliver it. Linh had delivered it to her village. Soul Mound had delivered it to her. Paul and Anne and everyone at Solfield had built Soul Mound. All Harry had done was play with bricks and dirt in his backyard. And now he was in South Vietnam, looking at a colorful replica of what he had created.
Their last evening in the village, Harry walked by himself to the mound and climbed to the top. The villagers had placed a small tower of flat rocks in the center of the top platform, true to the diagram Linh had shown them. Harry sat down and leaned against it, just as he had done so many times in Ohio. He closed his eyes and let the sounds and smells envelop him. He allowed his thoughts to drift away. He felt peaceful, serene. There was no place in the world he wanted to be other than where he was. He was as satisfied as he had ever been.
