The air was thick and pungent which awakened my senses. This was a place that one couldn?t walk around life. You had to enter into it.

Without thinking twice, I began to wade through the scented mounds of green to reach the heads bobbing up and down in the Village of Subak Guliang. Total quiet except for intermittent gusts of a tinkling gamelan. There was no way to walk around the high mounds of blooming bushes to reach the bobbing heads in the green. The narrow footpath sat four feet off the moist mud like a balance beam allowing me to plant only one foot at a time. Would frowns or smiles greet me? Sliding off the edge onto a knee caused laughter as I neared the women. Only then did I realize what they were doing.

Women in Bali spend the majority of their lives creating small banana leaf trays filled with offering to the spirits. These little plates of food, tea, and flowers are found no matter what direction you turn. Offerings did their duty at the entrance to every shop, on the seats of cycles and of course hundreds at every corner to protect those passing by. All those baskets need flowers.

Here I was about to meet some of the sweet-as-the-flowers-they-picked women. My driver would never know the privilege I felt as I walked those meditating fields of purple.