At the crater's edge, give a year's harvest back to the god

The sky is not yet light, and already one is climbing the slope of volcanic ash up towards the crater of Bromo. The wind is strong, the sulphur heavy, blowing the eyes shut; all around is a sea of grey-black sand without visible edge, every step underfoot sinking into the fine volcanic grit with a muffled hiss. People have already gathered at the crater's rim, headlamps swaying one by one in the dark, some clutching chickens, some carrying a basket of vegetables and fruit, quietly waiting for dawn.

Yadnya Kasada is the rite of the Tengger people — one of the few groups in Java still holding to Hinduism. Legend says that long ago a couple here, long married and childless, prayed to the mountain god, who granted them twenty-four children on one condition: the twenty-fifth must be offered to the volcano. In the end that youngest child truly walked into the crater, leaving these parting words: each Kasada month, bring the best of the harvest to offer the god. So generation after generation, the Tengger carry a whole year's harvest up the mountain on this day.

An old farmer lifts a sack of rice above his head, mutters a few unintelligible words, then hurls it hard, the sack arcing through the dawn light and falling into the smoking crater. There is no reluctance on his face, only calm, like one settling a debt long agreed. Offering after offering is thrown in — chickens, fruit and vegetables, sheaves of rice — vanishing into the smoke and the depths.

On the crater's inner wall, there are even people who have come up from below, lowering themselves perilously over the edge with nets and cloth sacks, hoping to catch the falling offerings — for them, these are things that carry the god's blessing. The sky slowly brightens, light spilling across from the far side of the sand sea, dyeing the whole grey-black a faint gold, the sulphur smoke drifting slantwise in the wind. Standing at the rim, the wind nearly carries one away.

From the depths of the crater comes a faint low rumble, like the mountain's own breathing; the wind blows the sulphur smoke against the face in gusts, then carries it away in gusts. The grit underfoot is warm, and further down is a volcano still alive. In that moment one suddenly realises this is not a piece of scenery but a living thing — one with a temper, one that answers, revered by a whole people generation after generation.

Watching a whole year's harvest given back to this mountain like this, in that moment I suddenly understood what it means to "live off the mountain" — not to treat the mountain as scenery, but truly to hand over to it one's life, one's harvest, a whole year's hope. You cannot take that volcano away, but that dawn at the crater's rim, watching others solemnly give back the best of what they have, I think you too will remember a long while.