Ten Little Creatures from Mount Slamet

Some animals I photographed ten years ago on a volcano in Java and my reflection on them.

The village road in Cemara. Photo by the author.

Ten years ago, this very month, I joined anthropology students for their field research. As a language student, I was an outlier sitting among them. But I was excited and voluntarily made the decision to jump in.

In January 2014, we ventured from the city of Yogyakarta into the rain-drenched and foggy villages surrounding the peak of the volcano Mount Slamet in Central Java, Indonesia. The villages were situated around 1200–1400 meters above sea level.

During that two-week field research, I was set to stay in a local people’s house in the village of Cemara. The village was the highest and the last village before the hiking trail to the summit of the volcano began. With such a height, there was no doubt that clouds covered the village every day.

The photographs

I was researching the local dialect of the Javanese language by documenting the names of plants and creatures as the locals memorized them. With my pocket and phone cameras, I took a lot of photos.

Today, ten years later, I want to share some of the photos. You will see some little creatures that I encountered in the forest and fields of…