Generous accolades there, thank you.
Nuoc mam, the sauce that keeps 'Nam rollin' along. The common folk over there put it on everything. Their lunch box is a wad of rice with sauce, rolled into a banana leaf. Simple, sound and expedient. Banana leafs are abundant.
I don't know this to be true, but my understanding is the sauce is made by layering small sea fish in salt and spices in an earthen crock and letting it age for quite a long time. It has that appearance anyway, and the odor and sharp bite of peppers.
It is quite pungent. Early morning, dawn just breaking. Mountains draped with thin misty veils sliding up the ridges and over the top, only to disappear on the back side as the moisture moved back to warmer temperatures on a soft mountain breeze. NVA cook fires hastily extinguished because of the approaching slap of rotor blades, but the thermal lift had already pushed the scent of Nuoc Mam into the tree tops and it didn't take a bird dog to follow that scent upwind until it vanished. The smell clashed profoundly with the moist jungle scent of wet green and rushing streams.
Like the pointer close to the covey, nervous flitting about the tree tops almost always led to the camp. Usually it had been quickly abandoned, but sometimes not. Sometimes fireworks followed.
To truly recognize "crazy" and appreciate the spectrum of nuance on that canvas, it helps if you have lived in that house awhile.
