On Friday, May 8, the newest offering in the “Star Trek” canon will open in theaters around the world. The film will give us the back story of the original series, and show how its three principals got themselves onto what might be (along with Noah’s Ark and the Titanic) the most famous vehicle in history: the starship Enterprise. Only one of the three main actors of that era will appear in J.J. Abrams’ “Star Trek.” It won’t be William Shatner (Kirk), or DeForest Kelley (McCoy), who died in 1999. Though Mr. Spock’s role as a half-human, half-Vulcan Starfleet cadet is played by Zachary Quinto, Leonard Nimoy makes a cameo appearance as the future Spock, coming to advise his younger avatar.

Spock has been on many minds lately, and not entirely because of the new film. Big thinkers in both print media and the blogosphere — from New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd  to MIT media moguls — have referenced the Enterprise’s science officer in recent months, drawing parallels between the dependably logical half-Vulcan and another mixed-race icon: Barack Obama.

They’re not just talking about the ears. For those of us who watched the show in the 1960s (or during the countless reruns since), Nimoy’s alter ego was the harbinger of a future in which logic would reign over emotion, and rational thought triumph over blind faith. He was a digital being in an analog world; the Pied Piper who led our generation into the Silicon Age.

Anyone who followed the early “Star Trek” with regularity knows how charismatic Spock was. If there were two characters I wanted to be as a young man, they were Spock — and James Bond. Both displayed total self-confidence, and amazing problem-solving skills. Both traveled to exotic destinations, and were irresistible to women. And both shared a quality that my generation lacked completely: composure.

While Bond had his weaknesses (anything in a bikini), Spock was virtually unflappable. The most startling marvels in the cosmos were “fascinating.” Disasters were “unfortunate,” perhaps even “tragic.” The raised eyebrow, the lifted chin, the vaguely sarcastic mien — these were coins of the realm to my pubescent friends. How did we weather the terrors of grade school, and survive the irrational outbursts of parents and teachers? By invoking Spock. Who served as our logical, enlightened counterpoint to the madness of the late 1960s? Who else but Spock?

“I am a first-generation ‘Star Trek’ fan, and I’ve long argued that many of my deepest political convictions emerged from my experience of watching the program as a young man growing up in Atlanta during the civil rights era,” declares Henry Jenkins, co-director of the MIT comparative media studies program and author of “Convergence Culture.” “In many ways, my commitment to social justice was shaped in reality by Martin Luther King and in fantasy by ‘Star Trek.’”

Obama, Jenkins points out, positioned himself in the primaries as a man “at home with both blacks and whites, someone whose mixed racial background has forced him to become a cultural translator.” In this sense Obama even surpasses Spock, whose struggle to reconcile his half-human, half-Vulcan genes is a continual source of inner conflict. In one episode, the entire Enterprise crew (except for Kirk) is infected by alien spores that turn them into doe-eyed flower children. The “cure” is anger — thus Kirk is forced to provoke his first officer to rage. He succeeds, spectacularly, by insulting Spock’s racial pedigree: “All right, you mutinous half-breed! You’re an overgrown jackrabbit! An elf, with a hyperactive thyroid! A simpering, devil-eared freak whose father was a computer and his mother an encyclopedia!”

Confronted with a similar insult, Barack Obama would probably just laugh. “The Vulcan side of Obama, the core of his character, hasn’t changed [since the election],” Jenkins believes. “He’s tough, he’s cool and he’s rational.” His appeal stems from the self-aware integration of all aspects of his personality: black and white, wonk and poet, athlete and aesthete.

Like Spock, part of what makes Obama so appealing is the fact that although he’s an outsider — “proudly alien,” as Leonard Nimoy once put it — he uses that distance to cultivate a sense of perspective. And while we’re drawn to Spock’s exotic traits — the pointy ears, green blood and weird mating rituals — we take comfort in his soothing baritone, prominent nose and ordinary teeth.

Spock’s appeal, according to the actor who portrayed him, came from cultivating this dichotomy. In 1997, I interviewed Nimoy for my book “Future Perfect: How ‘Star Trek’ Conquered Planet Earth.” “There is a sensitive side to Spock,” Nimoy said, “to which a lot of people, male and female, responded. Also very important — at least I thought it was, because it was what I was constantly playing — is the yin/yang balance between our right and left brains. How do you get through life as a feeling person, without letting emotions rule you? How do you balance the intellectual and emotional sides of your being?”

The early Spock’s only real vice was sardonic ire (often directed at McCoy). But this was also one of his most appealing qualities — because Spock, as Jenkins gleefully asserts, is “someone who can bitch slap you with his brain.” It’s an ability shared by Obama — who, unlike Spock, doesn’t employ that superpower recreationally. His brilliance isn’t a defense (or defended by sarcasm). While Obama embodies Spock’s passion for reason, he adds the element of warmth.

“Star Trek” fans who bonded with Spock already understood what those of us who followed Obama learned early on: that witnessing a powerful intellect can be deeply satisfying on an emotional level. We got a similar hit from Martin Luther King Jr. and the Kennedys, of course, and from Bill Clinton. But while Clinton’s administration was smart, Obama’s seems futuristic.

“Bill Clinton promised a Cabinet that looked like America,” Henry Jenkins said in a recent conversation. “Obama gave us one that looks like the Enterprise crew. In a matter-of-fact way, he’s embraced diversity at every level. No Klingons yet — but the administration is new.”

During the months that I researched “Future Perfect,” people all over the world admitted a longing for the zeitgeist of “Star Trek.” “The Enterprise crew was a professional team of people solving problems together,” agreed Nimoy. “It was always a very humanistic show, one that celebrated the potential strengths of mankind, of our civilization, with great respect for all kinds of life, and a great hope that there be communication between civilizations and cultures.”

Which is another reason why the sometimes audacious diplomacy of the Obama administration is innately appealing to those of us weaned on the credo of “exploring strange new worlds” and “seeking out new life and new civilizations.” And what if the Earth itself was visited by aliens? If benevolent ETs were to land on the Mall tomorrow, most of humanity would be proud to have Barack Obama speak for us. If Bush were still president, we’d be looking at “Mars Attacks.”

The problem with smart, thoughtful people is that you have to pay attention. Even with “Star Trek,” some viewers complained that the stories were too complicated, requiring too much focus for the average TV viewer. Nimoy sympathized. “‘Star Trek,’” he reflected, “was a language show. A lot of the ideas were expressed verbally. It has been said — and I think it’s true — that if you didn’t listen to ‘Star Trek,’ you couldn’t follow the stories.”

The same could be said of today’s White House: It’s a language show. “Issues are never simple,” Obama has said. “Very rarely will you hear me simplify the issues.” The stakes are high, the narrative is complex, and no one’s talking down to us.

Obama, like Spock, rewards close listening. His cool logic is a real departure from what we’ve grown used to. Often presidential speechmaking is an emotive art, where oratory trumps reason. What was being said was often confused with how it was being said. We could watch Ronald Reagan with the sound off, and get a pretty good sense of how we were supposed to feel. Bill Clinton’s richly accented arias lulled us, while reactions to the appearances of George W. Bush — pro or con — were driven less by analysis than by a limbic, visceral response.

Not that we don’t have a visceral response to Obama. But it’s a very different feeling, a pride of possession familiar to old-school “Trek” fans, whose millions of letters kept NBC from canceling the show in 1967. That victory — one of the first cases of the mass media being influenced by overwhelming grass-roots support — gave Trekkers the indelible sense that “Star Trek” was theirs. And while none of Obama’s individual supporters can claim ownership of his presidency (any more than “Star Trek’s” fans write the movies), they’re well aware that it was  similar grass-roots movements — on the Internet, at thousands of small-scale fundraisers and on the streets of contested states like Ohio and Florida — that sustained his phenomenon.

So we come, unavoidably, to the Big Question: What would Barack Obama himself say to this comparison? How might our president respond to the cartoons circulating on the Internet, showing him sporting Vulcan ears and a Starfleet tunic? In a September 2008 broadcast of the popular NPR show “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!” guest Leonard Nimoy recalled a recent encounter with a fan.

“About a year and a half ago, I was at a political event. One of our current campaigners for the office of president of the United States saw me — and as he approached, he gave me the Vulcan hand signal.” You can practically hear Nimoy’s eyebrow raise. “It was not John McCain.”

Bunaken lies off the north shore of Sulawesi in Indonesia. The small island is one of the gems in Bunaken National Marine Park, created in 1991, one of Indonesia’s first marine parks. I am here with Seacology, a nonprofit group based in Berkeley, Calif., that works with islanders around the world to help preserve indigenous communities and ecosystems. In Bunaken and neighboring Manado Tua, a perfectly round island dominated by the towering cone of a dormant volcano, Seacology is funding a revolutionary practice of reviving coral reefs.

Often called the “rain forests of the sea,” coral reefs are among the world’s most endangered ecosystems. Currently, all of the world’s reefs would cover an area only half the size of France. Once damaged, reefs demand well over a century to regrow; in many areas, they may not grow back at all. With the reefs gone, fish disappear, and the islands themselves become vulnerable to destructive waves and erosion.

The years prior to 1991 saw a lot of bad mojo at work around Bunaken and Manado Tua. For decades, fishermen bombed the reefs with dynamite, or squirted them with sodium cyanide, to net large harvests of fish that surfaced. Low tides forced local boats to anchor amid the fragile corals, and dive boats (not to mention clumsy divers) wrought havoc as well. Storms reduced already weakened corals to rubble. By the time the national park was created, big sections of the reef were already in dire shape.

In 1998, marine biologist Mark Erdmann, a senior advisor to Conservation International, along with Indonesian activist Meity Mongdong and dive master Christiane Muller, helped create a management board for the Bunaken National Park. They managed to shift control of the park away from the central government in Jakarta and put it in the hands of local villagers, fishermen and dive operators — people with a vested interest in preserving the area’s ecology.

Environmentalists have employed various strategies over the years to revive crippled reefs, from sinking old railroad cars to dropping huge cement balls into the rubble; anything to give new corals a handhold. But the most elegant fix, the one funded by Seacology, may be EcoReefs: white ceramic modules, the size of squat, round coffee tables, that look like 3-D snowflakes (they’re inspired by the shape of staghorn coral). Anchor enough of them in the rubble, the theory goes, and tiny polyps — the animals that create coral reefs — will take root on the modules’ arms and fish will return in huge schools.

EcoReefs are the brainchild of Michael Moore, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Moore looks like a young Ed Harris and holds a Ph.D. in integrative biology from the University of California at Berkeley. “One of my favorite things about EcoReefs,” he says, “is that unlike old tires or railroad cars, they’re not marine pollution. They are made of harmless materials that will ultimately be broken down by wave energy — leaving only the new reef growth in place.”

In 2003, hundreds of modules were brought to the northern Sulawesi islands. Local dive operators and villagers worked together to assemble them. “It was fantastic,” Erdmann says. “Everyone from little kids to grandparents helped out. Then the dive operators came to do the underwater installation.”

The largest installation is off the coast of Manado Tua, where blasted reefs are shored up with 620 modules. Seacology donated the EcoReefs to the island’s villagers in exchange for an agreement to leave the area alone: No Fishin’. There’s no diving, either, but exceptions are made for biologists and, fortunately, journalists.

Froggies Divers sits on the curving southern shore of Bunaken’s hourglass-shaped coastline, a funky resort of clapboard bungalows with thatched roofs, a sand-floored dining area and a lively, expressive population of geckos. The owner and proprietor is Christiane Muller, 67. She’s as unusual a creature as you’re likely to find on Sulawesi’s reefs. Christiane had numerous previous lives before Froggies, working as a DNA researcher, a simultaneous translator (she speaks six languages), and as a field recorder of Southeast Asian music.

“I’d never had any interest to dive,” she says, as she lights another in an endless series of clove cigarettes. “But in 1988, I was on vacation with my son, Martin, in the Carribbean. He was going scuba diving and asked me to join him. I said no, and he said, I dare you. That was all it took.”

This area of northern Indonesia, where Alfred Russel Wallace got the jump on Darwin in 1859, is considered one of the most spectacular dive sites in the world. The islands are surrounded by a huge submarine trench, nearly 3 miles deep at places. Diving along the wall is dizzying; it’s like hovering in space, just over the edge of the Grand Canyon. The trench is a blessing. Cool water welling up from the depths helps protect the reef against global warming and makes the area a perfect environment for everything from featherworms to spinner dolphins.

Christiane and I anchor to a mooring in sight of the village of Nigiri, where the red spires of Manado Tua’s white church rise into the shimmering sky. We strap on air tanks, roll backward into the water, and begin our descent.

The EcoReefs cover several thousand square feet of sea floor. On land, they look attractive but artificial, like contemporary sculpture. Underwater, they’re something else entirely: a hybrid of technology and organic life. Moore has a lot of faith in his reefs — “If we build them, they will come,” he has said — but their growth would probably exceed his wildest dreams.

Nearly two years after the EcoReefs were submerged, their antler-shaped arms are covered with baby corals and sponges, more varieties than I can count. Parrotfish, Moorish idols and clownfish have set up shop beneath their limbs; two tiger cowries nestle near one’s center.

One of the techniques used to jump-start growth on the EcoReefs is “coral transplants.” Chunks of loose coral are physically attached to the EcoReefs with little plastic ties. Oddly, the modules with the transplants have done no better than the ones left to their own devices. No one knows why; perhaps corals, like delicate houseplants, favor a specific angle to the sun.

Christiane busies herself with maintenance, using a dive knife to scrape a cauliflower-like soft coral that, unchecked, will cover the modules like an invasive weed. As she works, a handsome eagle ray, about 6 feet across, hovers nearby, watching with undisguised curiosity.

An hour later, back on the boat, Christiane shakes her head. “It’s incredible,” she says. “There are all kinds of fish; much more diversity than when I visited last. And at least two kinds of corals: acrophora, and millephora. Millephora, fire coral, is an especially good sign, because it means big boulders — coral heads — will grow. The whole area will become the foundation for a new reef. This is exactly what everybody was wishing for.”

We strip off our wet suits, leave the boat, and wade in toward Nigiri. Pa (“Sir”) Ganche is the village chief, a big man with a broad face and fin-shaped feet. He meets us by his house, right next to the church.

“The population of Nigiri is 1,139,” he says. “The EcoReefs belong to everyone and we all take care to see that no one is fishing in the no-take zone.” Ganche, free-diving, checks the modules at least twice a week. “The coral grows back much faster there than anywhere else; we didn’t expect it to be so quick!”

The terms of the Seacology agreement require them to wait five years before fishing here again but Ganche and the villagers are unlikely to start so soon. “For the time being,” he says, “we don’t plan to fish there again at all.”

The next morning I meet with Pa Yunus, the local coordinator of Bunaken National Park, in Froggies’ open-air dining room. With his coiffed black hair and world-weary grin, Yunus looks like an Indonesian Clark Gable, around the time of “The Misfits.”

Yunus reviews the park’s figures with me. About 40,000 guests visited Bunaken in 2003, each paying a modest entrance fee (for me, about $18). This generated more than a billion rupiah — over $100,000 — in revenue. Eighty percent of this goes to park management, which includes boat patrols of protected areas, moorings, salaries and a fund shared by the 31 villages within the park. The rest goes to Jakarta.

Yunus is mainly involved with the security patrols, which are still needed. In August, a boatload of men were caught fishing illegally in the waters off Manado Tua. “They threatened us with their spear gun,” says Yunus, “but stood down when the park rangers showed their pistols.”

On the Bunaken reefs, there’s a species of big-lipped wrasse so colorful that one might mistake it for a parrotfish. During my final dive, I see one following me; it stays by my side nearly 20 minutes, occasionally darting off to gnaw at the corals.

When I return to Froggies and tell Christiane, she laughs with delight. “Nine or 10 years ago,” she says, “there was one wrasse — just one — who would follow people that way. The fish had figured out that by doing so it could leave its territory without being chased by other fish. Now, all the big-lipped wrasse are doing it. How they learned this from each other, no one knows.”

The encounter seems like a wonderful metaphor. Maybe all the animals in Bunaken National Marine Park will one day come to see humans as their allies.

But if one were to speed up the clock, the crisis threatening the region would become obvious. The mangrove swamps would recede, making way for new resorts; the reefs would burst and dissolve, destroyed by dynamite fishing, coral harvesting and pollution. Swaths of tropical rain forest would vanish, giving way to erosion. Mudslides would pour though villages. Worst of all — and invisible even in time-lapse photography — one species after another would blink out of existence, its last member obliterated with no more concern than the accidental crushing of an ant.

It’s happening everywhere, of course, but on islands the rate of species extinction is snowballing at a stunning rate. Globally, 75 percent of all recent animal extinctions have happened on islands; nearly three-quarters of all the plant and animal extinctions recorded in U.S. history have occurred in Hawaii alone. Today, Indonesia’s 10,000-plus islands have more species threatened with extinction than any other nation on the planet.

Sometimes environmental pressures come from outside developers; sometimes they come from traditional practices like hunting, fishing or tree-cutting. It’s hard to break such habits or show why resisting development is a good idea in the long run. That’s where Seacology comes in. The nonprofit group, based in Berkeley, Calif., represents a new league of environmental groups that work directly with indigenous people to help them preserve their communities. Seacology, which focuses on islands, offers local people tangible benefits such as a new school for protecting the biodiversity of their lands. It also empowers village councils to monitor and enforce the protected areas.

On a recent morning, furious wind and intense rain hammer Manado, located in northern Sulawesi, scattering the tinny call of a mosque in all directions. I’m driving south to the village of Kawangkoan, where Seacology is renovating a primary school in exchange for 140 hectares (roughly 350 acres) of “no-take” tropical forest: a zone that will be left in pristine condition, protected from logging or hunting by villagers or the government. My guide and companion is Meity Mongdong, a short, sparky woman with features that one might mistake for Mayan. Mongdong is in her early 30s and a native of northern Sulawesi. Her father is a teacher from Minahasa and her mother a nurse from Manado Tua, a cloud-wreathed, Bali Hai-ish island to the north. In 2002, Seacology awarded Mongdong its annual environmental prize for her work in the marine sanctuary of Bunaken, where she galvanized the local community and put what had been bumbling, top-down management of the national park into the hands of local villagers, fishermen and dive operators.

We stop at a small church to pick up Janny Rotinsulu, a graphic designer and community leader who was instrumental in getting the Kawangkoan project off the ground. Rotinsulu is a young, immediately likable man with a round, clear face and an astonishing smile; he made a bundle living in Jakarta, designing ads for BMW, before moving back to his home village.

Kawangkoan, Rotinsulu explains, means “Big Land,” the name given by the original inhabitants. The parcel of rain forest being protected with Seacology’s support, he explains, is a beautiful tract of land with two waterfalls, giant hornbills and numerous rare mammals, including tarsiers (the world’s smallest primate, a tiny monkey with Bill Keane eyes) and wild cows. I didn’t even know wild cows existed. Rotinsulu nods grimly. “They can be very aggressive,” he says.

The moment we leave the outskirts of Manado, the rain forest becomes thick and heavy. As we enter Kawangkoan, signs of earlier inhabitants appear in the form of warunga: mysterious stone tombs that litter the landscape by the thousands. Little is known about them; they might be anywhere from 300 to 700 years old, and are decorated with odd, sometimes macabre, carvings. They remind me of the ghostly tombstones found in old Dutch cemeteries around Tarrytown and Hastings. This is probably not a coincidence; the Dutch controlled Indonesia for centuries, even though these northwestern reaches were also on Portuguese routes.

The forest itself is a tract owned by Kawangkoan, and the decision to create and enforce a no-take zone requires only village approval. Indonesia already has strict laws against cutting the forests, and I wonder how this newly protected area will affect people hoping to build new houses. But Mongdong and Rotinsulu agree that the lack of lumber isn’t an issue; when wood is cut down, it’s usually shipped off to Jakarta for wealthy people wanting to build Minahasa-style homes. The real ecological problems here are game poaching and people clearing land for farming.

We drive our Daihatsu van down a dirt road and arrive at the existing elementary school, built in 1975. “The building is awful,” says headmaster Christian Wenas. “It is falling apart. Huge chunks are missing from the roof; during the rainy season, water pours in.”

We stand outside one of the large classrooms beneath a plumeria tree. A cow wanders by; I eye it with some apprehension. Wenas, who has been in the local education business for 37 years, shows me the holes in the roof, the broken benches and inadequate desks. The school serves 183 students, ages 5-12, from four villages. The terms of a financial agreement with Seacology are fairly simple: Seacology will provide around $12,000 for the project, money the foundation raised from private donors. In return, the village council will sign on the dotted line, promising to leave the agreed area of the rain forest intact. Rehabilitation of the school will begin as soon as the village leaders sign the agreement. When it’s all settled, Kawangkoan gets a new school, as well as a protected rain forest — not exactly a hard bargain.

By the time we return to Manado, the island is obscured by massive gray clouds. The wind rises, and within minutes the sky opens, pelting the tin roof of Mongdong’s office, peppering the sea and cleaning the dust off our van. We drive the narrow lanes slowly, passing two little girls gleefully shampooing their hair in the rain.

The following morning we drive west to several more villages in Minahasa district, where Seacology projects are well underway or complete. “I grew up here, in these coastal areas,” says Mongdong, “and I loved the beaches and the reef fish. Even as a child, I could see that the coastal communities were poorer than the upland people; we depended on the marine environment, and the quality of those resources were going down. The distances fishermen had to travel for a catch were getting greater. That’s why I felt that I needed to do something.”

The road is as smooth and black as a graphite line drawn through the jungle. “When I was a girl,” Mongdong recalls, “transportation to Kumu was by boat.”

We pass the Telekom booths, traditional markets and horse-drawn carriages of Tanawangko, and drive through a town called Poopoh. “It means ‘coconut,’” explains Mongdong.

Mongdong’s hometown, Kumu, is a tidy village ending at the sea. There isn’t a trace of litter on the streets. Motorbikes buzz up the road, driven by 12-year-old girls and fishermen with skin like fish jerky. There are churches everywhere, and the new school we’ve come to see — built with Seacology’s help — is behind one of them. It’s a single-level, L-shaped building with blindingly white walls and slatted wooden windows that channel the breeze into the large classrooms.

“My parents are both very socially minded,” Mongdong says as we approach the school. “My mother works as a nurse for low-income families; I’ve seen her treat people in exchange for bananas. My father worked as a teacher. He has a strong personality, and can be difficult to get along with; he’s hard-nosed, but also very honest. He helped the people in Kumu understand the impact of logging the forest and the problems it was causing; and he also helped see that every rupiah went to the project, and not into someone’s pocket.”

The school opened in August but already feels lived in. Classes are in session when we arrive, and I’ve never seen a more expressive bunch of kids. They shriek with glee as the teacher introduces us, then leap to their feet to sing an Indonesian version of “Frère Jacques” at earsplitting volume.

The teacher, a beautiful woman named Sartji Manangkoda, is seven months pregnant, and her desk is littered with flower parts: a big pink bud, broad leaves, long stems. “This is a science class,” she explains. The children sit in neat rows behind shared wooden desks, dressed in white uniforms and waving their arms frantically after every one of the teacher’s questions.

Two hundred fifteen families from four villages send 102 students, ages 6 to 13, to the school. During a break, all eight teachers — four volunteers and four employees, who each earn between $100 and $150 a month — meet me in the courtyard. They express unanimous delight with the building.

“The old school was very hot,” one of them recalls. “There was no air circulation at all. During the rainy season, we had to tell the students to go home; water flooded the classrooms.”

Still, the effort to build the school in exchange for protecting Manenembo-nembo — the local stand of tropical rain forest, which borders all four villages — met with opposition at the start, mainly from villagers who felt threatened by the idea of a no-take zone in the forest. The complaints stopped when people saw the new school, and realized that it hadn’t been an empty promise.

A few hundred yards away, we meet the men charged with the conservation plan’s development and enforcement. District supervisor Harry Runtualian, a rough-looking character wearing a black T-shirt, sums up the reasons the program has succeeded.

“Only about 5 percent of the villagers cut trees from the forest, but it had a big impact,” he says. The river dried up because the trees were no longer holding water; a landslide covered the road; sediments washed into the sea and covered the coral reef, killing off the fish. Awareness of these problems came from the Sulawesi people, he says, not from an outside agency telling them what their problems were.

It wasn’t just a matter of harvesting trees. Wild pigs and bats were being killed, and the endemic crested black macaque was hunted for food. The hunters were among the most vocal critics of the proposal. But they’re not complaining anymore. When I ask why, Runtualian’s answer seems both reasonable and ominous: “Face-to-face discussions.”

Part of the deal included money for several thousand nantu saplings, which Runtualian and his two colleagues have been carrying, nearly two miles up into the open forest, for planting. It will take the hardwoods from five to 10 years to grow. When I ask who is charged with enforcing the no-take rule, Runtualian points to a tall man wearing a green Lacoste knockoff and a ten-gallon hat: “The Cowboy.” Despite his Gary Cooper poise, Wely — the man’s real name — doesn’t look like much of a match for poachers armed with rifles or machetes. But all he has to do, I learn, is warn the culprits and report them to the local council. On a second infraction, the police and forestry rangers take over.

Impressively, conservation has quickly become a part of the local mindset. Erni Sumatow, a woman from the nearby village of Pinasungkulan, recently pushed through a Seacology project protecting the local reef, mangrove swamp and rain forest, all in exchange for a new drinking water distribution system. “People truly believed that it was their right to take everything they needed from the beach and forest, even using bombs to fish the reef,” she says. “Building awareness wasn’t easy; we informed people of the issues at every opportunity: at meetings, weddings, funerals, any time the villagers were together. Eventually, it worked. It was hard at the beginning — but now people think it’s a very good thing.”

For all their apparent success, Seacology’s projects prompt another question: If communities are being asked to protect their forests forever, what happens when the school, or water system, eventually falls apart? What’s the incentive to keep Kumu or Kawangkoan from cutting down trees after 20 or 50 years?

In Manado, Meity Mongdong and I pick up a marine biologist and conservation specialist named Mark Erdmann, who has lived in the area for more than 10 years. We drive together to a rustic cafe, high in the hills overlooking the city. Mark and Meity order avocado smoothies; I wait and see if they look better than they sound.

Erdmann explains that conservation in Indonesia had typically operated in a top-down fashion. People were told that if they cut down trees or poached animals they would face stiff penalties. But the punitive approach wasn’t successful. Seacology’s approach to offer something in return, he says, “really grabs the interest of villagers.”

Still, Erdmann says, Seacology knows it can’t ask for anything in perpetuity. In general, it enacts commitments with villages that last 20 to 30 years. “But after that the school or dock will have fallen apart,” Erdmann says. “At that point, we hope that the concept of conservation has sunk in enough so that people continue to respect it, and that things have progressed to a point where the villagers are not so dependent on natural resources.

“And if not, what’s the worst that could happen? What if, in three years, Kumu turns around and cuts down its forest? At the very least, they got a school. It was a low-cost investment and it made a big difference in some people’s lives. Compare that with what happens when huge conservations groups come in. They might spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on consultants and posters, and at the end of the day, when that project folds, the community is left with nothing.”

“There’s no place else to put them,” he shrugs. The deactivated mines, he says, pose no hazard, unless the temperature in the barracks rises above 80 degrees Celsius (176 degrees Fahrenheit).

No one knows exactly how many mines were scattered through Kuchchaveli by the tsunami; the records from the nearby Sri Lanka Navy base, where the devices originated, were lost in the flood. Vavuniyu’s best guess is that some 850 Pakistan- and Chinese-made mines were washed inland out of minefields and storehouses. Some ended up in the local schoolyard. Others were found lodged in trees, hidden between boulders, or buried under the sandy soil. Ramesh Kumar, a field officer mapping out the danger areas, says he’s found mines floating in wells.

Mines, as well as UXO (unexploded ordnance, which includes live bullets, rockets, mortars, artillery and fuses) have long been flies in the ointment of this island paradise. The danger zone is the northeastern coast, where the simmering conflict between the government and Tamil Tigers (the LTTE) has cost 60,000 lives — twice the toll of the tsunami. The government has admitted that it planted about a million mines to combat operations by the separatist rebels. There are no figures from the Tigers themselves, but the United Nations estimates that the LTTE has buried another half million mines. As for the UXO count, that’s anybody’s guess.

During the 20 years for which there are records — from 1985 through 2004 — 1,063 Sri Lankan civilians have been maimed and 194 killed by the explosives.

“It’s a very serious problem,” says Judy Grayson, of UNDP Mine Action. “It’s not on a par with a place like Afghanistan, where there are many more mines. But it’s a huge problem for people whose houses are endangered, or for kids who can’t go to school because of the mines and UXO that have washed up into the schoolyards.”

Ironically, there was a rash of civilian casualties (15-20 per month) right after the 2002 cease-fire. That’s because previously restricted areas, like highway A-9, which connects the northern city of Jaffna with the rest of the island, was reopened after 20 years and people started moving through heavily mined areas.

Beneath their flak jackets and helmets, DDG members wear color-coded shirts: yellow for the team leader, orange for section leader, green for medic. Deminers wear red, and drivers blue. The rainbow of colors seems deceptively cheerful as Vavuniyu and his co-workers use primitive tools to unearth the weapons. Working with hand rakes and probes beneath the sweltering sun, they will examine every centimeter of Kuchchaveli’s 2 square kilometers.

Paul Boncz, a former Swedish army lieutenant who, until 2000, was teaching soldiers how to lay mines, is the technical advisor for the multiethnic team of 400 Sri Lankans, some of who are working in the country’s eight other hot spots. An unlikely figure in his jeans and worn-out T-shirt, the lanky Boncz looks more like a beachcomber than an unexploded-ordnance expert.

Each of the P-4s, he says, holds 32 grams (just over an ounce) of plastic explosive.

“When one of the mines ignites,” he explains, “it sends shrapnel flying upwards at a speed of 6,000 to 7,000 meters per second, at a temperature of up to 4,000 degrees Celsius. It sounds lethal but it’s usually not. That’s because the idea of these mines is not to kill but to maim; that’s because six to eight people are needed to deal with a single wounded. So the idea, really, is to decimate the troops. Mines blow up feet, legs and hands, while the aftershock blasts sand and dirt into the wounds and genital area, destroying muscle tissue.”

Every step taken in Kuchchaveli is taken with care. Even the cleared areas are approached with caution; what if a mine slipped through the dragnet? Treading lightly, I make my way to the local school, where mines were recovered from the playground. Outside are a series of cartoon posters in Sinhalese and Tamil, showing a pigtailed girl pointing in alarm to stray mines, mortars and rockets. Behind her stand a parent, a cleric and a teacher.

“If you see something suspicious,” the caption reads, “report it to your elders!”

In the empty classroom, the scene is equally grim. Instead of wildlife posters or world maps, the walls are plastered with mine identification charts. A poster showing six mines invites kids to match each one with its name and country of origin.

The beach, 100 yards away, is bisected by a fence, emblazoned at regular intervals with skull-and-crossbones warning signs. A short distance away, cement is being poured for permanent signposts and fences, marking the areas where the Sri Lankan navy will keep their existing mines in situ. (The army and navy deal with mine clearing on their own bases.)

Near the remains of a Hindu temple, I meet a team leader who asks to be called Peter. He’s a black-haired, fierce-eyed team leader from Jaffna, the heart of the country’s ethnic strife. Peter joined the DDG in July 2004, well before the tsunami. He’s exasperated by what he’s seen.

“Some records say there are more than 1 million mines in the north and east,” he affirms. “So If we clear 100 mines in this place, it’s solving .01 percent of the problem.

“Look around this village,” Peter says, gesturing at the dirt streets, shambled homes and thin cattle. “This is one of the effects of this war. People in these areas are not well educated. The one thing they do get is mine education.

“We want to do something for the motherland,” he asserts. “But we’re frustrated. What’s the use of our effort, unless the government and rebels agree not to lay more mines? All this money, all this labor, all this time. It’s pointless. If there would be a peace agreement between the government and the LTTE, we could make real progress.” This government, he pronounces bitterly, “is bullshit.”

Although the DDG will soon wrap up its operations in Kuchchaveli, they’ll continue their work in 27 other areas. There may come a point when a mine ban in Sri Lanka is realized and the monsters beneath Naba Vavuniyu’s bed vanish. Meanwhile, several major nightmares persist.

“First,” Grayson says, “there’s no actual peace agreement between the country’s warring factions, just a cease-fire.” Also, during the two years since the cease-fire, the government has been juggling an awful lot of issues, and that was before the tsunami. They’ve stopped planting mines, and for now, that’s good enough for them. The ban just isn’t a priority.

The process gets even more complicated when it comes to the “dangerous areas” still under LTTE control. There, an independent demining group run by the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization pokes and prods the soil. It’s a tangled web, woven through decades of suspicion and resentment.

Nimbly, the UNDP supports demining efforts on both sides. “But it’s difficult,” Grayson allows with an audible sigh. “They’re living in a very complicated place.”

Last week, Dwayne and I visited the ancient city of Anuradhapura, famous for Sri Maha Bodhi: a full-grown ficus religiosa planted from a sapling of the tree that sheltered Buddha during his enlightenment. Kandy has a very different attraction. Two and a half millennia ago, an incisor was recovered from the ashes of the Buddha’s cremation. That tooth now rests in Kandy’s Sri Dalada Maligawa: the Temple of the Tooth. A relic beyond price, it is locked within a series of seven solid gold and jewel-encrusted caskets. No one sees the tooth itself. Even the elite have only glimpsed the seventh, innermost chamber: a small, jewel-encrusted cylinder. (Once a year, in August, the entire reliquary is placed on the back of a gorgeously costumed elephant and paraded around the temple grounds with giddy fanfare.)

The number “seven” is a meaningful digit in Buddhism. The infant Siddhartha took seven steps after his birth and meditated under the Bodhi tree for seven weeks. Our visit, then, is coincidentally timed. As we arrive at the city’s artificial lake, Dilan explains that exactly seven years ago — on Jan. 25, 1998, at 6 a.m. — a truck carrying 250 kg of explosives drove up to the entrance of the Tooth Temple. The ignited bomb killed at least 20 people, collapsed walls, and shattered stained-glass windows in a Christian church a quarter-mile away.

The psychotic attack (I remember being stunned by the headline) was staged by the Tamil Tigers in an attempt to destroy the tooth itself. The tooth was saved by the temple’s huge iron doors but the temple edifice sustained enormous damage. Now the repaired structure is surrounded by a spiked fence, while police and Sri Lanka army troops patrol the area day and night.

Buddhism is a beautiful religion, based on the values of personal awakening and universal responsibility. Buddha’s main teaching centers on impermanence, the undeniable observation that all phenomena are subject to dissolution. Nothing, in other words, lasts forever. It seems useful, on this full-moon anniversary of the tsunami, to take a break from my Mercy Corps duties and investigate how Sri Lanka’s Buddhist majority (74 percent of the population) is dealing with the disaster on both practical and spiritual levels.

The Kandy sanga, or Buddhist community, is divided into two chapters. One, the Malwata, oversees a quiet and peaceful monastery on the eastern shore of the lake. The other, Asgiriya, has offices in the Tooth Temple itself.

Our first stop is the Malwata complex, where we wait quietly in a cool anteroom for the head monk to receive us. The room is lovely: worn, polished teak floors, with a breeze blowing through the doorway. The skylights are open to the sun, rain and wind. Portraits of smiling monks, all holding round palm fans, gaze from the walls.

While we relax, Dilan (who is from Kandy) tells us that the monk we hope to see — Thibbotuwawe Sri Sumangala — did something rather extraordinary, considering the events of 1998. Four days after the tsunami, he and his monks loaded 26 trucks with food, medicine and supplies. They drove the trucks due east and delivered the supplies directly into the hands of the Tamils near Trincomalee.

“It was a way of saying that religion doesn’t matter,” explains Dilan. “For the past 20 years, Sinhalese and Tamils can’t find a chance to talk to each other. With this disaster, there is an opening to communicate. So we give help to them, from the bottom of our hearts.”

Time passes and Dwayne and I wait and wait. After two hours, we’re told that Sri Sumangala is indisposed and won’t be able to meet us. Normally, such a turn of events would twist my mind-set into a balloon hat. But after our long rest amid so many enlightened faces, I simply wag my head and fetch my flip-flops.

The Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic of Lord Buddha, as it’s formally known, is an opulent place, with numerous chambers, antechambers, balconies, libraries, altar rooms and inner sanctums. During our visit, the inner courtyard is decked with thousands of flowers and jammed with devotees. Everyone is wearing white. Strings of gardenias surround the inner chambers and incense burns everywhere. The smells and hubbub are intoxicating. (You don’t meet a lot of South Asians, we note, lobbying for “fragrance-free” environments.)

Dilan leads us out of the main temple and through a side door, avoiding the crowds craning for a glimpse through the opened door of the Tooth chamber. We cross a grassy yard where people light oil lamps in wrought-iron candelabras shaped like Bodhi tree leaves and eight-spoked wheels (a symbol of Buddha’s “Eightfold Path” to liberation). Yesterday, we learn, 20,000 lamps burned in this courtyard, a luminous memorial to the tsunami victims.

To our right is a garden compound, removed from the bustle of the temple itself. Here, in a dark and cool room decorated with pictures of past Asgiriya abbots, we find the Tooth Temple’s chief monk. His name is also a mouthful: Reverend Warakawe Dhammaloka Thero.

Dhammaloka is one of those monks one loves at first sight. He’s a broad-shouldered man in a bright orange robe, affable and perpetually amused. Dilan, who will translate for us, bows low, placing his hands together in respect. We follow suit.

“I’ve just returned from Colombo,” Dhammaloka states cheerfully. He is also a professor at the University of Peradeniya. “And I was about to take a nap and prepare for this evening’s rituals. But so many of you, from around the world, have given our country so much. My time is yours.”

I ask the reverend how he, a Buddhist leader, counsels people who have lost so much in this disaster? What lesson can be learned from this event?

His answer is complex but sensible. Immediately after the tsunami the monks began a series of chanted blessings, performed every evening since. But that, Dhammaloka explains, “is like aspirin.” The next pressing need is food and shelter. On Feb. 4, the prayers will end and the monastery will concentrate on direct relief. And while the monks assist the refugees materially, they will work with their minds as well.

“We’ll try to explain to the people,” Dhammaloka says, “the impersonal nature of the event. This is the reality of karma. Our life doesn’t belong to us; it’s like a flame that can be extinguished in an instant, without warning.”

There are two important terms in Buddhism, explains Dhammaloka, that relate to the tsunami. One is “kalachakra,” the wheel of time. The other is “kalavipati,” which refers to natural disasters that occur on that wheel. No one expects terrible things to happen, but good and bad events are inevitable facets of human life.

“This is the real medicine,” Dhammaloka explains. “But it’s not easily absorbed. It takes a long time to work.”

So what is the main challenge for the monastery, and the Buddhist community, during the coming year? Dhammaloka nods, then points to my notebook, indicating that his next statement, more than anything, must be recorded.

“At this time,” he says, “so many countries have stepped forward, offering to help Sri Lanka and asking nothing in return. The government must learn to organize these people and help them work together as a single team. Otherwise, there is only inequality, confusion and resentment. In that case, the tsunami disaster will be never-ending; like a wound that never heals.”

As I rise to go, the monk asks me to write down one final thing. “Please,” he says, “make a special note. To everyone who has helped us, from any country, of any religion, of any age. As one human being to another: Thank you.”

We leave the shade of the garden, emerging into the clouded dusk of the temple grounds. Fruit bats sail through the sky. Beneath a huge open-air shelter, thousands of devotees — housewives and teachers, taxi drivers and lawyers — chant prayers of salvation. Oil lamps flicker and the full moon rises behind the Kandy hills.

Wednesday, Jan. 26, is the one-month anniversary of the tsunami. Dwayne has flown back to San Francisco and I’ve returned to Colombo. At 8:30 in the morning, Dilan turns on the car radio and combs the airwaves. Beginning at 9:05, he informs me, services will be held for the souls who perished in the waves. Four events — one for each of the main religions — are scheduled at four locations across the breadth of this battered island.

In the Nallur temple in Jaffna, far to the north, Hindus are performing pujas for the dead. The Kandy temple is hosting yet another invocation, and the Madu church, in Puttalam, is conducting Catholic rites.

Here in Colombo, the place to be is the Devatagaha Mosque, an elegant white building, flanked by minarets. Sri Lanka’s population is only 10 percent Muslim but many of the affected people were Islamic fishermen. One of the first people I meet inside the spare, echoic mosque is Naqeeb Mowiana, a lanky, friendly man in a tight skullcap. “From Galle to Hambantota,” he tells me, “my father’s family lost 37 people.”

I’ve brought no skullcap but the groundskeeper improvises. A small plastic fruit basket is overturned and placed on my head. Sporting this ridiculous attire, I am ushered into an office to sit with the visiting dignitaries. “We are praying to the Almighty,” I’m told by the deputy mayor of Colombo, “to let the victims of the tsunami enter Jennathul Firdhouse, the Gardens of Paradise.”

It amazes me that the place isn’t filled with media. In fact, I’m the only foreigner present. Not only that, I’m American, and Jewish. As this information circulates, it becomes clear to the assembled believers, and this infidel alike, that my presence here cannot be accidental.

At 9:05 a.m., the time of the first wave, 50 men in spotless caftans and skullcaps gather in the mosque’s prayer room. Led by their imam, the fiercely dynamic Jaleel Muhiyaddeen Qadirie, considered by his followers a living saint, the chanting begins. Standing amid these men, in a white-tiled room with fans whirling above and pictures of Mecca on the walls, I lose all sense of national and ethnic boundaries. The oration is in Arabic — the only word I understand is “tsunami” — but the passion in Qadirie’s voice is universal.

The prayers continue until 9:36 a.m., the moment the great wave impacted the shores of Sri Lanka, sweeping more than 30,000 people to their deaths. Interspersed throughout is the Imam’s sermon: a call for all the residents of the land to join together, and rebuild Sri Lanka.

“Some of those who went to their morning prayers on that day,” the imam cries, “did not pray in the afternoon. This is the lesson for everyone. The tsunami picked up everything and everyone; it called each person by name, deciding whether they would live or die. Regardless of who you are, there is no guarantee of a second day, or hour, or even a second breath. Yesterday is gone; tomorrow is doubtful. We have only the present moment to do good works, to love each other, and to praise God.”

The iman offers a prayer that the people of Sri Lanka learn to live together peacefully, and a prayer of thanks for the agencies and charities that have come to the county in its hour of need. Chants of “amin” — “may it be so” — follow each benediction. Around me, men place their palms upward in supplication, or over their hearts

When the ceremony concludes, the circle of worshippers begins to rotate, forming a receiving line that snakes past the imam and other VIPs. Everyone shakes each other’s hand and murmurs of greeting and blessing ring through the tiled room. All this is being filmed, and I try, discreetly, to back away, feeling out of place among this community of worshippers. But I’m taken by the arm and pulled into the fray by an elderly man who reminds me of my grandfather.

“You must come,” he says, simply. “You, and I, same God. All, same God.”

I enter the circle and move with the crowd. One by one, in turn, each man takes my hand. Every one of them looks directly into my eyes, with an expression I cannot describe and will never forget. I’m thinking: No tarpaulin or schoolbook, no soccer ball or Frisbee, has meant more to these people than my presence in this room. And nothing I’ve accomplished with Mercy Corps, as part of their relief effort in Sri Lanka, has meant more to me personally.

Later, after a cup of milk tea in the mosque office, the imam approaches me. “Are your parents alive?” he asks.

“My mother is alive,” I reply. “My father passed away 20 years ago.”

Jaleel Muhiyaddeen Qadirie, tsunami survivor and servant of Allah, reaches into his breast pocket and extracts a crisp 1,000 rupee bill. He places it in my hands, and holds it there.

“When you return home,” the Imam says. “Buy your mother a bowl of fresh fruit.”

As we leave the mosque and reclaim our shoes, I query Dilan. “Do you understand why he did that?”

“Of course,” my guide replies. “He is Muslim. Very generous people. And by the way …”

“Yes?”

“Your own fruit bowl is still on your head.”

I spend the hot afternoon indoors, writing up my notes. By the time I leave my room it’s half past 6. I walk slowly along the seaside promenade of Galle Face Road and buy 20 rupees worth of potato chips from a street vendor. The bag is homemade, folded from a page cut from an old science textbook — an illustration of the lunar module, en route to the moon.

Sunset comes quickly near the fast-moving equator. The Arabian Sea fills the western horizon, pink-tinged gray from north to south. A few weeks ago, people walked along this beach in silence, staring fearfully at the swell. The healing process is well underway but one wonders if the lessons have been learned, and not just in South Asia.

“You can read a thousand books,” the monk in Kandy told the assembled crowd, “but if you don’t apply them to your life, you haven’t learned anything. In the same way, if mankind ignores nature, and the language of nature, we will always be caught unawares. The sea warned us when it pulled away from the shore; many people treated it like a curiosity. Many who were warned thought it was a joke. Those who understood, survived. Those who didn’t, perished.”

I munch a few chips and look west toward the tankers on the horizon. Below, along the breakwater, the surf slaps the shore with a steady, gentle rhythm. Couples and children frolic on the sand, gleefully dodging the waves.