Day 983 – Damian Evans

Thursday, September 28, 2023

Yesterday, I was looking at my monthly newsletter from Far Horizons, the travel company I have used for many of my trips. I was shocked to read that Damian Evans had died. He was a young man. (Late 30s – early 40s? Cancer.)

I first learned of Damian from a National Geographic special on Angkor Wat. Damian had done the LIDAR work in Angkor. In that special he showed a canopied forest in Cambodia. Then he showed it with all the trees and vegitation stripped away. You could see where the old canals and roads were, where the huts and temples were. He then put little images of huts on each square and temples on the larger ones. “This,” he said, “is how Angkor looked when it was the largest city in the world.” It was mind blowing.

I wanted to use those images in a talk I was giving. Damian was a subject matter expert and group leader for Far Horizons. They were kind enough to put me in touch with him. I only needed a few images. He sent me his whole slide deck! Not only that but he sent me a link to a talk he gave using those slides. So I had a much better idea what was what. We chatted by email on a few things. I was going back to Angkor and I told him I had hoped to meet him. He said he had moved on to Laos, but he told me whom to get hold of – Kim Po Thai. Wow, Thai has a resume that reads like the who’s who of archaeology/adventure filming: Nat Geo, History Channel, Smithsonian, Travel Channel, etc. My wife upon seeing that asked, “Are you worthy?”

No, I said, but my thoughts exactly. What was I doing hanging with these people? 

The last time I heard from Damian was July 2022. I had just procurred the 1960s tome that is the classic mapping and images of Angkor. 

He wrote back:

Very nice, those can be a little hard to get ahold of these days…

He did a trip for Far Horizons. I considered going, but time did not permit. I’d catch him next time.

There will be no next time.