Local couple write about nation on the cusp of change.

Byline: KAREN McCOWAN The Register-Guard

FORTY YEARS after they fell in love with Bhutan as backpacking college students, Vida residents Blyth and Russ Carpenter have published a book on the world's last independent Buddhist state.

In "The Blessings of Bhutan" (University of Hawaii Press, $24.95), the pair examine the ecological and cultural treasures packed into the Himalayan kingdom, which is about one-sixth the size of Oregon in both population and area.

They also consider the challenges facing that country.

"They are doing a kind of remarkable experiment in modernizing to improve the standard of living for their people without sacrificing their environment and one of the world's extraordinary cultures," Blyth Carpenter said.

After retiring (Blyth as an Asian history teacher; Russ as an attorney specializing in health care), the couple embarked in 1996 on an unofficial second career as "a two-person Peace Corps" to Bhutan.

Each year since, they have spent at least one month in the country.

The couple became convinced that communications technology can provide the links to the outside world that are essential to Bhutan's survival as an independent state.

Otherwise, the Carpenters say, the small kingdom is at risk of being swallowed up by a giant, powerful neighbor such as India or China.

To that end, they have helped a Bhutanese publisher convert from printing press to electronic publishing. They've helped establish an Internet cafe and a radio communications system for remote villages. They've helped Bhutanese weavers market their textiles in the United States.

Paradoxically, they've felt themselves transformed by their exposure to values of a culture little-changed since the seventh century.

"Our love for Bhutan is a sword with two edges," they write. "We observe cultural divides at every turn. We (the authors) are linear, the Bhutanese are intuitive. We are agnostic, the Bhutanese are Buddhist from birth. We watch the clock, the Bhutanese see time as a relatively unimportant element of life ... Bhutanese culture has made us think."

Brent Olson, director of Bhutan trips for Geographic Expeditions, called the Carpenters' book "a wealth of insight into the people, culture and heart of Bhutan."

The book is illustrated with more than 40 color photographs of Bhutan's spectacular landscape, its Buddhist art and architecture, and its colorfully robed residents. Nearly all of the photos are by the authors, who have previously published books on natural history and aquatic life.

Karma Ura, director of the country's Centre for Bhutan Studies, calls the book "a captivating and splendid account of a complex nation on the cusp of tradition and modernity."

That cusp is a place of both opportunity and danger, the Carpenters say.

"We believe that the arrival of the Internet was clearly in the best interests of the country," they write. "It is already serving as a vital lifeline of knowledge for people in the urban areas of Bhutan. And e-mail has revolutionized international communications. For the first time in its history, Bhutan has a cheap and reliable way to stay in touch with the outside world."

But the same technology has brought television, illegal in Bhutan until 1999. "Amazingly, American professional wrestling and trashy programs from Indian are among the most popular shows, " Blyth Carpenter said.

The pair know such exports could be the biggest threat of all to a country never conquered or assimilated by another culture.