Trip to Asia starts journey of the heart

When Helen Keller said, “Life is a daring adventure,” she could have been speaking about Kelli Mlinarik Marko ’91. But to hear Marko tell it, all her adventures have come as naturally as following her heart.

“Heart” is a word that comes up a lot when talking to Marko. Warm and enthusiastic, she conveys the joy and wonder of life. In her case, life has led her far from her hometown of Bowling Green–all the way to Denver and then Thailand–but kept her close to the hearts of those she has met.

During the first of eight months over four winters she spent in Southeast Asia, she was surprised to find that she felt completely at home. “People have places they belong,” she says. “Thailand made so much sense to me from the first time. It was soft on my heart.

“Here, we’re always rushing and we feel we must be accomplishing things. There, you can be appreciated for who you are. It’s a much more heart-centered life.”

She discovered that people everywhere are, as the Thai say, “same same but different.” She recalls at one point suddenly realizing that the land so far from home “felt normal. Not that I had lost the sense of wonder at its difference, but in a delightful way. The concept of ’same same but different’ has become a guiding principle to me.”

The love and hospitality she received led to opportunities to participate in life there, beginning with a cookbook she wrote to benefit the Elephant Nature Park and its founder, Lek. All of about five feet tall, Lek risked her own life to establish the park and save the elephants from abominable lives of pain, torture and grueling work by giving them a safe place where they would be cared for. Although elephants are revered and valued in Thailand, Marko says, the little-known underside is that they are also abused and their spirits broken to make them more manageable.

While Marko was at the park, she learned from Lek how to cook Thai food, and then began hosting Thai dinners back in Denver to raise money for the park’s important work, eventually writing and publishing A Taste of Heaven: Recipes from the Elephant Nature Park. Included with the recipes are beautiful photos of the elephants and their life stories. Sales of the cookbook, online and at the park itself, have raised more than $20,000 so far.


To buy A Taste of Heaven: Recipes from the Elephant Nature Park, visit www.lulu.com/content/834615.

To learn more about the park, visit www.elephantnaturefoundation.org.