TRAILS UP NORTH

Glo Abaeo Tuazon
The highlands of Sacasacan

SADANGA, Mountain Province -- Sacasacan. A weird name for a beautiful place. Located above the other barangays of Sadanga, this place overlooks most of the mountains that surrounds the municipality. From the crest to the west way before sundown, the mist shrouds most of the valleys, transforming it into a mystical place where legends live. At sunset, it becomes a glorious fusion of deep orange and reds.

Sacasacan is the oldest village in the area. It was where the ascendants of the townspeople of Sadanga originated from. According to the old lores, it was because of a pig wandering away from their homestead that the owners strayed further away in search of it and discovered that the place down below is more accessible and had more flatlands for agriculture. Sacasacan for a time stayed the capital village of the municipality until it was changed and passed on to Sadanga Poblacion.

Being in the uplands, the strategic view gave it advantage which was well beneficial to the Americans in the early 1900's after they took over the Spanish forces. They constructed a garrison and a lookout point on a ledge overlooking the possible routes of incoming enemy forces.

To this day, the lookout stayed where it was, reconstructed a few times and turned to concrete, serving more as a view deck in these days of peace. There also stands a few meters away a chapel of old GI sheets, the roof painted in a dull red more for weather protection rather than for aesthetics. I was told this used to house the American soldiers, then turned into a temporary school building, now a chapel. Even the rusty old bell hanging at a corner near the doorway tells a story. It hangs there in a disfigured way, like a reminders of the village's past wounds and triumphs.

Taking a walk a little bit on the northern slope is an amazing view of the Fokong Rice Terraces. A whole valley encamped between the mountains. Like a bowl of rice where sustenance could be had, it lies there like a gaping maw, filled to the brim with the crop of the season. The overpowering greens of the newly planted rice reaching for the skies above it.

The paddies were like gentle waves of water interlapping each other in an almost subtle way, not abrupt or crude. Up close the sides were neatly stoned walled, one craft the people here are proud of. The stones piled atop each other, in perfect fit that it almost seem the stones were "born" for each other.

Here and there the womenfolk work the land from sunrise to sundown, tending to the crops with gentle calloused hands. When the sun dips below the horizon, they know it is time to straighten up and head home, often teasing each other along the way. In this place the teasing goes on, normal to sarcastic in a way but still acceptable to them. They go home to their families and the next day the routine goes on. Life here in the uplands go as simple as it could, but they find happiness in the little things, the best way they know how.

Morning kissed me with the crowing of the cocks and life coming about the village. People doing the chores, pots clanging and smoke puffing out of makeshift chimneys. The pigs were fed, the kids sent running to school in their slippers, the house closed and again the cycle of life begins.

There is so much here to see. Maybe unlike the spires and skyscrapers of modern cities, but these are real people, clinging to the comfort of the throbbing heartland, passed on as legacies of family lineage from generation to generation.The smile of the toothless old man and the tiny old lady manually separating the grains from the chaffs made me stop awhile. These were people of the uplands where my father came from, my people. -- email: twilight_glo@yahoo.com