TRAILS UP NORTH

The road to Kan-ew
GLO A. TUAZON

BONTOC, Mountain Province -- It was just a name of a place I used to hear from folks who came to visit my father when I was a kid. A little part of it stuck inside my head and lately cropped up again when I went to Mountain Province and heard it mentioned. With my nonstop prodding, I drove a friend crazy enough to drive me to the place just for me to stop picking on him. Eleven in the morning and already the heat was searing, toasting my skin like bacon on a frying pan.

We passed Samoki on a trail of dust, admiring the newly planted terraces and wasting precious time to take photographs along the way. We drove on and I could not help but notice the sounds of chainsaws whirring away as we moved further up. Then we reached a diversion road separating in a Y. First road was where we came from, the other goes up to a tricky, dirt path to Kan-ew, and the one at the bend going down leads to Talubin. There were soldiers up at the bend, fully armed and a tank was on a standby.

It’s not usually like this on ordinary days, just that today was a special and they were on red alert. This area was once said to be an ambush sight, of people on either side of the social balance scale, of clashing principles. And they wanted to prevent similar situations that some dignitaries were around town. From here you can view Talubin in the distance. A cluster of houses amidst corrugated mountains around it. Way above it was a road leading to Barlig.

But today my heart was set on Kan-ew. We took the dirt road going up to Kan-ew, passing by a rectangular structure of a building, constructed of GI sheets and concrete. It was unpainted and unadorned. From the signage I learned it was the elementary school of Talubin. Looking back down to the direction of Talubin and imagining the distance the children have to walk everyday to get to school gave me an idea how tedious life is in these parts. I could not complain.

And then just as suddenly, the terrain changed, from the hot dusty, dirt roads came mountains of granite boulders. The road carved out from it. It must have taken a long, hard time to tick the stones, even with machines to open a passage connecting Kan-ew to Bontoc. Now I realized that my adventures were indeed just another name for trouble, just that the word adventure is more romantic.

The road or whatever you want to call it was like a dried up river bed. The road itself like a project started was left unfinished. I could not say the path was of gravel because there were stones of all sizes, some bigger than my head and very sharp. The vehicle had to crawl the way down in an almost whimpering stance, to avoid stones cutting the tires and for the car not to slide all the way down. It was a one-vehicle road, nowhere to navigate or turn your car around just in case you chicken out.

Looking on my right I could view all the green of the mountains I want, and way, way below is the river. A little slip of the tires would send it tumbling down eternity, and so I braved the ride, my knuckles turning pale with a grip that could squeeze an orange dry. Now I understand why this place was once one of the favorite hiding places of people at war with the government forces. More than an hour later and we were down on a landing.

The car seemed to heave, grateful that half of the ordeal was over. I was looking at an expanse of broad mountain shoulders, the bases overlapping each other, cradling a few houses huddled close to each other. There were about 10 to 15 in the cluster and only three clusters to comprise the whole village.

But I felt the unfamiliar. I haven’t seen a soul stir since we came, just one barking dog that got tired and stopped after awhile. You can feel the silence stretching all the way to Heaven. I took one look and I shattered like glass. How can people live in such a desolate manner? It was so lonely that all that was missing were tumbleweeds blowing in the stark landscape. It could have been a dead town except for that dog and the few carabaos I saw from when we were still rolling down the road.

We saw no one come out from all those houses all that time I’ve been climbing rocks, or straddling this and that to get to another side just to get photographs. No one was curious enough to see who the hell came in an unusual time on a rather unusual day. It felt lonely seeing the place, the word forsaken entering my mind. I heard some missionaries came to this same place just a few months earlier, to meet the people, spread some Words and ease the starkness of the land.

I heard too they built a small chapel for worship, a place to get the people together once in awhile, with high hopes that the people may find comfort in it. I was thinking that maybe, with the roads getting fixed and access to this secluded land becoming better, this place and its people would have a better chance to develop and prosper. Then I remembered a long-forgotten tale I heard of this place long ago, that it was reprimanded by Kabunyan for the killing of his son Lumawig. Then again that was just a tale and reality has more to say than these tales of forgotten pasts.

Most of those who made it out of their village and were educated found comfort outside this town, caressed by urban dreams. But like prodigal sons, they always come back once in awhile and consider themselves lucky to have been brought up here, the starkness of their lives pushing them to a positive continuity of everything, of faith and hope and life itself. So I came, I saw, I felt and my heart was left dented with a sorrow I cannot fathom.

One of these days I hope to come back and see more of it, maybe in a better situation. And with hopes that the roads would soon be smoother, access would soon be easier and the people having more reason to come out and appreciate their sunrises and sunsets.