TRAILS UP NORTH

Glo Abaeo Tuazon
Range where buffalos roam

O give me a home,
where the buffalos roam. ....
where seldom is heard a discouraging word
and the skies are not cloudy all day.

I was very sick most of the day, but we have something planned and I so much wanted to see it. A friend told me of a place up the mountains of Samoki, Bontoc, where some incurable ailments were sometimes healed. Not that I'd go there for the purpose but it got me all curious, besides I heard the place was really pretty too. With legs like logs and my head bursting to infinity I followed and trudged uphill.

Taking the route of the Bontoc-Banaue road running parallel the river we took a sudden hitch and left the paved road. From here the ricefields of "Faniash" can be seen. Green in all expanse, broken only by the white, grays and browns of the river traversing next to it. I looked away and started a painful but uncomplaining climb. The pine trees here are huge, some are mother trees I say.

Curling up their limbs or stretched all the way to Heaven, like creatures communing with the Great Being. Looking at them made the hike a little bit better, draining away my pains and soothing my thoughts. We came to a place where a previous bonfire took place and was told we need to burn something for the forest dwellers, like a safe passage to the mountains.

And then we came to a small hut. Strewn inside were relics of tobacco leaves hanged on small poles staked to the ground. Bottles of empty and half empty gins were around too and the ashes of old fires. This I learned is one of those places, wawalikan or wawalitan. Walit or walik to mean the ritual, to invoke and call upon the spirits for the ease of those who are sick, and leave sacrifices that they might delight in.

Modern days would see people going to hospitals and resorting to medicinal drugs for cures, but even those sometimes could not heal a man. In the pagan belief of sacrificing to the spirits, or to ancestors gone ahead, people here sometimes resort to doing this traditional practice, hoping against all hope for a reprieve. I once saw a similar ritual in another place, and I can feel the hair on the nape of my neck rising. I know it would not be far from what they do in these places.

In an area ahead called Pula, we smoked the trees again. It reminded me of the American Indian practice of doing the smoke signals. As we trudged ahead I could sense the life in this place. That in the silence of everything, one could almost hear the whispers of the leaves as we passed by. T

he pine needles cushioning our feet on the forest floor added to the echoing silence, yet nevertheless the chirping of birds were so pronounced that the sounds seem to stretch to eternity. The swishing of the winds through the gaps among the trees annihilated most of my bad moods and pains when we first started. The beauty of the place is unlike the other places I’ve been into. This place is raw beauty. Raw and comforting in a different way.

The last few yards to the destination saw the rain catch up on us. I decided Id love the rain on me this day and like kids catching the rain on a summer day, we welcomed the soaking embrace of cold, cold streams draining the fatigue of the weary souls. The clearing soon appeared, to my surprise. It was a wide span of ground, naked and bald except for the carpet of grass. On the left side was a shallow lake, something like a marshland, a little bit wider than the clearing.

Its banks lined with old and ferocious pines and some willows, the branches dipping their fingertips on the waters. My eyes were all aglow with glee, like a kid left on a prairie and running wild among the dandelions. The city left me hungry for places like these.
And I took it all in, wallowed in it like an animal caged too long and tasting the first licks of freedom. Every mountain has a certain effect on me, different in every place. Here was freedom and solitude and healing. You can shout your heart out for all the pains you have and the world would care for once. This is "Posong". I

n the wonder of it all, I wished for this place (and similar places like these) to stay the way it is. With the herds of cows and buffalos roaming the place wild and free. The untamed rural beauty, something you would give a day (or forever) to stick in the mind, a reminder that God does have a way of making us realize the simplest of everything is much more precious than the complexities of modern services.

Given the warmth of the campfire and the smell of smoked meat on the fireside was enough to sate me today, downed with a dose of cold spring water. I don’t mind the dirt and grime, my toothy grin is enough to compliment my aesthetics today. In this place I found another home in my heart. email: twilight_glo@yahoo.com