TRAILS UP NORTH

Glo Abaeo Tuazon
Reasons to love Kapangan

Why do I love Kapangan? Let me count the ways. There is nothing so special about the place to make it stand out among the rest I thought. Years ago when I first stepped into Kapangan I saw it as a dreary place, uneventful and just remotely simple there’s nothing much to it. A few years later I was invited back and was taken around.

It was like going there a first time and seeing everything a different way, or maybe I matured and saw it in another perspective. But like a book with a plain cover, Kapangan when read is a bestselling novel. And exploring the place beats sitting around just reading about it.

First, the mountains may not be as spectacular as others but it has its mysteries. They even have the face of St. Nick etched in one of them. Second. Along the ways, are caverns of limestones, some are bat habitats, some are nooks filled with long-ago war-time memories, some claimed as burial grounds by ancient ancestors.

The views are amazing in most of the farthest barangays, the interlapping mountains soothing the tired imaginings of urban minds. Terraces here and there, hidden rice fields among crops of corn and vegetables. The list goes on. The people of Kapangan have come a long way from being the shy municipality sitting amidst the clawing of the world around it.

A few years ago it started opening itself up to the embrace of tourism, ecological conservation and cultural appreciation. And so they set aside a couple of days in a year to celebrate all these for the people, a way of gathering the locals to enjoy the bounties of their land and traditions. Now on its fourth year, the local dads decided to include a day more to launch what they thought would make the place have a unique festival identity.

Thus was born the Anitap Festival of Kapangan. Anitap is a tree, abounding in most if not all the barangays of Kapangan. Scientifically it is called Macaranga Cumingii. So why name a festival in honor of a tree? Anitap I was told is a sturdy but light wood. Unlike the big trees, anitap does not grow very tall nor very thick. Take off the bark and the trunk is light in color and lightweight too. Carved or shaped in a way, a cut of trunk produces a distinct sound different from each other.

Discovered by the people in the early days the anitap was utilized to make musical instruments before the introduction of the gongs. In Kapangan as well as most of the other places in Benguet, the anitap was the raw source of the instrument called tallak. This piece of indigenous wooden instrument is used even to this day in the performance of the tallak during canao celebrations. Kapangan decided to adopt the name of this tree particularly to pay homage to an age old tradition, that this tree has been part of a heritage that lasted throughout the ages.

Thus was born the Anitap festival of Kapangan . For the visitors who were lucky enough to be part of the festival, the five-day affair was a joyous celebration of friendly encounters, not to mention the tasty treats of binubudan and kinuday washed in a generous bathe of tapuey. Next year is a promise of more things to show and tell and experience. -- Email: twilight_glo@yahoo.com