Preparing to Climb Mt. Maculot

865 meters above sea-level and considered a minor climb, Mt. Maculot will be a pleasant hike. As for preparation, it will just entail the basics. Tomorrow at 3am, we leave for Batangas.

This is an excerpt from an email I sent my loving partner:

"It is just an interest that I had carried since I entered the University and found out about the UPMountaineers Society. I had since kept the images from memory close to my heart – always waiting for the time and opportunity to once again climb. You remember how my eyes come all aglow whenever I talk about the climbs I had been on. Think of it as an adventure – a thing that is ingrained in the mind of humans. Without the spirit of adventure, the first humans may not have ventured outside of their first riverside communities and founded the communities of the world.

Some people try to satisfy this impulse by doing things that may be considered as adventurous. Think of all the adventure that new gadgets, video games and malls that are out there can offer. For those who want more, there are the movies and better yet, scandalous and contemptuous behavior!

If resources and time will allow, people can travel. For those who want more, there are more challenging activities like kayaking, climbing, trekking and caving. I chose climbing of course.



Looking into the Crater of Taal Volcano (311m ASL - Batangas, Philippines) 2004



But as they say, it is hard to explain why climbing is so exhilarating and addictive. It is impossible to rationalize why climbers will take risks that most persons would shy away from. As for me, the experience of reaching the summit is almost a religious one. In overcoming all adversity on the way to the peak, seeing that there is no where else to go, and the understanding how insignificant I am compared to the vastness before me, brings a sort of peace. At that moment, I feel so tiny that my name no longer means anything.

It’s ironic that reaching the top can be looked upon as conquering the mountain, yet in reaching it, you come to realize that you are nothing - that nothing was really conquered.

I guess the experience is different for everybody. But in arriving back in Manila, I found myself to be more contemplative, more thoughtful.... and searching."

-April 6, 2005

My latest climb was at Mt. Tapulau at Iba, Zambales. A ten hour climb to the summit, it was a hike across three very different ecosystems. At the base of the mountain are farmlands and dusty grasslands. As you get higher, the waist-high grass makes way to lush rainforest. You will observe endemic ferns get larger and more numerous as you go. Near the peak, the vegetation thins out and again gives way to pine trees. In the Philippines, pines only grow in places of high altitude; and a Filipino shown pine will inevitably reminisce of childhood holidays in Baguio - unless of course if they were from Baguio or Benguet in the first place.

Mt. Tapulao (2037m ASL - Iba, Zambales, Philippines) April 2005



The peak is blanketed by dwarfed and knarled trees so twisted into each other that deviating from the trail would require the use of bolo or machete to penetrate the vegetation.

Mt. Tapulao 1 Hour Away From the Summit (2037m ASL - Iba, Zambales, Philippines) April 2005

Being a Filipino means living with a sort of cognizance of supernatural entities existing in a monistic world - which coexist in an uncomfortable manner with the dualistic world view of heaven and earth which originated outside of the orient. Priests and ministers easily dismiss these entities as fairytales yet claiming the greatest fairytale of all as the source of all the truths in the universe. But it means little to me whether they do exist or not. What I am concerned about is how it affects me. How looking into that thick cover of knarled trees wells up a primaeval fear in me.

Who stares back from within the green darkness? What life breathes from within the thick blanket of moss that covers each and every branch? Where will this lead us when you cannot see the sky and the general rule is to stay on the trail that leads to higher ground?

Mt. Tapulao - Clouds Rolling In (2037m ASL - Iba, Zambales, Philippines) April 2005

In the same way that devout church goers are silent inside cathedrals, we traversed silently and reverently through the eerie silence and afternoon darkness in a sort of resignation to the fate of travellers led astray by enkantada who neither needs to hide or be fleeting for the forest are theirs. So silent we must be, basking in our culture and history, knowing who we were and needing not the utterance of others to tell us of our place in this world. We knew who we were and the forest knows us by name.