It’s Time to Pass the Forest-Care Baton (Part 3)

     As children, we were super excited each time the trucks that hauled the logs from the mountains upstream stopped on our way home from work in the paddy fields or the upland farms, especially when the driver allowed us to sit atop his load of huge logs. We enjoyed how the wind brushed our faces like we were on the back of a carabao running non-stop up and down the mountain trail.

THE FORESTS OF DUPAX may not have been discovered to be habitat to charismatic wildlife such as the Philippine eagle, the tamaraw, the tarsier, and the mouse deer. But such lack might as well have been filled by the presence, as mentioned, of the Ilongots whose daring and jungle skills could put them at par with the Apache Indians.

Not only that. While our forests may not have been as photogenic as those of the pine stands of the Cordillera, at least one could say that if he happens to be a survivor of a plane crash in our wilderness, there’s plenty of wild food items he could stay alive with.

For example, bush meat from the deer (ugsa in Ilocano; la-man in Isinay), wild pig (alingo in Ilocano; bavuy si eyas in Isinay; baboy-damo in Tagalog), civet cat (mutit in Ilocano; amunin in Isinay; musang in Tagalog), fruit bat (paniki in Ilocano and Tagalog; pani-i in Isinay), and monitor lizard (banyas in Ilocano; baniyas in Isinay; bayawak in Tagalog) were common table fare when I was little.

Each time I developed scabies on my legs (acquired from eating too much igat  or eel), my grandmother would ask one of my uncles to go hunt for a monkey (sunggo in Ilocano; araw in Isinay; unggoy in Tagalog) the meat of which proved to be good antidote for skin allergies when cooked as adobo.

Because the streams and rivers seldom got murky nor dry, spearfishing mudfish (dalag in Ilocano and Tagalog; dalaj in Isinay), white goby (bukto in Ilocano; guggur in Isinay; biya in Tagalog), native perch (ar-aro in Ilocano; alalu in Isinay; martiniko in Tagalog), stone goby (bunog in Ilocano; sappilan in Isinay; biyang-bato in Tagalog), catfish (paltat in Ilocano; pattat in Isinay; hito in Tagalog), and tilapia was always a delight. With bare hands or with small nets one could get enough freshwater shrimps (lagdaw in Ilocano; ajdaw in Isinay) to make into “jumping salad” seasoned with bagoong and green mango or wild button tomatoes (butinggan in Ilocano and Isinay). 

Farmers were not yet using chemical fertilizers and pesticides then, so it was very safe to collect the fresh-water shells (particularly the bisukol, leddeg and birabid in Ilocano; respectively basikul, ambeveyo^ and genga in Isinay; kuhol in Tagalog ) and edible algae (tabtaba and bulbulintik in Ilocano; bajase in Isinay) that were at the time part (not pests) of the coupled forest-and-ricefield ecosystems. 

During heavy rains when meat, fish and shells were difficult to have, there were other organic food items free for the taking be it in the forest wild or along tree-covered riverbanks. 

Depending on the season, ubog (pith of the fishtail palm), barit (rattan shoot), and tabahat (edible jungle fern) were common then. Most other days, we stuck to pako. 

In summer, many of us became entomophagous (insect-eaters) as it was season for gathering the white eggs and nymphs of the abuos (tailor ant). The months of April-June, was fiesta for us in the barrio as we trooped to the riverside to catch abal-abal (May beetle; salagubang in Tagalog). 

When rats, locusts, and mayas (billit-tuleng in Ilocano) diminished our rice harvest, there was always the wild yam (karut in Ilocano and Isinay; nami in Tagalog; kalot in Bisaya) as alternative staple food.

You might think that we had gizzards of stone then but, yes, part of my happy memories of childhood was my having been nourished by food from the wilderness that most children or even adults of today will probably not be able to taste anymore or would only be able to sniff as “exotic food” in specialty  restaurants.

FOR MANY YEARS we thought that the Amorsolo-painting-like nature of my boyhood barrio would never end. But the picture started to change when huge bulldozers and strangers on board 10-wheeled trucks came to our barrio.

At first we were delighted to see new faces. We were also happy with the way the strangers improved the muddy road that passed by our barrio and opened up new routes in the hills that allowed us to bypass ricefields and avoid several river crossings. 

As children, we were super excited, too, each time the trucks that hauled the logs from the mountains upstream stopped on our way home from work in the paddy fields or the upland farms, especially when the driver allowed us to sit atop his load of huge logs. We enjoyed how the wind brushed our faces like we were on the back of a carabao running non-stop up and down the mountain trail.

But pretty soon our love for such free rides aboard the isahan, dalawahan, or tatluhan logs faded when, apart from muddying the river (where we swam and fished) when the trucks made their frequent trips, they also brought in a lot of people whose language we could barely understand. 

With the improved roads and the free rides on logging trucks, more and more forested areas were opened up to kaingin and settlement. There were opportunities for employment in the timber-cutting areas and in the sawmills for local people, yes. But only for the able-bodied males.

As if on cue, incidences of beheading in the forest fringes have also vanished as the presence of less-than-friendly people who started to populate the hillsides and riverbanks further upstream of town may have proved too big a challenge to the Ilongots. 

It didn’t take long, however, when we got problems we had not encountered before.

For instance, our abung-abung (farm huts) where earlier anyone was welcome to seek shelter when caught by darkness or thunderstorms, started to lose their resident salt, rice kettle, and even firewood. Cornfields and peanut farms whose produce have yet to be tasted by their owners suddenly had significant quantities of their edible parts missing.

Where during the pre-logging years our rivers never got murky, a few years after logging started our favorite fishing spots got totally obliterated when chocolate-colored water spilled out of the erstwhile placid rivers and either covered its path with silt or washed away bamboo clumps and nibbled at vegetable farms and ricefields by the riverside.

I wrote an essay many years ago for Focus Philippines and the Forestry Digest about such price we people of Dupax had to pay for allowing our once thick and verdant forests to be ransacked by non-natives. I was still looking for a wife at the time, but I already felt a sense of big lose then for my would-be kids and other children who stood to be deprived of their forest heritage, so I titled my essay “No More Poems for My Children.” 

Mind you, many years later, my sentiments got echoed by the group Asin with their “Kapaligiran” song the lines of which include:

Ang mga batang ngayon lang isinilang

May mga ilog pa kayang lalanguyan...

May mga puno pa kaya silang aakyatin

May dagat pa kaya silang matitikman.

LOOKING BACK NOW, I feel sad  that even those who could in all candor say “Me too... our house was near the forest” (or words to that effect) are not aggressively tapping their forest experience to help improve life in the  Philippines. 

There was once a movie that expounded on the wonders of  “paying forward” or passing on to others whatever good things another person did for you. How I wish people whose childhood lives had been happily entwined to forests could apply that beautiful concept to the conservation of our natural ecosystems.

As it is, however, things are not yet the way we would like them to be. Henry David Thoreau, my favorite nature writer and himself a forest dweller (when Walden Pond was still sylvan and biodiversity-rich), had a similar lament: “Each more melodious note I hear brings this reproach to me, that I alone afford the ear what would the music be.”

Short of using as mantra another pertinent quotation (this time attributed to an American Indian chief), “We didn’t inherit the world from our parents, we borrowed them from our children,” what I’m really trying to say is that we adults have a moral duty to teach children on how to keep our forests well.

There is no discounting how little steps of early child exposure to things of nature such as trees and hills and rivers and forests, including the flora and fauna and culture that dwell in or are associated with them, can work wonders to young people’s attitude towards nature and behavior vis-a-vis the environment later in life, especially when it’s their time to take over from where we have left off.

For my part, even as I miss the taste of venison and the meat of wild boar... even as I long for the night music of the kulluong (boat-like wooden vessel) being pounded as upland rice stalks are separated from the fat grains... even as I miss the hourly kraw-kraw-kraw of the kalaw and the crowing of the labuyo... I wish I could do more for the forests that nurtured me to become what I am today. 

I may have already gone first base, as it were, along this path by teaching my three “forest products” to be nature lovers when they were small. In fact, they are all grown-ups now, and I recently got into the habit of nudging them with this reminder: “When you have kids of your own,  please give me and your mom the freedom to bring them outdoors rain or shine, to chase dragonflies, catch tadpoles, soak in the river, play hide and seek under the trees, pitch tent on grassy ground, watch the moon and the stars at night, build bonfires on which to roast corn and camote, etc. etc. etc. – like what we used to do when you yourselves were kids.”

I may have done my little part, too, as a forester since much of my professional life has been devoted to the information, extension and communication aspects of forestry, using my boyhood exposure to forests and nature as framework, leverage, inspiration, and wind beneath my wings. 

I have served as writer/editor for the outreach publications of the UPLB College of Forestry that included the Conservation Circular, the Forestry Digest, the Makiling News, and later the Ilocano forest magazine Anaraar.

I have been part of the UP Los Baños team of foresters that shared forest conservation knowledge to science teachers in Manila, Quezon City, Pasay City, Caloocan, Rizal, Nueva Ecija, Mindoro, Lubang Island, Iloilo, and Sultan Kudarat in the 1976-77 Forest Conservation Education Program for Elementary Schools.

I was one of the water boys, so to speak, when we were yet winning to the fold fellow foresters who found it hard to balance their timber-focused mindsets with concern for marginalized forest-based communities.

But I really wish I could do more.

As a full-fledged senior citizen now, I feel I no longer have the physical wherewithal and academic fortitude to do forestry IEC work like I aggressively used to as a young forester. Well, then, perhaps teaching forest appreciation (plus love for birds, beetles, hills, cicadas, fireflies, rivers, dragonflies, fish, and the great outdoors) to my grandchildren yet to come may compensate for this shortcoming.

I just hope that doing so will result in the kids’ becoming better stewards of the Philippines -- and, for that matter, Planet Earth -- than I have ever been.

It’s Time to Pass the Forest-Care Baton (Part 2)

   

Our grandmothers in particular were strict when and where we went to play. For instance, they told us to stay close to our huts and to never climb trees nor go for a dip in the river during agmatuon (when the sun is directly overhead), a time when evil spirits are said to go after noisy and hard-headed kids.

IF THERE REALLY are guardian angels that shield children from sin and harm, then the one assigned to me must have worked non-stop 24/7 for many years. This was because, aside from minor bruises, spiny-amaranth thorns lodged on my soles, and skin allergies caused by contact with the babies of butterflies, I never met major, major accidents as a frequent forest visitor.

Not one of my playmates, too, ever had cases of getting stung by the spitting cobra, getting chased by a crazed wild pig, or getting embraced by a lovesick monkey.

Even as we were eager for adventure, perhaps we didn’t encounter life-threatening situations because we listened well to the counsels of our elders, for example: not to use our bolos this way or that way, especially when you are in the water.

Our grandmothers in particular were strict when and where we went to play. For instance, they told us to stay close to our huts and to never climb trees or go for a dip in the river at that time of day when the sun is directly overhead (agmatuon in Ilocano; namalintur in Isinay; tanghaling-tapat in Tagalog), a time when evil spirits are said to go after noisy and hard-headed kids.

They also cautioned us to avoid trees where a farmer has died after drinking too much basi, or ones known to have been hit by lightning. It was also a no-no for us to salivate for the fruits of a tree where a sinampade or ghost in priestly garb was once seen leaning, in much the same manner that it was taboo to go within striking distance of remnant forests that have a grotesque-looking balete.

As is natural for kids, however, we were not always saints. When someone warned us not to go near this part of the woods because of the presence of uyukan (honeybees), we only half listened ― for the mere mention of that word alone awakened our curiosity and tempted us to try our Olympian slingshot skills at the beehive and then run to the river when the thousands of bees thus provoked came looking for the culprits with their suicidal instincts and stings on the ready.

We committed venial sins, too, in summer when the song of the cicadas and the call of the birds and the scent of the ripe fruits in the wilderness were at their most irresistible pitch.

 And so, if we were not looking for bird’s nests or catching cicadas and dragonflies with long sticks the tips of which we coated with jackfruit latex, you would find us climbing guava, mango, tamarind, anonas, bignay, avocado, starapple, mabolo, santol, kasoy, jackfruit, pomelo, and duhat trees.

Not even the rumors of kumaw (sipay in Tagalog) said to kidnap gallivanting kids, put them in jute sacks, and extract their blood to fortify bridges under construction in downstream Magat or Cagayan River, could keep us from enjoying life and educating ourselves among the trees.

Let’s put it this way: Once revved up, it would already be difficult to wean kids from Mother Nature.

For the record, however, one thing was more scary for us than the balete-dwelling white ladies and the blood-using kidnappers mentioned above. This was when the bagbag tree (Erythrina species) started to shoot forth its blazing red flowers, signaling the season when Ilongot braves practiced their dreaded custom of collecting heads and went downhill to search for prey, usually Ilocano and Isinay kaingineros, be they boys or old people.

While the kumaw and the lampong may have been fiction fostered by mothers to keep their children from escaping their household chores, the Ilongots were real, warm-blooded people. We were afraid of them then because we did see their bloody handiwork displayed in front of the Presidencia (town hall) for identification, minus their heads.

To those who are hearing the name for the first time, the Ilongots are an indigenous people, now called Bugkalot, whose headhunting tradition as a forest-dwelling tribe has kept virgin forests in Nueva Vizcaya and neighboring parts of the Sierra Madre off-limits to big-time loggers, miners, ranchers, hunters, swidden farmers, rattan gatherers, and yes, even bird-hunting and fuelwood-gathering kids.

The aviator-naturalist Charles Lindbergh and the anthropologist Renato Rozaldo started to befriend them in the 1960s, and soon they stopped chopping off the heads of landgrabbers and other exploiters who dared to intrude in their forest-rich ancestral territory.

FOR THE RECORD, my early exposure to forests has its roots in the fact that as a child I had the fortune to commute between two homes both of which gave me opportunity to explore the outdoors. One was my parents’ house in the shadow of the hills in the western part of town where my playmates were mostly Isinays. The other was my grandparents’ place in the barrio nestled between the river and the cattle-grazing hills, and where the people were all Ilocanos.

In both Isinay and Ilocano worlds, almost all boys in my time wore slingshots on their necks. Called baris in Isinay and palsiit in Ilocano, we used the slingshot not only to hunt jungle fowl (abuyo in Ilocano; kalatan in Isinay) and monitor lizards (banias in Ilocano; baniyas in Isinay; bayawak in Tagalog) but more often to drive away field rats and rice sparrows (that’s maya for you) that attacked our rice crops.

Yes, the slingshot was a toy. But when no one was looking, we also used it to bring down an irresistible yellow guava or mango. The slingshot also boosted one’s bravery when sent for an errand that required passing by a house with unfriendly dogs or a balete or other such geriatric tree that is believed to house  sinampade, santilmo, kaibaan, kapre, enkantada, ansisit, and other malevolent spirits.

Lest you get the impression that playing outdoors was an everyday thing for me, no sir. As the eldest and only boy of eight children, I had to squeeze in time for my school books and class projects while doing such household chores as sweeping the yard, feeding the household pets, watering the coffee and ornamental plants, running errands for my mother, and taking care of baby sisters.

Saturdays were not all slingshot time either. I had to be around my father when we needed to mend fences, tend the backyard garden, or split firewood. We also had chickens, goats and pigs to look after. It was my duty, too, to bring a cavan of palay to the rice mill when the rice bin is running empty.

But you will note that even such chores, including the ones I had in the barrio -- such as taking the carabaos to pasture or helping weed the upland rice plants in the swidden (uma in Ilocano; soppeng in Isinay; kaingin in Tagalog), were not completely divorced from the forests.

For instance, if a hen has hatched its eggs, I would search the bushy meadows and bamboo groves for termite nest-balls to feed the chicks. To make the rice-bran feed more palatable to the pigs, I would comb wooded stream banks for the Amorphophallus campanulatus herb (tigi in Ilocano; imbayang in Isinay; pongapong in Tagalog).

In the barrio, while the carabaos grazed, my friends and I would play hide and seek among the arosip and wild guava trees or, if in the ricefields, chased the gallinule (tukling in Ilocano; siboj in Isinay) or the wild ducks (papa in Ilocano; engaj in Isinay) that searched the mudholes for stranded shells, frogs and fish.

Whether in town or in the barrio, we gorged on the fruits of kallautit and bugnay trees, painted our faces ala-Indian with appatut (achuete) seeds, or searched for whatever edibles or firewood to take home.

(CONTINUED IN PART 3)

It’s Time to Pass the Forest-Care Baton (Part 1)

I no longer have the wherewithal and fortitude to do IEC work in forest conservation like I used to as a young forester. But teaching forest appreciation (plus love for birds, beetles, hills, cicadas, fireflies, rivers, dragonflies, fish, and the great outdoors) to my grandchildren may yet compensate for this shortcoming. I just hope that, by doing so, the kids would become better stewards of the Philippines than I have ever been.

GRANDFATHER WITH NATURE-LOVING KIDS by Dante N. Pecson

 

BY WAY OF chipping in to the celebration of 2011 as the International Year of Forests, please allow this corner to share secrets on why I care so much for sylvan lands that I don’t resent it and in fact even welcome it when other guys refer to me as Taong Gubat (tajun si eyas in Isinay).

Along the way, I shall give you a ringside though not blow-by-blow account, as it were, on how it was to live in a place and at a time where and when there were plenty of forests. Here and there, I shall also be sharing tips on how parents and senior citizens like me could plant the seeds of forest- or, for that matter, nature-appreciation among our kids.

Well, the idea is not so much because I want kids to become forest scientists, forest managers, or even forest dwellers. It is rather because I just wish to contribute to their arsenal of options for coping with the impacts of climate change, fast declining resources, and increasingly frequent natural disasters.

My first bone as a “man of the forests” is this: I happened to be born with the proverbial silver spoon. This spoon was, however, of the kind that fed me not with the material things in life, but with things associated with forests, including wild food, pets, tools, toys, music, medicine, folklore, and joys from the forests.

Put another way, and using a quite poetic line in Filipino: Katas ng kagubatan ang dugong nananalaytay sa aking katauhan. (The blood that flows through my being contains juice from the forests.)

It may have helped that by some twist of fate I got enrolled in the forestry course at UP Los Baños. However, I still owe a larger part of my love for forests, birds, rivers, and ― oh well, Mother Nature as a whole ― to my childhood upbringing with things that had to do with forests and their linked hilly-land, river, agricultural, and rural ecosystems in Dupax del Sur, Nueva Vizcaya, in the northeastern part of Luzon, the Philippines.

AS SUGGESTED in the illustration here made by my nature-loving artist friend Dante N. Pecson of Agno, Pangasinan, when I was little, my playmates and I made do with games and toys reflective of the objects and creatures common in forest-endowed areas.

Thus, unlike over-accessorized yet nature-malnourished kids of today, we were very much at home then with birds, beetles, dragonflies, spiders, fireflies, cicadas, butterflies, bugs, grasshoppers, snakes, lizards, crickets, earthworms, bees, tadpoles, frogs, rats, and monkeys.

Yes, sir, no electronic nor even plastic toys for most of us then. Aside from the flat sardine cans that we converted into toy jeeps with the fruits of the tibig (Ficus nota; tebbeg in Ilocano; lavay in Isinay) for wheels, the closest to non-living “imported” or “high-tech” item that most of us got to touch was the elastic rubber of our slingshots.

From getting attracted with butterflies among the gumamela hedges during the day to catching fireflies that cavorted among the starapple trees at night, we soon graduated to the less mobile elements of nature. It wasn’t long before we became familiar with the shapes, colors, tastes, and scents of trees, bamboos, palms, herbs, vines, orchids, including their leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds, nuts, and associated creatures.

You must have sensed the drift by now: To get kids to bond with the things of nature, one has to start with what they like to do best ― play.

That was how I got to learn the names, appearances and uses of certain trees, birds, vines, insects, grasses, and water organisms ― going outdoors with my fellow children to play and to exchange notes on what we individually learned from our respective elders.

That was also how many of us learned how to climb trees ― emboldened and teased as we were at seeing smaller guys being able to make their way up a tamarind tree and enjoy the sweetish-sour marasaba or kalangakang fruits ― while lesser mortals (like the shelled character in Jose Rizal’s tale about the monkey and the tortoise) just make do with what those up there would be generous enough to throw.

This is not to belittle my grade school science teachers but, looking back, it was also through playing with my fellow outdoor-loving barrio friends and grade-school classmates that I learned what wild fruits were edible, and what vines and trees produced the quaint nuts we loved to collect by the stream.

My friends and I also shared stories on what trees (such as the angang) not to cut for fuel because, apart from being smoky, it also caused the banga (cooking pot) to break. I also got tips on what vegetation was host to edible mushrooms and which ones harbored our favorite rhinoceros beetle (barrairong in Ilocano; dumoj in Isinay) .

Pretty soon, I was a little expert on which ferns and mushrooms were safe to eat, which trees and shrubs were to be avoided for their itchy leaves, which larvae or “baby butterflies” you could touch, and what snakes were venomous and which ones you can sleep with.

From my friends I also learned which herbs could be used to cure Tinea flava (kamanaw in Ilocano; isaw in Isinay; an-an in Tagalog) and other such skin diseases, what leaves you could apply to stop the bleeding of minor wounds, and the Apocynaceae shrub (kuribetbet in Ilocano; pandakaki in Tagalog) the milky sap of which you could use to prepare the male organ for circumcision.

We also traded secrets on which trees had leaves and bark you could use to stupefy river fish, where best to go for a swim, how to ward off leeches, and which ponds offered the best prospects for hooking tilapia.

Rarely shared, however, is the live tree from where one got his martin or mynah pets. Also best kept as secret was where the wild ducks and the jungle fowl (abuyo in Ilocano; kalatan in Isinay) were mostly roosting.

Going back to toys, among our favorite in the barrio was the miniature version of the H-shaped dalaydayan used by our elders to haul logs, bamboo or rattan from the forests using carabao power. Instead of real logs, however, we hauled banana trunks from the nagtebbaan (an Ilocano term that literally means "banana cutting area") to the garbage pit; in place of carabaos, we hitched the sled to our docile dogs.

My Isinay friends in the town proper were more advanced. They had mini replicas of 6-wheeled logging trucks, complete with tansan (softdrink bottle caps) for headlights. My father once crafted one for me and the mini truck made hauling of half-meter slabs or a sack of sawdust from the sawmill a kilometer away from our house quite fun, until its wooden axle and wooden wheels gave up.

(CONTINUED IN PART 2)

The Dupax Flood of 2011

For a town that rarely experiences floods, this second big one in recent memory is again a big hit, not because of casualties but because this time it generated interest among Dupax natives living or working overseas and making use of Facebook. 

Got a number of texted accounts of the flood triggered by Typhoon Pedring the past few days. In my comfortable house in Baguio, I should not give a damn. But since the contents of the messages fortuitously have something to do with me or with people I care about, as I shall later tell, I had to pay attention.

Fortunately, too, somebody with a camera happened to record some memorable scenes of the flood, all the more lending weight to its significance in the history of Dupax. I have included my selection of such photos along with an elaboration why I chose them for this post, mainly because they might as well the same shots I would have taken had I been there.

The texted messages started quite simply with me asking my correspondent, as it were, how Typhoon Pedring was going. Excerpts:

Me:
Boni:
Me:
Boni:

Almost immdiately, I relayed the sad news to Judith and to Opring this way:

The lights in Baguio went out or rather were turned off by falling bamboo poles or pine branches. Thus, I had no way to verify on TV what was happening in Nueva Vizcaya.

Then I got this message, again through texting, from my sister Judith:

Judith:
Me:

Then my daughter mentioned something about my sister Nenette telling about photos of the flood in Dupax posted on Facebook. And almost immediately when the electricity came back, I turned on my laptop and logged on to my Facebook account.

None of the said flood photos appeared in my inbox. Instead, there was a color photo of the Dupax Catholic Church in its resplendent beauty, under which was a prayer by the Facebook account owner Fr. Romulo Felix that went this way:

I could not resist dipping my finger into the Dupax flood pie, as it were. And so I also sent in this comment:

Then a little later, I opted to open my own Facebook account. And lo and behold, the candid photos of the flood.

A big event. (Photo by Hazel Basconcillo Arreo)

The Church tower in the background. (Photo by Hazel Basconcillo Arreo)

The Green Fields of Dupax

Perhaps because they signify hope and prosperity, perhaps because they evoke pleasant memories of childhood...  among the things I never tire of seeing each time I go home to Dupax are the ricefields. Be they in muddy state, dressed in green during planting season, or looking like an Amorsolo painting when the grains turn to gold, the ricefields never cease to awaken a sense of pride in the Dupax native in me.

If there is one thing that I wish Dupax to retain for many, many more years to come, it is its ricefields.

Don't get me wrong. I don't want my town to look sleepy and stagnant forever... nor do I wish my townmates to feel backward and -- to use a favorite Tagalog phrase during my student activist years -- "naiiwanan sa kangkungan ng kasaysayan" (left in the kangkong ponds of history).

The fact, however, that wherever you go there are ricefields to your right, ricefields to your left, ricefields in front, and ricefields on your back, is what makes Dupax home and paradise to native sons like me.

Indeed, be it Norte or Sur, Dupax is Dupax because of its ricefields. Take them ricefields away and I assure you the thousands of Isinays and other Dupax-born or Dupax-raised Filipinos would no longer feel their hometown is the same.


Put another way, Dupax would not be Dupax if you take away such staple-food-producing areas and replace them with subdivisions, golf courses, memorial parks, industrial sites, and even mass-housing projects that you now see proliferating in many parts of the Philippines.


Of course, I may be biased. But having traveled to many municipalities in the Philippine archipelago and having seen how they compare or contrast with my birthplace, I think I have earned the right to speak and write glowingly of my hometown. Yes, I can say with fervor that Dupax is beautiful, even if first-time visitors would most probably get the first impression that there's not much to see but ricefields and balding hills.

Not Just Skin-Deep

It may be an overused description, but I'm proud to write "not just skin-deep" here to qualify the aesthetic quality that the ricefields exude and radiate like sunshine to Dupax.

Indeed, there's more to the ricefields of Dupax than sunburnt farmers, slow-moving carabaos, gurgling irrigation canals, rice plants swaying in the breeze, and later paddy fields redolent with newly cut and threshed hay.

There's more to the sights, sounds, scents, and even tastes of the ricefields of Dupax than those you could probably encounter in the ricelands along the highway in Nueva Ecija or Pangasinan. I can even venture to say that they have many special things to offer compared to the well-publicized terraced rice paddies of Banaue and other parts of Ifugao.

To be more specific, let me lay down three of my cards:

1. Fields with history. Called payaw in Isinay (talon in Ilocano), most of the ricefields of Dupax have been there long, long before the town became North and South. I got the following from the manuscript History and Cultural Life of Dupax:

2. Fertilized with blood. Dupax then and up to now, had been equated to headhunting land. Excerpts from the book The Ilongots (1591-1994) by Fr. Pedro V. Salgado, O.P.:

3. Nurtured by hills and rivers. If you look close enough, an integral part of the ricefield ecosystems of Dupax are the hills their sides and the rivers from the blue mountains where they get their nurturance.

Memory Makers

In whatever state they may be, the ricefields evoke happy memories of childhood to many sons and daughters of Dupax. A composite of such memories would include any combination or all of the following:

• the wondrous sensation of soft mud on the soles of your feet as you make your way to a point in the paddy where you thought you saw a couple of tadaj (frogs) in tight romantic embrace or when you go searching for such mud-loving edible shells as ambeveyo^, basikul or genga.
• the excitement the child in you would get at discovering that if you concentrated enough you could not only keep your balance but also walk fast or even run on the ricefield's dike no matter how slippery it would be at certain spots and even dare to challenge your playmates to a dike-walking race.
• the happy feeling of accomplishment when you tried your hand at pulling the pulla (rice seedlings) during that stage Ilocanos call sikka (uprooting rice seedlings preparatory to riceplanting), followed by dibbling the seedlings and testing for yourself if the lines of the song "Magtanim Ay Di Biro" really hold water.
• the unforgettable experience of visiting the ricefield a week or so later to check if there are problems with the tamnang (dike) or if the irrigation works, and a few more times thereafter to remove recalcitrant weeds or to gather again edible snails if not edible algae called bahase.
• the great sense of accomplishment you get when the rice plants begin to mandawa (pregnant with grain) and, along with the refreshing breeze on your face, you hear the song of the tukling or the kebkeb as they make their way among the now thick emerald riceplants in search of tadpoles or stranded tuldu^ (juvenile mudfish).
• the hours-long picnic of woodfuel-cooked aromatic rice (and outsmarting your siblings with the ittip) when you keep vigil or stay overnight enjoying camping life in the abung-abung to reinforce the tinahutahu (scarecrow) and the bambanti used to drive away tulin (rice sparrows) when the riceplants begin to ripen.

If memories like this do not make you wish you were young again, I don't know what cave you have been crouching in all these years.

Making Up for Lost Time

I'm putting my neck on the chopping board here. But believe me the ricefields of Dupax are not only a photographer's delight but also rich prospects for the emerging business of ecotourism. Their prospects are bright for being tapped to fill the increasing need of urban people for clean air and organic food, of OFWs for getting back to their roots or close to nature, of senior citizens for catching up on their deposits of happy memories, of those nearing their expiry dates for retiring in peace and beauty.

This means that the ricefields are a sleeping giant for entrepreneurs of healthful, environmentally benign, culturally appropriate, and local employment-generating ventures related to the travel industry.  

Put another way, Dupax is a frog princess awaiting to be kissed by a knight (small entrepreneurs) on the lookout for some damsel (ricefields) in distress (being ignored for other beautiful functions and benefits other than producing rice).

(TO BE CONTINUED)

An Insect that Prays and Preys

Which is correct, PRAYING MANTIS or PREYING MANTIS? 

And how do you call this insect in Isinay, in Ilocano, in Tagalog?

Don't look now, but among the common insects that are not so familiar is the mantis. Blame the creature's seemingly fearless and always-ready-to-strike mode.

When I was young, I never played with the spiny-legged insect. Well, aside from fearing its sharp spines, there was this story I heard somewhere that the female of the species harbored bulate (worm).

Whenever we encountered one among the kardis and patani, or when we climbed guavas, we tended to avoid it or to squash it with a long stick.

I was already in college when I learned that the mantis have a strange lovemaking behavior.

A Stick that Walks

One of the pleasures of being on an extended vacation is the freedom to spend all the time you want to play with and ruminate on unusual creatures such as the walking stick

My wife and I found a walking stick one day this August. Actually it was half dead having fallen on the pavement from its perch high up on a pine tree.

We brought it home in the hope that it will survive its injuries and live long to populate our house plants again with a lot of its non-destructive insect tribe. Before I let it go (or rather before it eventually passed away), I had the pleasure of my senior life playing with it, setting it on a leaf here or a twig there, and taking photos.

A 9-Inch Pencil-Thick Beauty
First, I laid it down straight beside a foot rule to determine its length. From head to tail, it measured 9 inches.


Then to indicate how fat or slender it was, I held it on my palm along with a ballpen.

Then in succession, I put it on a number of my wife's plants not only to record how it looked but also to document some of the plants currently growing on our veranda.

I have not yet seen a walking stick in Dupax. In fact, even in Los Baños I have not encountered a live one in the greenery of Mount Makiling.