A Trek to Kalabugao

Kalabugao | 2889 words

In the predawn of a misty Saturday I boiled water for myself and my cousin Abdias. Then I cracked open the jalousie window and the cold morning air kissed my cheeks. Outside the world was still enveloped in intense darkness. Fog thickened out in the yard, gray shapes hovering low over the rambutan and lanzones trees. 

Since we didn’t have LPG I had made a fire in the firepit, placing big logs over small logs and burning pieces of plastic underneath. I brought my hands close to the fire and warmed myself, the chemical smell of melted plastic wafting around the kitchen. 

“Chilly, isn’t it?” I said. Abdias nodded and rearranged the wood, letting the fire breathe. One of the things I liked about him was his silence. Abdias instead liked to observe people and things. I knew he was a sensitive character, someone who knew a lot about the ways of this place and its people. After having our coffee we left, riding Abdias’s brother’s motorcycle. Finally, we were going to Kalabugao. 

Rain caught us as we neared the elementary school in Barangay Impalutao. God was bringing it down hard, forcing us to stop and shelter at a small grocery store along the highway. Raindrops fell like bullets, hammering the tin roof above us like machinegun fire. Then came a sight I won’t forget: lightning flashed and struck the road right across from where we were standing.

After the rain subsided, leaving the asphalt highway glossy, we rode on beneath a heavy sky. I constantly looked up to check for any hint of blue in the gray. We passed a few small houses, most built with bamboo and concrete, all crowned with the same rusted aluminum. They were spaced far from each other. 

Above Atugan River we rode along what could be the most beautiful bridge in Bukidnon, about sixty meters above the water. To my left, huge trees rose of a deep shade of green. To my right I could see the river glistening silver and rushing toward blue mountains on the horizon.  

Kalabugao has always been a mysterious place to me. I often heard about it from my grandmother whenever she began a story with “Kaniadto,” or “Back then…” She spoke about the mountain countless times, how different their life used to be there. She’d tell us about the small house my grandfather built with his own hands and the coffee he grew, about her own father’s encounters with the Japanese during the war or fond tales of the family spending weekends on the Pulangi River. But the stories never quite stayed with me, slipping away as soon as the plates were cleared. Kalabugao was distant, both in geography and in my mind. Once I checked the place on a satellite map and put it in the category of places I thought of as “extremely out of the way,” since it was about forty kilometers off the highway.

I took trekking in the forests and hills for granted when I was still a child living in Bukidnon. But when my family became trapped in the concrete wilderness of Manila, trying to build a better life, I began to long for home. The strain of living on those cramped streets made me appreciate our house in the mountains. I had grown tired of the urban routine of waking up to the shrill five o’clock alarm, taking a quick shower, having a hasty breakfast, then braving the hellish commute to school where eight people were packed into a tricycle that was meant for four at most. The roads that always got jackhammered before elections, the smog and smoke, the oppressive humid heat, and the sewage that passed through the canals, filled with added muck and rat droppings—all these were draining the life out of me. I was getting numb from the video games into which I lost myself. I needed an escape hatch from what felt like confinement. 

I found a Facebook post that was looking for “joiners” on a hiking trip to a mountain called Mt. 387 in Nueva Ecija. We passed by vast rice fields, the irrigated paddies catching the sky’s reflection in them. After two hours we reached the summit, then descended: at one point, I had to crawl down a steep slope while grasping sharp grass so I wouldn’t slip. The next month I joined another day hike to Mt. Ulap in Baguio, which was even more challenging. It took us the better part of a day to reach the final summit, and I had doubted if we could get down before dark. The trip was so exhausting that, without realizing it, I fell asleep in the van on the way home. After that I stopped joining such hikes. They didn’t have the same effect on me as they had on call center agents and weekend warriors—people looking for a quick escape from their busy jobs. I went hiking because I wanted to replicate the feeling of being in Bukidnon, but with these hikes, I’d come to feel more and more like an outsider, and also more separated from nature. Paying the organizer’s fee, rendezvousing at a fast-food restaurant at three in the morning, being up and then down the mountains again in mere hours and approaching the ascents as mostly a matter of “thrillseeking” seemed superficial.

I wanted to go home to Bukidnon and live there, and my mother finally granted my request. Although a lot had changed and it was no longer the Bukidnon of my youth, I was elated to be back. From the upper floor of my uncle’s home in Malaybalay, I could see the entirety of the Kitanglad mountain range standing tall and solitary on sunny days, silhouetted against a clear blue sky. I spent a good amount of time staring at those peaks.

It wasn’t long until I had a renewed urge to go hiking again, but this time not as an urbanite and not as casual recreation. I wanted to go hiking as a way of feeling at home and of loving my home.

“Why don’t you go to Kalabugao with your cousin?” my mother said. “He always goes.” 

*

When Abdias and I reached a junction called Damay, where the road to Kalabugao began, the sky began to clear. The dirt road was narrow, just enough for two small cars to squeeze by each other cautiously. It went downhill, then uphill again. Trees lined the roadside; their shadows covered the road. We passed corn plantations and sugarcane fields, and saw small wooden houses atop rolling hills. Then we saw Higaunon people walking along the road. 

They wore their distinct red vests featuring geometric designs, usually black and white stripes. Brass jewelry was wound tightly around their wrists and feet. They seemed to have come from some meeting or occasion since they were in their ethnic regalia. There were about eight of them, young and old together. One of them smiled. When we had passed by I found myself looking back at them.

The chance encounter with the Higaunon along the road reminded me of a piece of family history I’d heard from my mother. 

About a hundred years ago Aparicio Rivera, my great-great grandfather on my mother’s side, roamed these same lands. He was part of a force that Governor General Ramón Blanco sent to quell the Marano Rebellion led by Amai Pakpak in the Lanao Region. According to my mother, during one of those battles, Aparicio killed Amai Pakpak in a duel. Fearing retaliation from Amai Pakpak’s kin, my great-great grandfather went hiding in the mountains, and eventually reached Kalabugao. On that mountain, he married a Higaunon woman.

I burst out laughing when my mother finished the story, but she insisted it was true. It was why, she went on to say, her grandfather and his siblings were the only ones who could read and write among the people in the village back then.

I didn’t believe her. If Aparicio Rivera did indeed exist and had killed Amai Pakpak, his name would have come up somewhere. A quick Google search revealed only Instagram models bearing similar names. Additionally it made no sense for Aparacio Rivera to stay in Mindanao if he truly feared retaliation, I thought, because he was more likely to get found and slain. But I kept my mouth shut and accepted my mother’s story as a yarn like the adventures of Agyu and Gawhanen, the heroes in Indigenous epic songs, and many other incredible stories told in Bukidnon.

The truth is, I didn’t want to believe my mother. The thought that our lineage descended from a settler who came from the north didn’t sit well with me, and it troubled me that he might have even been a conquistador. And if the tale was true, why hadn’t I heard a single story about the woman who married the strange man who came to her land? Why, in that case, did our family remember Aparicio’s name, but not the Higaunon woman who was also our forebear? 

*

Abdias and I slogged on along the dirt path. The more I saw of this place the more I believed that if Aparicio had been a real person, he must have stayed here because of the land. Mountains stretched out as far as my eye could see, trees covered the slopes and the ridges looked like God had run His fingers along them. All the while I could hear the faint rush of the Tagoloan River. The place exuded a beautiful, quiet solitude that would have entranced Aparicio.

About ninety percent of the current population of Bukidnon are migrants. Many of the original inhabitants are living in their recognized ancestral lands. Smaller groups, however, have settled in remote places, such as Kalabugao. Others have gone even deeper into the mountains.

Even before the Spaniards came to this region, settlers from neighboring islands in the Visayas had come to live here, and as their numbers grew, the original inhabitants who occupied the lowlands got pushed away. Today, too, more and more outsiders are relocating to Bukidnon, and the government takes more from the land to accommodate everyone. They expand the highway, build subdivisions on what were once forestlands. There is even talk of an SM shopping mall “soon to rise” in one of the less populated barangays on the outskirts of the capital. The place’s natural splendor seems both a blessing and a curse.

But I stop myself short of protesting. I, too, am a settler.

Sometimes on our trek I imagined Aparicio coming from Manila, hacking away at the impenetrable green fortress that the road we were trudging on must have once been. 

*

We reached the village a little after twelve noon. A few more minutes of sitting on the motorcycle would’ve turned my legs to jelly. We stayed with Abdias’s uncle Tono who lived alone in a small weather-beaten house at the edge of town. The back of his house looked out on the bottom of a small ravine. When I saw it, I prayed the area wasn’t prone to landslides. For lunch Tono served us some dried salted fish and freshly-picked avocados from a tree near his house. Much like Abdias, Tono wasn’t much of a talker either.

Later we sat on the porch while my cousin smoked cigarettes. Before long the rain came back and it fell in a light drizzle. The place wasn’t what I had expected. For an area so remote I thought Kalabugao would be untouched but in truth it was fairly developed. Rice paddies were laid out on flat areas on the outskirts of town. On the road to Uncle Tono’s I had even seen lavish houses standing amid panoramic views of the mountainside. Yet looking out from this porch, I felt like I was on the edge of the world. Clouds moved slowly along the ridges of the mountains. Although Kalabugao had satellite dishes for cable TV, loud music blaring from someone’s house, even a store offering cashless services, it still felt as though time didn’t hurry here, a far cry from my old life in Manila. 

Before light next morning, we got up and rode to Hagpa, the village where my mother once lived. Our goal was to hike up a hill that Abdias had told me about. We wanted to get there before the sun rose.

We got to the foot of the hill in darkness, insects droning around us. When we started on the ascent I instantly regretted wearing white socks as my shoes sank in the soft mud. Above us the sky slowly turned from black to blue, stars glittering in the dimness of early morning. Tall grass wet with dew covered the path. We waded through the grass as though we were in deep waters. We walked for about half an hour until the path forked, and we went left. The path now widened and flattened a little, much to my relief. I wanted to stop, but Abdias kept walking tirelessly. It baffled me how he still had a full tank despite his cigarettes.

When we reached the top of the hill, my shirt clung wetly to my skin, but I didn’t feel cold anymore. I took a few seconds to catch my breath, then I turned around and saw the light of the sun touching the rim of a ridge to the west, the rest of the hilltop still washed in indigo. I faced the sun peeking from behind a mountain, rising like the back of some great mysterious being while swaddled in thick clouds. The sun slowly bathed everything in warmth and light.

I sat on the ground and leaned against a tree, observing the world around me. Down below I could see the same Tagoloan River that ran through the village, snaking around the slopes of hills, white under the shining sun. Everything was quiet save the rushing river. Maybe my cousin and I both felt that talking would only spoil an experience that was only beginning to show itself to us.

In that moment, I felt small. I must have been imagining it, but the mountains seemed to shift and grow, and the sound of the river surging became louder, imposing itself upon us two onlookers, us two settlers. The whole place seemed to come alive as if it was breathing. A light wind blew across my face and continued down to the reeds below the hill. I felt connected to the land, not only physically; I felt as though my soul was being restored to its original state, a strangely comforting feeling that was to stay with me for a long time.

We sat there watching the world wake from its slumber until I felt it was time to speak again. I pointed out to Abdias what I had just noticed. As light spread around us I’d made out carvings on the tree I was leaning against: names and dates, some profanities directed at other names, all of it crisscrossing in a chaos of scored wood.

Soon we went back down the hill. I followed my cousin to the other path at the fork we’d passed earlier. When I asked him where it led, he pointed down to the river.

The Tagoloan River was massive compared to how it looked from above on the hilltop. The current was strong, I was afraid of getting swept away.

My cousin stripped down to his underwear and dove headfirst into the water. I watched him with envy as he disappeared and reappeared on the water’s surface. I don’t know how to swim, so I walked to a shallow part of the river, dipping half of my body in. The water was clear and cold. It felt good after the long hike. A little later a group of children showed up. I took it as a cue to get out of the water and leave.   

On our way home, I asked my cousin what Kalabugao meant.

“It means ‘dispersed’,” Abdias said. “Before, this place was called Tinagenan.”

“Why did they change it?”

“Some Datus had a quarrel and one of them said, Da nangabugao kaw labi sa mga bantugan.”

“What’s that?”

“It means ‘even the strong can be dispersed’.”

My mind drifted back to Aparicio. I thought again of his wife who belonged to the Higaunon tribe—to whom I trace my roots. But I don’t know her name because my family has forgotten it. I wondered what she was like, how she lived, if she thought far into the future in the same way I was now lost in the past.

It occurred to me: I am both a settler, and Indigenous.  

I wanted to carve the memory of Aparicio’s unnamed wife in that tree. A hundred years from now her already obscure existence will have faded further. But at that moment, as my cousin and I rode along the side of mountains, cutting through the thick forests and racing above the gushing river, I let myself believe she is still one with this place and that I am her living and breathing connection to this land.

© Jose Francis R. Sycip

Commissioning editor: John Bengan