A Case Of Do Or Die

When we look back at it all,
As I know we will,
You and me, wide-eyed.
I wonder, will we really remember
How it feels to be this alive?
And I know we have to go,
I realize we only get to stay so long.
We always have to go back
To real lives, where we belong.
- The Cure

For the last four months, I and some 30 other people submitted ourselves to what, in countless ways, seemed to be a demonstration of actual dementia. I can't understand now how we all managed it, how we blazed through the Makati traffic every Wednesday night in our running shoes, sweating it out just when everybody else was trudging back home; how we were able to rouse ourselves awake every Sunday morning to run all along Fort Bonifacio and to grunt through set after set of insufferable ramps. I think of all the kilometers we'd sprinted through, or all the mountains we'd so far scaled, and I can't resist shaking my head at it all. It was crazy. No doubt about that.

But, well – it's all done now, and we wrapped up the Basic Mountaineering Course with our Induction Climb in Mt. Kalatungan, Bukidnon, a five-day, high-altitude hike that brought us to the very summit of the sixth highest peak in the Philippines. It was, by and large, the best climb I have ever been on, chiefly because the mountain bore with it an undeniable air of secrecy, as though walking down its half-concealed trails was proximate to plumbing for the answers to very dark, somber questions like Will I be able to take a dump somewhere down this path because my colon feels massive now?

Or, when you are blessed with bad eyesight the way that I am, you can be speeding up the trail with your 50-pound pack on your back, gloating over your supposed agility and much-improved reflexes. You feel like Samson! Which is definitely apropos, because Samson had long hair, and so do you!!! Your pace seems much like flight itself, and you're going at it so that the features of the trail become smudged together like some piece of impressionist art. You're about to thank your own nearsightedness for making everything seem so dreamlike when POW! you ram your left thigh right into a small tree trunk, something which your eyes did not pick out from the shadows. The pain is incredible, you double over from it, and your nerve endings are braying out their protests like a herd of beleaguered cows. Moooo, they say, you idiot, we told you it was time to get contact lenses!

But since I couldn't get contact lenses at 2,000 meters above sea level, the same dumb accident happened to me at least two more times on my way to the summit. As I type, I can see a family of livid, purple bruises peeking out from my shorts, and I've grossed out friends and officemates alike by showing them off. Reactions have ranged from the horrified, awe-struck Oh my god to genuine disgust, with people covering their eyes and making gagging sounds.

Honestly, people shouldn't be so damn sensitive.

But let's talk about the mountain. Mt. Kalatungan, while not as wildly popular as nearby Mt. Kitanlad, was perhaps more beautiful, primarily because not as many trekkers usually venture over its body. The trails had a somewhat robust look to them, with the plantlife creeping in from the sides to prevent the paths from widening any further than they should.

Most breath-stopping, however, were the large sections of mossy forests sprawling down the mountainsides. I'm not talking about run-of-the-mill moss here, the kind you see on the walls of derelict buildings, although we certainly still found the same type at different points in our trek. What I'm speaking of, really, are the varieties you will see only in tropical rainforests such as those rooted in Kalatungan, mosses of a wraithlike green, dangling off in whispering tassels from branches overhead, embracing the trunks of stolid trees, beds of them carpeting the damp earth. Walking through these stretches of terrain was like intruding into a place so sacrosanct, precisely because they were far-removed from the filth and artifices of daily, urban living. As we made our way down one mossy forest, Mau Alcazar, one of the senior members, remarked that it felt like we were suspended in some fairy tale, and we all had to agree with him. If there had been a forest spurring on the imagination of the Brothers Grimm, it must have been close to what Kalatungan's mossy forests looked like.

However pleasant most of the climb had been, it wasn't without its difficulties, most bullheaded of which was the cold. As was expected of high-altitude climbs, the chill came at us in a stealthy march, and the higher we went, the more pervasive it became. The cold was something we'd come armed for, but by evening, the temperature had dropped to such a frigid degree that we all found ourselves cocooned in fleece jackets and multiple layers of clothing, shivering and cursing at the icy wind hissing through the trees.

The situation was compounded by the rain, which visited us nightly and seeped through our small tent, whose waterproofing was shot and rather hopeless. Small puddles of rainwater collected on the belly of my sleeping bag, and I was turning paranoid with such macabre thoughts as the possibility of hypothermia; I imagined myself a stiff corpse, blue-lipped and empty eyed, my tentmates shrieking at the discovery of my motionless body, weeping friends and relatives, pancit and pusoy dos and Coke making the rounds during my funeral, which would most probably be on a sunny day, I thought, and they should play Don't Change Your Plans by Ben Folds Five when they're scattering my ashes over the ocean, I do love that song to pieces, it's such a tender, tragic tune, so pretty, yakkety yakkety, and the train of thought would go on until nothing else but exhaustion drove me to consummate sleep.

And then hours later, I'd wake to my skin warming and the sun glimmering through the foliage, and I had never felt as exultant as when I'd zip open our tent and find the dew forming shyly on my sandals, my own blood quickening from beneath my flesh, the heat piping down to the tips of my fingers and toes. Oh, there it finally is, I'd think. The world once again offering you its open hand, the way it always has and will, its surprising friendship without fail or demand.
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