PROVINCIAL ODES

Prologue

19 March 2023 - My first mountain-climbing experience and the first ode:

The day began at night, considered for its deep blue terrain than the black of true night I was more accustomed to. Having a normal sleep schedule didn't make our early-rising trip a bother were I to sleep earlier with a broken sleep schedule draw the nourishing bed ineffective at all. Me and my grandfather left for the car his friend owned with others they invited. That was 4am.

After some detours to a few friends of theirs awake at such hours, a convenient store and a bathroom break by the welcome sign of Botolan by the highway, for elders, being so used to my grandfather whose farthest technological capabilities was to operate the call via SIM and microwaves; no apps, no social media, no contingencies, drove across an intersection where the highway met the road Camp Kainomayan is situated.

Rules were attested, like no staying at the volcano's perimeters past 12 noon and no swimming in the crater due to its dangerous toxicity levels, he mentioned how the meteorology because of its crags self-sustained sudden outpours which created flashfloods and dangerous waterfalls, mud tinted and chalk the further in we reached the hundred-cliffs. Safety guidelines were said while I listened for middle-aged group I was in, talking to some people they were acquainted with who happened to also be hiking, too. They're very well-connected people with their new money and old-fashioned beliefs, but I knew myself and let them be in what semblance of life they had I saw only there. On with the sunblock (I forgot mine; having to ask the old Hokkien lady with us), sombreros, shorts, running shoes and all.

In three 4x4 trucks we sped out through the barrios in my blank camisa and thick jogging pants in that old thing I was sure could buckle at any moment, and brought us out to find the sacred mountain: Pinatubo. The dwelling of the native goddess named Mayari, Hispanized to Namallari, apo of the Zambal Aetas. My camisa began to gray in no time until it had the texture of my own personality and pumice stone covered in black bile. The coughs of the eruption which seized the landscape started seizing us, with the Aetas going in caravans opposite our directions, some waving, some harvesting stray taros and water spinach in their colorful blouses, long skirts while the men wore unusually American-wear with their cargo pants, leather bumper sandals, flip-flops, neon shirts, the elder men wore more sun-bleached polo attire and basketball caps.

Ranges of small hills began to envelope our way when the road filed through the ashy sinews of the same yellow streams turned orange and whiter flora which has adapted to that dry environment. And it will only get drier. We were told that the streams and rivers we traversed seeing one end of Zambales at San Marcelino to one of the early peaks south of Pangasinan (which name escapes me) revitalized my interest in geography, wanting to learn every natural landmarks like those mountains again.

witnessing my first moonscape, landing off the viaduct onto the ash pit where a river or sea would be. Buffalo caravans and some sleds came more hardly as the sun went. The horizon picked us up from the cold for about an hour where the stillest and flattest panorama I've ever seen began to glow. It was the seat of Mars, or like it since the revolutionary battles and great wars outside, abandoned, where peace in its smote essence reigns. And a thought gripped me: "No president nor conqueror nor both in one can ever subdue, let alone fathom this white planet, where Noah's dove never died, permanently finding itself as if source of the winnowing rivers our poor little wagons there smoked leniently.

The long drive took me a trip from my city to Manila the most gorgeous film reel I've watched of true nature thus far. What expressways bore me of; in two hours, from the camp to the clouds made me my own Tarkovsky, from monologue to composition. The life of the artist.

Those badlands, that mirror of the earth to stranger Medusa-typhoons fear to absolve in a torrent, only to see themselves clearer in what becomes a thinner salt flat than skin, but cause whiter the longer it baked with the one, single tree against its quiddity.