Warrior Pilgrimage

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on January 1, 2010

IT HAD BEEN A year already when I first climbed Mount Babag by way of Ernie's Trail, a steep and challenging route named after my climbing buddy – Ernie Salomon. That was on August 17, 2008. Since then I have climbed her twenty-three times alone or with a group. I aim to complete a full year cycle by climbing her again on August 23, 2009. This would be my twenty-fourth incursion there.

I brought two hawk feathers for this occasion to celebrate the passing of a year the old way. Two feathers for Courage and Generosity. The hawk feathers will now be a regular fixture in my head band everytime I climb Mt. Babag as it had been a regular fixture in my South African veldt hat that I carried on my head during major climbs. The feathers will dance with the breeze along with me.

Boy Toledo, another of my climbing buddy, completed one year yesterday on August 22. He have climbed the Babag Mountain Range many times more than I. Boy T is a stroke survivor. He now make things happen for him and of others. He climb here every weekend and you are cordially invited to chase him up a trail.

Those previous weekend hikes brought me to a lone house on a hill that became a refuge, a well-deserved stop-over, enroute to Mt. Babag. In it lived a family of four who are generous of their space and of their young coconuts. Ha ha, I paid for those. In return I brought them gifts, food, used clothes and books for the kids. I even nurtured a 13-year old boy, Manwel Roble, as a future mountain guide...READ MORE (Press CTRL + mouse click)