Warrior Pilgrimage

Featured in Warrior Pilgrimage on February 7, 2011


FOR FIVE STRAIGHT weekends, I was frozen in my workplace and family. My mind is somewhere else but my butt is glued to my office chair and the living room couch until a slight breakthrough came in on September 19, 2010. Previous to those weeks, I thought I need to explore a trail I found somewhere in the fringes of the Buhisan Watershed Area.

Two presets of alarm went past unnoticed. And as the heat of the day became an inconvenience, I woke up grudgingly and tried to convince myself that it is okay to go hiking in the woods in an unholy hour past seven in the morning.

In slow motion, I dress up for the outdoors and collected all my gears and went out without any fanfare. I arrive at 8:10 AM in Guadalupe and took breakfast there. My unpreparedness took a toll on me as I took so long in deciding what to buy for my meal up there. I decided, anyway, to buy a kilo of fine-milled corn and a can of corned beef plus fifty-pesos worth of bread for Ricky Flores and his family.

It is already 9:11 AM by the time I start from the trailhead of Bebut's Trail. Along the way, I saw men making a small coffin. A four-year old child succumbed to dengue fever, they averred, and I am saddened. I parted half of my stash of bread to the surviving children and gave away some money as alms to the grieving parents.

I move on with a heavy heart along “Heartbreak Ridge”. Reality comes when you walk late in the day on this exposed part of the route because it is very hot! The saddle is now thick with grasses whose tops reach my thighs...READ MORE