Some of my colleagues from the UP Mountaineers have posted that Interaksyon.com article headlined “Mt. Apo still on fire, closed [to] trekkers for 3-5 years.” The article said that the forest fire is blamed on a bonfire left behind by trekkers last March 26. Many of my friends share the article with no accompanying comment, perhaps finding no words to describe the destruction. But I have a few — it’s murder.
I have climbed Mt. Apo twice and both occasions shared little in common. The first one was in June 2013. While weather forecasts said that the whole of Davao would experience heavy rainfall the entire week, it only poured for a few hours on our first and third days in the mountain. Not a drop of water fell from the sky on our second day, the day we climbed up Mt. Apo’s summit.
Climbing out of its mossy forest at 10 a.m. and stepping into its craggy, treeless face of boulders, the veils of smoke which rose from its sulfur beds parted for a second, and one of Apo’s peaks peeked through the clouds. The sight was majestic, as if gongs started sounding in our heads. Goaded on by the end in sight, our group of 13 climbers and three elf-like guides (straight from Middle Earth) furiously lunged up the boulders. We formed a crooked line as we signaled to each other which rocks were loose and which ones gave stable footing. I felt a thunderous beating pound louder and louder in my chest as the peak appeared closer and closer. The sour smell of sulfur, which choked us whenever we breathed it in, tasted sweet in our tongues. We fit ourselves through a narrow trail on the climb up the steep wall to Apo’s main crater, balancing to keep the shrubby cliff on our right. And when we reached the summit a few hours before dusk, we finally got a chance to breathe out. Up to today, I have yet to see kinder, more sincere smiles than the ones I saw on my companions’ faces at that moment. On top of our country’s highest mountain, the sun perched high and clouds blanketing all the land below us, it was foolish to entertain doubts about the existence of God. The weather report was easier to discredit; we came down sunburnt the next day, for we had anticipated a rainy traverse from Digos to Kidapawan.
Apo’s Unkind Side
But a more unkind side of the Great Apo showed itself on my second trip up the mountain last September 2015. While the weather was fair in Davao City, there was nary a ray of sunlight in sight throughout our trek up Apo. Each time we glanced up the heavens, we prayed for the sun to show itself. But to no avail. We were eight visitors with three guides accompanying us. When we reached the boulders, the problem of loose rocks was made tougher by the sudden gusts of wind which carried our feet mid-step. At the campsite, we could hardly pitch our tents. Drenched to my spirits, I felt my knees lock and my arms shake wildly while we attempted to lay down the flooring for our tents in the unrelenting storm. Unceremoniously, I left my more capable teammates to finish assembling our shelter and hid behind a wall which broke the wind.
There, our guides who were also trembling handed me coffee — a cup of 3-in-1 — which tasted much better than anything I’ve had from Starbucks.
We went to sleep, with the wind still punishing our tent. Our hopes of ever seeing a good view at sunrise got crushed, each time the wind rumbled the tarp we had layered over our roofs. We didn’t proceed to the summit the following morning even if it was just a stone’s throw away. It rained even harder, the wind was still too strong, and the fog made it impossible to see anything beyond what was right in front of us. We went down through the same route and realized how much tougher it was negotiating the boulders in reverse. Apo cared not if it killed us by tripping on a rock.
Similar Stories
I can hardly claim my experiences in Apo to be unique. I am sure that many have had similar or even more memorable experiences. Some might even tell stories with tougher, more rewarding circumstances. But what I am sure of is that on both occasions when I did climb Apo, it was I who was conquered and never the other way around. How can anyone really ever conquer a mountain when we’re all just passing through?The recent unregulated spate of tour groups offering overpriced and oversized mass climbs up popular outdoor destinations has been a point of debate among mountaineers and enthusiasts alike. With social media colonizing all aspects of life, we have altogether created a digital counterpart of the great outdoors (under the wider genre of digitized travel) wherein users attempt to recreate the wonder of nature through pocket-sized posts which, even with (or precisely because of) the use of filters and superlatives, admittedly fail to capture the bigness of it all.
At the other end is the progress which this trend brings. To define a sweeping tourism policy is a tedious task since every locality has its own customs, culture, and threshold for travelers. Likewise, it is unfair and unrealistic to say that these lands should remain untouched or that these peoples, indigenous or not, should be kept away from the rest of the world (such is a reverse form of elitism). It is in this intersection that the beauty of environmentalism resides. Taken seriously, environmentalism props the individual out of his/her shell and requires him/her to view the problem with wider social lenses.
Environmentalism asks one to be inclusive, nuanced, and sensitive of the livelihoods of the persons next to us and the lives of the succeeding generations. That or else accept the bleak view that all humanity must perish in order for Nature to survive. For environmentalism to be constructive, it must veer away from black and white, oversimplified conservationism and look towards sustainability. It is in doing so that we understand that some things outdoors remain the same as in the world online. We still have to educate ourselves more, to study our activities and our surroundings more, and to clean up after everything’s done — to leave no trace — so that the journey becomes inward.Perhaps for the sake of striking a balance, we could consider posting photos of the outdoors in moderation, so as to keep the outdoors outdoors. That way, we also realize — the way Apo had made me realize — that nature’s grandness is present even without us in the picture.
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