Bonding with Mother Nature and bargaining with God

Today I climbed an altitude of 2,400 feet above sea level, 270 stairs, went spelunking, bathed in a falls that had freezing-cold water, and got bitten by ants. And I have had enough excitement to last me for a long time. This morning on the bus, one of my classmates read our horoscopes and mine said, “Adventure comes to those who stumble upon it.” Well, I certainly had an adventure today. And I literally stumbled upon it too.

Our field trip was going to be on the Banahaw Rockies, formed some hundreds of years ago by rocks that flew out of some volcano. Our guide kept telling us that we’d be extremely tired after today, and inwardly I said, “Me? Tired? Hah! What’s so hard about climbing up a bunch of rocks?” Of course, after five minutes into the mountain I ate my words morsel by morsel. And whatever romantic fantasies I had about falling in love with hot guerillas completely evaporated along with my morale. I guess you could say that I’m your stereotypical girly-girl who hates to get dirty (although I don’t really make a fuss about it), is terrified of heights, and is extremely disgusted with bugs. Of course, trekking up mountains involves heights and where there are forests, there are bugs. I can vividly remember my initial reaction upon setting foot on the mountain. I looked at the ground, and there were ants crawling all over the ground. I know that it’s only normal to find ants in rainforests, but somehow I found that quite gross. “Eww, yuck!” I exclaimed, but made sure nobody heard because everyone already thinks I’m maarte enough. But seriously, I can’t stand any crawling organisms who have more than two legs.

The rainforest was pretty but I was too busy watching my step to appreciate its beauty. No wonder it’s called the Banahaw Rockies. Even though most of it is a rainforest, the ground is covered with rocks of all sizes. If you aren’t careful you could easily trip on them. Of course, I was the first one to fall. Ten minutes after we started trekking, I slipped on the goddamn mossy rocks and fell. My jogging pants got all muddy and to make matters worse, I was second in line and everyone saw me slip. Nobody laughed, but talk about wa-poise (the loss of poise)!

The batch was split into four groups and two went to the peak of the mountain while the other two went spelunking and swimming in the falls. My group was the first to go to the peak and because I kept hesitating during the drops, I ended up being the last in line. After fifteen minutes of clambering up the mountain, my hands were sore from holding onto the rocks, my shirt was all wet from my sweat, my hair was a mess and my legs were quite tired. My initial fear of bugs and heights was gone. All I cared about was getting to the peak. Even if I was in a group, it felt like it was a struggle between me and the mountain. At first, I was helped along by one of the guides, a really nice girl named Meg who goes to UP. She says I’m a good climber for someone who’s afraid of heights. That boosted my confidence and I found myself needing her help less and less, until I could finally find footholds and boost myself up entirely on my own. Of course, I must’ve looked completely ridiculous; at times I felt like I was doing a poor Spiderman imitation.

I’m not sure how long it took us to get to the peak, but eventually we arrived. The view from up there was great; you could see the neighboring mountains and coconut groves below. A lot of the girls in my group were like, “That’s what we went all that way for? A view?” Well I guess some people could look at it that way but when I got to the peak, I felt like I accomplished something. I mean, I actually climbed a mountain in spite of my fear of heights and extreme dislike for creepy, crawly creatures. I felt a sense of pride, and just sat there admiring the view and contemplating on what I had done while everyone else compared bruises and took pictures.

Spelunking (a form of caveing) was an entirely different thing. I almost chickened out because the entrance of the cave has a steep drop. When my turn to go enter came, I made the mistake of looking down andbecame completely petrified when I saw how deep it really was. I couldn’t bring myself to lower my body down the entrance even if there was a guide to help me find footholds. What if I lost my grip and fell and cracked my head open? What a disgusting way to die. I decided that I just couldn’t do it. I backed out, waited for everyone to go through, and somehow managed to find the guts to try to get in the cave again. While I gripped on tightly on a rock while I felt around for footholds with my legs, I made bargains with God. “God…if I ever get out of here alive and in one piece, I promise…not to be such a snob anymore! And that I’ll go to mass every Sunday. Just please don’t let me fall, or get a dislocated arm or fractured bone!!” There really is a God. Somehow, I managed to climb down the drop, squeeze through the rocks of the small, cramped cave, and come out again on the other side. I was disappointed that it only took me about ten minutes to go through it. I expected the cave to be long, with water in it and bats and lots of stalactites. What I find kind of interesting is this saying that anyone who gets out of that cave without getting bruised or scratched leads a sinless life. I came out unscathed, which a lot of people found hard to believe because almost everyone ended up a wound or two.

The last thing we did was go to the falls, and in order to get to there we had to climb down 270 steps. It wasn’t a very easy thing to do not only because I was very tired by then, but also because the steps were kind of slippery since it was drizzling as we climbed down. But I was muddy and dirty, and I there was no other way I could get myself somewhat clean. I forced myself to keep going until I finally reached the bottom. The falls were small, but it was surrounded by mountains and it looked real pretty. The water was really cold but I discovered that if you stood very still your skin becomes numb and you don’t feel the cold at all. For a few minutes I just kind of floated on my back and stared at the trees and foliage overhead. The light drizzle gave everything a dreamlike quality and in spite of my classmates’ shrieks, my body calmed down for the first time and I felt like I was at peace. Just floating there made me feel so happy. Too bad I couldn’t stay that way for a long time; we had to leave after twenty minutes.

At the moment I’m still trying to get used to walking on horizontal ground that has no rocks that I can possibly trip over. The mountains are pretty, but I can never fall in love with a guerilla and live there because I don’t think I can stand the bugs and the fact that I am so far away from civilization.

Here are some photos when we reached the summit.

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