Journeys Through Time and Place

The bustling town is hushed by the weight of today’s three hour trek to visit the hanging coffins. As small motors and bikes fly across the busy roads in a bizarre mishmash of colours, I am quiet and still. Half-deafened by contemplation, knowing that I must think back to what Sagada was to understand what it has become. This is a town filled with stories, and not the usual ‘a dog pissed here and now we’re famous’ kind. Sagada seems ancient, wise and trembling with legends that reverberate through time and create schisms that silence the world of today.

As we begin our trek, my group is led across a graveyard that shows no evidence of decay. The glaring white is a stark contrast against the dark green grass, and it sets a sombre, buzzing tone for our descent into Echo valley. The valley is chill, and echoing with the morbid sounds of chopping wood, and after navigating through bare trees we reach the site of the hanging coffins. Their rugged exterior is a portal that beckons immersion of oneself in the emotions and respect of a 2000 year old tradition suspended in time within the ageing wood nailed upon a cliff face.

I am struck by the uncomfortable feeling of being almost too close to this culture’s past, and try to maintain a respectful distance from this scene that I am not entitled to reach out to fully. The tall, dead red-barked trees leaning on the cliff face, the resounding ‘CHUCK’ of an axe in the distance and the decorations that only family members and the people within the coffins can truly appreciate are all reminders that this is a truly interconnected process that bridges the gap between life and death, crumbling into one through a landscape that seems integrated within the culture itself. It belongs. Within the coffins, the dead are in foetal positions, replicating the way that humans come into this world in a circular sign of life in death. This cycle of transition from exterior to interior, from light to dark, modern to ancient and life to death is the source of ancient cultural energy in Sagada.

We descend further, and upon reaching the entrance of the caves at the Lumiang Burial Ground we are welcomed by more ancient coffins. Inside there is water flowing continuously across slowly progressing limestone structures. The sound of it licking the rock surface is lit by our guide’s lamp in a motion that repeats its first illumination by firelight with the same fascination that I am experiencing, before Sagada’s culture had even begun.