backpack talk

Travel is a loud dialogue between real and the ideal. The confused traveler walks in between these two shouting poles. Travelers crave to experience the place like a local while locals like to experience the traveler’s lifestyle. This contrast provides a more colorful and significant hue to every travel experience. Every traveler learns respect.  I have the opportunity as a mountaineer to listen to the stories of a lot of people. One of these stories is the story of Mt Pulag’s porters.   Mt Pulag is the highest mountain in Luzon and the third in the country. Witnessing the dawn in its peak is a bucket list experience: the waving sea of clouds cascade against sleepy neighboring peaks while the sun paints the horizon crimson. When the light penetrates the mist, the secret of the mountain is revealed: the cold russet grassland; the verdant chaos of the mossy forest; and the ageing pine forest. The wind in the background orchestrates a cacophonous howling.  At the campsite, porters shiver while waiting for their guests to descend. Their faces are reddened by the altitude but they always greet everybody with a warm big smile that reveals their sometimes red teeth from chewing betel nut. Out of 116 porters, 77 of them are women who are usually mothers. No one would suspect that a five-footer woman with a fragile body frame would carry a backpack that is full of camping provisions of a guest for five kilometers of rugged terrain to the campsite. When a guest asks her if she could carry the heavy load, she would only smile albeit giggle, and nod her head. She knows that a backpack is not as heavy as the responsibility she carries in helping her husband provide for their family who lives in a place that is almost unknown.  I have climbed Mt Pulag for the nth time and most of these porters have become my friends. Every time we meet along the trail, they would talk to me in their language. I could not understand them yet. We would laugh out of respect. We know we share a story.