Dear Reader,
I believe in chosen family—that the people we were born with may not be the people who love us fully, nor can they. This doesn’t have to be a somber thing. As there are seasons in life, there are seasons for the people we call family, kin. Each relationship nourishes us in different ways, in varying degrees of closeness. Some, we hold tight to, while others, we let go peacefully; others still, we allow to come and go as they please, trusting in the vitality of the connection and knowing that kindred spirits never stray for too long.
Believing in chosen family, I pay close attention to the people I encounter. I look for who sees me. This is important as an introvert, more important still now that I’m in a season oriented toward solitude.
It makes sense that in my self-enforced seclusion, I felt a tug toward another soul that was not quite human but animal, a humble creature that is often invisible in the mountain grass, an emerald green snake.
This story begins with a midnight alarm that made me shoot up in bed and ask myself why I make such plans. A few friends and I had planned a sunrise hike. Blurry-eyed and grumpy still, I baited myself out of bed with the promise of hot coffee. I knew the hike would be worth the sacrifice of sleep.
Mt. Maynuba is nestled in the spine of Luzon island in Tanay, Rizal, at the southernmost part of the Sierra Madre mountain range. There are at least a dozen trails from Tanay. Choose any one of them, and when you reach the top, you’ll see its brother and sister mountains stretching to the north like green marbles.
We started our hike at half-past three in the morning. Our guide, Ate Rose, led the way with a flashlight pointed to the rocky ground. In the dark before dawn, our surroundings shape-shifted constantly. By that, I mean I heard our surroundings change. Bamboo stands waving against the wind sounded like a chirruping bird, a creaky house, and a rushing river. The thousands of leaves of the rainforest at times sounded like thousands of liters of running water. While my legs burned from the steep ascent, I was comforted by this feeling of boundlessness. Deep in the mountains, everything is everything.
It was in our climb down from the second peak when I came across a jade green snake in the path. It strolled out silently after our guide had passed, so I was the first to see it. It looked at me with one eye, this snake that was both a blade of grass and a dew-covered ribbon. It stayed for a moment, and I stayed watching, enchanted yet unsure. After a beat, it turned around and returned to the cover of mountain grass, its tail tipped with maroon like the hard stem of a flower.
The green of this snake was just slightly brighter than the green of the mountain grass, which was light like mint. It was as if the tapestry of mountain grass released a single thread and called it back again. The snake’s color was the soul of Mt. Maynuba itself.
Ate Rose said she had never seen a green snake in Maynuba before. Since she’s climbed the mountain countless times and knows its trail better than I ever will, I couldn’t help but feel special, as if I was chosen by the mountain.
“I see you,” in Na’vi, from Avatar, means I understand you. I know you. You are like me. Seeing, truly seeing, is a sense of kinship that promises acceptance, no matter the circumstances.
To be seen is to be called kin. I know you. You are like me. There is nothing quite so special as this connection which reminds us that we are not alone in this volatile world.
During one of our rest stops, I listened to our hiking guides talk about the wind turbine project to be built on Mt. Batolusong and its resulting closure of the beloved trail. I had hiked Mt. Batolusong two years prior as my first experience of the mountains of Tanay.
They spoke of impending corporate projects with disdain and trepidation, namely the Kaliwa Dam in Kalinga, further north, also along the Sierra Madre range, that will cause destruction to the environment and culture in Tanay by changing the flow of Kaliwa’s tributary waters. It’s estimated that the Kaliwa dam will submerge 93 hectares of forestland in Luzon, affecting the entire ecosystem of the Sierra Madre. If that number means nothing to you, try imagining it in basketball courts—one hectare is around 20 basketball courts. That forestland is essentially the home of thousands of life: plants, animals, and people.
I’ve been speaking as if kinship is a gift without burden. Indeed, it is a gift. The mountains don’t ask anything from us in return. But if you call yourself kin to the mountains and its web of life like I do, we have a responsibility to shoulder the burden of resistance against the powers that seek to abuse these ecosystems.
This is an invitation to be in solidarity with Sierra Madre.
