Extremely lovely is Cordillera region’s nature when regarded with an unjaundiced or open-minded eye.
It has long been debatable ground whether morning or evening is the best suited for reflection on our Cordilleran nature – which of the two unfolds most of nature’s beauty – and which accords the highest topic for flight of contemplation.
We leave that for readers to settle the question.
Yet, as you close your 2018 November book, you can’t help but recall an elegy by Thomas Gray that “tolls the knell of parting day, the lowing herd winds lowly oe’r the lea, the plowman homeward plods his weary way, and leaves the world to darkness (to you) and to me,” and you wag your head knowing how time flies, much as you want it to tarry but it goes, as it’s her nature.
Maybe, too, once in a sunny November, you strode across meandering Cordillera mountain lands covered with a brown carpets of dried pine needles and pine cones, and hidden under their scales are tiny little seeds, like very precious letters in their dainty envelopes to come out and start life again.
Your walk could have been in the woods, in the countryside or in the city and you heard the swish of pine needles on the branches above as they nodded in cadence with the wayward wind; perhaps, somewhere on top of a tall pine, gladly you heard the chirping birds.
And in your November stray, have you spotted a difference?
So it came to pass Sunday of last week when a 4-year old boy named Andrew Ludanen, was walking with his grandpa alongside a road somewhere in Abatan, Benguet. The grandpa and the kid were visitors in the vegetable-growing town.
Clutching his grandpa’s hand while his grandpa was talking with Ah Kong, Andrew paused, then stopped, staring intently at the shrubbery growing along the road.
Then a smile fleeted across his face, like a sunbeam of caress fighting off the cold November air pinching the boy’s care-free face.
Then Andrew pointed to the shrubbery and blurted happily, “Lolo, ni, kitam, sunflowers!”
Regular Cordillerans might retort, “What’s in an ordinary and wild sunflower anyway growing along the road and so odorous that it can’t even compete with the exquisite beauty of other flowers, like, say, a rose?”
But, nay, good friends, Andrew wasn’t at all pointing to his Lolo about exquisiteness from other plants.
The innocent boy was merely pointing out when a wild sunflower is seen for what it is, one will realize it doesn’t at all radiate envy for not having the exquisiteness of other flowers like the rose.
A wild sunflower never for a moment thinks of competing to the flower next to it; it just blooms.
For the little boy, there was no call for judgement, no competition between petals, but only the varying display of how lovely nature can be in all its expressions when regarded with an unjaundiced or open-minded eye.
Andrew saw beauty in the bloom of a sea of wild yellow color in all the luxuriance of a November beauty borne by an unwanted plant many call pest that nobody would even care to think about nor nurture it at home.
The earth was made from nothing, and man was made from earth. Consequently, we all sprang from nothing in origin.
Unsurprising how Ah, and true to his origin – in being made from nothing, knowing nothing, doing nothing and being good for nothing, wasn’t able to spot the sea of yellow wild sunflowers growing along Abatan, Benguet, when he was with Andrew and the boy’s Lolo that Sunday.
Andrew can easily converse with the wildflowers, in a way that any girl can easily converse with her mother and the beauty of conversation between a girl and her mother can be as wild a sunflower as can be.
You don’t agree? Well, read the conversation of this girl to her mother that happened last week in La Trinidad, Benguet:
Anak nga babae: “Mama, agdawatak man ti 500 pesos ta usarek gumatang badok nu mapanak agpasyar ti fiesta ti Adivay.”
Mama: “Anya? 400 pesos? Nagdakkel met ti 300 pesos nga dawdawatem. Pang-usaram ti 200 pesos? Kunam sa met ka nalaka laeng it agbirok iti 100 pesos. Pipte pesos tupay ket narigat a biruken. 20 pesos’ pa kaya! Agsalamat ka ta adda sangapulo a pesos ko. O, nay, daytoy ti 5 pesos!”
Anak: “Sige, Mama, alaek dayta 5 a pesos. Baka damdama agbalin ket din a piso.”
For it’s really November time when we are led to contemplate the sublimity and perfection of the appearance of the wild sunflower that relates with Panagbenga – the simple flower without envy of the heart or puso.
Wild sunflower can be likened with the fruit, saging, (banana) because the saging simply says without envy to other fruits, “Ako simple lang. Kung baga sa mga ibang prutas, saging lang ako. Pero tandaan mo, sa lahat ng prutas, saging lang ang may Puso, na pwedeng ulamin ng mga tao!” Indeed, indeed!
There was one November time how this common tao stopped, squatted and concentrated for nothing besides the base of a Benguet pine tree and pondered at nature’s beehive of activity while ruing at November days fast slipping away and he haven’t accomplished anything fruitful yet.
Picking his teeth and amusing himself by building castles in the air when his attention was roused by the unusual and trite observation that a phalanx of yellow flowers was rioting to wave at him, nodding pleasurably like they wanted to converse with him, but couldn’t.
He stood up and went near “dagidiay sabong ti marapait,” touched them and recollected how, when he was then a teenager, he offered a sabong ti marapait to a lass and that girl readily accepted that wild sunflower.
And he smiled, thinking, “How many Cordilleran lads have had that opportunity of offering a sabong ti marapait to a girl, eh?”
Better to have offered a smelly sabong ti marapait and tried courting but failed in the quest, rather than having said to a girl, “I love you, I miss you, I need you,” and became successful in the courtship, pero kapag mag-asawa na, di kaya lumilipad na ang kaldero, kutsara, plato, kutsilyo…pati asawa, pinapalipad na.”
Plucking one wild sunflower, and admitting that the Hand that made them as divine. He intended to present the wild sunflower to Mr. Sebio Gapais a male friend who was recovering from sickness but still confined at the hospital in Baguio City.
His good ‘ol friend was an admirer of wild marapait flowers, being a botanist by education.
Why, only recently, a drinking friend of Sebio teased him this way: “Yaay, Sebio, naglabaga ngipen mo.” To which Sebio answered, “Uray pay!”
Sebio’s friend kept up the teasing, “Puskol subil mo.” Unaffected, Sebio giggling, said “Uray pay.” But when his friend said, “Itaray ko mommam ken dayta marapait a sabong mo,” Sebio growled, “Padasem!”
Goes to show that a “sabong ni marapait” has sentiment filed in us, after all.
