reflections of passion

One wearing afternoon, while I was walking to my car along the parking lot of my workplace, a fellow employee approached me and asked if I could give him a ride up to Centro. Having the morals of a “Good Samaritan” inside me, I didn’t decline the act of kindness he was expecting from me.

And so we went on.

On our way, this guy saw an outdoor magazine tucked under the passenger seat and picked it up, subsequently, lifted through the pages. As he was scanning the intense pictures in the magazine, he came up with a question that I often get from a lot of people, including my mom. A question so common to outdoorsmen but the answers are perplexing, even to us who engage in such strenuous and dicey endeavors. For me, the question doesn’t only need a plain spoken answer, but also ought to be rationalized.

“Anong napapala mo sa ginagawa mong ito?”

Needless to say, the guy is pertaining to my mountaineering exploits. For a moment or two, I was caught dumbfounded and couldn’t open my mouth to answer the question, considering the time it has been when someone asked me the same. I tried to recollect my thoughts quickly as I could in order to give my passenger an answer, bearing in mind that he’ll be disembarking in just a few minutes.

Frustrated as I was in recollecting my thoughts, which didn’t respond immediately, I just gave the guy an answer in a form of an invitation.

“Sumama ka na lang sa akin at ikaw na mismo ang makakasagot sa tanong mo.”

The guy just giggled knowing that he won’t be able to do it, and if he did, he’ll be a major millstone to the climbing party, in view of his age and brittle bones. Seemingly remorseful in asking the question and aggravated with my answer, he got off suddenly in front of the Catholic Church.

Mountaineering is merely a form of activity that enables individuals to express themselves and lets them suit an inner need.

The need maybe to live heroically, or to rebel against restraint and limitation: an assertion of the freedom of the spirit, or it may well be the pleasure of physical fitness and moral energy, elegance of style and calculated daring. It may be the search for intense esthetic experience, for exquisite sensation, or for a man’s never contented desire for unknown places to explore. Best of all, it should be all this things together.

Indeed, the answers are perplexing. But why do we really do it? Why do we submit ourselves to such punishing ordeal and torment? While in fact, we could be well off watching MTV or aged movies in HBO, sit in a bar and gulp a bottle or two of your usual drink, or even just snore our time away in our very comforting cradles. What’s more…. you don’t have to sweat profusely or exert so much effort.

Undeniably, the question left me reflecting once again on why I engage myself into this off the wall adventures.

Outdoorsmen have a different way of living; Mountaineering is itself a subculture, that’s why mountaineers have a different attitude – an attitude so bizarre and out of the ordinary. Their spirits are customarily exalted and have a different perception on things simply because they do something not all can. People often times see them as having this masochistic attitude in them, but looking deep inside the heart and spirit of a mountaineer, one can straightforwardly recognize that pride is what they only have. They are proud not only because we do something extreme and demanding but also because of one of mountaineer’s best traits, that is, being a proenvironment citizen and a helping hand to our indigent brethrens out there in the bounds of the mountains we climb. Mountaineers consider the mountains as part of their life and not as a playground, and when its part of your life, mountaineering doesn’t only become your lifestyle, but your way of life as well.

Definitely, it’s a difficult life. Climbing a sheer rock wall or a boulder, finding your way through dense jungle, trekking fifteen miles in a single day, seeing your breath in the morning air, staring at the world below your feet, your head will be totally worked, arms twitch like they’re gonna fall off, fingers are cracked and bleeding, legs are swollen, feet are begging for mercy, using muscles you never knew you had, facing your fears…. these are just a few of the things we do and experience. Some will plead for mercy, some will cry for mommy, some will affirm their valor, some will plant a flag on a peak or name a mountain, and some will suck the sweet marrow of triumph in the seclusion of the wilderness’ most cruel terrain. We find all these things so peaceful.

There are places on earth you have to earn the right to see. They’re at the outer edges, beyond the limits of tour buses. The only way to see them is from above and to be able to see, one must endure pain and suffer the torments of the intricacies of mountaineering. “What is above knows what is below and what is below will never know what is above.”

To some, climbing a mountain is just a dream and will stay that way forever. As a child, I’ve always dreamed about climbing and the outdoors, but somewhere along the way, it just wasn’t sufficient. To dream great dreams is itself an act of daring. But, we have to realize our dreams and experience it.

So, one boiling morning at the Metro in the early nineties, I dressed up and signed myself in one of the mountaineering clubs in my school…. and the succeeding days of my life were never that blissful. Climbing a mountain is, in reality, tough and challenging. But, once you’ve put your dedication into it, everything else turns out to be easy and relaxing. In fact, if one would ask what my hardest climb is, I’d laugh so loud and say, “The second floor window of my ex-girlfriend’s dormitory room way back during the college days”.

To answer my co-employee’s question…. “I don’t really know what I obtain from doing it. I don’t know why I do it either. It’s something I’ve been doing for a long time but heaven only knows why. I need to. I just love it…. every step of the way.”