Breath vapor escaped from my mask as the balmy streets of Kias, still wet from days-long downpour, were covered in white mist. I moved against dawn’s darkness toward Camp John Hay’s Yellow Trail slow and steady as fog.
I arrived a day before in Baguio City, also known in the Philippines as the “City of Pines”, a month after parting ways with someone I shared a soul-deep connection with. Hiking has always been therapeutic for me. Whenever loss swallows me, I crave the kinship and solace of trees and mountains. Against the loftiness and brawn of Herculean trees, grief becomes infinitesimal.
A guard roaming the vicinity leered at my sneakers. “The Yellow Trail is bushy and muddy. There is a rotten bridge there. It probably isn’t safe.” He was right to judge. I looked straight out of an Eat, Pray, Love scene. No maps, no destinations. Looking at the breadth of the thick, untrimmed bushes blanketing the forest floor, I was not even certain if I wanted or could finish the trail. My intention was singular: to walk – away from the dim place I was in and toward the lucent wisdom of the forest.
Entering the Yellow Trail feels like stepping foot on a grand red carpet. Benguet Pines dart through the skies and stretch infinitely on either side, their gnarly roots crawling through the length of iron-rich currant soil. Whether gazing up or straight ahead, these coniferous giants are a feast for the eyes as one ambles along brooks, bridges, rotten logs, and brief slopes. Their fallen needles and cones dot the ground.
A little over an hour, I came upon a large tract of hollow land surrounded by higher ground, resembling a caldera. There I was, at the dead center of it all, ringed by soaring pines as crows cawed and shrikes and sparrows sang. Sunlight began to creep in through pine needles. Slowly, everything turned crystalline and glimmered against the sun’s warm, golden arms. It felt like divinity saying, “Reserve the tears for harvest. It will arrive soon.”
My knees dissolved like particles in broth, as they surrendered to the ground and became a sponge for yesterday’s rain. Amid kingly trees, birds, and wild shrubs, I wept as if it was my last. Without abandon, the same way I loved destructively months ago. I promised the trees: This is where I let go, no matter how many times I must do it.
For a while, for this precious while, my body drifted to weightlessness, graced with the spirit of release. How small heartbreak is compared to nature’s powerful, loving embrace.
There were many ways to get lost on that trail. Many ways to be found, too. Both didn’t matter at that time. I wasn’t trying to get lost. Or to be found. I simply needed to walk until my feet realigned themselves on the path and said, “Enough”. And I was gifted just that in two hours. I emerged from the thick trees out into a golf course, bought myself strawberry taho—the best I’ve ever tasted in Benguet—and basked in the soft morning light before packing my bag.
“It’s a good day for tourists like you today. It’s been raining hard all week. This is the first time the sun shone like this,” the cab driver told me as we coasted through Session Road to the bus terminal home.
I smiled and nodded. It is, indeed. My heart was aflutter, feather-light and ready to weather grief as it comes knocking again in the days, months, or years to follow. To be Ellen Bass about it, “to love life even when you have no stomach for it…like a face between your palms…and you say, ‘Yes, I take you. I will love you, again.’”
