Trail-walking Sagada

(photo by: Marian Sanchez, travel comp)                                  

It took us six hours and a half of convoluting trails to reach a dreamy and solitary place. In between miles, a constant yearning arouses in my mind a distant and moribund thought. The unending visions of a sad and gloomy memory take me back to a commune which had complicitly made this return trip part of a piece in a resultant and conspiring circle.

My travel companion woke up to ask in curiosity if the trip would be for eternity as the bus slowed down to submit and traverse a sharp curve. The whispering wind would tell us later on that this trip was indeed for eternity.

The bus parked beside a lonesome inn devoid of any soul and spirit. I knew that beneath those yearning souls lie buried in the earth forgotten memories of tranquility and comfort. A friend once told that the feeling could never be explained because it will always be forbidden. And indeed as we walked, passed tombs and epitaphs that remind corporeal beings how life recedes into whitewashed graves, a tender feeling gently harps into the unaffecting heart which would inevitably allow a person to ask to himself if the moment would endure.

Yes, the moment would endure. . . forever. It clings steadfastly among barren worlds like mine reverberating the height of the experience into one soulful and nostalgic dance.