With a childhood spent in impoverished surroundings in a farming village called Doliman (Infanta, Pangasinan), my favorite song easily becomes "The Impossible Dream". But my version of the song has this line which is missing in the original song: "To climb the unclimbable peak". That peak belongs to Mt. Pempeng, a gently sloping cone of soil poised on the Pangasinan bank of the Nayom River on the western side of the northernmost part of the Zambales mountain range. This range extends from Sual, Pangasinan to Mariveles on the Bataan peninsula.
Here are some photos from afar and at close range...
A year ago, I have come to a foreign land where I won’t be able to leave it for the next five years for a reason. At the end of that period, I plan to go back to the place where I grew up, bring with me a set of mountain-climbing gears and climb my "unclimbable peak". Once on top, I would give a "big" westward gaze not so much to return the "tiny" gazes I used to throw in this direction as to restore my favorite song to its original number of lines.
I mayeven pay a final tribute to my hero, (Dr. Jose Rizal, the Pride of the Malay race whose vision of a bright tomorrow for the land of his birth dims with each passing day) by giving voice to his unspoken words of desperation with a brandish --- beat my chest and yell at the top of my voice: MORIR ES DESCANSAR!
--SS
***
Though uncaptioned, the photos reminds me of my own nomadic days in Pangasinan. My favorite trail was the one connecting San Roque Dam of San Manuel to Agpay Reforestation station, San Nicolas. The views taken by SS are very close to the ones we feasted on while we were on the trail. There is a different feeling when one is climbing up a hill. Civilization is nowhere to be felt or seen. It is like going back to the early times when man was alone to face the cruelties of nature with nothing to fight it but wits, a club or maybe a rock.
Man they say, is basically a hunter, a nomad, an adventurer. Confine man in a cubicle with papers, a telephone and a computer and you are depriving him of his basic instincts of self-survival. That is why some men hate the 9-5 regimen.
That is why on summer holidays, the go fishing or hunting not so much for what every they catch but for the fun of catching them.---#
--Vic
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