(This article was also published by The Manila Times on 29 August 2026.)
The floods—made more morbid by tales of corruption and the
recent deadly strike somewhere in Nepal—prompt me to take another hard look at
how we relate to nature.
Fifty years ago, while still a teenager, I helped my parents
till a small rice field. Often, family members did the cultivation, planting,
and weeding. Farm workers always helped, having seen how the other rice farmers
did it. But paying for their wages would have been costly, and we were usually
short on cash. We had relative plenty from survival crops like camote and gabi
because my parents—Hilario and Maria—also worked hard on our upland farms
during the rice-farming offseason.
My hometown in Eastern Samar lacked rice fields. But I liked
rice farming because I had other interests. I loved snaring wild birds and
putting them in cages. There were schools and schools of them in rice fields
during summer, when the fields turned golden, the time crops announced they
were ready for harvest. Like us humans, other living creatures were drawn to
the free food. There were red maya (Lonchura atricapilla) birds that could
cover whole fields when they descended from neighboring valleys. Flying
together, they formed like a giant Arabian rug, hovering in a variety of shapes
most likely orchestrated by how the winds blew, or wherever the scarecrows
surprised them, before landing on their feast.
Yonder, farther afield at the edge of valleys where sloping
hills came into view, were dalakit (Ficus philippinensis) trees that stooped to
almost ground level when heavy with ripe fruit. Their branches drooped even
more when a variety of other birds, wild pigeons and korokoro (Phapitreron
leucotis) among them, feasted on the fruits. The flapping of their wings in a
feeding frenzy was a stunning sight.
But I spent most of my time around the rice fields where
quails were easier to trap. Like mice, this mostly pedestrian, pint-sized bird
has a big appetite for grains, especially rice. Hours on end under the midday
sun, I set traps between stalks of native rice—which were much taller than what
the rice farmers plant today—and seemingly oblivious of the heat.
I’m not sure now if I did it for reasons other than vanity.
The bird meat, when cooked over an open fire, smelt like any other protein-rich
food. My friends and I sometimes gathered to barbecue them. They were delicious
to the taste. But being small, they hardly satisfied hungry bellies. No meal
was worth the effort required to cook and set them out on the table. Other ends
could hardly be justified as well. Not being born to be domesticated, they
could not be tamed and kept as pets for longer than a couple of weeks. In the
end, these irreplaceable treasures of nature were simply wasted.
At 66, I feel like a remorseful accountant. The examination
of how I contributed to the melancholic poverty of nature is a sobering
thought. Under a mango tree, in a place where I grew up before the search for
livelihood sent me to faraway places, the table with either a laptop or a chess
board on top of it has yet to materialize. I have long desired to set this
table up. To me, chess or writing can consume the hours otherwise claimed by a
conscience nagged with remorse. But, somehow, the work had not kept pace with
the desire. There are raw materials nearby, mostly scraps of hardwood probably
discarded years ago. What adds to the lack of will is that neither the laptop
nor the chessboard exists.
This nook is in the backyard, just a few steps from the old
house my maternal grandfather built two years before I was born. He built it
with hardwood—concrete materials being mostly unheard of in that era. Yet it
has survived the most devastating typhoons that hit the country, including the
2013 Super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) that claimed no less than 6,300 Filipino
lives and left almost two million families homeless. No other proof of his
elite craftsmanship can be more compelling. But quite unlike him, I could not
get around to building this table even in my idle time.
I also have the weather to blame. An hour of downpour would
leave the mango tree flooded for several days. This has been a good enough
excuse for me to postpone putting in the woodwork needed to assemble the
fixture. Every time I look up and see the clouds gathering low, rain is sure to
follow, even during summertime. I could tell this was not how it used to be. It
makes me miss my youth in the rice fields when the climate kept the seasons
true to their calendar. Today, the seasons have lost their rhythm. It can rain any
hour. The sun may or may not show up at all. Or it shines imposingly,
generating heat beyond bearable levels.
So, the table under the mango remains unticked among the
priority to-do list. I realize now that many things are left undone despite
keeping oneself busy in one's youth. The lifespan of Filipino males averages at
67 to 71 years, so the pressure to rush things up a bit mounts, knowing there
is little time left while there are still lots of promises to keep, “before I
sleep.”
When Robert Frost wrote in 1922 the following lines: "The
woods are lovely, dark and deep, / But I have promises to keep, / And miles to
go before I sleep," he painted the contrasting colors of a quiet, alluring
peace of nature with that of a restless pull of social duties and human
obligation.
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