THERE was a time when the highlight of a trip to Baguio was the first sight, and scent, of pine trees. Alas, what we see today as you enter Baguio are rather anemic looking pines, the smell of pine is long gone and, it seems, so too is the spirit of the trees.
But I?ve come to look forward to something even grander. Either going to or coming from Baguio, I always look forward to seeing the town of Binalonan in Pangasinan. The landscape changes as you approach Binalonan. It?s almost as if you?re entering a new world. At the poblacion, near the center, you find majestic old trees, giving you a feeling that the entire town is under a huge canopy. I?ve never stopped at the town, but just driving through has always lifted my spirits, almost as if I?d been granted a few minutes of refuge.
I?ve always loved old trees. My decision to buy a house turned on a mango, narra and ylang-ylang tree on the lot. Even more importantly, there was a towering sampalok tree?in the neighbor?s lot. When I renovated the house, I had a huge glass window positioned right in front of that tree, almost as if to frame it. So there it stands, this one tree, always looking different depending on the time of the day and the time of the year.
Fearing trees
I grew up, as many Filipino city kids did, fearing trees. We had trees in our backyard, but we were always being warned not to play around them, with every kind of threat imaginable, from itchy higad (caterpillars) dropping on your head to spider webs trapping you. One household helper even claimed there were snakes in the trees, and I imagined them peeping at me as Lucifer did with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
Today, we talk about ?clearing? the land of vegetation, including trees, almost as if nature is an infestation. Old beliefs about trees being inhabited by malevolent spirits now mix with an association of these trees with the past, with being old-fashioned.
Trees just aren?t new enough, modern enough. There was a time when places were named after the trees, for example, Manggahan, Sampalok, Talisay, Narra. Now we have entire towns named after political clans and dynasties (think Ampatuan).
We need to bring back an appreciation not just of trees, but of what they do for us. Preparing for this column, I looked up Binalonan on the Internet and found out that ?binna-lonan? means ?everyone brought their baon.? I have no doubts that people who met would partake of their baon or meal under the majestic trees.
Much has been said about how trees are the planet?s lungs, of how they prevent floods, provide food, shelter, clothing, but there?s more. My own love affair with old trees started when I was living in California with its ancient redwood trees, thousands of years old. In one of the parks, they even have a cross section of one redwood, with its numerous rings testifying to its age. There were rings marked with such historical landmarks as ?Jesus born? to dramatize how very old the tree was.
Looking up a redwood, soaring into the sky, is always breathtaking, and humbling, reminding us of how puny we humans are, and how brief our lives are. Old trees remind us that we live on a very ancient planet, and that we are the newcomers, each given the privilege of a few decades to savor its wonders.
Trees live. Trees move, their rustling leaves a balm for the weary spirit. And in their silence, trees too have much to say about life and our existence.
Memory trees
Which takes me to Anne Frank?s tree. Anne Frank, the young Jewish girl who had to hide in a house in Amsterdam during the Nazi period, became famous because of a diary she kept.
The diary includes one touching passage, written on Feb. 23, 1944, about an old chestnut tree that she could see through their attic?s skylight: ?From my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind. As long as this exists, I thought, and I may live to see it, this sunshine, the cloudless skies, while this lasts I cannot be unhappy.?
Only a few months later, in August, someone betrayed Anne Frank?s family and she was sent to a concentration camp where she died in March 1945, aged 15. Her father, the only family member who survived the Holocaust, had her diary published and it continues to be a best-seller, a poignant reminder of good and evil, of hope and despair, of the human condition.
A front-page article in Wednesday?s San Francisco Chronicle features Anne Frank?s tree in Sonoma University. How did it get there? After Dutch horticulturists discovered that the chestnut tree, now more than 100 years old, was dying, they launched an intensive treatment regimen but, just to be sure, they also decided to take cuttings. The first of 150 saplings or young trees were planted in Amsterdam in December. Eleven saplings were reserved for the United States and the first went to Sonoma State University in appreciation of their programs and activities around the Holocaust (a term used to refer to the mass slaughter of some six million Jews by the Nazis).
And so, Anne Frank?s chestnut tree will live, many times over, all to be accompanied by markers explaining where they came from and why they are so important.
We might want to link our tree-planting campaigns to memory projects. In one of his lectures at Ateneo?s medical school, Ambeth Ocampo mentioned that Ateneo was going to plant 150 trees for its sesquicentennial from cuttings taken in Dapitan, where their most famous alumnus, Jose Rizal, had lived.
Other institutions celebrating milestones?50th, 100th, whatever?might want to think of a similar project.
Or you could launch your own personal ?eternal tree? project. Frangipani trees, known locally as calachuchi, used to have a romantic connotation. Because they were such hardy plants, their cuttings could survive for months and so people would take a branch from a tree in their home garden before going off on a long voyage, as a reminder of home and of a loved one (or loved ones). One can imagine Spanish friars, or soldiers, introducing these memory-filled frangipani saplings to the Philippines.
Unfortunately, once established in the Philippines, the calachuchi became associated with ghosts and cemeteries, but there are many other trees one can pick from. Many countries have strict rules about bringing in plants, but we could at least look into local memory-telling. Consider taking cuttings from old trees?maybe that mango tree you used to climb, or the kamatsile that offered shade for your family picnics, or your dates?and transplanting them in your new home.
Like humans, trees can live on, too, through their children.
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Email: mtan@inquirer.com.ph
