While reviewing a few old published articles I wrote long ago, I again remembered a creepy and profound experience I had during the mid-90s. I used to work as a Researcher-Writer for a non-government organization, where I became part of a team that assisted Subanens (an indigenous tribe) in Zamboanga del Sur in their formal filing of the tribe’s ancestral domain claim before an assigned government commission. As part of my role involved tracing their genealogies and retrieving tribe history, I must have spent countless visits which when aggregated, almost took a little over eight months.
However, while this intro might have proven lengthy, it’s just intended as a setting and backgrounder; not the main topic of this article, so please bear with me.
Anyway, during one of our many treks to the many Subanen communities (which averaged twelve kilometers a day and often pierced through secondary forest), I somehow lost my way for a moment and instead stumbled into an overgrown bush which concealed a dead-end clearing surrounded by steep walls. Along its sides and though strewn everywhere were piles upon piles of forest animal bones, some of which were almost-complete skeletons. (as I recall, I identified quite a few: boar, deer and monkeys).
Spooked, I hurriedly traced my steps back until I finally met up with the rest. Thereupon, I asked our tribal leader and guide Melchor, what it was I had just seen. Quite solemnly, he answered that it was a sacred place and no one ever really goes there. “It’s where all the old, sick or wounded forest animals go to die.“ he added. “From all we know, that’s the only area where predators like snakes do not venture”.
With deep respect, I had then wondered, is this the same with forests everywhere, having similarly-secluded places where all its dwellers could go to claim their peace in death?
Thinking back to that particular experience, I admit to being dumbfounded till this day. The haunting image that all those piled-up animal bones had each a tale to tell, just makes me marvel at the hidden order of things in nature and more important, how wondrous it really is.
So many times have I seen roadkill, or worse, fresh remains of animals, especially pets scattered on our highways, with no one, at the very least, to carry them to the side of the road lest they be scattered further. One time, on our way home from a gig, my friend who was driving stopped awhile as we alit and dragged a large dog from the middle of the road to keep it from being continually run over again and again by large trucks plying the highway in the early morning. What is more disheartening in all these, it’s quite ironic sometimes, while in the densest of jungles, one discovers honor and respect, these values appear hard to find in our own civilized cement jungles.
