The Tree Of Life

This photo that I took in the summit of Mount Kabunian, Bakun, Benguet, Philippines was one of the best representation how I see things beyond my lens. As a mountaineer we should take care of the mountain, we don’t destroy it for our own advantage instead we need to protect them, the best God’s gift to humanity.

But sometimes, we need to witness on our own very eyes the disaster that will move our life before we act; to care about the things that God given to us, we neglect the nature, the air that we breathe, the sea that gives us water, the mountain and forest that we can search for a food.

Instead, the artificial city lights are more important to us, it gives us different pleasure what life is supposed to be. As we never felt what’s really happening in the countryside where the indigent people is struggling, they live a very simple life, a simple food that they catch in a water or harvest in the forest to share with the rest of their family, and children travel for more than an hour by foot to get an education.

Bakun Elementary School

And, much often we complain in our life, even we have more than enough but cannot distinguish what is more, we always in a look out that enough is not enough in our life. We never see the life in a different perspective as what other sees it.

Instead of complaining what was the government can or cannot do for us, maybe instead as an individual we do things even an inch to help the government, we have our skills and knowledge, on our tiny way we should help the people in the government. Yes, we have to call their attention but we have to do our own part as a citizen of our country.

As a mountaineer’s creed: “Don’t change the mountain, let the mountain change YOU.”

On the trail of Mount Kabunian