Published December 8, 2000

Stand on top of any Cordillera peak and, on a clear day, you can indeed see forever. Do it from Mt. Pulag and you will be transported. But, even from lesser peaks, the same wonderment cannot be denied. Sto. Tomas, a definitely less lofty height but more accessible from Baguio, can be as exhilarating. Thirty minutes to its step-plateau, or an easy two-hour hike from its base, the high ground that guards and straddles the provinces of Benguet and La Union is one site that should be visited at least once by anyone.

Get there in the closing hours of the day and you will forget all the hyped up romance alluded to Manila Bay in the lowlands. On the rare cloudless close of day, the view of the descending sun literally thrills you to the bones. A misty sunset can even be more thrilling as the colors that only a sinking sun can paint. Even a cloudy day will not disappoint. There in the gray horizon can be seen the dying rays of a shrouded orb. Neither does a stormy day diminish the eternal wonderment of each sunset. Somehow, and there in the west can one imagine the truism that behind the clouds the sun still shines.

But, get up there on starry and such dazzlingly clear days as we have now and treat yourselves to... a treat. Pre-dawn is in itself a true wonder. Imagine yourself all and truly above the squalor of Baguio's slums, and then look down at a city whose lights, as my wife had often told me, look like lingering remnants of a fireside in the shivering cold.

Bundled up as you are, perhaps even with hands in gloves, you might shiver and then turn one way and the other and then relish the sight of slivers of light beaming from the western coast, a city's lights beaming up and the crack of a dawn slicing through your horizon.

Stand there and rapture in the moment. Because, that is all it will be. Seconds after will come as a shock when the first rays of the sun palpably shoot up.

That is perhaps one of the most tingling moments one might experience hereabouts. One can imagine a languorous sunrise in one of those cottages allegedly built for you-know-who and you-know-where. Those inhabitants however will never know a true Cordillera sunrise until this rise of the Cordillera sun dawns over them.

The marginal strawberry or cabbage farmer knows that. He upended on his back at the break of dawn, he trods to his field, no matter how small. And yet, he is not above or below the moment. He pauses to look once more at the breaking of the day. It strikes him again, that a day of drudge should being, and yet, in his pause, knows that there is in that moment of sheer God-given instant the instruction for his person to get back to reality.

Up there in Sto. Tomas, even the glaring day which bears on ones back like so many pinpricks, the obtrusive sun is only half unwelcome. The sunshine is, for the itinerant farmer, a boon that will help ripen his crop. The same is as much welcome for the visitors on the way up or down from the peak. Whichever and however, at the middle of the day, the sunshine of these days when it bears on ones shoulders is always welcome.

Whoever said that the sunlight in such as these higher reaches that Baguio enjoys is more cancer-causing must have been speaking somehow out of turn.

Truth is that Sto. Tomas residents do not lack for testimony confirming the healing powers of the sun when it beams down from that rise.

That is neither here nor there. The thing is for one to experience a day on that nearby rise. Mornings there are incomparable, as are the day's end. The hours in the between are as wonderful.

It is a - pardon the use of the word again - wonder that the presence and overall potential of the looming presence of the mountain has not been exploited by the pretenders who want tourism to explore.

If they just as much as dig into former advocacies, they might find that Sto. Tomas was scheduled for a site of so-called alternative development.

I must rest here, however. Scaling heights is no longer my forte. I'd rather try my spindly legs, leaving the so-called tourism-boosters behind, and step up to those little mounds that I can conquer.

And yet, and yet... I have to question. Why is it that the full of the Cordillera is not promoted as the Highlands of the Philippines? And that, therefore, it is only via her that one can reach the sky. Literally.

That way we might one day sing and feel confident that on a clear day, we can.