Breathless prose, stories about people nurturing trees

“Mountains of Triumph”
By Roy Iglesias
PNOC–EDC, 2001



You drive up north toward Subic and you see, from afar, mountains colored brown and gold. Nothing sentimental there, because that shows the mountains are rid of forest cover and are, to put it plainly, bald.

Your plane hovers over Mindanao, and as you look through the window, you note land blocks of brown, gold and yellow on mountains and you conclude – these two are bald. But, then your eye catches patches of green – a refreshing sight with a refreshing thought: Some parts of the mountain are going through reforestation!

What’s going on inside those forests? When a multitude of trees grow, whose hands nurture them? When they are cut down or burned, what form do these malevolent forces take – kaingineros, illegal loggers … and their murderous ilk?

What does it mean to see evil face to face when you want to save the trees while armed insurgents are ready to shoot you. Despite well-rehearsed possible reaction when death or bloodletting comes, what do you really do when the passenger beside you suddenly slumps, after receiving a hail of bullets from the underbrush?

When day breaks, you wake up to see a multitude of community folks breaking the good news that they now also “own” the idea of taking care of the forest – said with the brightest toothy smiles you have ever seen in your life. Are you emotionally prepared for such a magical moment?

The book “Mountains of Triumph” – to paraphrase a familiar saying – brings you closer to the trees you usually miss because all you have seen are forests. Actually, the book brings the reader where the action is and where dreams begin – right in the midst of community folk working hand in hand with well-meaning organizations to save and nurture their sole salvation: the perpetuation of forests.

One could simply summarize this book as a story book on the social forestry project of both the PNOC Energy Development Corporation and the New Zealand Government – with a forestry manual thrown in – and would rest in the thought that he/she has captured the spirit of the book. Not so. That’s oversimplifying it as a one-dimensional coffee table book that has postcard perfect pictures and elegant prose fit for an award winning brochure. Actually, it is a coffee table book -- and much much more.

What we have here is a gripping account of warm-blooded people, leaving the comforts of plush offices in the concrete junge, and penetrating deep into many forests all over the country to experience first hand what it means to share your dreams and your fears and strategies with the simple folk about how to secure a shared future and how to restore a vanishing forest.

And yet, the accounts are not the usual stuff you find in annual reports, rid of the real stuff and drama life is made of. Listen to this:

“The rifle was aimed at a bend of the empty, twisting road. An inocuous target, it seemed, until moments later when a pickup truck came into view. Then the sniper knew his vigil was finally going to pay off. In the truck, Emmie Ybanez was seated in front, between the driver and her officemate Mon Arong who, like her, was also an extension worker of PNOC EDC’s Environmental Management Department …

“Suddenly, a loud burst of gunfire by the crashing sound of broken glass from the windshield jolted Emmie out of her thoughts.” Read on through the breathless prose when you get hold of this book.

The book also connects the life of executives who shuttle from concrete to real jungles: “Agnes de Jesus is on her way to a conference in another building when she sees the earthworm twisting and twirling on the carpet of her office, moving toward the door. The little creature has ventured beyond its world, crawling out of the pot of tropical plant by the desk, crossing the unfamiliar terrain of the carpeted floor … to search for a fresh patch of earth to till.”

This books open a fresh new possibility in reporting the dream and drama, conflict and concord, the tremulous truce and the lasting peace inside our many forests. The book is shorn of slogan, and has steered clear of anemic prose that usually marked reports on the great work done by foresters and the community folk to protect every tree in the mountain.

When you read the book, you do not only sense the triumph of the human spirit, not only the victory of good storytelling over trite reportage – but you sense the soul of the community. And before you know it, you feel you are part of the same community, feel the sunlight in your soul, and acquire the communal hearthrob of the forest dwellers.