Like a slow and gentle stream

AS someone had written long ago – and time has obviously stood still – Sagada is a state of mind. It is possible to visit the place and miss the point.

Sagada is unassuming, its charm unprepossessing. It is different from, say, Palawan, whose stunning scenic beauty hits you like a sudden wave and leaves you drenched for days. Sagada greets you with the sight of a ramshackle, three-storey hotel that has galvanized iron sheets for exterior walls. You realize the mystique must lie elsewhere.

THE CLIMB down Sagada's Sumaging Cave: Entering the King's Chamber. JOSE MARTE A. ABUEG

Sagada is calm and quiet, like a slow and gentle stream. It is the perfect opposite of a city. Urban anxieties and heavy, residual heat may take time to vanish, which they must. The essence of the place can begin to seep in only after you empty up.

That can happen deep inside Sumaging Cave, as you entrust life and limb to a local guide, a petromax, a rope, and ultimately, yourself. The steep climb down, estimated at 350 meters, takes about two hours. It has to be on bare hands and feet; shoes won’t do on the muddy rocks. Outside the lamp’s illumination, all is pitch black.

Experiencing this danger can help clear away inner cobwebs. As you go deeper down, the ground loses its mud, and the rocks and stalagmites turn golden. The final reward comes in the King’s Chamber at the bottom, where a cool natural pool cleanses and exhilarates.

That night, a cloud descends on Mount Ampakao. You watch it from a cottage window at Saint Joseph’s Rest House. The trees that line the mountain crest slowly turn into fine silhouettes before disappearing in the white haze. About half an hour later, the cloud is right at the cottage’s door.

Mount Ampakao can be a full morning’s hike to the peak – if you often pause to look for mushrooms, pick berries, drink from a flower that yields rainwater, and perhaps attempt writing with a twig and natural ink from little black peas.

The peak shows magnificent landscapes of mountains and valleys, giving a feeling of being at once grand on the mountaintop and puny beneath the sky.

The winding road to Sumaging Cave also provides a view of one of those valleys, a landscape of rice and cabbage terraces. Along the ridge you can clearly hear constant wind blowing through the pine trees overhead, and from below, the sound of an unseen brook.

Sometimes Sagada’s invitation to contemplation isn’t overly subtle.