Pray once more, forester, for your childhood playgrounds (Part 2)

So, what came out of those ruminations?

     Oh well, the one in the hospital led me to the idea of making a dictionary of my father’s mother language – Isinay.

Hitting that idea of a wordbook was a big aha! moment for me. This was because it came out that, despite Isinay’s being suppressed – like a seedling under big trees – by other languages, it has no full-blown dictionary yet. Thus, making one would not only be historic but also a helpful input in saving the Isinay tongue from extinction.

The dictionary is still a work in progress. But at least its word-hunting phase, which included several long, happy, and nostalgic story-telling sessions with Isinay-fluent senior citizens, gave me good reason to go home to Dupax more often, especially in the precious years before my mother (who learned to speak Isinay thru osmosis) went to “the more verdant forests up there.”

Incidentally, my from-woods-to-words journey also took me to destinations I never thought I would be, such as giving lectures about Isinay and Isinays to anthropology students at UP Baguio, helping a UP Diliman linguistics student do her thesis on Isinay grammar, and getting published by Academia.org with my “Let the Isinay Forest Sing Again” (a paper I presented in a seminar for teachers on mother-tongue-based education in 2015 at St. Mary’s University).

Equally exciting, the word-hunting part of my dictionary project has greatly improved my knowledge on the history and geography of Isinay country, including the names and whereabouts of my town’s native trees, birds, fish, bats, insects, and other wildlife.

Called lavay in Isinay, tebbeg in Ilokano, tibig in Filipino,

and Ficus nota among botanists, this fig tree's fruits were among

my organic toys while growing up in the then Sitio I-iyo.

On the other hand, my  muni-muni in 2013 resulted in something closer to my heart as a forester – to put up an agroforestry farm in my little patch of hilly land in Barangay Carolotan, a former logging community in the upstream part of Dupax.

I felt ashamed of myself then because at that time I had only been paying lip service to agroforestry. I was a graduate, long time ago, of the first ever Training on Legume-Tree-Based Agroforestry held at Minglanilla, Cebu, and conducted by Prof. Napoleon T. Vergara (my Forest Economics & Finance professor in 1971-72 and my supervisor at the East-West Center in Honolulu in 1986-87), but I have not yet applied what I learned.

My original plan was to make my farm a showcase of two systems: 1) sloping agricultural land technology (SALT) and 2) biodiversity-focused agroforestry. I envision these two systems would attract neighbors and passers-by – many of them upland farmers with hectares of hilly land – to drop by and either follow my example or make tsismis to other farmers about how beautiful an ugly place could be if it has agroforestry or if it is planted to various kinds of bird-friendly trees.

For the SALT system, I wanted to make bench terraces on the hill with the widest eastern slope, then put up camote, gabi, corn, peanut, mungo, tomato, snap beans, and ginger plots on them. For contour hedges, I wanted to grow tigi (Amorphophallus campanulatus), saluyot, alugbati, and marapait (wild sunflowers). And on the border sides would be rows of ipil-ipil, kakawate, katuray and betelnut as living fences.

On the farm’s river side, I wanted to plant galyang, tree ferns, wild bananas, and two or more baletes with alukon (himbabao) as would-be host trees. I was thinking that if the baletes turn grotesque later, the belief that they harbor white ladies, tikbalangs, sinanpadi, aswang, ansisit, etc. would discourage trespassers.

 For the biodiversity focus, I already had in mind the species I would grow in other available spaces – langka, ilang-ilang, pakak, anteng, bitnong, samak, kapasanglay, alukon, guyabano, kamias, lansones, kalamansi, kallautit, marunggay, lumboy, kasoy, lukban, abukado, kanarem, pili, narra, durian … all in a merry mix, like a true forest, not in rows like orchards.

I’ll also try to grow rattan, especially the one that bears the sweet type of littuko. I’ll follow the technique, of planting uwway along with a host tree, developed by Dopinio Mento in his agroforestry farm in the Kakilingan part of the hills above the late Forestry Director Romeo T. Acosta’s village in Vista Hills, Bayombong.

And for the birds, I’ll plant guava, aratiles, bignay, duhat, papaya, kamiring, tibig, saba ti sunggo, samak, bitnong, atbp.

I also plan to dibble branch cuttings of Erythrina variegata (called sevveng in Isinay, bagbag in Ilokano, dapdap in Tagalog). In the olden days, especially when the other group of indigenous people of Dupax – the Ilongots – were still very much around, this tree helped protect the forests and wildlife in my town. How? When its flamboyant red flowers bloomed in March-May, it served as warning for tree-cutters, kaingineros (manopsoppeng in Isinay, agum-uma in Ilokano), bird trappers, and deer hunters to just stay home and avoid going to the wilderness areas. Or else, their bodies may be brought home without their heads.

[CONTINUED ON PART 3]