Meet MT. Makiling (and More)

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Hello everyone! Kumusta ka! Welcome to today’s episode. Which includes a trailer for the flagship Hugot Podcasting show: The Mountain’s Heart: an audio drama about returning home, or refinding it again despite the challenges life throws at us. The RSS feed should be completely distributed so now you can subscribe to it wherever you are currently listening to my voice. However, I should point out that the first episode will not  be released until April 20th. But you can still subscribe now; it’s great to be ready for the big day. Because, and not to toot my horn, it’s going to be an exciting release.

For now, though, I want to talk a little bit about the inspiration behind the show. Or one aspect of it. Namely, Mount Makiling and the spirit that lives within it.

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Mount Makiling is a dormant volcano in the Laguna province that I’ve never climbed or otherwise directly interacted with, but I have family who live in that area, so I have seen it from a distance. I can definitely say that it is truly a beautiful mountain. Or volcano, technically. There’s no historically recorded eruption, but with geothermal features like mud springs and hot springs, the chance remains, so it’s classified as ‘potentially active.’ Hence the clarification. 

Clarification aside, though. It’s a beautiful mountain and a popular hiking destination with two major trails that are fairly established, as is not limited to the super experienced hiker but please know what you’re doing when you attempt to climb it. Because Mount Makiling isn’t and will never be fully transformed into a commercial hiking destination. If such a concept exists. It might not. 

But what I really mean to say in so many words is that this mountain is a declared Heritage Park as of 2013, but it’s been a protected forest reserve for much longer. Or just treated as such, depending how you read the various proclamations, acts, and orders surrounding the Makiling Forest. Regardless, it’s been preserved for the enjoyment of all and all future generations, though it might for a practical purpose considering it’s technically a volcano and all that.

Or maybe there’s more to this “practical protection” than that.

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You see, the mountain is sacred to many, whether explicitly as a pilgrimage sight or subconsciously as an extension of a cultural memory passed down through the generations. Because, well you see, there’s a guardian who watches over the mountains. A diwata, the most widely known in Filipino mythology in fact. By some standards, you could probably even consider her a goddess. 

And she is Maria Makiling. The beautiful anito portrayed with ornate and radiant clothing, associated with the white mist that often surrounds the mountains. To the point that some legends describe her as fair skinned with pale hair. 

Oh and by the way, if you want to get into the sort of hair split that’s like… Which came first: the fruit or the color orange. The legends are unclear whether the mountain was named after her or if she was given the name Makiling because she calls the mountain her home or homebase in the same way many of us would think of our families as our home or as our starting point. But to some she was always known as Makiling, an anito sent by Bathala to the mountain as something like a guardian over mankind. And on that mountain, she lives in some sort of hut, potentially with a farm of sorts outside of her door, unlike some of her counterparts in other mountains who merely live in caves There are even some stories where the hut is situated in a village with the people she is meant to guard. Or it was, once upon a time. In those same stories, she had to flee to a more remote portion of the mountain for one reason or another.

  As for the “Maria” portion of her name. That was later added by the Spanish as a sort of rebranding to make her more compatible with Catholicism. Because the belief in her and her presence on the mountain was both difficult to combat and maybe needlessly so. I mean, there are some parallels that can be drawn between Maria Makiling and Mary the Mother of Jesus, so maybe it really was better for missionaries to make it work somehow.

But that’s not the important thing, you might be saying. Well, Makiling itself is the word for leaning or uneven, which corresponds with the observation that the profile of the mountain resembles a reclining woman. But that’s not the source of the legend that surround this mountain. It’s not the image of the woman at rest. It’s this guardian, Maria Makiling, that has captured the imagination of the Filipino people.

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The legends about her are many.  And many involved men that disappear in the forests of the mountains, having been taken into Maria Makiling’s household as her husband, to spend his days in matrimonial bliss. As long as he loved her and only her.  Other legends have Maria Makiling as scorned love. And Jose Rizal even has a version of this tale. Or one could have angered Maria Makiling in some other ways. Like by picking the fruits of the forest and carrying them off. Now, don’t get me wrong, you can eat what you need to eat if you are hungry. But don’t take any with you. If you do, you will be attacked by insects and thorns until you throw away the excess and reverse one’s clothing as a sign that you truly have nothing more you are hiding.

Other stories have Maria Makiling turning ginger into gold to help a family plagued by poverty. A sweet gesture that then gets perverted by human greed.

And… now I guess The Mountain’s Heart is going to soon fit somewhere into this canon. After all, some say she still appears to visitors. Usually to punish them for mistreating her mountain. But I think there might be more to her than that. 

So here’s the trailer for The Mountain’s Heart. Find it wherever you are currently listening to my voice. The first episode will be out April 20th.

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(Equipment adjusting Airport boarding announcement starts. It is muffled and hard to hear. The announcement ends, but the sounds of the airport still seep into the track)

Okay, so… (sigh) This is going to be… Well, I don’t know. I never thought I would be making a “what I did over vacation” assignment at my age. But then again, I also thought I’d be done with school by now. But whatever.

For this vacation, my parents and I are going back to the Philippines to see family and… And I guess do some sort of sightseeing type events. But you should know… (sigh) Okay look, if you haven’t done a trip like this, you may not understand it. We go to the Philippines as a family to spend a few weeks there to try to make the cost of the plane ticket worthwhile and also it’s the only time we get to see our family, every other year or so. Which means, that we cram in as much domestic bliss as we can. And that sort of thing will take priority over all the other touristy stuff you can do around the islands.

I don’t know what you expected me to document when you made the offer, but if that’s the case, I probably should have been more open about what this trip is actually going to look like. Namely, a lot of cooking, a lot of sitting around the house, not so much hiking and touring and swimming and all those sorts of things. 

But I did give you my word that I would give some sort of documentation of my trip, per the assignment and as a bit of appreciation for excusing my absence from class. Seriously, my parents would have never let me come on this trip if it would have hurt any of my grades. Or my grade. And well, okay, I… I know I won’t always sound like it and sometimes I roll my eyes when I talk about my visits home, but I do appreciate it. I did want to go on this trip really badly, and it would have broken my heart if I couldn’t. 

This is a beautiful place to be, complications aside, but more than that, I love my family, and I love being around them, even though it’s hard to be in this family sometimes. It’s hard being away from everybody. It’s hard to get out there. It’s hard to find a way to pause my life long enough to make a trip possible. And it’s going to be hard to explain what I’ve been up to these past few years. I mean, the “wala boyfriend?” thing was never great, but then again my parents didn’t want me to get married young, so it worked out. There’s nothing… good about what’s coming, the explanations I have to give, the questions I have to face. 

But I guess I’ve got to just rip this bandaid off. Or that’s what Dad says. And in theory, I should appreciate the sentiment. I mean he would be an expert. This has never been all that easy of a trek for him in the same way that it’s never really easy to visit the in-laws. But somehow he’s made it work. 

Okay, I’ve never been good at introductions. As all my essays probably show. I understand though that it is important to set the scene. So currently, I am in the airport with my parents, getting ready to board a flight to Manila. My uncle will be waiting there to meet us and to take us back to the province my mother is from. There will likely be more people, but you never know who's coming until they actually get in the car. Also this trip is probably going to be the hardest one I’ve ever taken. Not just because my hip makes long periods of anything difficult and airline seats. But I have no clue what I’m going to do about everything, what I’m going to tell them or what they’re expecting. I mean, it’s been five years since the accident, and I know I was expecting to be a lot better by now, but the healing process goes as it goes, and unfortunately I think it’s come to a stop. We’ll see, though. We’ll see about everything. And I will resume recording when I have seen. Something. I guess.

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This has been a production of Hugot Podcasting, a subdivision of Miscellany Media Studios. It was written, performed, and produced by MJ Bailey. If you like the show, please consider subscribing and maybe telling a friend to as well.