words and images by Zean Villongco

I remember when the town center was less crowded by people and buildings, and roads leading to it were not so well paved. That was twenty years ago, back in 1999, when I first came to Sagada. I was fresh out of college, having hurdled my last year like a stubborn kid who was just too relieved to finally get out of the dentist chair. I was with a couple of friends; actually, just mere college colleagues with whom I have never really invested much emotional ties and with whom I have never kept in touch after our backpacking trip. I don’t even remember their names. What I remember was the inn where we stayed – a nondescript place up a trail path off the side of the road, with its rustic wooden interiors and spartan rooms, and the forest just by its backyard. I came aboard the trip upon the enticement by my colleague who painted for me a mental image of a hidden mountain village where time stops. My being in Sagada for the first time was like getting lost, like leaving behind a life, like falling out of existence.

Since then, I have returned to Sagada numerous times. It was a place that I grew fond of – the cold climate was always a welcome from the oppressive heat of the city. It was a place with a quiet, unassuming temperament, with its people holding a subdued yet sturdy esteem, their stolid yet amiable faces seemingly filled with wisdom that I couldn’t read. I have explored its burial caves, where the solemn visage of an ancestor’s skull once greeted me at the entrance, and the magical dance between water and rock played out for me as I descended into the depths. I have visited its limestone cliffs upon which the coffins of the ancient departed hung like perched sparrows. I have bathed in its falls which cascade down the mountain like a white veil. I have walked its trails to emerge upon wide vistas of its mountain landscape. I have met its weavers who spun the traditional patterns of the Cordilleras and its potter who molded a menagerie of earthen vessels. Sagada was the place up in the mountains where I would lose the world and find myself. Sagada was my Terabithia.

But time never really did stop in Sagada. Modern progress and the media eventually found their way into this village up in the mountains, and the vans with their load of tourists soon followed. More hostels and inns were built, along with a fine dining steakhouse, a coffee shop and a reggae bar. The crowds filled up the caves and snaked their way along the now cemented trails leading to the falls and the hanging coffins, snapping away with their smartphones, with the hope of gathering a multitude of likes for their #YOLO Instagram posts. As with all things, change is but inevitable. Seeing Sagada change throughout the years since I first visited has brought me both pangs of old town nostalgia and a soft exhilaration. I can only relish the thought that I have come to know Sagada when it was still just a quiet hidden mountain village, where quietude roams like a guardian spirit.

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