My interest in the environment became a “real thing” for me while I was in high school at Holy Angel University in Angeles City. I was probably around 14 or 15 years of age at that time.
Our environmental science teacher, Miss Emilyn Q. Espiritu (now a professor at Ateneo de Manila University’s Department of Environmental Science with a Ph.D. in applied biological science major in environmental technology, and executive director of the Ateneo Research Institute of Science and Engineering), asked us to form small groups for a research project.
My group chose to study the effects of Paning’s (famous for its “butong pakwan”) factory on the surrounding area after we observed the blackened leaves of the plants and trees within its vicinity. I can’t remember the finer details of our research project, but I do recall how participating in it made me appreciate applied research and the beauty of vigorous scientific study.
Food chains and food webs fascinated me, as did our studies on pollution and the chain that links us, humans, to the environment.
College life in Baguio
My university life in Baguio wasn’t as exciting as I envisioned. I enrolled in biology at Saint Louis University, with becoming a doctor of medicine as my end goal (I had a medical encyclopedia since elementary school, and various science books, including ones about anatomy and physiology).
Lab work got me bored and frustrated (I expected to have my own microscope), and failing rates were quite high. Moreover, everyone feared the genetics class, and we, biology freshmen, were advised to rethink our college path.
I decided to shift to mass communications during my second year in college to avoid wasting time and money (I didn’t fail in any of my nat-sci subjects and had high grades in “minor” subjects, but I also didn’t want to wait for failure to come). After all, I was interested in photojournalism.
But then, when I was about to enroll in mass comm, I was told the photojournalism class had been dissolved because the sole instructor had gone back to his media practice. So, I also enrolled in AB English (which I ended up finishing ahead of mass comm where I had one semester left during graduation).
Well, my love for the environment continued. I only wished I were as good at math as my dad because his field—geology—fascinated me. When I was a college freshman, he’d fetch me sometimes for weekends in Pampanga. While on the bus passing through Kennon Road, he would talk about the different geologic time scales and how to identify rock formations, as well as the effects of mining on the environment (he worked in mining for several years and was based in Bakun, Benguet for a long time).
Adulthood gets in the way
My passion for the environment stayed on the back burner for several years as I struggled with becoming a young parent and building a writing career.
After working in Manila for nearly three years, I ended up returning to Baguio to teach at the University of Baguio for a semester and then at Saint Louis University for around eight years.
During that time, I joined hikes that combined work (research) with the fun of hiking. I was able to climb Mount Santo Tomas, some mountains in Kapangan (sorry, I forgot the names), and Mount Pulag.
Of course, during summer vacations, I would climb Mount Arayat (Arayat is my hometown) with an uncle and some cousins, and even my son when he was able to tag along.
It was during this time that I became keenly aware of the burden we, humans, were and are still placing on the environment. I was also against the construction of SM Baguio. But then, I left my job and went to Dubai for financial reasons. I was a single parent after all, and I had my kids to provide for.
Dubai, Climate Reality, COVID
While in Dubai, I felt apprehensive about the materialism all around me. With a bigger part of the year being unbearably hot and humid, people there spend a lot of time indoors. And this includes staying in malls and doing lots of shopping.
Credit cards were extremely easy to acquire pre-GFC, and malls were always full of people shopping for items on sale, and not. I also got exposed to the problems of fast fashion while researching certain topics as a feature writer, so I created a Facebook page focused on encouraging people to minimize their carbon footprint.
It was the only way I knew I could contribute something worthwhile to my quest to protect the environment. Fast forward to 2017, I decided to stay in the Philippines for good and resigned from my job in Dubai. I began working remotely in earnest.
After staying in Pampanga for over a year, my kids and I decided to move back to Baguio City. While here, I joined Climate Reality and met Mam Lucy’s older sister, Mam Josie. This association later led to introductions between Mam Lucy of the Baguio Chronicle and myself—a serendipitous event, if I may say so.
And so I began writing environment-centered articles for my column called Green Minded in the middle of the pandemic. I hope to continue doing so to contribute, in my own little way, to the preservation and restoration of nature on our tiny planet.
