Beachwalks and other musings...

I find it really envigorating to take a walk along the beach on early mornings. This morning, I took a walk along Baybay to get a whiff of fresh air and exercise my weary bones and muscles at the same time. You see, I am trying to get my weight down per advise by my doctor. The water level was already very high considering that the tide wasn't still at its highest. It is really interesting to watch the water come in from the river. I noticed this as I passed by the bridge where the Irriberri fishpond used to be. The water looked really green and one would think that it came from a clean river. I tried to suspend reality at that moment. I was tempted to take my shoes off and jump off the bridge but I controlled myself.

The sight of water rushing in from the river reminded me of my childhood days when we used to jump off the bridge at Casa. Those were the days when our river was still relatively clean although you would ocassionally see some flotsam and jetsam and in those days, it didn't matter to me nor with the other kids. We just brush the debris aside, smelly or otherwise. Water is water and whenever we get the chance, and those chances were plenty, me and my friends would hie off to our river to take a swim. I learned to swim on my own at Cantilan river that's why I have nostalgic memories of this river. In fact, I almost drowned in our river because a friend of mine who didn't know how to swim tried to use me as his floatation device when a boat we were riding in capsized. I was just learning how to swim then and you can just imagine what I did to stay afloat. It was a good thing my friend was able to grab on to something and that saved both of us. To this day, we remain the best of friends.

I mentioned that I have nostalgic memories of our river, a river that was and still is a major transport route for our agricultural and fishing products. It pains me that when I look at our river nowadays, the landscape has totally changed. Where I used to see a river bank with trees, now I see houses on stilts and it's not a pretty sight. I really wonder how it reached to this point when Cantilan has plenty of land where the inhabitants of these houses on stilts could live. With the proliferation of these stilt houses, I can just imagine the ecological impact of this to our river. I haven't even mentioned the impact of having the Puyat Veneer Plant situated at this river. I do not personally know if the plant dumps its waste materials into our river but I can't imagine it not dumping anything into the river. These factors contribute to the slow death of our river.

Rivers are supposed to be a source of life, a place where people bathe, travel and have fun. Think of the Nile, Amazon and Yangtze, the Tigres and Euphrates were civilization started. People built settlements near rivers because of its obvious importance and here we are ignoring this important value of rivers particularly our own. What have we done to our river, I ask myself? And what can I do to help rehabilitate this very important part of our economy and history? Is it too late or can we still do something to stem the slow death of our river?

I wonder.