Land: A World in a Word

story and photos by B.J. Stolbov

What is land? Land can have many different meanings. Land can mean wealth, profit, prosperity, privilege, prestige, power, control, status, accomplishment, satisfaction, success, fame, respect, honor, dignity, safety, security, stability, continuity, contentment, freedom, happiness, hope, joy, beauty, love...

Land, for most people of the world, means wealth. Wealth, like beauty and love, is in the eye of the beholder.

 

For me, land was never wealth.  Wealth was always money, money in the bank, money in a bankbook, a bankbook safely in hand or in a box in a locked drawer, money invested in stocks, bonds, and mutual funds.  Land was always an illiquid asset of uncertain value with high property taxes, constant insurance, repairs, trespassers, and troubles: land is an almost completely useless investment. The only land that I ever owned was a plot: 6 feet long by 3 feet wide by 6 feet deep. 

Every person I know in the Philippines either rents or owns their property outright.  For the average Filipino, there is no mortgage system of credit. In fact, I know few people who own a credit card. The Philippines, at least in the rural Philippines where I live, is a cash-and-carry, or, more often, a barter-and-carry, economy.

This is one of the main reasons why the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) figures for “developing” countries are often so low. GDP measures the above ground economy of wages and income; it does not measure the underground economy of cash and barter.  Particularly at a local level, GDP is a misleading number. Many of the people I know here in the Philippines live on almost nothing, except their own homegrown food, and the products that they barter for goods and services. This is how we, and most people of the world, live.

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In Search of Quiet

by B.J. Stolbov

Deep in the barren Sonora Desert of Southwestern U.S, three days away from the last person I saw, I was hiking alone, in search of quiet. The desert has always been the one place that spiritual seekers, saints, and sinners have gone in search of quiet. 

Sonoran Desert, Prima, Arizona. Photo by Ken Bosma via Flickr CCLExcept that, in reality, the desert was not quiet. Its incessant winds whistled by my ears and rumbled up through my feet. Dead and dying grasses tumbled and rolled by.  Snakes slithered, lizards clicked, and hares scurried across the sand. The winds sang beneath the wings of hovering vultures and under the claws of lingering thoughts.

There, hiking alone through the desert, reveling in my own silence, late in the afternoon on a tranquil summer’s day, I suddenly came upon a rattlesnake, which startled me with its rattle, louder than any rock concert I had ever been to.  I stopped, the snake did not strike, we stared at each other, and then we both quietly went our separate ways. 

Sound and silence can come in unanticipated places and at unpredictable times. 

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The World of Growing Things

by B.J. Stolbov

When I was 11 years old, my father took my 15-year-old-sister and me on a cross-country car trip from Tamaqua, Pennsylvania to Seattle, Washington to San Diego, California, and back in 30 days. What I remember about the trip was my father saying, “Here we are at the Space Needle (or Disneyland or the Grand Canyon or wherever), you have 10 minutes, take some pictures, I’m going to the souvenir shop to buy some pennants.”  (For some reason, we got into collecting pennants that ended up on the walls of our basement.) My father drove 10,000 miles in 30 days, and I got to see the U.S.A. at 60 miles per hour. 

Navajo Bridge over the Colorado River. Photo by robin-loo via Flickr CCL

Now, that I have journeyed many miles throughout the U.S.A. and have moved to the Philippines, I would like to tell you what I have discovered about our world of growing things.

I learned the difference between a Saguaro Cactus and a Joshua Tree. (A Saguaro looks like a thorny, bristly candelabra and a Joshua Tree looks like large scrub brushes.) I learned to distinguish between a Coconut Palm and a Date Palm.  (You have to look up, but be careful; a falling coconut can kill.) I have journeyed to see a legendary Boojum Tree, which looks like a living tree that is growing upside-down! (It should be on everyone’s must-see list.)

The more I traveled and the more I observed, the more I discovered about trees. Banana trees (technically they are not a tree; they are a grass like asparagus) can be identified by a subtle difference in the leaf shapes. (I can’t tell the difference yet.) But I can tell the difference between the taste of a Lakatan (the sweetest) and a Saba (the meatiest). Did you know that a Pineapple plant is surprisingly short (less than a meter tall)?

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Floating on the Ocean

by B.J. Stolbov

Pagudpud is not a promising name for a beach town.

Boracay – now that’s a great name for a beach town. Boracay is an island between the Tablas Strait and the Sibuyan Sea in the Visayan Islands of central Philippines.  This is the place where people, many foreigners, go when they want to go to a beach. Here are white sandy beaches and deep blue waters, planted coconut palms and scheduled ferries, harbors for sailboats and large yachts, expensive hotels and designer resorts, gourmet restaurants and fast-food joints, beautiful women in tiny bikinis and handsome shirtless men, hot sunny days and wild drunken nights, 24-hour bars and all-night discos, music, singing, laughing, fun, affairs, romance, sex, secrets, exciting evenings, and, maybe, a regret-filled morning. Boracay.

Boracay Beach at Dusk/ Flickr.com

Pagudpud sounds like one of those small, lost towns in northern New Jersey. Pagudpud is a small, lost town in northern Ilocos Norte.  It is the most northern town in the most northern province on the northern island of Luzon.  From Manila, it’s a 10 to 12 hour bus trip. But when Filipinos want to get away, they go to Pagudpud.

Pagudpud is a tranquil, isolated town nestled between the South China Sea and the Cordillera Mountains.  Protected by the mountains, few storms threaten up here. The weather is warm, but not hot. The ocean is clear, blue, and unpolluted. The fishermen, in their hand-built boats, are out early in the mornings, tending their nets.  Long-winged seabirds fly low over the water. Wavelets splash lightly on the shore. The beaches are pristine, unspoiled, and almost all white sand.  These beaches are some of the most beautiful in all of the Philippines.  

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Hunting the Wild Banana Blossom

by B.J. Stolbov 

It was a dark and cool morning. I was up before dawn. Quietly, I put on my boots and my hat. Then, accompanied by my protective guard dogs, Julius and Brutus, and my intrepid, knife-wielding guide, Samuel, we started out into the jungle in search of the elusive wild banana blossom. 

The hills rolled away like brown buffaloes. Sighing as if still asleep, the trees drooped in the morning stillness. Birds flittered from tree to tree. Except for the sound of the distant chickens, a sound as pervasive as breathing itself, it was unusually quiet. The morning was calm. Not a breath of air moved. The dew was still thick on the tall grass. My view, from close to far, was green, jungle green, dark green, light green, middle green, green and green, everything was green. And I was searching for anything that wasn’t green. I was looking for yellow bananas and below that the most colorful plant in the jungle, the rare wild banana blossom. A banana blossom is a beautiful specimen. It is a deep reddish-purple and shaped like a huge upside-down rosebud.

Bananas, in the wild, come in many varieties, shapes, sizes, and colors. The Saba is a thick banana. It is much like the plantain in the supermarket that everyone looks at but no one seems to know what to do with. The Saba is used for boiling into soups and stews, or just boiled, peeled, and eaten cold much like a potato. It is also boiled in sugar water to make a delicious dessert called banana glaze. It can also be deep-fried and rolled in sugar to make banana-que. Lakatan and Latundans are both sweet, eating banana, with the Lakatan being the sweetest-tasting banana I have ever eaten, especially when it is freshly picked. Empress bananas are the tiniest bananas, about the size of the palm of your hand and can be eaten in about two or three tasty bites. The long, yellow, perfect banana that you see in the supermarket is called a Cavendish. It is probably originally from near here. But your perfect banana, domesticated and grown on enormous plantations throughout the tropics, is no longer a wild banana. 

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Transportation As If People Mattered

by B.J. Stolbov 

When I was in the United States, commuting every day by bus to work in the Financial District of San Francisco, I took the #2 Clement Street bus. Since I lived near the beginning of the line, there were always plenty of empty seats to choose from, if I got to the bus stop at 7:38 a.m.  If I got there at 7:39, the bus was gone, and I would be late for work. If I got there at 7:38:01, the bus would be pulling out, its engine revving, exhaust fumes spewing, as I ran as fast as I could, and shouted as loudly as I could, and pounded as hard as I could on the side of the bus. Sometimes, the bus would stop; most of time, it wouldn’t. 

When I first got on a bus, actually a small van, in my province in the Philippines, I was on time; in fact, I was early. I had the whole van to myself and I had my choice of seats. I was so excited! This was great! And then, we waited and waited. We did not go anywhere, as passengers, one by one, or two or three, climbed into the van, and we waited until the 12 seats were filled, and, if the driver wanted, we waited until 13 or 14 passengers were crammed into the van, and, maybe one or two old people sat on the front seat beside the driver, and perhaps one or two young men climbed up onto the roof, and we waited, maybe 45 minutes to an hour, until the driver decided that the van was full. 

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