Fire in the night

THE sightings of fire patches on the mountainsides have become rare these days. I refer to that fire that does not burn matter. In Mountain Province, we call these phenomenal appearances “botatew.” Our old folks used to see these fires like blinking torches in the night. They glow in place or from place to place like giant fireflies. Some say they are visiting “anitos” or ancestral spirits that could not sleep until they have delivered some message. But no one has figured what the “botatew” is and what they came to reveal from beyond the grave to the land of their living off springs.

I recall those “botatews” as shown to me during a visit to my hometown in my teenage years by the local folks and of late, during a visit to my wife’s ancestral place in Tucucan, Bontoc like flashes of insights if not foresight. I figured the torch lights (botatews) were not held by human hands; or earthly fires burning and fuelled by matter. One distinguishes human torch lights in the dark by determining the movement and direction they are going. In those days the locals would tell you whether there are foot paths where the “botatews” are currently being sighted; or if a community search is on-going for someone lost in the forest or in that part of a mountain that is normally not accessible or visited by people. Those were not ordinary fires too or else they would have caused forest fires during the summers of their appearances. “Botatews” were real phenomena at a time when communities in our highlands were very much isolated to each other and it was taboo for anyone to just wander in the forest and mountainsides unlike today.

Yes, the age of the “botatews” is simply but gone. You cannot assume seeing “botatews” in our mountains and not being mistaken for seeing car headlights, flashlights or simply bulb lights from newly built residences instead. Chances are the lights one sees in the dark yonder these days are also nothing but camp lights.

I recall them “botatews” of old, not to compare ages, times and conditions. To me, the vision and the images of the “botatews” simply remain and I wake up to them some nights as genuine eternal flashes of fires in the dark – in my Jurassic mind. If you have them, you can camp out on your own on those nights and squirm with the heat that it brings. That is all you really can do with it. Just like my old folks, they kept their “botatews” that came to their abodes to themselves and lived their time with the locals in peace. I may just well do that, the last of ‘em “botats” of another age and weave who I am with some tales. I am a man of peace and weak as the reeds.

Fire in the night is not just some phrase actually. Those are historic words I borrowed from President Thomas Jefferson when he spoke in 1820 about the slavery crises at the time of the Missouri Compromise. He saw his fire emerge in the darkness. From a distance he knew it would engulf the nation’s soul. He rang the “fire bell in the night” in a manner that would have Americans, supposedly possessing enough good sense to be able to reach settlements on the slavery issues themselves. They did not. Thirty years after, the crises cascaded into 1856 and made James Buchanan one of the most corrupt Presidents of the USA, meddling in the affairs of the Supreme Court and bribing members of congress to please and maintain his base of support, the Southern States. Ultimately, the South seceded and Jefferson’s vision of “fire in the night” became a real earthly inferno engulfing the northern and southern states in a costly civil war.

It is 40 plus years since the appearances of the “botatews” in the forests and mountainsides of our highlands. In more than half of those years, I joined others covering the disappearance of our forest faunal and floral species; the rising population and pollution of the environment. Like in Jefferson’s time, the flash of those lights were largely ignored. They will not be felt. But the increasing lack of water, food and resources will bring about scorching passions – human transformed “ignore”(ance) into wars of all kinds and scale.

“Botatews,” fires in the night --- I guess what they are and what they meant to tell us. They were conscious and caring beings who tried to relate to a people supposedly possessing enough good sense to settle the issues of survival and existence of the future now.