2020-001 | RESURRECTION OR VENGEANCE?

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! Did you missed me? For a lot of people who had been following my blog, the silence is deafening. I apologize for that. I had been unfortunate with my desktop computers. I could not understand how easily it melts down. I had three PCs crashing one after the other in a span of six months between 2018 and 2019. All were clones though and I cannot do about it since its working environment is warm and without an air-conditioning system. The fourth one after the three, a second-hand branded desktop did not fare either.

I got discouraged by the crashes and my zeal to write articles disappeared altogether and I have to console writing my opinions and activities on Facebook instead from an Internet cafe. Of course, I got a good following there and social media helped a lot in increasing readership of my WARRIOR PILGRIMAGE Blog when the machines were running healthy. This is one hell of a blog and it is a waste that it had to end that way. But, no way. I need to resurrect it come what may. I need to retrieve my data on those hard drives.

Then one day, I was able to scrape enough funds to procure myself a used SONY VAIO laptop computer. I did not immediately churn out articles for I was afraid it would go on the way of those four busted machines. I took time and tested this smaller machine at inconceivably long hours of operation and I felt satisfied only on the last days of 2019. It gave me hope. Finally, I could move on and write. Right? Yes and No. I will explain this later.

Even while I was enjoying the better qualities of the Sony Vaio, a second laptop arrived from the United States. It was a DELL LATITUDE and it was given as a gift from a friend who missed the WARRIOR PILGRIMAGE churning out article after article every week, every month, every year for eleven straight years. Five hundred sixty-three articles until March 16, 2019 when “Murphy came to town”. This second laptop becomes my backup and now I am going back to blogging paradise, many thanks to my friend who liked it that he remained incognito.

Going to that “Yes and No”. It is complicated right now. If I focused writing more for my blog, I would not have time to write for my other pending projects: WRITING BOOKS. Believe me, I have three pending book projects which needs to be finished the soonest time possible and I am afraid it begins to take shape as mere memories. These are (1) ETHICAL BUSHCRAFT; (2) A WARRIOR’S PILGRIMAGE: The Making of the Cebu Highlands Trail; and (3) THRUHIKING AN ISLAND IN THE PACIFIC. All are non-fiction.

I also have other books to write which had not gained a toehold yet. One is the study of animal trails and the other would be a couple of guidebooks for the two long trails that I had established in Cebu. I need to finish all these books before I turn sixty. I am not strong anymore to do so many activities on the mountains every weekend. I get injured too easily now. I do not have that mindset of invincibility anymore. I could feel myself more and more human.

Going back to my blog, I used to publish an article a week that accumulate to 50 articles a year. Regular. That made me and WARRIOR PILGRIMAGE a bit busy in blogosphere. There was passion and fire then. This day, I decide to publish articles on a whim. It means I may leave a month empty and unproductive and awash the next with as many as, maybe, twenty. That way I do not have to worry about backlogs and, that way too, I will not be a slave to my own system.

WARRIOR PILGRIMAGE is definitely making a comeback. I promise you this first day of 2020, but it will not be the same. No more endless sequels. Just stories that would entertain you. Stories of the world I am in – Bushcraft and Survival, Outdoors Education and Guideships – the three main activities that has been my bread and butter. Stories which teach good values and build character. I have journeyed far and wide in the bloodstream of years. It is time to give back to what I learned through this blog.   

This January, I will guide pilgrims on a pilgrimage route that I had helped establish in 2017 with the Archdiocese of Cebu – the CAMINO CEBU – the poor man’s Camino de Santiago yet the longest of all caminos in the Philippines at 175 kilometers, walkable in ten days. On this same month, I would travel to Luzon on the invitation of Project RONIN, to introduce my basic wilderness survival program on their members in the forests of Rodriguez, Rizal.

Because of this blog, my skills and activities became known nationwide and I would take advantage of this opportunity again to advertise myself as I have done so in the past. I can do that in Facebook, like most people do, but a blog is different. It gives you more credibility and you are spread out globally to people who really read. Did you not know that WARRIOR PILGRIMAGE was included in the Top 40 Bushcraft Blogs in 2018? Mine was the only Asian blog to be part of that international list dominated by the US and the UK. 

This June, I would convene the tenth Philippine Independence Bushcraft Camp for the last time. The PIBC was introduced in 2011 as an annual skills-learning camp to the local outdoors community and it had a good reception of attendees every year. This is one of my flagship events which gave me a unique identity in Philippine outdoors and where the campers became the core of the Camp Red Bushcraft and Survival Guild. The Guild shall convene the PIBC henceforth on the next succeeding years.

Also this year, I would organize a certification program for Bushcraft Camp Instructors which, hopefully, would be funded by a national government agency. This is to prepare the people who would handle training for the PIBC and similar courses and to equip them more knowledge in the environment they would be working in. I believed it is time to recognize the jewels among the rough cuts. I am selecting the best people for this. People who have learned from me.

Later this year, I would help organize a bushcraft skills challenge, possibly (and hopefully), with sponsorship from an international company. I will not divulge how it would be done as it is still under wraps. This would be different, that is all. For the rest of the year, I would be refining the route of my other flagship event – the CEBU HIGHLANDS TRAIL – and I will still accommodate paying hikers only by segments, which it has eight. Hiking through it in one walk is out of the question unless you have a good reason that I cannot refuse.

So do not be sad, I am on a comeback trail. I would be here for as long as I am physically and mentally able. This marks the first article for 2020 and the 564th overall. This blog would be giving updates on the progress of my unfinished books, maybe give a peep of selected chapters. I will light the path for you this time and do not fail to comment in or share my articles. Thank you for your patience and I will write for you with a vengeance to atone for my long absence.

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