Pyroclastic Wonderland

I was cleaning out my "memories shelf" earlier today. It's actually this space above the dresser in my room which used to hold all the ceramic characters which topped my birthday cakes all ordered from Cakestop, the only decent bakeshop in my side of the country when I was a little girl. It later on housed all my prized Hardy Boys and Sweet Valley books and when I got a bigger bookshelf, I used it as a space for all the trinkets I had collected through the years such as my E.T. charm bracelet from Universal Studios, a bottle of colored sand which Sue and I bought back in high school, a Blue Jays baseball, the candle I carried around during my high school prom and a boomerang my dad bought for me from Australia.
In one corner of the shelf is a piece of rock, reddish in color with a lot of little holes punctured all over it. My mom once asked me why I had a rock inside my room and attempted to toss it in the garden. She stopped when I screamed "No!" loud enough to make the tectonic plates where our house stood on shudder. That piece of worthless rock, I explained, was a piece of lava which I had gotten from my first trip to Taal in the summer of 1998. I was then fourteen years old.
Last week, my family and I spent my dad's 54th birthday in Tagaytay. From our lunchtable in Dencio's, I got a great view of what I regard to be perhaps my ultimate wonderland.
I was an incoming junior in high school then and our school required us to spend our summer months working as interns in an agency, company or business which was focused on science, technology or research. I had begged my parents to allow me to spend the summer in Manila as an intern for the PNP Crime Laboratory in Camp Crame. When it was time to follow up my application, I was told that all the slots had been filled. I then turned to my second option: a short stint at the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology. I was admitted to the summer internship program along with my friend Dang and a number of other girls (I think around six or seven of us). I was just so excited in a seismically crazy sort of way. I had always wanted to be a paleontologist/geologist since I was a child but I had shelved such career options ever since I realized I I couldn't munch on rocks at the dinner table. But that summer was the opportune time to live out that dream.
For a month I lived in a dorm with my co-interns across the hall from another group of girls from my high school who were a year older than us. I remember standing under a dimly lit phone booth while one of my co-interns made phone calls to Vince Hizon. Day in and day out, I had cup noodles for dinner. I did not mind the eye strain from dissecting seismogram after seismogram. And I loved the sound of my time card getting punched in the PHIVOLCS bundy clock.
One of the highlights of that summer internship was getting to visit Taal and staying there for about three days. We had packed tents with us since PHIVOLCS did not have a place for us to stay there. Upon getting on the island, we realized we couldn't sleep inside the tents unless you wanted to know what hell felt like so we slept outside with our sleeping bags stretched out under the stars. I just had to swathe myself with insect repellant in amounts enough to equal a bath. Once, a slight drizzle interrupted our slumber so we scrambled under the trees for shelter. Despite all that, it was the best sleep I had ever experienced. We went swimming in the lake although occasionally, Sir Aries, one of the personnel-in-charge, would tell us we could even take a bath in the lake itself since the PHIVOLCS bathroom would usually run out of fresh water. I personally did not know how the fish in the lake would feel but after climbing craters for three days, I just had to wash my hair some way.
We hiked up the main crater of Taal whereas the tourists swarming around us rode up by horseback. As we walked up, steam erupted from tubes PHIVOLCS personnel had placed near the trail. A viewing station greeted us near the caldera of the main crater along with vendors selling water. That sent all of us scrambling up the sandy ledge just to have something to drink.
I got my piece of lava near Binintiang Malaki, the most visible of Taal's craters and the one usually mistaken in photographs to be Taal Volcano. We got their via a motorized banca which Sir Aries thought would give us the thrill. The rest of us stared at him and said we had a lot of motorized bancas back home. When we got off the boat, I saw a huge stretch of lava which had cooled and hardened through time. It jutted out in odd, sharp formations enough to scrape your skin if you weren't careful. I managed to whack out a heavy piece of lava from that stretch. On our way back to the boat, I picked up a small worn piece of lava on the lake, thinking I might never see this sight again either because I might never get the chance to visit again or another eruption might change the scenery.
That was the thing about volcanoes and their dangerous beauty - they will never remain as they are. With every eruption, they blow up a part of themseves and yet rebuild in some way. Their bubbling, simmering cauldron draws out the hidden adventurer in every person, a nature fiery enough to fight and die for its release.

In Tagaytay overlooking Taal Lake and Taal Volcano (Binintiang
Malaki prominently visible as always) last April 26. A year after my
summer internship, I was informed that Sir Aries, our PHIVOLCS
mentor, died in Taal Lake during a PHIVOLCS assignment
due to a boating accident.