The Philippines is a country full of legends. Filipinos love legends and myths, and they believe in superstitions. The legend of the sea and the sky is one of them.
Several million years ago,
there was nothing but the enormous sea and the expansive sky. In the vast
emptiness, a cunning bird came and saw the calmness of the sea and the beauty
of the glorious sky. At first, the bird thought it was a pleasant, beautiful,
and incredibly peaceful place. The bird watched it every day, flying over the
wave year in and year out. A few years passed, and one day, the bird became
restless because the scenery was the same all the time, day in and day out, and
it started to get monotonous and boring. The bird thought what a waste it was.
The bird also needed a place to land and rest its weary wings. The bird kept on
thinking about what it could do to make the place more interesting. For days,
the bird could not think of anything else. It kept thinking, thinking hard, and
then thinking even harder. The bird had to do something to break the monotony.
One day, a light flashed into
its tiny head. “What a great idea,” the bird shouted aloud. “Maybe I can do
something to create a confrontation between the quiet sea and the blue sky. I
can make them quarrel with each other. I can drop a seed on the sea in the hope
of opening up dry land. But where would I get the seed? There was nothing here.
I could fly to some distant shore. That’s what I would do.” And so the bird did
what he wanted to do.
The bird flew away to distant
places, looking for the right seed. It took the bird a long time, but he found
the precious seed at some distant shore. The bird returned and executed what it
thought was a brilliant idea. The bird felt smugly at the prospect of what
would happen next. Just as expected, the sea saw the seed begin to sprout and
thought it was the sky that did it. The sea, angry at the sky, spouted a
tremendous amount of foaming waves into the sky, and the sky, in turn, grumbled
and spat down tons and tons of rocks and dirt to stop the crashing waves of the
sea. As the sky grew wetter and wetter, it retaliated with violent thunder,
blinding flashes of lightning, and more boulders and rocks crashing into the
sea. It went on for days.
Finally, bombarded by the sheer
number and weight of the rocks and dirt, the sea gave up and retreated. When
things quieted down, the bird knew it had achieved its goal and was ecstatic.
The bird landed on the small island formed by boulders and rocks, and the
Philippine archipelago was born.
In
truth, there was only the vast body of water, the mighty ocean, which would
later be called the Pacific Ocean, and the encompassing sky above it in the
beginning. At that time, the Philippine tectonic plate sat squeezed between the
vast Pacific and Asiatic plates.
Geologically
speaking, the Philippine archipelago was formed by volcanic eruptions beneath
the sea and the buckling of the Earth’s crust when two tectonic plates collided
approximately 65 million years ago. When the world’s largest and much heavier
Pacific Plate moved under the smaller Philippine Plate, the Philippine Plate
buckled under the tectonic pressure, pushing land masses. Northern Luzon sat on
the western edge of the Philippine Plate, while the remaining islands rested on
the eastern edge of the Asiatic Plate. The southward movement of the Asian
landmass formed the shallow China Sea and crumpled the edge of the continental
shelf. The crests of the folds produced in the submerged ridge created the
elongated mountain ranges of the Northern Philippine islands. Fissures formed,
and from the bottom of the immense ancient ocean, a vast amount of trapped
molten material deep in the Earth spewed up in horrendous volcanic eruptions.
Continuous volcanic activities pushed up and spewed forth billions of cubic meters
of ash and molten lava, adding their enormous debris across the landscape.
Islands were formed, and the Philippine archipelago was born.
A
number of the archipelago’s islands continued to grow and rise from the depths
of the ocean floor. Monsoonal climates exhibit noticeable summer rainfall peaks
and winter dry seasons. Winds tore down at mountain ranges, and ocean storms
ripped at tiny islands on every side by huge waves. The islands were
periodically subjected to strong typhoons, devastating floods, and volcanic
eruptions. Strong earthquakes have also occurred periodically. These climatic
occurrences had been happening constantly for centuries before humans
discovered the islands. All these elements, along with the ongoing erosion,
contributed to the shaping and reshaping of the Philippine archipelago. Luzon
was torn away from Taiwan, the Visayas from Luzon, Mindanao from the Visayas,
Borneo from Mindanao, and the Sulu Archipelago from Mindanao and Borneo.
A
narrow belt running southeast from Zambales Province to Legaspi in Albay
Province roughly follows the boundary between the two plates. This belt
contains the most vigorous of the Philippines’ two dozen active volcanoes,
including Mt. Pinatubo in Tarlac, Taal Volcano in Batangas, Mt. Banahaw in
Quezon, and Mayon Volcano in Albay. Mayon Volcano is the most beautiful of them
all and is recognized as the most perfectly formed volcanic cone in the world,
rising to a height of 9,000 feet above the Albay Gulf.
The
Philippines lies on the volatile Pacific “Ring of Fire,” and most of the
highest mountains are volcanic in origin. There are about 50 volcanoes
scattered about the archipelago, 22 of which are still active. These volcanoes
can erupt with great explosive force at times, spreading ash and devastation
for miles around. Taal Volcano, the lowest volcano in the world, erupted for
200 days from May 15 to December 1, 1754, its greatest recorded eruption. Mt.
Pinatubo, about 100 kilometers northwest of Manila, angrily woke up from its
600-year slumber on June 12, 1991, and earned the reputation as the most
devastating volcanic eruption of the 20th century, killing more than 1,000
people and raining volcanic ash everywhere nearby. Mayon in southern Luzon has
erupted 47 times since 1616. The deadliest, in 1814, killed more than 1200
people and partly destroyed the Cagsawa Church and buried a village. The most
recent deadly event was a two-month-long eruption in February 1993, sending
volcanic debris five kilometers into the air and killing 70 people, including a
group of volcanologists. On January 22, 2018, the Mayon Volcano was placed
under Alert Level 4 after it spewed a massive ash column, extending the danger
zone around the volcano to 8 kilometers from the crater.
However,
these eruptions bring great soil fertility to the area. Over 10,000 species of
plants grow in the Philippines, with more than 1,000 orchid species, many of
which are found nowhere else in the world.
Sources:
Insight
Guide Philippines – Discovery Channel
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