Last summer of 2007, I was in Sogod, Southern Leyte, and this sunny afternoon, as I was going to downtown Sogod from the barangay of Salvacion, I happened to stop and stand on the deck of a bridge, a steel and concrete bridge on the edge of the hills, on which Maharlika highway connects the barangays of Suba and Hibod-hibod. Looking down below and veiled not by the shadow of the hills, lies the famous household name of Sogod that evokes its bigness “Subangdaku”. It is a big, beautiful river, the color of a clear blue sky, on whose ripples sired the glitters, like sparkling jewels that might have fallen from the sky; and as in the way it was, still defining itself on the map, on ancestral stories told and retold.

      I stopped again on Pandan bridge, the bridge on the west side of the riverbed, which is about over a kilometer northeast of Sogod. It was as if, on the wide and open riverbed, there was a cultural performance. Why on the riverbed? Why not in downtown Sogod, where the clatters of motorcabs could have add new flavor to a culture? For a moment, I stood a moment, the moment when I forgot that I am who I had been part of Subangdaku; then, in a sudden nostalgic reflection from childhood memories, my eyes anchored to where the old highway to Libagon used to be. It was an old gravel road, the road that was only paved, not with concrete, but with many memory imprints of supernatural phenomena than shuddering potholes could be counted. It was once a part of the many alluring mystiques of Subangdaku, where three low structure of wood-planked bridges stood, without fear of the river, without railings; and one was without a river, abandoned, like a mournful table emptied by its chairs until what it remembers.

      On the east side of the riverbed: wisp of dust hung low, the secretions from bulldozers’ blades over a cone-shaped mound of gravel that, like a temple pyramid, is an illusion, not the evocation of a culture, or of an ancient architecture. It is the quarrying in Subangdaku, and the commercial selling of sand and gravel to Cebu and to other provinces that confuse the eye. This is what quarrying can infect Subangdaku, when entrepreneurs harvest the surroundings, as environmentalists can only look on its flowering, as politicians worry from low tax quarry remittance for the province, while Sogodnons sigh over the ruins. On the west side, what the engineer’s transit pinned on the hand stone of mason workers, stretch of concrete wall embankments were shaped, hardened for the re-channeling of the river; and before it: an open shed with indigenous coconut palms as roof covering, which, if neatly stacked, would seem to resemble a tropical delight against a backdrop of the tormented river.

      Imagine the landscape on which Subangdaku is to look at: unoriginal, hollowed like a scar that contain more pain than when it was hollowed. The destructions equal to that of a corrupted culture, broken as to a diluted language that, its tone, its rhythm, are melodies that do not echo with the original language. Like the intended victims of a sacrifice to the Gods, those sand and gravel are sold out from the necessity for a very lucrative complacency; a perfect patchwork of sand and gravel on which to bask, waiting, and waiting until the hungry crocodiles could pad their meager beginnings. Hear the crusher crushing in Subangdaku; feel the crackles of gravel that echo with far more greater pain than the pain that is joy to a few, but what the pain is to the ordinary commonness of people, is a shrug askance to the ruins, like a sigh.

      The sigh of Subangdaku echoes an elegy, the whisper of a claim, of a belief in the stigma that bleeds on its fragmented history. Apart from the decimation of fish sanctuaries, it rises over of what greatness had not floated on: our human greed, our fear of the river- the kind of fear that are fearful than birds would to raindrops. Subangdaku river only seeks its own level, like faith that is religion. It only inhabits its own geography, creek by creek, riverbank by riverbank, on whose music are as harmless as the rustles of the leaves, so that every nuance in their sanctuaries, is in rival mix of natural splendor. It is not for me to deny progress at its best, yet how easy is it to blame Subangdaku for its floods, than to forgive a mountain for its landslides. The way sunlight is to the leaves, expensive homes are built closer to the sea, to white sand beaches, as though, white sand beaches are good for complexion; and when the morning mist makes sense in the tropics, life would seem as simple and as enviable as a sunset; a ferment until what tsunami could save to remember, like a sigh.

      About four decades ago, Subangdaku abandoned the bridge on the old highway. If it fails to remember the bridge and in its bigness becomes an inmate inside the prison-like walls of re-channeling, what would be the name?