It’s not his fault

Pico Iyer, writer, distinguished "travel" from "tourism." "Tourism," he said, is when you surround and change the place with who you are, while with "travel," you let the place surround you and transform you. The latter is especially true when you see a place with people who have so much devotion to the wonders of the place that they know every bit of its history, told in the color and shape of rocks, plants, animals, and water formations. When these same people share their knowledge with such passion and joy, the place becomes alive, and you become even more alive with it, transforming yourself from a tourist to a traveler because you have gained new eyes. This is how and what scientists help us see – with new eyes, a world so rich and varied and with an unimaginably long natural history that once you connect with it, it feels like an arrow has shot through your caged understanding and freed you so you can see and understand more.

We were at the mainland ranger station and Ray picked up a rundown radio and called out so loud in his deep voice to the station in the Taal Volcano while tapping it in all its parts, that I doubted whether the radio was working at all and I told him that maybe, we could just all shout in unison to be heard. He tapped my head lightly like an adult would react to a kid suggesting something silly but joined me later when I started shouting through the window across the lake. At the Taal Volcano, during the morning hike to the crater, Ray would stop every 20 minutes or so and point out the changes in the geologic formations and would give an impassioned lecture so animated that I was all too ashamed to admit when I could not find what he was referring to. More than an hour of these many stops under the sweltering heat, I made fun of him by running ahead of the rest and mimicking Ray’s lectures. This earned me another light bonk on the head from him when he and the party reached me. In the afternoon, swimming at the lake, he took to finding those mini "hydro vents" underwater so I could feel them for myself. Knowing you are in the crater of a volcano and swimming in the lake that was born out of its past eruption and feeling those mini "hydro-vents," reshaped my sense of reality of being in a planet that is alive at its very core. Ray continued to bob up and down all over the lake, tirelessly pointing to all of us the wonders of a volcanic lake. It made me more aware of all that energy packed deep under the surface of the Earth, venting their hot bubbly riddles, telling us that, indeed, more of the planet’s mysteries lie beneath the surface. More importantly and joyfully, I was seeing a prime geological real estate of this planet and I was being shown around by the one who was most at home with it, the late geologist, Dr. Ray Punongbayan.

Ray was also a master of grills. Amid an abandoned school where we all slept in that Taal trip, he brought a chef’s hat, all the possible condiments for steak, and all the utensils needed for grilling. He also did not want anyone messing with his grilling. I watched him grill his steaks with pride and bravura. Imagine, you have the quintessential geologist showing you around a volcano and even providing nourishment with exceptionally prepared cuisine.

He also had a great sense of humor. I think this helped in making his science so relevant to the public. And geology is a particularly important science to know if you live in a country in the geological Rim of Fire like ours. I remember him telling me what he claimed was a rare positive story right after the strong quake in 1990. With pictures to show, he said that "you can end up with a new bathroom after a quake and the good news was that the former owners of the bathroom did not demand it back." Every time he would see us, my late husband would always mock him: "Ray, after all these years at Phivolcs, you still have not done a good job of stopping all the quakes, volcanic eruptions and activity at faults!", to which Ray would promptly retort: "It’s not my fault!"  

After the Pinatubo eruption, he became a household name and his friends kidded him then that his popularity already made him a "presidentiable." But he stuck to his first love, which was geology. When he took over as head of Phivolcs in 1982, he elevated the research capability of the institute like never before that when Pinatubo erupted, we could not have been anymore prepared than we were, faced with a massive natural catastrophe. He enlarged the areas to be evacuated, saving many more lives. His unparalleled research at the institute and the heights it has achieved for geology in the country has earned him great respect here and abroad, giving him well-earned awards and recognition.

I wonder if Ray ever crossed paths with that nun who claimed that she had visions of an Intensity 9 earthquake, which had a lot of Makati office-goers evacuating their buildings a few weeks ago? I already wrote a column about her and why it is science and not superstition we should seek when it comes to knowing about quakes and tsunamis. And after that frantic texting that predicted a 5 p.m. quake and tsunami and the consequent massive evacuations in Makati, I could not imagine a more exasperated person than Ray. It is no secret that the government gives relatively little heed to science. To know that even the level-headed business community relies more on superstition than on science in dealing with physical phenomenon, is truly disconcerting. As Ray said in his Malaya interview last Jan 13 with Dahli Aspillera: "Human technology has not progressed to a point where we can influence the behavior of the earth’s core." Yup, it is not his fault. And it is not anyone’s either. As I said in that column, it is good to do good in any season, and I think especially so, without an earthquake or tidal wave to remind you.

Like many good senior scientists we have and have had, Ray was a product of the local public school system. Ray was from Torres High School as was my late husband. Now, I also help train science public school teachers to help them gain or recover a sense of wonder for the world through science. Often, these teachers tell me how frustrated they get with their students because they said kids now do not seem to have a passion to learn and know the world. The teachers ask themselves and eventually ask me what reason we all now have for teaching or writing about science one day more. I always tell them it is because if you can affect just one learner, perhaps like Ray or other scientists we have now who came from our public schools, one who will open his or her mind and eyes to learning as much as he or she can about the world and share it, then it will be all worth it. Ask the countless lives Ray saved by placing geology in the service of life in the many decisions he made amid natural disasters. Ask the many students and colleagues he had helped and inspired. Ask the many friends whom he had touched with his intelligence, wit and humor. Like a blown lone dandelion, it casts its presence in so much more. Goodbye, Ray and thank you for making the rocks of ages come alive to teach us and transform our experience of this planet with new eyes.

* * *

For comments, e-mail [email protected]