It has been 25 years since my dad retired from Del Monte and we moved out of Cawayanon. My brother, Joey, wanted to have his kids, Frankie, Kitkat and Kobe, along with friends, experience how we had lived — even for just a couple of days.
In the morning, we went fishing!
The Cawayanon lake is a man-made lake constructed as part of the design of the Del Monte Golf Course. Built in the the late 1920s by some of the greatest golfers ever lived – Peter Crawford and Celestino Tugot, it covers about five hectares of land and can go as deep as 10 feet in some parts. It also is regularly populated by tilapia (St. Peter’s fish), hito (catfish) and carp.
It was amusing to watch the kids’ faces as they caught something on their lines. (So that’s how we looked back then, eh?)
.. while the older girls went for a walk –
But what never ceases to amaze me is the lush greenery of the whole neighborhood. Beauty flourishes under loving hands and Cawayanon Compound is the ONE place on earth where this is a tradition brought down from decades ago.
And have you seen such gorgeous trees?
By noon, we’d caught some eight medium-sized fish and had had them fried by a friend of ours on our way home. The kids and our guests were sorry to leave so soon but knew that they could always come back for a longer trip in the future.
TREES by Joyce Kilmer
I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree… A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the sweet earth’s flowing breast… A tree that looks at God all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pray… A tree that may in summer wear A nest of robins in her hair… Upon whose bosom snow has lain, Who intimately lives with rain… Poems are made by fools like me, But only God can make a tree.
Life in the Bukids 