I discovered that stream while wandering through the woods of Singao, just beyond our house, the last house of Apo Sandawa Phase 2. As a little girl, the forest was my playground.
It was a small stream in a shady clearing, barely larger than my arms outstretched, just a few inches above my ankle. In and along it were stones of different sizes. I would go there before going to school in the morning and after coming home. I kept it clean by picking up and burying the dried leaves and rearranging the stones that seem out of place.
No one else knew about it, and it became the secret center of my love for the forest. If I wasn’t in school or at home doing chores, I was by its banks, where I read or just listened to the sound of the gushing water.
I was in early sixth grade, just twelve years old, when I first met him.
