High in the teal jungle of Luzon Island is Ituy, the Magat River Mountain valley, where the Igorots, the people of Ituy, ended their 70,000-year adventure eastward out of Eden. On an inky moonlit night, in Dupax Del Norte, an Igorot man would share with me the legend of the Ayturi tree, the symbol of the kings of Ituy. A Tuy was the Igorot king who embodied the ideal of the deep-rooted Ayturi tree.
My religion sent me to Ituy to convert the Igorot and Cagayanese people to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. However, it was my adventure to Ituy that converted me to the way of the Tuy. A phase of child development that is often ignored is the leaving home stage. Unlike other primates, we spread across the globe, inhabiting every part of the planet. Between the ages of 15 to 25, a young adult, particularly a young man, is programmed to go on a hero’s journey. An adventure where he can find his strength to stand strong in the world. The narrative of this journey is so programmed into our psyche that it permeates almost all great epic tales, from Star Wars to the oldest written story, Gilgamesh. My hero’s journey took place in foreign soil rich with experience, a place of high winds, an island where gods and demons fought for my soul.
Mormons are one of the few communities that still practice this rite of passage. Hundreds of years before, Catholic missionaries established Christianity throughout this world through their hero journeys. Those missionaries converted the first Igorot and Cagayanese people sacrificing their whole lives to maintain peace between the Spanish and the native population in the Cagayan Valley. This epic is my incredible adventure to the end of the world, and how it changed me to become what the Igorot called a Tuy.
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