By Joel B. Belinan
During the first two weeks of March when border controls were momentarily relaxed, we saw people moving around that brought us optimism, especially what we saw at Burnham Park. The past year, the atmosphere there had become my measuring stick on the general situation of our city in particular, and to some extent, that of the country. The more people, whether local residents or visitors meant, we were going back to the old normal we knew before.
And during those two weeks, it was really exciting to see people flocking to the park but the most eye-catching were the families promenading there. Sad to say that those scenes had again disappeared due to the return of the restrictions.
While talking about those restrictions is tempting, let me instead focus on the importance of the outdoors especially the parks and other open spaces for our people in relation to this pandemic. We are actually lucky that despite the limited space of our city, we have several parks, thanks to the Americans during the start of the 21st century who made Baguio into a city from the “rancheria” that it was. Aside from Burnham Park, we have Bayan Park, Sunshine Park, the Botanical Garden, Forbes Park, Wright Park, and Mines View Park. We have Camp John Hay, Busol Watershed, Buyog Watershed, among other open spaces that we could consider as family outdoor destinations. These are much better than the shopping malls and other enclosed leisure places.
Compared to many cities in the lowlands especially those old cities created by the Spaniards, we are in a much better situation. For example, when I was assigned in Angeles City during the 90s as a missionary of Ananda Marga Yoga Society, my usual refuge when I needed my usual martial arts exercises or even when I wanted to meditate outdoors was a private memorial park. The reason was that they had, and still have, no park at all.
Of the places I enumerated above, many are not yet developed for family outing areas like Forbes Park, the Buyog watershed, and the Busol watershed. The others are basically the heart of Baguio’s Tourism destinations but there are still rooms for improvements. Of course, Burnham Park remains to be the premier park for us and any additional improvements to the existing attractions should be very welcome. But not more buildings or infrastructures except what are really needed (like the controversial parking bldg), just some small innovations. One interesting idea is the suggestion of my friends in the martial arts circle, Kru Noriel Acquisio, and Coach Ryan Willis about introducing some small developments that will make the park more sports-friendly for everyone. It should be noted that Kru Noriel has had the experience as a martial arts instructor both in China and Dubai and Coach Ryan is still based in China as a boxing and muay thai trainer, hence, they saw some things that can be adopted for our park.
In particular, what my two friends are suggesting is the putting up of small metal poles and barriers where fitness aficionados can do some pull-up exercises (barasan) with a pile of sand underneath as safety precaution. And such can be near the sides of those open grass areas without any alteration of their present appearance.
Attending the 2019 Maharlika Sunrise Festival held at the Quezon Memorial Circle in Quezon City, I also saw simple innovations that made the park sports friendly. Those include fitness equipment you commonly see in gyms such as treadmills, sit-up benches, spinning bikes, staircase machines, etc. These are innovative, having been made from metal scraps and other things from junkyards. Talking with a park maintenance personnel, he said that they just hired an expert welder with some dynamic imagination and he made those things which are heavy duty to withstand public use.
I talked about these ideas with Architect Mark Tidang who happens to be a member of the Burnham Park Technical Working Group and hopefully will be heard by the decision makers. And these can also be done in other parks on a smaller scale and the result should be that those who cannot afford commercial gyms will have an option that is even better as it would be outdoors.
There are more innovations that can be done so long as our park authorities are willing to think of ways to improve our parks.
Recently, the Rose Garden which is located at the western portion of Burnham Park was re-opened to the public after a year of rehabilitation. It is now the favorite area for picture taking. **
