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THAT NIGHT, AS IT DOES EVERY NIGHT, THE CHAPEL BELLS TOLL CURFEW.The ominous sound is an anachronism, something from before the turn of the century, perhaps, not from today. It frightened me the first time I heard it--genuine, heart-racing fear.
      I was supposed to have anticipated the curfew bells. I knew that curfew tolled at 10pm because the guidebooks tell you as much. The tourist guides might tell you that it's for the business establishments in town, urged to close at that hour to protect the interests of the early-rising residents from rowdy visitors. That's partly true, but the region is still nest to Communist rebels, tribal warriors, and other dangers that are still very real to the Cordilleras. Elsewhere it seems a fiction.
      In this, and in many other ways, Sagada feels like another world. One week in Sagada, and I am nearly mute with solitude.
      Alone happens on the surface; it's loneliness that's trickier to identify. A Swiss couple strike up a conversation with me as we go through dinner, and I am so grateful for the interaction that we end up talking well after everyone else has left the diner. Eva and Lawrence were to be wed, but they took half the money they'd saved up for their wedding and used it to travel around the world together.
      They explain this to me animatedly, by way of reply when I asked where they'd been. They had all the markings of travelers who'd been away from home for a long time--the badly washed clothes, suntanned skin on lean bodies, the satisfied weariness. And they had the body language of a couple who had become familiar and comfortable with each other. I look at them, and I think to myself how their children will inherit their intense green eyes.
      I awake with the dawn the next day. It is a cold, quiet morning, and my window overlooks the town square and the bus terminal. There seems to be an unusual number of people leaving town today: a good half-dozen backpacks are strapped on top of the bus, and their owners are either standing outside or looking sleepily out the bus window. I recognize a man I'd spoken to a couple of nights ago. He had mentioned that he was on his way to Manila now, and from there, to Palawan.
      I love the view from my window, because I have a view of the mountains, and the church, and, on Sundays, the makeshift market. There are many things to see from here, but this morning, all I can see is out my window is distance. All this distance; not just the miles of difficult roads between what is here and what I left behind, but the intangible, immeasurable distance in myself that has brought me to this day, in this room, far away from home, alone. This place has taught me one lesson: The heart is capable of far more loneliness than even I suspected.