Pay close attention to tops of the sticks and staves because many of them offer a touch of natural beauty while being the top end of a hiking stick that you can comfortably grip. — Photos: ARNOLD LOH/The Star
IF you fancy hiking sticks that are natural wood, visit the Orang Asli on either side of the Sungai Perak rest area along the North-South Expressway.
The north and south-bound rest areas are hard beside Sungai Perak and on both rest areas, off to a corner, are booths run by Orang Asli of the Temiar tribe offering a number of products found in the jungles near Kuala Kangsar, Perak.
Hikers and campers will find themselves drawn to the many sticks and staves for sale, and hefting any of them might tell you that the Orang Asli have sun-dried, treated and even fire-hardened them till they are quite strong.
An Orang Asli of the Temiar tribe, showing a bunch of rotan tumpat hiking sticks, which they claim will scare off evil spirits.
Of particular delight is the cane called rotan semambu (Calamus scipionum – scipio means “walking stick” in Latin).
“Rotan semambu grow everywhere in the jungle. They climb around trees. Very common. But it is a hassle to harvest them because they are full of thorns and they are always all bent or curved.
“We have to shave off the thorns, use fire to straighten the cane, then sun-dry them for about a week before they can be used as hiking sticks,” said Ikar Abdullah, 41, an Orang Asli of the Temiar tribe.
Since she was 11, Ikar said she has followed her tribe members into the jungle not far from Kuala Kangsar, and now that her stamina has waned, it has become her task to sell jungle products for her tribe.
“In looking for staves, our way is to never cut the trees down. We need them. But trees are felled by lighting, storms and landslides. We hike through dense jungles in search of these,” she said.
A traveller on the North-South Expressway stopping for a break at the Sungai Perak rest area and checking out the many sticks and staves made and sold by Orang Asli.
Another popular hiking stick is buluh tumpat (Gigantochloa ligulata).
Its Malay name literally translates into “dense bamboo”, and Ikar said they are cut green and sun-dried for at least seven days till they turn beige.
“Then they become stiff and hard and yet are light,” she added.
The base of the bamboo shoots are what become hiking sticks, and one will actually be holding it upside down, using the fatter base of the shoot as the hilt of the stick.
And the buluh tumpat has another dramatic use. Ikar said because they could scare off evil spirits, buluh tumpat sticks are always placed over doors and in other places overhead.
“You must never hit people with them. They have a magic venom that will make people fall sick,” she claimed.
A collection of raja kayu staves offered by Orang Asli at the Sungai Perak rest area.
Another stick with purported mystical powers that is useful as hiking sticks are those made from tas wood.
In Sabah and Sarawak, a tas wood stick is grandly called God’s Mountain Stick.
The tree from which tas wood comes is scientifically known as Goniothalamus velutinus and botanically, it is regarded as a “treelet” because it is slender and grows to no taller than 6m.
While it has no importance as timber, its bark is proven to contain anti-cancer and anti-tumour bioactive compounds and pharmacologists around the world are actively researching this.
Ikar said Orang Asli love this wood because the sticks ward off snakes and other venomous creatures.
A stand full of hiking sticks, mainly of rotan semambu, treated and dried by Orang Asli to make them extra strong.
For hikers, the appeal lies with how its straight branches used as hiking sticks are strong and stiff, with hardly any flex.
There is also the aesthetics, because the bark of tas wood hiking sticks are of a fine grain that is black (a rarity among natural wood bark), and inscrutably, tas wood with black bark are considered males while the females sport brown bark.
Many other varieties of au naturel hiking sticks are sold by the Orang Asli, with prices from as low as RM15 to as high as RM80, depending on the rarity, length and quality.
