meaning in the moving design

It started with a gulch.

We were on the East Coast Trail in Newfoundland, reading out directions from our trusty map: "Following the path, you will pass a small gulch, followed by two larger gulch-like gulches, which in turn precede a particularly steep gulch just left of the isthmus."

We... had no idea what a gulch was.

That got me thinking that all those other pretty things I was gushing over probably had names too, like not just "that rocky shelf thing with the cool guy around it..." So I've decided to dedicate an entire post to geography, or more specifically, geomorphology- that mysterious, creative force that shapes all that natural beauty around us. Time to get your learn on....

Let us begin.

A shoal is a bar of sand. A dune is a hill of sand. A dune field is a field of dunes. An erg is an extremely large dune field.

(Easy so far, eh? Take a deep breath...)

A valley is a dale. A gully is a small valley. A valley full of water is a vale. A wooded valley is a dell. A small valley surrounded by mountains is a hollow. A deep, narrow valley is a coombe or a glen. A deep valley carved by water is a gorge or a canyon. A wide and shallow valley carved by water is a strath. The opposite of a valley is a hill or knoll or mound.

A drumlin is a long whale-shaped hill formed by glacial activity. A crevasse is a fissure in a glacier. A moulin is a fissure (such as a crevasse) through which water enters into a glacier. A pingo is a mound of earth-covered ice. It is also a friend of Pingu the penguin.

A bay is a bay. A cove is a bay with a narrow mouth. A gulch is a rectangular-shaped cove with steep sides (at least in Newfoundland). A gulf is a large bay. So is a sound or a bight. A fjord is a narrow bay with steep sides, carved by glacial activity.

A river is a river. A stream is a small river. A bayou is a slow-moving river or stream, or a marshy lake. A bayou is also an anabrach, which means it will divert from the main waterway and rejoin it at a later point. An estuary is a brackish body of water that sits on the mouth of the ocean and also has freshwater (ie. rivers and streams) flowing into it. A delta is a landform composed of sediments that forms at the end of a river, before the river flows into a lake, an estuary, an ocean or another river.


A ventifact is a rock or stone that has been shaped or polished by wind. A yardang (which comes in mega-, mesa- and micro-) is a ridged ventifact shaped like the hull of a boat. An eolianite is any rock created by the wind through the compacting of sediments. A mesa is a mountain or hill with a large flat top and steep sides. A butte is like a mesa, but with a smaller flat top and really steep sides.

A stack is a tall column of rocks found near the coast. Stacks are remnants of headlands that were eroded away by the waves. A headland is also a cape. A hoodoo is also a column of rock, but is only found in the badlands. They're usually composed of sedimentary rock, but have a hard hat of volcanic rock that protects it from erosion. Badlands contain canyons, hoodoos and eroded sedimentary rock. Malpais (or "bad land") are like badlands but contain eroded volcanic rock. A scree or talus is a pile of rock fragments found at the base of a mountain or a cliff or a crag.

A ridge is an edge of a landmass. An arête is a super thin ridge of rock. A defile is a narrow pass between a hill or a mountain. A debouch is the wider space at the end of a defile. A monadnock or inselberg is a rocky hill, ridge or mountain found in a predominately flat area. A kame is a hill composed of sediments deposited by glaciers. A kettle is a water-filled valley containing sediments deposited by glaciers.

An alas is a valley with steep sides formed by the melting of permafrost. It may contain a lake. A lake is a lake.

An archipelago is a series of islands. An atoll is a circular reef with a lagoon in the middle, formed when a volcanic island sinks into the ocean. An isthmus is a narrow strip of land connecting two other pieces of land. A strait is a channel of water between two land masses.


And a horse is a horse, of course.




*Thank you Wikipedia and Wiki Commons

Ambivalence.
I think that's my favourite word. Or at least based on my definition of it. Ambivalence, the way I intuit it, is not about uncertainty, it's about feeling strongly about two opposing concepts. I imagine a line, or a metal pipe. I imagine bending it in ways that purists and bureaucrats would frown on, until the two ends meet, tensely, but with intention; the poles perspiring in resistance. I like being there.
But that was a tangent. This post isn't about ambivalence. It's about action. It's about my ambivalence to action.

I kind of straddle the line between being really active and really... not. Most people who know me would probably say I'm pretty active, and in broad strokes it's certainly true- I'm constantly squirming to do something or go somewhere, I work multiple jobs*, I have a really short attention span, I get depressed when I'm bored...
But I surprise myself constantly because in all these little ways, I am consistently able to do nothing for long periods of time, and do it really well. In fact, I often find myself actively seeking this out, clearing my schedule and opening up a time and space to do nothing. Everyone thinks that travel is so adventurous, so "active," but one of my favourite things about it is getting on a bus for 8-10 hours and dedicating half a day to staring out the window. When I go to visit my grandparents in Etobicoke, I don't even bring an mp3 player for the 1.5 hr commute, I just sit and stare at things: people, passing trees... poles. I savour these quiet times between places, when there are no distractions and I'm forced to shut my mind off and just enjoy the ride.

All my hobbies operate on the same ambivalent principle. I've come to recognize them as experimental adventures in stillness; activities of non-activity. They are pastimes that teach me how to live in real time.

Take scuba diving, for instance. Diving is the only sport I know of where the less energy you exert, the better your perform. It is a sport that's about 10% physical ability and 90% mental fitness. It has two golden rules: Remain calm and Breathe. If you don't remain calm, you run out of air and have to surface. If you don't breathe, or try to hold your breath, your lungs will rupture and you die. So, as in life, remain calm, breathe, and you'll do just fine.
Diving also has the added bonus of making you feel like you are One with the Force, it's the best real life example of positive thinking I know of. When you want to descend, all you have to do is think it. Think down, and exhale deeply... and down you go, like magic. Think up and inhale, magically you rise...

I take to hiking and canoeing for the same reasons, it's moving meditation for the body that teaches me something, in this case, how to focus mentally. It's about planting feet and oars, one step at a time. It's about the mindlessness of repetition, an appreciation for muscles and ligaments, focusing on the minute, the trivial, the inconsequential. It's a mindlessness that is decidedly different from just relaxing with a book on the beach. It's that metal pipe of ambivalence again; pushing your body so hard that your mind goes comatose.

I've just spent the last 3 hours applying for jobs, and I have to say- minus the prettiness and the physical exertion... it's kind of the same. Mindless, trivial, inconsequential. You forget yourself. You go on Auto Pilot and just do it for the sake of doing something. And you know that all this time and effort could be for nothing, but you're ok with that. It's almost... meditative.
There's supposed to be a line there; there's supposed to be a mindlessness that's good and a mindlessness that's bad, and I'm supposed to know- to feel- the difference... but all my definitions are blurry; I don't seem to discern.

I think I'm too in love with the Process. I honestly get no satisfaction out of whether anything ever materializes**... maybe that's dangerous, but I guess I just never feel like the result adds to or takes away from what I've put into something. And I guess that's why I never get anything done... I'm just Sisyphusian by nature. (Note to Self: pick up a copy of Camus' Myth of Sisyphus... I think he's onto something)

But but... Then I recognize that I'm actually like this when I'm focusing on work too. You get into a zone.... mindful mindlessness. Doing something starts to feel like doing nothing. The ends of the metal pipe are kissing again.


* ... or none, as the case may be
**A few notes on The Process:
1. I am writing a lot these days, just not finishing anything... (this entry itself feels like a bunch of parts that don't quite make up a whole...)
2. I'm getting too enamoured with the Process of job-hunting, should try to, uh, set a goal or something

I've been shamelessly obsessed with So You Think You Can Dance for about a year now... so dance is on the brain. This is awesome. Spoken word dancing should be the next new thing (along with capoeira martial arts films and breaking to classical music). Me likes...




That is all.

Oh Toronto.

I'm back in the southern True North, basking in the cool summer sun, happily munching on grilled meat and sipping (yes, sipping) Canadian beer.

Back in the warm, cozy cradle of toronto indie music, tdot beats, rep cinemas and art films, street festivals and community dinners, great food, great films, great music, great taste in everything, and great people.

I love this city for all that and more. Yes, it's true, Toronto is busy... but it's busy in a way that is so much healither than the way Asia is busy. Here, people don't pour their energy into their useless 9-5 jobs (unless those jobs are wicked cool and not useless at all), they pour energy into creative, pro-active, community-giving ways of life. People here dare to dream, and it is beautifully inspiring, especially if you're a lazyass half-start like me. This city amazes me.

But I wouldn't be me if I didn't have at least a minor neurotic twitch at the thought of being here again. Coming home is always a little traumatic. If I travel for longer periods of time than most it's because I love the feeling of coming back to this city and having it look slightly unfamiliar... that it can look unfamiliar to me is so exciting. Everything ordinary is given this thin coat of newness and that potential for discovery is so full...

At the moment, Toronto is half living up to this promise of discovery. I'm living in a new hood and getting to know my neighbourhood, I'm discovering new bike roots* and avoiding job hunting by playing in my new garden. On the other hand, I speak the language and most things feel... old. Or rather, everything's the same, and I feel old. Sigh...

Everyone's been asking whether I'm happy to be back, and it's really a hard one to answer. My standard answer is that 'happy' isn't exactly the right word, but I know that it's right to be back. I'm kind of sorting data as I type here, but on a personal note, I feel like I need to "settle down," and by that I refer mostly to internal geography, not external. There are things I need to settle within myself, and Toronto seems the safest and most supportive place to do that. I'm not broken by any means, but I've realized that the challenges of travel and displacement have kinda acted as decoy distractors, they come at the expense of other challenges I'm ignoring, am happy to ignore...

I had a conversation with someone recently, about the idea of wholesale change, of displacing yourself, and why we do it. And we both hit on this one reason- we do it to prove we can do it. There's nothing like diving into a foreign situation, and watching yourself rise to the challenge to give you an incredible- and incredibly addictive- rush of "Yay, Im Awesome!"ness. And then that becomes the easiest way to feel awesome, so suddenly you're doing it all the time and you get all cracked out on this Awesome drug and you can't stop....

So you come down from your Awesome drug and you go home and you find yourself In Transition again, and you're familiar with this place but it's the one place that never stays the same. And so you undergo these familiar/unfamiliar rites of coming home, the settling part, when the universe trembles and pushes and figures out where to fit you into a life that has gone on without you for 2 years. You feel like a triangle shape being manhandled by a fat-fingered kid; you're not sure whether Jolly Bo Gumption here is going to slip you smoothly into the triangle hole or try to jam you stubbornly into the square cutout. There's fear there, you can't help but look back. But there's also this other thing, some sort of inner acceptance that enabled you to go away in the first place. You'll fucking deal. And you'll do it well. Awesome.

And then...

*an honest ta gawd typo, almost but not quite as good as "scene of changery"

The first thing you'll hear about Pulau Derawan and the Sangalaki Archipelago in East Kalimantan (...if you hear anything at all) is that it's a pain in the ass to get to. The second thing you'll probably hear is that it is worth all the pain and more.

This place is magic. There are no cars on Derawan, no ATMs, no money changers, no internet cafes, no German schnitzel, no Muesli breakfasts, and no electricity during the day. Hardly any tourist infrastructure at all. Just a handful of losmens, some exceedingly smiley locals and a very out-of-place, fancy-shmance dive resort that is always empty. Oh, and a few hundred turtles, pristine coral and tropical fish to keep you company. Yes, it's as good as it sounds. These tiny little islands are... it's like... well they're just completely unspoiled havens of pure underwater WEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

I really can't explain it better than that. But to give you an idea of what I mean, here's a breakdown of my week.

Friday
Snorkeled with dozens of manta rays in the plankton-rich waters off the coast of Sangalaki. Came so close to these graceful majestic creatures that, on more than one occasion, I thought I would get clubbed in the head with their giant wings. Thankfully, they saw me at the last minute and swooned past me, all stealth bomber styles. If my mouth wasn't clutching a snorkel, my jaw would've been perma-dropped all day. They were beautiful beyond words.

Saturday
Did one of the craziest dives of my life at Barracuda Point near Kakaban. The dive entailed dropping down 30 meters into a very strong current, getting pushed mercilessly along the coral wall, and then, at the sound of the guide's signal, swimming furiously across the current to calmer waters (or risk getting pushed down to the 50m-60m mark by a raging down current!!) I'm not a very strong swimmer, so I was nervous as hell before entering the water- especially because the equipment was rather sketchy and I didn't have a depth gauge... but once in the water, it was pretty fun. My dive partner and I even struck a Superman pose as we flew along. The coral wall along the calmer bit is gorgeously intact with loads of fish abound.

During the dive break, we took our snorkeling gear into Kakaban Lake. The lake consists of warm brackish water (both sea water and fresh water), which makes for an interesting species soup. An ice age about 12,000 years ago transformed the waters into a landlocked marine lake, with a bed of sea water at the bottom. Millions of stingless jellyfish roam the lake, a specially-evolved species that was able to survive due to lack of natural predators. Millions. You couldn't swim a single metre without bumping into twenty of them. The mangrove forest that hugs the lake also added to the fairy tale feel of the island- the tree roots were covered in coral! Weird magic!

Sunday
Went down to the beach on Derawan and watched a few giant female sea turtles struggle up on shore under the bright waxing moon. Watched one choose a choice spot, dig a hole and lay a few dozen eggs. Then watched it toss the eggs like salad, using its back flippers to throw them around and bury them in the sand.

Monday
Stretched out in my hammock, stared at the sea, read, and napped with vigour.

Tuesday
Feasted on coconuts fresh from the tree, delivered to me by two happy, charming Indonesian brothers (erly and henri) who have the curious distinction of being able to speak both Bahasa Indonesia (obviously) and... French. Not a word of English. They were my ideal language skills practice partners. Communicated in Frahasa Indonesia for most of the afternoon. Took a sunset canoe ride along the coast of Derawan and was smiled and waved at enthusiastically by Derawan locals.

Wednesday
Went back to Kakaban and tried to capture the magic on camera...



Thursday
Snorkeled around Derawan and found crazy abundance of marine life- crocodile fish, scorpionfish, morays, lionfish, nemos... Spent more time in hammock. Practiced being lazy.

Derawan was just... ridiculous. If you love sea creatures and the simple life, I can't think of another place that could be more fulfilling. It does take a minimum of 2 days to get here, but the upside is, you won't want to leave anytime soon. If you're used to easy traveling, well, it's not easy... Almost no one speaks English, and unless you're willing to pay the big bucks, no one is going to organize anything for you. But considering the reward, this place is a bloody gift. It's amazing. Go. GO NOW.

The Nitty-Gritty Details
Getting There:
There are 2 ways to approach Derawan. The easier way is via Malaysian Borneo. From Tawau, take the ferry to Tarakan (145MYR). Then it's Tarakan to Tanjung Selor by ferry (80,000INR); Tanjung Selor to Berau (70,000INR) by kijang (share taxi); and Berau to Tanjung Batu by kijang (60,000INR). From Tanjung Batu, you'll need to charter a speedboat to Pulau Derawan. The boatmen typically want 200-250,000INR per boat, so it's a good deal if you can find folks to split it with.
From the south, it's a 16-18 hour bus ride from Balikpapan, the capital of East Kalimantan, to Berau.

Being There:
Rooms: 75,000-200,000 per room (I stayed at Losmen Danakan, which was wonderful)
Food: Typically 12,000-20,000 per meal. There is a great restaurant closer to the end of town (going towards the mosque) that has a gaudy pink exterior. The ladies here don't speak English but they serve fresh fish that you pick yourself and a host of super yummy vegetables, tofu and tempeh. Their Nasi Kuning (coconut saffron rice with fish steak and sauce) is sooo good. Danakan does meals too, but I like to spread my money around...
The Fun Stuff: To get to Sangalaki and Kakaban means finding a boat, ie. a local fisherman willing to take you out for the day. Again, there's power in numbers. Typically, boats run for 600,000 to Sangalaki and as much as 800,000 to Kakaban, but if you know who to ask, the prices can come down significantly. Don't be afraid to negotiate. There's a guy named Tiar (I call him Manta Orang) who owns a really slow boat, but he's a lovely lovely man and definitely knows how to spot the mantas. His house is a few left of Losman Danakan's, the one with the circular steps. He doesn't speak a word of English.

Diving and snorkeling equipment can be rented from the dive shop at Losman Danakan, but I personally think they suck. I didn't do a lot of dives out here because I was pretty unimpressed with them. The diving equipment is sketchy, their attitude was horrible and they're quite expensive. It's about 500,000 for 2 dives, not including boat rental, wetsuit, torches or anything else, so it adds up. They're very money-grabby, which is a personal quality I happen to hate. What's more, unless you're into crazy currents, there is almost nothing you can't see just by snorkeling (the mantas came right to the surface, and most of the fish are no more than 3-5m down). The snorkeling right off the jetty on Derawan is excellent.

Erly and Henri run a mini golf course on the far side of town (past the mosque). It's super fun and they are lovely boys to chat with if you speak French (or B. Indonesia). That side of town is also where the sun sets and the beach is quite nice. Watch out for falling coconuts.

More photos here. That is all.

My time in Sipadan (world renowned dive site) and Danum Valley (one of the last remaining swathes of primary rainforest in Sabah) was really defined by sights and sounds. In Sipadan, everything was bigger and more abundant than anywhere else I've dived- the turtles and fish were ginormous and the schools of fish were overwhelming. In Danum, hornbills, warblers, cicadas, gibbons and orangutans provided the lively soundtrack for our jungle walks. I'm having a hard time writing about it because those experiences feel really... tactile, like you really had to be there to get it: the sweat and the sounds and the leeches; the need for ninja stealth when looking for wildlife and the anticipation of spotting an animal; the giant, century-old trees towering above you; the quiet awe of being surrounded by a giant swirling school of barracuda; the jedi mind trick of scuba diving and being able to control your movement with your breath... Words just aren't cutting it, so maybe photos and recordings will do better (the recording ends with a gibbon duet :)

We pick up where we left off; Our Intrepid Heroine (OIH!) is in Borneo, making her way east across the Malaysian state of Sabah. Determined to indulge in a sumptuous diet of Mountain, Oceans and Jungle (or MoJO, if you will), OIH! arrives in Sukau, a sleepy village that sits on the banks of Sungai Kinabatangan, the longest river of the region. The area is home to a cornocopia of Bornean wildlife; orangutans, gibbons, hornbills, and the endemic proboscis monkey are all here in mad abundance.


I became an instant nature geek (I think Borneo has this effect on people). I learned how to identify the mating call of a female gibbon, recognize the dominant male in a proboscis monkey harem, differentiate between various species of hornbills, and name loads of other beautiful tropical birds by sight.

The Lower Kinabatangan is teeming with life. I've never had so many successive days of feeling so awed and humbled by nature, EVERY DAY I saw, heard or learned something new and incredible. It helped that I met a guide there who was also a total nature geek. Jamil had worked as a photographer/videographer for conservation NGOs for over 10 years and was "taking a break." He was a brilliant guide and just a generally happy and adventurous chap. He'd once climbed a tree and slept in an abandoned orangutan nest just to try it out for a day.

The Lower Kinatabatangan offers the best opportunity in Sabah to see animals in their own natural habitat, but it's a bit of a catch 22. The irony is that the relatively common sightings of wild primates is only possible due to the massive deforestation of the area- we can only spot the animals because their natural habitat has been so incredibly devastated.

We turn to the enemy- palm oil. Over half of Borneo's forests have either been logged or burnt down, much of it replaced by ever-profitable palm oil plantations. Palm oil is used as a cheap substitute for vegetable oil, and is found in everything from soap to cosmetics to food. As of late, it has also been touted as the EU's biofuel solution (another display of environmental shortsightedness a la ethanol). Malaysia and Indonesia are the biggest producers of palm oil in the world (together they make up some 85% of global palm oil production) and all this economic stimulation is directly threatening one of the most biodiverse pockets of the world. Borneo has already lost almost half of its primary rainforest, and Indonesia's deforestation rate has earned it the honour of being the 3rd largest carbon emitter after the US and China.

You can't blame Malaysia and Indonesia for thinking this is a good idea. Ok, maybe Malaysia (that's Strike 2, Sabah), but Indonesia is pretty poor and frankly just needs some- ANY- economic leg to stand on. For both countries, it's essentially a double bling- they log the forest and make a killing on the hardwood, and then they set up palm oil plantations, which are fruitful and immensely profitable.

I really had no idea how much sweat my body was capable of producing until I came to Borneo. It's mind boggling, really. I mean, I don't want to turn this into a big philosophical thing, but there's a certain zenful rite of passage that everyone travelling through the tropics must undergo. You go from furiously wiping your brow, your neck, your upper lip and any other part of you that's publicly acceptable to wipe, to just letting the sweat slide gracefully off your chin (sometimes into your dinner); from being completely disgusted with the smell of your sweaty, rank body to recognizing that smell but accepting it as your own. eau de you.

There was a plan. The Plan was to hike into Batad, a small rice terrace village only accessible by foot, and then spend a few days going further afield, staying in remote villages and traveling deep into the valley before popping back out onto the main highway. The Cordilleras in Northern Luzon is a beautiful stretch of eye candy; a mountainous region shining an unreal neon green. What's most amazing about this place is that its beauty is entirely man-made. Thousands of years ago, the Ifugao people of the region started hacking into the hills surrounding them and planting rice. They devised an ingeneous irrigation system and in the process created hill after valley after hill after valley of terraced neon green fields.

This was never meant to be a travel blog. Even the pretentio-title of the blog doesn't refer to travel in the literal sense. But alas, I've been doing a lot of traveling lately, so posts have fallen into a kind of routine. I have a childish aversion to routine. I'm sick of listening to myself tell all these "and then and then" stories, so I've drudged up a stray thought, circa New Years 2009.

A few friends and I went down south and stayed with my friend's relatives in Changhua. Her cousins were in their early 20s and we had some interesting conversations. Us Western folks are have completely spoiled ideas of "the country". In Taiwan, "the country" doesn't consist of beautiful pastoral fields with rolling green hills abound, it's more like lonely looking mansions and industrial buildings and abandoned factories sitting atop dying grass scattered across Nowhere. It's, in a word, ugly.
And all this ugliness, well, it does a Body no good... Here's basically what Cousin Larry had to say:

Country Cat
he said that young people in the country had no power. That there were too many old folks dusting their coffins, shuffling around him in slow motion, made him dizzy. he said the air tasted dead. Everyone was dying or waiting to die, and the stillness seeped into him, slowed him down. He had to drive everywhere and driving made him tired, everything made him tired. Young people in cities don't have this problem, he said. There were lots of them, enough to fight the tired sickness. Enough to push past the haze of boredom and dead air. Enough to do, make, dream, take....
Power in numbers.

City Dog
he said he didn't want to live abroad because it was too calm, too relaxed, and that was dangerous for a person like him, someone who lacked ambition and was prone to laziness. He needed to live somewhere fast, driven, pressurized, a place that would make him do better, be better, where ambition was in the air, he hoped to inhale it, use osmosis to attain it, that pop and bang of dreams that would signal the start of his life...
Living abroad is too easy, he says. Save that for when I'm 60. For now, I wanna live. Live hard.

I woke to the sound of Tim discussing the weather situation with the Germans*. "It's the worst of the worst," one declares. Cloudy, rainy, foggy morning. If I'd thought the day before had been bad, well. We took our time with breakfast and started out once the downpour was down to a drizzle. It wasn't so bad, actually. Aside from occasionally having to brace myself against the punishing wind, and, well the last hour, the way down was kind of fun.

Trails always look different on the way down. It's a challenge of a different kind, it's no longer about endurance and stamina, it's about balance, weight distribution and minimal impact. The trail becomes a jigsaw puzzle for the feet. It's a game of brain not brawn. If going up is the mindless zen of planting feet and just keeping the pace, going down is the thoughtful process of planning ahead- left foot pushes off here so that right foot can use this foothold... Working my way down a trail always gives me a serious appreciation for that ever-underrated art of trail making- all those artfully or randomly distributed rocks and logs and leaves that all do their little part to ensure that you don't go sliding down on your ass for 3000 metres (... although that might be kinda fun too). Not only did a few good folks take the time to haul several giant rocks and whatnot partway up a mountain, but they really thought about how to lay them down properly. That's a beautiful thing, that is.
Onwards.
After a longish slog, we get down and are met with the hospitality of the Siangyang police. They are about to have lunch and insist that we join them. When I refuse, they say "hey, we are police. We must take care of you." After Tim and I get over the shock of hearing this, (I mean... they're cops) we sit and relax with tea, food, and a bit of rice wine.

After lunch and mounds of tea, we head to Lidao, descending into the fog. At some points, vis was a mere 10 metres ahead. In Lidao, we park the car and look around for a homestay. Walking down the street, we're met with a chorus of "Hello friend!". A massive group of Bunun aboriginals (ones we later learned we'd passed on our way up from Jiaming) were celebrating their mountain descent in a big way. They'd slaughtered 2 pigs (or rather, were in the process of slaughtering [the two decapitated heads were facing us, their expressions something between solemn and bored]) and had been at it for 2 days. We joined them, drank, and were merry. They laughed a lot, which made us laugh a lot, and best of all, they told all their jokes in Mandarin and I understood everything, which made me laugh even harder.

Lidao sits low in a valley below the mountains. Everywhere about is forest and bamboo and green and green and fog. It's apparently a town of 300, and evidently Bunun. Also evidently poor for the most part. Houses are makeshift- some are sheet metal shacks, some towers of tile, some take the remnants of old brick walls and tack on some corrugated metal to fashion a roof. Everywhere we turned, there seemed to be some form of innovative architecture at work. A cool town, indeed.

Back at the homestay, Tim and I sit down for tea with an oldish Taiwanese lady who'd been living in Virginia for the past 38 years. In the midst of our lengthy conversation, she taught us the finer points of deer hunting (she's got a 2-barrel rifle and a sharp eye), did an awesome Chinglishstrian impression of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and tried to turn us against Darwin and evolution. She was... interesting to say the least.

The next day, Tim and I decide to relax with a trip to the hot springs. We have our choice of a few, but us being us, we opt for what I can only call "the adventure springs." (Neither of us have this "relaxing" thing quite... figured out, exactly.) The Lisong Hot Springs are natural sulphur springs that run down to the river. To get to them, you have to drive to Motien, walk 2km down along a gravel road, cross a farmer's field, hike (or, if you're in sandals, slide) down a super steep forest trail of leaves and trees and giant boulders, cross the river, and scramble over some rocks. Then you're there. And man, is it fucking cool. Getting there was half the fun- especially the rock scrambling. Here's an artist rendition (that's me suspended horizontally using a giant log to get over these giant rocks):


The river itself was freezing cold, and the hot springs were, well, really hot. To get that real "ahhh" feeling involved a carefully maneuvering of rocks, allowing just enough cold water in so as not to burn, but not enough to totally cool down the water. We soon discovered that our talent in mixology was... not that great. Often we'd find half our bodies totally scorching while the other half shivered with goosebumps. Midway through conversation, one of us would interrupt with "burning... burning". and so forth.

We ended up accidentally staying the entire day. When, after several attempts to leave, we finally made it out, I wondered why it looked like it was getting dark. Turns out it was close to 6pm and we had been in the springs for over 6 hours. Driving back, I discovered yet a new record for bad vis- I couldn't see the road at all. Somehow, we made it back, crawled into bed and promptly passed out.

There is a difference between living somewhere and travelling somewhere. They are two very distinct paths, present two pictures of the same place, each with very specific trade-offs. We only get a glimpse of life in the places we travel, and we never seem to travel the places we live in. I lived in Taiwan for 15 months, and I've just traveled it for a week and a half. I felt like I was in two different countries, but in any case, I'm glad I got to see them both.


*The Germans are 3 dudes we met en route, hereafter known as Hardcore (he was rather.. hard), Mediumcore (our favourite), and Vertigo (so named because he was afraid of heights)
**more pictures of Lisong and Jiaming can be found here.

I woke before my alarm went off. My cell phone read 3:55am. Still dark out, but the adrenaline was pulling me out of bed. After coffee, breakfast, and a bit of stumbling around, we set out at daybreak. Well, sort of. The thick blanket of fog only let in a wee little bar of light, but it was pink and pretty and enough to make my heart swell and sigh in a satisfied "aahhh" kinda way.

The path to Jiaming Lake is, for the most part, a long narrow trench cut along the side of a ridge, dipping up into peaks and down into the valleys for about 5km. When the fog opens up (or on a clear day) the view of the surrounding mountains and the valleys below are just amazing. I also love the vegetation at these heights. Toughened by the cold and wind, the grass, the trees, even the rocks have a different kind of character. It's vast, barren, rocky terrain- totally my thing.




.... Jiaming Lake?



Tim insisted that we were in the right place, so we sat around and stared at the fogged out hole while the wind blew mercilessly at our backs. After a while (admittedly a long while [let us not speak of lost hours of sleep]) the sun blessed us with a few clear moments, enough to snap off a few impressive shots before the fog rolled back in. It was actually a lot more exciting this way, like it sort of gave the lake a magical mystique; it shone brilliantly but only at certain special moments. As we were joined by more people, a chorus of excitement would rise up around the lake whenever the sun came out, which pleased me immensely. [Much in the same way that plane rides in South Asia do, how everyone onboard breaks out into relieved applause when the plane lands smoothly. Like, hooray! No one was maimed or injured! and so forth. That might've been a tangent, but in my brain, it connects.]

After making our way back from the lake, we chilled out at the cabin for a little while. In the late afternoon, I ventured out for another walk. The 2km before and after Jiaming Cabin was probably my favourite stretch of scenery of the entire trek. Part mossy green forest, part barren golden grassland, the landscape made me feel very far from home... which, incidentally, is a feeling I really like.

Not 3 minutes from the cabin, I spot an animal in the trees below. It had the face of a raccoon, but a yellow stripe and a long bushy tail. Here is a picture I attempted to take while running with my camera. You can just maybe sort of make out the, um, tree:

Here's a better photo. It's a Formosan yellow-throated marten (黃喉貂). We're especially tight because we have the same family name. Whattup, coz.

All in all, it was a pretty kickass day. Tim and I were both happy that'd we'd chosen to stay the night and didn't have to rush back from the lake, pack and slog our way down the mountain. Night set in, and after the bustle of dinner, everyone settled into their sleeping bags. Unofficial lights out, some time around 8pm. Party hardy.

Taiwan is almost entirely mountainous in nature. Once upon a time, the plates around the South China Sea trembled and pushed inwards, resulting in the long range of central mountains that run the entire length of the island. There are 3 cross-island highways, each twisting and turning through the country's mountainous interior before flattening out to reach the coast. Only two of these highways actually make it to the other side; the Central Cross Highway was taken out of commission by a devastating earthquake in 1999 and has remained like the elevator-to-nowhere ever since.

I'd heard that the South Cross Highway (Hwy 20) was the most beautiful and least trafficked, and so it began. After a year of feeling trapped in Taipei, I was finally going to be able to a) stretch my hiking legs and b) (arguably more exciting) experience Taiwan on a weekday, without the hoards of people that had disappointed many a weekend of the past. The plan was to rent a car and drive across the island, from Tainan to Taitung, with a few stops in between to hike the surrounding peaks, including a 3-day jaunt up to Jiaming Lake.

I'm going to pause here to give a hearty thanks to Richard from Barking Deer. I had trouble finding English info on the hike, and I threw out a posting on the Formosa forum (which is a great resource for hikers in Taiwan, btw). Richard served me up a whole bevvy of it, not just on Jiaming, but about other hikes off Hwy 20 as well. What a star! I never got to meet him or treat him to the beer I'd promised him, but he incredibly helpful in planning the logistics of our trek, down to the tiniest detail- from weather and permit info to trail descriptions and choice camping spots. Much obliged, thanks Richard!

From Tainan, we made it to Meishankou by early afternoon. The friendly police processed our permits on the spot, one for our day hike to Guanshanlingshan and one for our 3-day trek to Jiaming Lake. By 4pm, the fog had set in, giving the forested scenery between Tienchi and Yakou an atmospheric mist a la Lord of the Rings. On the other side of the Yakou tunnel, it was as if someone had turned the fog switch off. The climate was completely different- the air was crisp and dry, not wet and misty, and the sun even looked like it'd been out and about. At the lookout, we gawked at the infamous Sea of Clouds, a phenomenon whereby all the surrounding peaks look like distant islands washed over by wave after wave of puffy whiteness. At over 2700m, Yakou is the highest point on the SCH, and as such, probably the stupidest place to choose to camp. But we were high on scenery adrenaline and the promise of a beautiful sunrise was too much to pass up, so we secured our tent and settled in under one of the lookout gazebos. That night, I froze....
Onwards.

Jiaming Lake is one of the youngest meteor lakes in the world, a crater bowl set amongst alpine grass in a rolling mountainous valley 3300 metres up. The trailhead starts on the back end of the Siangyang Forest Recreation Area, on Hwy 20 just east of Yakou Tunnel. From here to Siangyang Cabin it's a gentle switchback trail through a beautiful mossy forest. The path is of the soft, spongy forest floor variety, with the usual confusion of tangled roots for steps. Could've all been nature's design, for all I could tell. I was especially happy that the trail is made with special care to those of us with short legs. As a small girl, I tend to... not so much hike as shuffle along a path, trying to exert as little energy as possible. Normal steps for other people can end up feeling like hurdles for me, and can really kill my stamina on long hauls. But the Jiaming trail is perfect, easy on the legs... well, at least for the first hour.

From Siangyang cabin, the trail climbs steeply. I have to admit that for this stretch, I was mostly doing one of 3 things: looking uphill, looking at my feet, and asking everyone that passed me how much further to the next cabin. The path here is a little more savagely cut; we were scrambling up long narrow ditches cut by rock slides, mercilessly steep and somewhat precarious at points. As we climbed, the altitude began to take effect. I felt like I was hyperventilating every 5 minutes, the cold air just couldn't feed my lungs fast enough.
The scenery changed too, the alpine climate gave rise to a rougher tougher breed of plants- bonsai variations, gruff porous pines, and my favourite, the white trees. Trunks burnt hollow by forest fires, the dead and naked. There was something about the bareness of the forest that really struck me, always does. I had old imaginings of the forest in action, of the trees in dramatic pose, communicating elaborate messages to me and each other. As the wind grew stronger, I saw my old green-haired goddess friends stretched in yogic prostration, reaching out to wrestle the wind.

The 2km before Jiaming Cabin was awingly beautiful, even despite (or especially because of) the fact that the fog had set in and everything beyond a couple hundred metres was completely whited out. Naked bushy-haired bonsais bowing low amongst yellow alpine underbrush, along a dramatic ridge down down down into the fog. After 7 hours and about 500m gained in altitude, we arrived at Jiaming cabin. I was achy, exhausted, and filthy. But fuck, was it beautiful.