Hiking

When black clouds gather inside my head, a way out is to meet some friends around a table and spend some time to see if the conversation, jokes or serious stuff manage to cheer me up and I end up walking out with a lively step and flying again over my worries. Besides, if they also ask me if I want to go hiking on the following day, the best thing to do is to say yes.

So, Saturday morning, I met with some other post-docs met at the Taipei Main Station, took the MRT to Beitou, then a taxi to Zhuzihu (Bamboo Lake, even if there is no lake and few bamboo trees) to hike in the Yangmingshan National Park, north of Taipei.

As I have probably said more than once, Taipei is surrounded by mountains, around 1000 m high, and Yangmingshan is supposed to be one of the more beautiful places. I had wanted to go for months, but I only did it for the first time yesterday. It was a wonderful sunny day, as many of previous ones,

which meant that it was very hot and the Sun was bound to burn you.

After a good meal, and under the naked Sun —I could almost hear the prototypical old man complaining about the time we were setting off, but the company was like that—, we took the trail that lead to Xiaoyoukeng

made of stones and/or steps, going up, gently in some parts, steeply in others. The initial part of the trail was flanked by a thick forest of different kinds of trees, bamboo trees among them,

traversed by many different sounds, butterflies of many colors (and oh so beautiful)


colourful fireflies


and full of plants with odd leaves.


Once we were up there, the landscape had changed from the initial forest, to pine trees to a kind of tall grassland without any trees, and later we could see the fumaroles at the feet of Qixingshan, while we recovered from the walk (listening to Abba, by the way)


Some of us climbed up Qixingshan (the 7 star mountain), of 1120 m, the tallest mountain of northern Taiwan. I really enjoyed it, pushing myself up the very steep steps that took us there. We found several fumaroles more on our way up, and were subjected to the changing wind and Sun, sweating a lot.

We could see Taipei at our feet on some parts of the trail, even if the air was not so clear as we would have wished.

At the top, we had a magnificent view of the North-East coast to reward our effort —I could even see Yehliu— with a very clear sky and that great feeling that comes from reaching the summit, it does not matter how small.


We climbed down on the other side of the mountain, where there were similar or even steeper slopes, even if they were short, and we managed to catch the last bus to Taipei.

One of the postdocs asked me later, while we had dinner, what was the goal of hiking, to get tired?. I do not know, but for me, it is that mix of walking in nature, reach a beautiful place and stress my body with exercise, which on some day, and while I am still healthy, it is the best thing to do. A clean body, a clean spirit.