This was my first proper adventure in Taiwan and a memorable one.  I can tell I’m going to be returning to this National Park frequently.  I will shortly tell you about the geothermal vents, the beautiful waves of grass, weird flora and fauna, etc., but first …

THE CHARACTERS

LASKA

Laska is actually his last name, but it’s what he goes by and by this he shall be referred to on Life of Adventure.  Laska was the first American I met in Taiwan.  I don’t believe in fate, but I do believe in appreciating luck, and it was lucky that he and I were picked up by our company together at the airport, roomed together, and consistently grouped together for most of our first two weeks in Taiwan.  Since then, it has been clear to me that whenever we are together, we find the best things:  hot springs, hooker alleys, everything stores, bookshops, good hikes, markets, restaurants, etc.

In many ways we are opposites.  The guy watches team sports, whatever those may be, and he’s more of a pub and live-music kind of guy than the techno-nightclub enthusiast.  But we first set foot out of the hotel to explore together and since then, he’s kind of like my new good luck charm — or maybe it’s just that this Wisconsonian late of South Korea possesses an infallible good-humor, gameness for all manner of fun and hi-jinx, and the wisdom born of travel that I’ve come to appreciate, respect, and seek in foreigners abroad.  Our cramped little hotel domicile, packed with ALL our worldly belongings was truly a home by way of our frank and compromising practicality, mutual bohemianism, and brotherly willingness to vacate the premises into the Taipei night at a moment’s notice if either of us was likely to have a female visitor.  My nights there were far better for his presence, whether we were playing cards on the side of a rolling suitcase placed between the beds with others, exchanging ghost stories, or philosophizing about comparative Asian culture, the opposite sex, or various other items relevant to free spirits roaming the globe.  We sat through 9+ hour training days together, ate breakfast together almost every morning, did our laundry together, went shopping for shampoo together.  On my birthday, this guy, and our friend Huy, bought me dinner even though we were up to our ears in training assignments, and during our late-night study-session of stress before the following morning’s big 25-minute teaching demo, in comes Laska with a birthday cake for me.

In short, he is the closest thing to a wife I’ve had, except I didn’t mind living with him.  And how shall I ever forget the night he came in at a slightly irregular hour and fell on top of me, thankfully with the comforter between us, saying only, “HUUUUUUUUUG!”  He got up, but returned a moment later to repeat this greeting.  Then he wandered around doing I-don’t-know-what, then gave me a third good tuck-in with the same clearly labeled action.  When he found his way to his own bed, I heard a vague, slightly slurred, “I love you,” which I returned through stifled laughter.

Laska is a true brother-in-arms, a man’s man, and one I shall be proud to adventure with again.

JOSH AND SARAH

If the Taiwanese want to learn about the true nature of Western culture, they should learn it from Laska, who reminds me just how much we swear (ah, it’s like a warm blanket to hear all my favorites) and who insists that it’s “rock, paper, scissors” in a society hard-wired, in the most militant way, that it’s “paper, scissors, stone.”

However, when I want to learn about Chinese culture, I don’t want to live in the squalor of Beijing working in a factory for more thorough research.

America needs more cultural ambassadors like Josh and Sarah.  There are a few atypical-American qualities this married couple shares:  they are extremely fit, health and diet conscious, disciplined, and unattached to security.  I shall elaborate on the last of these.  They gave up what seems to me to be a fine and comfortable state of living in the U.S. to come out here to an alien land and adventure.

As a very few words may often suffice to describe a person, such as to say Bruce Lee was wise, so too can I summarize Josh efficiently.  He has impressed me as being unimpeachably well-intentioned, honest, giving, and, more than anything, humble.  A rare trait indeed and a label I cannot attach to many.  Men know the hearts of men and the subtleties which betray deeper flaws, like little black spots that indicate a fruit’s rot.  Yet in Josh one would find a solidity of humor, honor, and character that befits him for a task as stressful and important as impressing young minds.  He reminds me, in many ways, of Tim Frasier, with a touch of Jason Eaves, and like them he possesses the athletic prowess, quick grasp of practical mechanics, and calmness of mind that recommends him for, say, a high alpine excursion.  I shall do my best to lure him up where fixed lines are involved when the weather warms.

The first thing most people doubtlessly notice about Sarah is that she is hot-beyond-all-reason.  As one trainee put it, “I don’t even want to know how perfect Sarah’s body is.”  It is a factor that can color analysis instantly, and I’ve seen how a pretty face can earn complete loyalty even if moral bankruptcy lies behind it, as well as how a good soul with the fortune of beauty can make quick enemies of new acquaintances, for who, male or female, has not been damaged in some way by another’s attractiveness?

Beauty casts a fog thick as wool over personality, for good or bad.  But fortunately yours truly is not inexperienced in said cases.  Sarah is more properly defined as being highly secure, discriminant, with the cork-like ability to ride the waves of changing circumstance.  Her humour is most similar to the military and former military men I’ve known.  It is a humour that is quick and incisive, with more movement of eyes than facial expression, complimented by a genuineness of interest in new faces and a quick-flashing but authentic smile.  Moreover, she shared her clove cigarettes with me and that’s what I call winning friends and influencing people.

YANGMINGSHAN IN THREE VIDEOS

We climbed the highest peak, we descended valleys of fumaroles, and Laska and I ended up taking the wrong bus, but it took us to a slice of paradise.

It was a long drive, full of twists and turns and somber passengers, eyes cast down away from the iron-gray sky.  But then for a few minutes, the rain seemed to let up, and I could see from the window the coastline, and the huge crashes of wave against rock, a bashing that hurled gouts of white seawater high into the air.  As the foam drifted back down like snow, the black water slithered back from the jagged rocks, preparing to charge with the next massive wave.

I took a few deep breaths.

Then I was walking down a dark, one-lane road of concrete, where a little shack appeared on the left, a makeshift assembly of tin sheets, wooden posts, chain-link fence, and blue tarps trying and failing to keep out the water.  But apart from the freezers full of Cornetto and the like; and shelves stocked with Pringles and Snickers bars, the shack was also home to many racks of brightly colored surfboards.  It cost me $7 U.S. to rent a board for the day, and in a few short minutes I found myself in a tiny locker-like space, smaller than any telephone booth I’ve ever seen, with a ragged mirror and a few weak hooks, struggling into my wetsuit.

The *twatch* *twatch* of approaching flip-flops after I’d stored my backpack in a locker introduced the surf-shop manager — if he was a manager at such a young age — to tell me the water was too rough for me to take my key.  Apparently another patron had had his sucked off in the ocean and they couldn’t get his locker open.  So we hid my key above the little food vendor’s counter.

Barefoot, but with my board under my arm and my wetsuit keeping me surprisingly warm in the cold rain, I strolled down the concrete path, flooding over from both ditches, to Big Wave Bay.

It was aptly named.  Both red flags were up, warning that the beach was closed to all users.  The waves, as it was reported, were 7 feet tall when I arrived.  And I, having never surfed before, had no idea what this meant.  All I felt was the giddiness bordering on enough fear to turn back entirely.  But how could I turn back now?

Big Wave Bay is a small stretch of sand, taking not more than 3 or 4 minutes to walk from one end of it to the other.  On either end are jagged rocks hammered by the swell on the outside and a strong sideways current inside.  As it turns out, the place is usually very small.  Only on rare occasions, such as during a storm, does the bay actually get big waves, so I count myself lucky.

As I approached the water, awing at the biggest waves I’d seen since Thailand (seven or so years prior), I saw only two Westerners in the water and one local.  I waited and watched for a few minutes, getting the nerve to plunge in.

When one of the Westerners came out, I approached and asked, “Okay, I’m brand new to this.  Is it too dangerous for me to go out there?”

He said, in the most emphatic way, and with what I reckon was a New Zealand accent, “YES!” then added, “Unless you’re super confident, if you go out there, you’re gonna get nutted.”

I didn’t ask what was meant by ‘nutted.’   But that didn’t sound good.  He saw the concern on my face and re-considered, “Tell you what.  If you’ll stick to the inside, you’ll probably be okay.  So, I d’know.  But, yeah, just have fun with it.”

Silly me, I thought that by “the inside” he meant not to the left or the right, which was closer to the rocks.  I didn’t realize he meant between the beach and big sets.

In any case, I went for it, striding into the dark, foamy water, breathing deep and hoping I wouldn’t get ‘nutted.’

I arrived back on the sandy shore about twenty minutes later.  I sat on my board watching, intermittently, the crashing waves and the three big cuts on my feet, dripping streams of blood into the curs’ed salt that stung all my wounds like hell.  These little openings in my flesh were trophies of a struggle that had eventually required grabbing a tattered rope of buoys that failed to fence off the cliffs farther left and hauling myself back by it, not an easy task with a surfboard whose leash might get tangled in said rope at any time.  As I sit writing this, two months after the event, I can look down and see the two nice, shiny crimson scars from this little adventure, with resignation that they are not going anywhere.

They are a reminder of the price of failing my usual habit; thoroughly understanding what I’m doing before I do it.  Despite my years of breakdancing and gymnastics, solo foreign travel to places like Cambodia, hiking, climbing, scattered martial arts, my few little cave explorations, and even my four whitewater paddleboard experiences, being a personal trainer, etc., I have sustained no major injuries in my life, nor ever been hospitalized for anything but food poisoning.  I think I am a remarkably safe adventure enthusiast, but on this occasion — not the first nor the last — I went in over my head and paid the fortunately-small price.  It is when we stray from a good path that we appreciate its virtues, and this incident has reaffirmed my commitment to forethought as the ultimate virtue, to knowledge before action.

I’ve met plenty of adventurers who have a long list of major injuries, periods of recovery, and near-death accidents — climbing, kayaking, skiing, whatever.  And while some see this as the mark of someone “trying hard enough” or “pushing their limits” I see this as not knowing oneself.  Isn’t that one of the treasures of adventuring?  Knowing oneself; discovering our strengths and all the challenges we’re capable of surmounting?  He who knows what he’s good at and can be honest about what he’s not good at is wiser and more valuable to me that someone whose false confidence that they can do anything gets them into trouble.  If you get injured, in the words of Steph Davis, “you blew it.”  You didn’t have a good enough knowledge of yourself or the environment you were in.  I try to avoid these failures.  I can look back on my snowy, near-hypothermic misadventures in the Smokies and other similar misjudgements with satisfaction that the price was small, indicative of a small difference between what I thought and the truth.  But I can’t look on them as successes.  They are rather the slap of Mother Nature’s ruler on her student’s hand, encouragement to do better next time — to know the truth about the world and myself, even better.

I was pretty pissed at all this.  Again I thought of going back, but I had to finish this trip to Hong Kong strong.  It is said that genius has an infinite capacity for taking pains.  I’m no genius, but the real Sze Yuen Fung, that person inside of me whose thirst for adventure is stronger than all other desires, can be painstaking enough when thrill is to be gained.  I had to go Zen.

I went out until I was waist-deep in the water.  I stood there, still as a statue, feeling, listening, watching, shivering, my feet still stinging.  I waited and learned.  I tried to tune into the power of the ocean, to feel what was going on before me.  I got comfortable with the waves as they hit me there.  Then I went a little farther…

For the following three hours or so I had an absolute blast.  I body-surfed waves that blasted me like a missile right up to the sand so that I had to bail in the shallows or risk grinding up the beach like a penguin on ice.  I paddled through breaking waves and learned to catch them.  I even stood up for a few seconds here and there.  The surf came down, the rain slackened, and I found myself in company with four or five Hong Kong surfers who shared my battle against the saltwater with equally mixed results.

I won’t embellish.  I didn’t ride any huge waves.  I have a long way to go.  I didn’t perfect a duck-dive, and I didn’t hop coolly off my board right onto the sand after successful rides like I had with my paddleboard on the tiny waves of Shell Island, Florida.  But I came away smiling, laughing, exhausted, whistling.  A good snapshot of that day might be me getting caught up by a wave, standing up, holding for a second or two, then falling backwards, totally relaxing back into the water.  Under it, I waited patiently and calmly for the turbulence to pass, before popping up and turning my board seaward again.  At the end, my neck was raw from the rub of my wetsuit, and I stripped the top part off, realizing just how cold the rain was as I walked back to the surf shop.

I devoured a can of Pringles, some candy bars, and turned in my board with thanks to the proprietor.  Still damp under my clothes with gleaming hair and feet positively tormented by my boots, I hobbled back to the dead-end bus-stop and was on my way to Taiwan — where I had decided to make surfing my next conquest.

It is true, as the famous philosopher Justin Timberlake said in his recent film:  “You can do alot in a day.”  So it is.

I’ll start at the beginning.

I had seen Lion Rock many times from the distance, a towering cliff over Kowloon shaped, depending on your vantage point, like a crouching lion.  But I had never been there.  Consulting my hiking map, I decided which district MTR station was closest and decided I would walk up into the hills from there, a strategy that always works in my experience.  During my multi-kilometer ramble through urban Hong Kong in search of the trailhead, however, I stumbled upon a curious place.

THE WORST TEMPLE

I stumbled back upon a temple I’d visited during my study abroad in Hong Kong.  I enjoy the Kowloon-side Wong Tai Sin Temple, probably because of the giant zodiac-animal sculptures, where they are all cast in humanoid form with various robes and implements.  THIS temple (not sure of the name) is my least favorite of any I’ve visited in Asia.  It is home to a rocky man-made cave (probably concrete) filled with glass cases containing large dioramas of what I believe is Diyu, which you may read more about if you wish.  Whether there are 8, 10, or 18 hells in this place and all the other details are mix-matched depending on the period religion, folk beliefs, and other random whims of human ignorance.  In short, it is a cavernous maze of varying degrees of gruesome torture for deceased sinners.  Minotaurs in robes and various servant, manager, and king torturers lurk here.  I took no pictures of anything in this cave, because the images are so graphic and so disturbing as to leave one feeling sick.  It is a place, as I was told by some HK friends, designed to scare people into living good lives out of fear of afterlife torment.

It is my belief, based on my not-inconsiderable experience, that in religion we very often find humanity at its worst.  Nothing I’ve seen in the natural world has given me cause to believe that nature, or ANY higher being responsible for it, could conceive of anything like a hell.  No, on the contrary, the notion of hell reeks of human creation.  It bears all the unmistakable signs of something only a human being could dream up, as does torture itself.  It is almost comical how man’s attempt to lift himself to a higher moral standard is really just more human folly resulting in an ever-deepening pit of human stupidity.  Would-be goodie-goodies find themselves instead to be the creators of sculptures of torture, inventors of fear, and speakers of falsehood.  They fill man’s minds with cruelty and wincing at imagined suffering.  Instead of worshiping something holy, they worship minotaur kings of hell, because they submit to the fear of them; they advertise to me what their gods are really like.

AN ASIDE:  BRAD’S RANT ON “ABOMINATIONS”

In Brad’s worldview, this place is truly an abomination.  The religion of this temple is probably attempting to prevent the so-called abominations of an earthly life (which are probably good things like sex, rebellion against your mortal king/emperor, congress of the same gender, whatever.  But in-so-doing they have committed the real abomination, and have placed on the good, green earth a spot of darkness and fear.

I may not like religion very much, but I’m gonna give credit where credit is due — in the Bible, the word is usually used of dietary restrictions in the Old Testament (not really an issue anymore), improper sacrifice (ditto), and pagan gods that demanded human sacrifice (I agree this is an abomination).  Deuteronomy 22:5 is rather comical, as it says cross-dressing is an abomination.  Really?  An abomination?  Somehow I don’t think human sacrifice can be compared to cross-dressing in severity.  There are also two Old Testament verses that I’m aware of that say “lying with a male as with a woman” is an abomination.  Note that it says nothing about the lesbians . … … GIGGIDY!

Anyway, for the most part, I have to say the Bible is pretty bang-on about abominations, and most especially in Proverbs:  “There are six things which the LORD hates, Yes, seven which are an abomination to Him:  Haughty eyes, a lying tongue, And hands that shed innocent blood, A heart that devises wicked plans, Feet that run rapidly to evil, A false witness who utters lies, And one who spreads strife among brothers.”  And there’s another I particularly like:  “A false balance is an abomination to the LORD, but a just weight is His delight.”  This refers to merchants cheating customers by using a false weight to slight them on the purchase of grain or some kind of food.

Okay, back to my adventure…

THE MAUSOLEUM

I went to the top of the temple, where there is a pretty nice pavilion with bonsai trees and a view over Kowloon.  Then something else caught my attention.  Friends Jade and Mandy took me years before it, and I had to go there again.

On the same street as my least favorite temple, a nondescript concrete path, winding behind an unused parking garage leads up an engineered slope and into a struggling copse growing thereon.  Within, one will find a seemingly disused and crumbling temple.  Then one wonders into a whitewash-walled 3-storey structure, silent and eerie, filled only with the echoes of one’s own footsteps and the urns of the dead.  In the center of the symmetrical halls are pots for burning incense on metal stands.  Black and white photos of the long-dead sometimes accompany their remains upon the shelves, and one is filled with sense of reverence and reflection, intensified by the utter quiet of this tucked-away ruin.

I had to smile, looking at the faces of the deceased, faces that may have feared Diyu in life, thinking their rest was rather like this place — peaceful, silent, surrounded by the woods and the wind.

Behind the mausoleum is a long steep set of stone stairs.  At the top of the stairs, a man was playing some traditional instrument.  I didn’t want to weird him out by videoing him, but you can hear his melody on the video.  Higher on a country road that serves as a pass in the mountain, I found a pavilion, a roadside tarp-covered eatery (where I bought more Pocari Sweat) and a cat that made me miss my little Jing Jing.  It was snoozing under the table I sat at, right in front of my knees.  Oh, *sniffle* Jingy loves sleeping too.

LION ROCK COUNTRY PARK

The first thing I saw were funny signs about not harassing the monkeys.  Then it was trail, trail, trail, plenty of monkeys to see, and lots of other cool sights.  Check out the photos and videos below:

THE PLATFORM

I did a pretty risky free climb up a fairly high part of Lion’s Rock rocky spine, and I found myself on a wide, flat platform overlooking the city on one side and the farther low country on the other.  I spent a while here meditating.  It was to be my last hike in Hong Kong for this trip, and I got to revel in the feeling that I had done quite alot up til then.  My thoughts turned to the future, as if I could see from that high court of stone over the Pacific to Taiwan, my future home.  I’d never been to Taiwan, but it promised great treasure.  A prosperous job, beaches, rock climbing, surfing, scuba diving, high alpine trails, jungle treks, river tracing, tea houses, island windsurfing, the world’s second tallest building, and the time and the environment to learn Mandarin Chinese.  And I felt the thrill that early immigrants to the United States must have felt, the thrill that the first gold-rush miners must have felt — the bright hope that a better life and gleaming treasures awaited ahead, and the determination to endure whatever hardship stood in the way to get the most out of life’s opportunities.  And I smiled in the direction of Taiwan, at my home-to-be, at the trove of adventures awaiting me there, and at the struggles — sure to come — which would make me a stronger man.

GETTING OUT

I hiked for a while yet, ending up on another single lane road that led to a helicopter pad.  I eventually popped out and caught a double-decker within seconds of seeing the roadway.  It was back to Hong Kong to prepare for departure to Taiwan, but before that happened I was to have one final and terrifying adventure.  Stay tuned for my next post.

In Hong Kong Park, I went past the fountain plaza to the Flagstaff Museum of Teaware, then settled in at the LockCha Teahouse.  I drained expensive, 10-year-old Pu-erh by the ewer and ate dim sum snacks and vegetarian curry for a stretch of 6 hours, during which the water kettle kept refilling, and the tea leaves kept coming.

On my tea high, I worked at my steampunk novel project on my netbook, with the help of LockCha’s Wifi.  It was a blissful all-day teahouse sit, full of creativity, warmth, and relaxation.  Bliss.

When I finally left, after uncounted trips to the bathroom, I went to the HK Zoological Gardens to see the animals and the Burmese python.  I found myself strolling down into the antique district and onto Western Market, practically whistling with the feeling of energy and detoxification.  Wondrously, I found myself surrounded by the old world charm I had just been writing about.

I thought I’d post some pictures of the park and of the Victorian Era relics I got to see after spending an afternoon writing about them.

I ate outside at the street cafe Delifrance, looked around, and then started onto the Hong Kong Trail, which properly begins at the Peak.  It ends at Big Wave Bay, which I was to visit a few days later.

I rambled along the trail as far as Aberdeen, crossing dirt trails, streams, stone stairs, and concrete service roads, even a slope maintenance path, where I descended and took a bus back to the harbor side of the island.

It was a quick and easy adventure, but full of interest and delight.  Below are photos and a short video.

And then some adventures are just as cozy as a day at home with a book, a hammock, and a blue sky.

There have been those in my life, those perfect adventures of energetic rambling that never cross the line into tiring or difficult.  One feels accomplished, but with the sun (not too hot, not too cold) on your face and the wind (cooling rather than cold) in your hair.

No long drive, no jacket, no heavy pack, no bland trail food or gallon of water.  Short sleeves, a bottle of Pocari sweat, and all the views of city, ocean, and mountain pasture I could want.  It was just bliss.

THE RUNDOWN

In brief, I took a clean, uncrowded train to Man On Shan station, followed the thread of my long-past memory up a peacefully deserted mountain road to the entrance of the country park, then skipped over the peaks and hopped down the stairs to Sai Kung, a bright little market and fishing port where I had a (literally) world-class meal, tea, and a Cuban cigar right on the harborside.  I strolled and bought a book in a little bookshop.  Then I swiped my Octopus on a double-decker’s scanner and took the front seat on top for a thrilling little drive back to modern civilization … make that extremely modern civilization.

Below is the photographic journey.  Click on the gallery to make it a slideshow.

AS FOR THE VIDEOS…

Okay, I decided to do something a little different this time:  use music with my videos.  What I’ve noticed in the past, though, is how completely an otherwise cool video can be ruined by inappropriate soundtrack selection.  For example:  rock climbing videos set to some scratchy Metallica song, or some Frenchy jazz cafe music to a kayaking video.  Or my favorite:  some awful gansta rap song about killing and taking drugs to a hiking video.  What were these people thinking?  So I decided to use a song that is appropriate:  nature-y, peaceful, serene, with nothing inappropriate in the themes or language.  … … … and I would never lie … … enjoy.

FYI:  The end of the second video is just me trying to hold the camera steady as I jostle in a double-decker bus, which go surprisingly fast in Hong Kong.  I posted it to give a taste of the top floor double-decker experience, truly an blissful little accoutrement to Hong Kong life.

SOME THOUGHTS

I sometimes think that the very soul of adventure is in actually experiencing things dreamt of.  It is easy to romanticize about frolicking through the woodlands, of camping by a pristine mountain stream or scaling sun-kissed sandstone walls.  But as any adventurer knows, it’s not all campfire cooking and petting baby deer out in the wilds.  But to do those things one idealizes, to live those perfect moments, is the adventure, is the joy, and the way.

That said, not everyone dreams of taking a kayak down the perfect river perfectly, skiing down miles of powder, or of leaping off cliffs into the ocean.  But the same applies to those idealized notions of relaxing.  Retirement isn’t often the hammock, lemonade, and golf rounds people want it to be.  But when one plans a day of hedonistic descent into carnal pleasure and it all comes off, it gives one that same feeling of bliss which adventure has so often welled-up in me.

Travel is often a bittersweet mixture of appreciating the new and also stressing the hassles of not knowing anything about anywhere or what the hell you’re doing.  If people loved having to wing it with logistics having sketchy or no information, as one often must while traveling, no one would be making money selling GPS units in phones and cars.  But Hong Kong is MY city, a place I am totally comfortable and more free to enjoy all its delights than the richest dweller therein could be.  I am apart from all its troubles and and yet attuned to its workings and customs.  I am not desensitized to it’s charm by citizenship, it is as exotic to me as when I first saw it, but the locations and methods of getting everything I could want are just as ordered in my mind as the English alphabet.

Something about just sitting at a white linen-covered table, with tanks of recently abducted crustaceans clicking behind me, the ocean in front of me, and my favorite eats, drinks, and smokes before me, hit that sublime button.  And I had to just sit and feel the life in me, and the life around me.  All my hurry disappeared and I didn’t want to leave that table.  I’ve said before rather arrogantly that the world is my playground.  But there I was, surrounded by delights, safe and as home as I’ve ever been.  I got to hold something in my hand for a while and contemplate it, turning it over from fingers to palm, twiddling it with my fingers:  the cheerful contentment of the human heart, that we all seek, but can rarely hold onto.

It was a perfectly simple matter to visit a few backpack places — numerous and trendy in a city where everyone is a pedestrian — and select a light backpack I could climb in unencumbered but which also had the sort of theft-proof design features I’ve come to rely upon in a crowd.  Then I had only to find a hiking store, pick up a few maps and Sport Beans, and make my plan by spreading said maps over the glass-topped dining table of my friend’s apartment.

I had never done “The Twins,” two green-domed features just inland of some of Hong Kong’s most beautiful beaches.  Judging by the kilometer markings on the map, it wouldn’t take all day, so I got the idea of starting quite a bit further north …

NORTH POINT TO STANLEY

North Point is, as you can see on this simple map, the northern point of the island, and, more importantly, accessible by MTR.

simple map of Hong Kong Island

Locate Stanley on the map.  The question was straightforward:  can I walk from North Point MTR Station to Stanley on trails and backroads?

THE VIDEOS

It was a glorious hike, sunny and windy with the saturated blue of the sky and the bright green of island tropics ever going as my companions before me.  I started a few blocks from the harbor and ended right on the sands of the ocean.

The videos tell the story, but I should mention Pocari Sweat is a particular vice of mine and one which demands a daily budget, especially on hiking days.  If you are in the US and want to try it yourself, head to your local Asian supermarket.

The first video shows the more urban part of the walk, the second the main hike, and the third my look around Stanley and a temple there.  You can turn them up to HD.

AFTERWARDS

I had just time to catch a double-decker bus (which you will see something about in a future post) back to the harbor-side of the island and have a delicious dinner.  Perfect day.

Back in the States, over the 5 or 6 previous years, I had been subtly haunted, on-and-off by the same kind of dream.  Perhaps 40 times, maybe 50 times, I would wake in my bed, having dreamed so convincingly that I was in Hong Kong.  Often it was some single street:  a back alley of Shenzhen, for example.  Other times, I was in Victoria Park or on some green peak with windswept grasses.  Sometimes I was just walking down a store-lined street.  Sometimes it was a place I didn’t know specifically, but I knew it was in Hong Kong.  Sometimes I have a recurring dream of a stony mountain path and an ascent with no trees, rather a certain kind of stone … but that’s for another tale.  And I dreamed more than once that I was on the great plane journey over the seas to that paradise on the other side.  I endured these consistent pangs of waking so many times, always having to drag myself up and go to work, wanting to lie back down and return to far-off places in dreams.  Maybe these dreams were just the subconscious clutter of deep desire, the knowledge that, pretend as I would, I could not keep my heart away from Asia.  But it felt like more than that.  It felt like a glimpse of what was to come, a window into my destiny, a reminder that some invisible clock was ticking, some plane was, even then, waiting to carry me away from all my American adventures.

The path I’m on, the adventurer’s quest for the ultimate ride, must at points have dramatic and costly twists and turns.  It is a mistake to think it is a line of steady progress moved forward in the free time of a stable lifestyle.  On the contrary, these earthquakes can be paradigm shifts in thought that require one to bitterly (or gladly) eat one’s former words, near death experiences and physical hardships, the sudden necessity to learn a new language, or the sudden Star-Trek-esque “beaming” from home, friends, family, country, and culture.    I had become a stronger person over those years past — I got a degree and, more importantly, had had a host of new and wild adventures.  My brain and my body became equipped with the experience of all those hikes, the freezing swims, the muddy caves, the leaps off cliffs, the plunges down whitewater rapids — but I knew the Life of Adventure doesn’t allow stability for long, a necessity of “feeling alive” and of embracing the truth.

Every time I had one of those Hong Kong dreams, I thought, for a moment, the time had finally come.  But I always woke to my own bed in America.

Imagine the shock, then, after my 8 hour slumber, as I woke to see the first mountain peaks on the other side of the Pacific, floating on roots lost in the white mists of the sea.  Fishing boats came into view below, and then the coast.  And I realized, though it seemed just a few hours since I’d left my old routine of American life, it was no dream.  At long last, after more than 5 years, I was back.

As if prompted by the ringing of some far-off church bell, as if seized from the water’s edge by a long-waiting crocodile, I had been ripped from those 5 years of stability and shaken from one world to wake in another.  I had vanished from all I had known to be real, and come at last into the place I’d dreamt about so often.

And I realized, in that moment, that the plan worked.  The plan, which I had kept inside, despite the hours of paperwork, the doubts, the problems, the tense waiting for responses from the consulate, the late night visits to FedEx/Kinko’s Office, the days and hours of walking through parking garages thinking, planning my next moves, waiting for the email which would hit my phone to confirm another step had been completed.  I had lit a fuse and gone on with my life as if it wasn’t burning, knowing, waiting for that long fuse to run down to zero and blow my whole lifestyle away — my possessions, house, girlfriend, friends, job, language, habits, and even my name would crash all around me, and I would wake up in a whole new place.  And I did on that plane.  The fuse struck, and in the matter of a few hours and a deep sleep … it was all gone and the barriers of an ocean and 13 hours on the clock had admitted me.

What happens to a dream deferred?  I don’t know or care, nor do I ever want to.  I know that the realization of a dream is the ambrosia of immortality — a moment of smiling, laughing glory which will live forever in my memory and my history.  My “homeland” is now a foreign land utterly out of reach.  Right now, as I write, I can turn my head to look back, but all I see is a Taiwanese street (and a stray, usually black for some reason, dog).

This is my dream world — now in hi-def.

ONTO NEW QUESTS

After that dinner and that descent, I got up from my seat with my immigration forms and my jacket, gently hefted down my carry on, and walked, smiling, back into Hong Kong.  It was then onto the Airport Express, then the MTR system with all the familiar stops, and then to the home of a great friend.  Then came days of revisiting old explored places along with many new ones.  Then it was onto a whole new country, a whole new world of adventures.  I’m gonna show you some of what I experienced.

HONG KONG

As much as I’ve changed in the last 5 years, the city still stops me in my tracks to awe and gape.   Maybe it’s the crowded yet almost dinner-plate clean MTR subway system.  Maybe it’s mahjong parlours with sliding, frosted glass doors and the sound of a thousand clinking tile pieces being shuffled within.  Maybe it’s the Maxim’s Cakes bakeries, suckling pig and roasted whole gooses hanging in the butcher-shop windows, the shops of Gucci, Piaget, G2000, Giordano, Bossini, Swatch, Tiesot, Armani; the electric tramcars, the slippery fish markets where every kind of edible sea creature swims in tanks or lays on beds of ice still flopping, clawing, crawling.  Maybe it’s the dim sum restaurants with round tables covered in white table cloth, the custom of washing your white bowl, soup-spoon, and chopsticks with tea and then pouring it all into a glass bowl to be taken by the waiter.  Or maybe it’s the custom of setting the teapot lid angled out of its slot to show the waiter you need them to “ga di seui” (add water).  Maybe it’s the powerful earthy, herbal smell of the Chinese medicine shops which can be found just about everywhere.  Maybe it’s the sound of Cantonese, spoken in that super-fast, sing-songy way normal to tonal languages, or maybe its the sound of Octopus cards beeping passengers into buses, subways, trains, cable-cars, trams, 7-11s, DeliFrance, etc.  Or maybe it’s that globally recognizable skyline featuring IFC 1 & 2, “the Triangle Building,” Lippo Center, HSBC World Headquarters, the Peak, the Bank of China Tower, and all the others — a skyline that’s visible from the mountain peaks and the bustling harbor-side.

The grand answer is that I don’t know.  But there is something … magical, about the place; some intangible force of modernity, of opportunity, of paradise.  And I cannot resist it.  Even if I could, I know I wouldn’t.  Much as I am in love with the natural world, a love that is always returned to the giver, I am in love with this part of nature, this place on the globe.  The city has a soul, and its very akin to mine.

I will try, in an utterly ineffective way, to show you that paradise over the next few posts.  I explored the city, parts old and new, went on 4 hikes, and went surfing in a storm.  That last one gave me 4 distinct injuries.  But I’m fine now … no, no, I’m better than fine.

In a few hours, I will be leaving the United States for the Far East.  I go now to adventure in ways far more exotic than anything seen on this blog so far, in a place where the landscape and the culture could not have more character and interest.  It is possible that these adventures abroad, like the ones before them, won’t get a treatment in writing.

I have done a poor job of cataloging the adventures of my life over the past few years — I have omitted many and important parts of these stories and left others out entirely.

I don’t believe one person can change another.  All I have seen has directed me to think that when a person decides to change on the inside, they may assign it to inspiration from a book, movie, personal friend or famous figure, or something else.  But the change is always from the inside out, and never really from the outside in, like an egg that is merely waiting for the right temperature to hatch, revealing what was inside all along.

So I’m not writing this post, indeed, I didn’t write the blog, because I really thought I could change people or inspire people.  It was more for my own satisfaction when looking back, and, if I’m honest, to attract girls

But the things I’ve come to believe have, throughout these adventures, been tested and proved a hundred times over, maybe more.  I leave them here as the conclusions of a young man who has just soared from his zero point (working as a parking ticket writer in Knoxville, TN) to his highest peak yet, though I’m sure the summit is so far off I can’t even see it yet.

1.  The purpose of life is to feel alive.  Whether this is in sipping hot Pu-erh tea in a steaming bathtub with a hot washcloth over your forehead or whether it is jumping 50 feet from a cliff is up to you — but for me, it’s both.  Simple pleasures like petting my cat and listening to electronic music blaring from my speaker system while I shower are as close to bliss for me as clipping the last bolt on a lead rock climb I’ve never tried before, only to look back and see a wide sky above all the trees.  Sometimes it has been a long conversation with a true friend, and sometimes it is lying in a claustrophobic cave passage or off-trailing it for 10+ hours, jumping out of a plane, skiing behind a boat, or doing a backflip at a nightclub.

This implies, if accepted, that every day is a day to do something deliberate to feel alive.  A day in which even a small time is not sacrificed to honor this truth is a day not worth living; it will be forgotten.  It is easy to do daily something you’ve never done before.  Far better advice to not go even a week without doing something that makes you feel excited, free, and sublime.

2.  Don’t ever stop exploring, stop learning, stop challenging yourself.  Take a moment to enjoy each triumph and move on.  Never, ever stop.  If there’s something you want to do, start planning.  It is a person lacking wisdom who waits and hopes for what they want to occur.

To settle down is to resist change, and to resist change is to stand braced in the surf as wave after wave of unhappiness breaks over you.  It’s a common disease of the mind to think that securing one’s life into fixed grooves is desirable.  Many a person has thought that once they owned a home, married a stable partner, bought health insurance and had secure employment, they would have “arrived.”  But there is no arrival in this life and no stability to be had where human beings are involved.  Hell, there’s no stability where the forces of nature are involved  A study of the anecdotes of everyone you know will reveal as much.  When they realize the hardships of the woods were better than a roof and fireside when you can only look out the window, an emotional death awaits.  Shiny diamond engagement rings, shiny SUVs with hefty payments, and the noble-sounding but disastrous desire to “live for others” are all purveyors to ruin and bait inside a cage.  People will argue that “you can still be adventurous and *insert all those things*” but I’m speaking about “I did that when I was younger” syndrome (precursor to full-blown “I don’t do fun things anymore” disease).  Fun is going off the tracks, and the deeper you cut the ruts of your life the harder it is to get out of them.  Period.

3.  A person’s happiness and maybe even their sanity can be easily measured.  The degree to which one sees reality and accepts it, for good or bad, is the degree of one’s happiness.  To see reality and to go on believing that it is otherwise is the path of unhappiness.  Logic, discernment; to wit, fact-finding and fact-facing are the most critical skills the brain is capable of and often the most neglected, for none of us receive formal training where matters of our personal lives are concerned.  Human beings would more readily accept that the universe is ruled by an invisible cosmic elephant with 6 arms than believe that there is nothing after death, would rather believe that bread transmutes into flesh than consider that maybe, MAYBE the billions of tons of carbon dioxide we put in the atmosphere just MIGHT actually affect SOMETHING.  I have been stunned a thousand times over at my generation following the traditions and advice of the former generations which destroyed the housing market, job market, etc. etc.  There are a thousand miseries for one who can’t dodge the traps another has just fallen into (or more commonly, traps they’ve fallen into before, like controlling relationships or substance habits); believe me, I’ve walked right into the problems I’ve seen my friends face.  Logic would have led me to find some UT Journalism graduates and consult them about their job prospects BEFORE I chose that as a major, but I had not learned enough of basic logical synthesis yet.  To think before acting is an achievement I continue to work at, as easy as it sounds, there is often alot to consider about our actions.  To listen to your friends when they all tell you your girlfriend is a bad idea, rather than hold on until the bitter end when hearts get broken is a rare achievement indeed, because the mouse can’t see the maze layout, but the researcher can.  Either emotions overrule logic, or logic overrules emotions in any individual.  If you have any doubt as to which one is more desirable, consider that emotions have never built a suspension bridge, kept a steady hand at surgery, or even won a fight, verbal or physical, and they intrinsically interfere with your safety anytime it’s in question (i.e. cliff jumping and rock climbing).  Fear makes what you fear more likely to happen.  Emotions are, essentially, the weakness in us coming out when we aren’t strong enough to act deliberately based on what’s true and right.  I’m not being sexist here, I know plenty of women who don’t subscribe to the whole “women are born more emotional” thing.  There are as many of each sex in my experience who can keep a cool hand when to fail to would be disastrous.  The girlfriend I’m leaving behind is one of these.  And therein lies another another recommendation of fact-finding and fact-facing.  Despite what I thought when I was younger, I now see that whether I’m in a relationship or not, no matter how much I’m in love with a particular girl, I still desire to get close to new and intriguing women who come my way.  I don’t try to pretend reality is different.  That’s the truth of how I feel and feel right feeling (follow that ←-?).  So, even though it’s a rare thing, I got into an open relationship.  Most honest, loving, drama-free, functional relationship I’ve ever been in.  I would never cheat, because I’m responsible.  I don’t kid myself about what I want.  If you’re honest about it, nobody gets hurt.

It’s not always easy to accept what you really want and to seek it out, but it is really the only way to be happy.  You can’t pretend it isn’t what it is.  Some things that happen in life can’t be changed, but in these cases, you can always rise to meet them and “see with eyes unclouded.”

4.  Many people will be glad to follow the path that is set before them as children.  The son of a medical person might be happy to, with certain parental approval, pursue a course in some branch of medicine with his parent’s financial help.  I dated a girl once whose family had more than 20 horses.  Growing up in this she had become an expert on horse training and, naturally, wanted to start a horse training business.  And why not?  She’d be good at it and would enjoy it.  Who else would have the resources of land, barns, round-pens and the like anyhow?  I have seen, time and again, how the combination of family connections and young experience have provided a clear and acceptable path for friend after friend.  Steve Irwin’s family were zookeepers.  Bear Grylls’ dad took him climbing at a very young age.  George W. Bush’s dad was a president.  The anecdotes are endless.  Many a high school retail worker has gotten into management with that company when the degree didn’t pay off.  I see nothing wrong with any of this.  It’s no surprise that alot of the great adventurers and climbers out there started doing it when they were barely old enough to spell.  Who knows, I could be the best bobsledder in the world, but being as I’ve never been exposed to bobsledding or given the chance to try, we’ll never know.  (I’m serious, I really think I am)  I’m only making the point that it is who we know, how we were raised, where we were raised, etc. that determine our futures, especially in America, where the “who-you-know” system does a terrible job of actually placing individuals where they will do the most good for everyone.

But I think that we humans yearn for “character creation,” a process that has sold video games like World of Warcraft, the Elder Scrolls series, and numerous other RPGs, not to mention every pen-and-paper RPG in existence and a considerable number of other products.  Some people pay alot of money at salons, tattoo parlours, and clothing/shoe stores to “create” themselves.  Interior decorating, the products you buy, the car/bike you drive, these can all be sold, in part, because of what you think that purchase says about you.  Don’t get me started on the oh-so fashionable outdoor gear that’s as often as not useless in a technical sense.

Anyway, it is human to want some say in our fortunes, to determine our own destinies.  So much in the way of our image, we crave to change.  But the people are fewer who strive to change their inner character, their greatest and most entrenched weaknesses, their real destiny.

I go now to the next step on my journey, of challenging my fate, of defying the path that would have been easy, of making my own future for myself, of becoming what I wish to be.  Whether I succeed at all or make more money or have more vacation time than someone else is irrelevant.  Self-esteem and real emotional security cannot be had in competing with others or being compared to them — it comes in the certainty that I have written my own story, without the fear that would otherwise drive me to miss out on the opportunities of the one lifetime I have on earth to do as I wish and to be as I wish.

I didn’t ask to come into this world, but I’m here.  I understand the world owes me nothing, but you know what?  Since I’m not having kids, I don’t owe the world anything either.  I’ll tell you what I want:  I want it all.  I want to hike Huashan and surf in Australia and Taiwan.  I want to sit in a hot spring with monkeys.  I want plates of steaming pork and leek dumplings.  I want to sip hot tea and Hana Awaka, jump off seaside cliffs, and watch the sunset (maybe in the same day).  I want to jump out of planes and sleep on trains and stay in a Japanese ryokan.  I want to dance in clubs, crawl through caves, scuba dive, and speak another language.  I want to read Tang poetry in traditional characters, I want to meet the widest diversity of people I can imagine.  I want to date girls who are tall and short, artsy and science-y; white, black, Asian; I want to climb more cliffs and paddle more seas, even eat basashi again (raw horse).  I want to camp on snow-covered ridges and mountain bike, get massages, play video games, play mahjong and Wei Chi and lose money at it, and I want to do more yoga and tai chi.  Bruce Lee said if can’t find happiness where you sit, you’ll never find it.  My record of not letting life pass me by, of enjoying Knoxville to the fullest, speaks for itself.  And now, it’s time to raise the game.

I believe wisdom comes only through experience, so ultimate wisdom requires the ultimate array of experience.  I want to ride this wave until I get a face full of sand, because you only get one chance.  In short, I want the ultimate ride.

Is there more to life than just what people think of us? I SAY THERE IS!  We are part of nature, our real higher power, which sustains our lives and gives us all the pleasures we are capable of experiencing, from fresh air to the beauty of swimming among coral reefs.  To love nature, to experience it, to see its vast diversity and momentarily enjoy as many of its wide array of delights as possible is a task worth living for.  To know, to appreciate, to understand, to experience the real force that is greater and better than us is a path that’s completely free and always available.  I have seen, too, again and again, outdoor adventure specifically used as a tool merely to engage in social interaction, the whole goal of which is acceptance and love from other people.  This is using something higher to achieve something lower, like eating ice cream with an iPhone 4 instead of a spoon.    If we waste all our time trying to climb rungs in manmade society and neglect to find a place of comfort in the order of nature, are we striving for more, or settling for less?

5.  Lastly, I must share the personal truth that, much as we would like to think otherwise, there is far too little love in this world.  If my record is closed with alot of you, I hope I contributed some love to your life.  I must thank my friends and the few lovers to which the noun can be said to apply, for making these years special on the human-scale.  I have been lucky, and I know I’ve been lucky, to find so many individuals capable of accepting and loving me, or anyone else for that matter.  Surveying 10 random Americans I have run across and know, the average emotional health level does not inspire confidence.  There are so many seeking their own self-worth at all cost, whose acts done in the name of love are really an assault on it, an attempt to act a certain way and so steal security from someone else’s opinion of them, that I must indeed be grateful for those who have come in my path and been capable of real interest in another.  To love is to have someone else’s best interest at heart, and more especially when it runs counter to our own.  Indeed, some of the people who claim to “love” most purely and most fiercely, are really the most selfish and self-centered in the lot, who hold onto people like life preservers, because they themselves never learned to swim.

I have found, through years of meeting and sorting people out, a core group of friends here, before whom I need to hide nothing and whose interest in my well-being is beyond question.  These people know who they are, and I love every one of you.

As those of you who know me so well can imagine, striking off into this great new adventure, this long journey into the unknown — to a new culture, a new land, a new language, new jobs, a new group of friends I will build from scratch, a new opportunity for romance, new outdoor opportunities, new foods, a new set of challenges I will take pleasure in cutting through, even a new name and a new start — is about the most exciting thing that could happen to me.  I shall take a good deal of lessons with me, and learn those that must come next.

It’s off to mountain peaks higher than any in the Smokies, to beaches with crystal waters and 6 foot waves, to new rock walls, new caves, new rivers, and new jungles, it’s off to the world’s most beautiful women for me.

Even if the blog ends, be certain my Life of Adventure continues.

Whether near or far, my dear friends and long-suffering readers, believe me to be –

Very sincerely yours,
Brad Williams
The Party Pterodactyl
CAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWW!!!!

If you are in a wet sleeping bag being little-spoon to a guy naked except for a synthetic shirt, trying to stay on a one-man inflated sleeping pad because the tent floor is wet, while not touching the tent walls because they are soaked, and all your clothes including your waterproof jacket are dripping, that’s a start.  Add to that the temperature is in the upper 20s, it’s currently snowing, and the continuous downpour of last night, plus the current precipitation have turned a stream that was difficult to cross yesterday into one continuous line of extremely swift, freezing rapids.

How did we get into this situation?  I asked myself that, shivering fervently in the soppy sleeping bag, feeling Matt’s chest bringing heat to my back.

Well…

The forecast was for rain all day on Saturday, but Matt and I decided to go adventuring in the Smokies anyway.  He had just gotten a new tent and camp stove in the mail and a brand new rain jacket.  We had to go camping and test everything out.  So we decided to hike from Elkmont down the Little River Trail to campsite 30, which is on the valley floor downhill north from Clingman’s Dome.  The camp site is, as anyone who’s been there will report, beautiful for its being surrounded on all sides by deeply carved rockbeds and streams.

We hiked in Saturday having gotten a late start.  The ground was moist but it didn’t rain on us at all.  All I brought to wear was a synthetic undershirt, my blue adventure shirt (the cause of the catastrophe for sure, it always is), and a rain jacket.  I brought my waterproof pants too, for I was prepared for a day’s walk in rain.  The weather was warm and beautiful, if a bit cloudy.

We had one tricky stream crossing on the way in, which we had to splash through as I had done before.  It was this stream, a minor inconvenience on the way in, that would nearly be our undoing on the way out.   I did not stop to imagine that it would close behind us like a gate in a matter of hours, and bar our passage back, nor that neither the upstream nor downstream banks would provide any break in its watery barrier, shutting us in.

In truth, even on a low-water-level sort of day, where the trail crosses the stream is extremely treacherous with large slick boulders and deep drops, over which water plunges powerfully as if from a sluice.  It should be spanned by a footlog, because travelers usually go to a better spot upstream and cross, spanning rocks barely poking out of the water on all fours or wading.  A slip on a good day could cause a really horrible injury.

We reached the campsite as it began to get dark and tried setting up my Kelty tarp.  I’ll be honest, I’m not good at setting up tarps because I haven’t practiced.  We created a marsh on one side that soon flooded the area underneath.  Luckily we just moved the tent to a better spot first and forgot about the tarp, leaving our backpacks under it on stacks of wet wood to keep them out of the mud.  We didn’t try very hard for a fire, as everything was soaked and it had begun to rain.

We decided just to get into the tent for the night and relax inside, cooking in the vestibule.

This was a great experience for me.  In all the times I’ve camped, I’ve never just spent the evening laying on my stomach in the one warm, dry spot for miles and miles on all sides, as the rain pelted down all around in inhospitable cold.  We cooked on Matt’s new stove in the vestibule, which warmed the tent.  It was comfy to eat and drink lying on our inflatable sleeping pads on warm sleeping bags.  It was warm and cozy even though we’d stripped off everything that was wet, which included my jacket.  I had turned it inside out and brought it in the tent, a bad idea, as it turned out.

The only thing about enjoying camping exclusively within your tent is that going to the bathroom without the leaving the warm, dry comfort and marching into the mud and rain can be tricky.

This video shows a bit of our camping experience.  We ate two freeze-dried dinners that were each supposed to serve two.  Then we had dessert.  We are buff muscular hungry men after all.

The next day, we awoke to discover a couple of inches of snow on the ground and piled on our tent.  It was still snowing.  Me and my short-sleeved shirts hadn’t expected that.  My jacket was now wet and cold on the inside and outside, which rather defeats the purpose of a rain jacket.  Our pants and outer shirts were damp and freezing, not to mention the boots and shoes tucked under the vestibule.

This was not going to be fun.  I hate being cold.  I really do.  You wouldn’t know that based on the times I have swum in freezing water — for the most part intentionally  — or gone deliberately hiking in snow.  A weekend or so before this adventure, I went cliff diving into cold water on a cold, windy night.  Still, I had really had enough of being cold for one winter, and I wasn’t going to feel warm for the next seven difficult hours.

There is that awful feeling of sliding out of your sleeping bag into the cold air and scrambling around to get your cold, damp clothes on before shoving your feet into wet socks and damp boots.  Then, in-between running around in circles trying to get some body heat going, you have to pack down the tent while the snow is bustling about trying to cover it up in a mound.

By the time this is done, you can’t feel your fingers.  We had to leave two guylines of the tarp because we didn’t have the dexterity to untie the square knots that held them to trees.  The dripping, slush-covered tarp was not on my friends list when Matt, who had a pair of non-waterproof gloves cinched it to the outside of my expedition pack.

If the tarp could talk, and I hadn’t gotten delirious enough yet to think it could, I would have scolded it for being a bad tarp.

We got a move on.  For about two minutes … before realizing that the beautiful streams I mentioned all round the campsite had become raging torrents.  We went back and forth and forth and back looking for a place to cross.  The absolute best we found was a thin, snow-covered log which we had to shimmy across on our hands while resting our weight on the log at the stomach.  This I actually videoed, despite feeling very uncomfortable and frigid from our fighting through rhodo to look for places we could wade across safely.  It looks easy on the video, but that water was swifter and deeper than it looks and worse everywhere else.  This was the absolute best place to cross, many spots being practically impossible, unless you wanted to get swept away and go swimming with a heavy pack on.  We would have been up to our knees in rapids with slick stone underfoot if we had been older or less tenacious.  I would soon feel, however, that this was nothing and that we made way too much out of a tiny problem.

We got warm during the bit of walking we did next, feeling pretty good about walking 6 miles or so to the car and getting out.  I actually regained feeling in my fingers and stopped shivering.  Then we came to the big stream crossing, the one I said was tricky and dangerous on a good day.

This was where things went from great to we’re fu#$ed.  I took no videos of the dangerous rapids we faced.  We could see the trail on the far side, but upstream or downstream it was the same:  big boulders getting pummeled by a massive tide of white, freezing water.  There was simply no place to cross.  The big rocks which were mostly above water yesterday were deep under the deluge, and depth was impossible to calculate in places, unless you consider “too deep” to be a calculation.  You can’t wade a spot where for a 4 or 5 foot section the water is up to your chest or too deep to see and powerful enough to shoot you off downstream like a pinball from its spring.  We spent a long time looking at options that were all horrible and unlikely to be successful.

I pointed out to Matt that with rapids that were easily waist-high and with the force of the flow, it would be all to easy to get knocked down and swept off, to get dashed against boulders and dropped down the little waterfalls and battered into the even-worse rapids immediately down from us where the stream only broadened and grew in power.  The sound of it was like a deafening thunder constantly.  Our walking around revealed two potential places, but both had deep bits where the water was too bubbly to know depth and where the flow was hardest.

Here we made a critical misstep, and one I can’t believe I actually succumbed to after all the times I’ve spoken against it:  indecision.  No option looked safe, and we were freezing.  We should have taken the desperate plunge forth then, but I, at least, wasn’t up for it, and Matt was probably hypothermic by this time.  We were both shivering all over.  So we pitched the tent and huddled into it.

Matt was going to light the camp stove to generate some heat, but I decided that worst-case scenario we would have to wait for rescue, as the tent was easily visible from the trail’s continuation on the other side, and in this scenario burning down the tent could be fatal to us.  The tent floor was wet, all our clothes were soaked, and so we struggled into one sleeping bag trying to stay on one inflatable sleeping mat.  The sleeping bag got wet inside and out, but for a little while, as we considered our options, we got warm.

In the Smokies, rescue is never really an option.  Self-rescue is the only real option.  Matt didn’t want his parents to have heart attacks when he didn’t show up at home, and I wanted to see my incredibly hot girlfriend that night before the work week.  So, laughing at the awful mess we found ourselves in, we raced about again packing up camp and getting back into cold, wet clothes and shoes and numbing our hands packing up the tent.

We had developed a plan in the tent, and we put it into action.  We went straight to the spot of the stream where the most difficult breadth to cross seemed to be just off our side of the bank.  We bundled up the tarp and used it like a short length of rope.  Matt stood on the bank and held it tight, while I held onto it in case of getting swept off my feet, so I would not go shooting downstream into rapids.  The crossing was roughly waist-height, and stepping meant fighting the flow of the water, which pushed my legs back as if they were being pulled downstream by elastic bungee cords.  I almost fell a few times, trying to get my footing on the slick rocks, but holding the tarp gave me confidence and extra balance.  I made it to where the water pounded a boulder at about the middle, so the water just pushed me securely against it, where I held the tarp for Matt.  We repeated this process to get across the second breadth of the stream, and went skipping away down the trail.

It’s amazing how being so submerged in such cold water while your hands are gripped a frozen, wet tarp, doesn’t seem to make you cold.  We were invigorated and on top of the world as we hiked fast the remaining six miles out.  We had several shin-deep and one knee-deep crossing on the way, which we easily got over by putting our hands on each other’s shoulders for balance.  But those were nothing.

And speaking of my tarp.  Now that I WAS delirious enough to believe the tarp could talk (and hear), I praised Tarpy for a job well done, as one would a pet dog.  I apologized for doubting its merits earlier and for considering it leaving behind.  Oh Tarpy, you aren’t useless.  You saved us.  You should come on all my adventures now.  That was how I thought.

I started doing a few videos after that.  As I said, I didn’t video the really dangerous part, as we were in real danger, but the video shows the rest:

WHAT WE LEARNED

Getting into the car and turning on the heat was like heaven after so many hours of being chilled and soaked from hair to toe.  As we were hiking back, we made some resolutions.

I had found myself, as we lay in that tent completely at loss as to how to escape our predicament, so grateful for things like hot showers, the space heater and blankets in my bedroom, my girlfriend, Jing Jing, etc., that I felt a person could want nothing more out of life than a bedroom out of the elements and someone to care about and comfort.  Adventure always intensifies one’s appreciation of the savory food and hot shower when one arrives home, but this was much more intense.  I feel like I cherish the simple pleasures in life, the conveniences of modern living, more than most people.  But at that time, I felt I had been wholly unappreciative of them up that point.  As a man once wrote about his desire for adventure, “I want to want a place to call home.”  It’s so true.  I have done this.  I’ve adventured into really difficult territory and situations to the point of craving the comfort that normal living makes me think of as boring.  When a Saturday at home seems to your mind to be a blessing from heaven and all you could want out of life instead of a boring, uneventful waste of time, then you’re getting more from adventure than the fun you have in the woods.  Adventure, which gives your life great stories and close friendships and excitement and meaning — is also sweetening even your workweek lifestyle, turning it into a blissful repose that you can appreciate even when work is grinding and little problems come up.  It doesn’t matter.  It’s so comfy and happy.  And it’s just a quiet, warm respite from your constant adventures anyway.  Enjoy it, because who knows what next weekend will bring.  Rest up while you can.

That’s a gift of a life of adventure, making the mundane seem luxurious, not just making free time into thrilling stories that bond people and toughen you physically and mentally to realize your capabilities and push yourself to handle new challenges.

I also decided that I had been really wanting, but putting off buying, an Xbox 360 for too long and d@#* it, life is short, so I was gonna buy one if I made it out safely.

This I did.  I also went to Chop House a day later and ate a $20 filet mignon steak because, hey, you gotta enjoy life while you have it and are healthy enough to enjoy it.  Sitting in that warm booth, eating steak and looking across at my girlfriend was basically the antithesis of shivering in snow soaked and up to my waist in a rapid of icewater, or shivering in a tent looking across a nearly impassible stream to the trail on the other side I couldn’t reach.

The drama and complaints we make of life are often so stupid.  You gotta appreciate what you have and who you have.  But that’s hard to do.  So go and get yourself into a real uncomfortable painful adventure if that’s what it takes to not mess up all the good things you have going for you.  I haven’t had a fight with my girlfriend yet, and this adventure made me feel I never will, because if any little annoyance comes along I won’t be the sort of person to let it make me forget all the things I should cherish for being in my life.  And if Jingy scratches my loveseat upholstery all to pieces, well, hey, have at it my little orange friend.  It’s nice to come home to her cute little face fresh out of the mountains and in crying need of a bath.

Another lesson:  don’t judge people or inanimate objects.  You never know when that tarp you thought was a waste of time to bring will prove to be the one tool you cling to for safety.  Same goes for people.  Who knows how someone may come through for you just when you need them, even if you didn’t think well of them before. 

ONE MORE THING

This is the second somewhat frightening snowy adventure I’ve had.  Please refer to the first:

Trouble on Frozen Ridges

Also as Brad vs. Wild:  Remix

After the aforementioned survival situation, Rob and I ate a bunch of fudge from the Heavenly Fudge Shop in Cherokee, NC.  So after this little survival situation, Matt and I went to Gatlinburg for pizza and Aunt Mahalia’s heavenly fudge.  I guess it’s now a tradition.  Normally we just drive by all those touristy fudge places that seem to cluster around the Smoky Mountains.  But when you’ve had a really great adventure, when you can really taste fudge like it’s ambrosia, go ahead and stomp in one of them, dripping and clammy.  It’s a hilarious and life-giving experience.

That’s it, folks.  That’s about enough cold for one winter.  I’m now ready to Spring and warm-weather adventures.  And I hope you’ll join me, cause it hasn’t killed me yet.