An ill-equipped hiker undertakes a dangerous passage through the remote mountains of Taiwan, where she abandons her scepticism, instead relying on the kindness of spirits to keep her safe from the region’s deadly drops and bloodthirsty wildlife that hides in the overgrown forests.
Something grows restless, out there in the darkness. Shifting land fills the valley with rush and rumble. It is hard to tell from which direction the roar comes, but it is close. Between the roars, there is a stillness. Alongside the fear, there is peace. A patter of rain on the tent occasionally, or just the rustle of the leaves overhead. Then the sharp clatter of a stone nearby, and fear is there again.
When a stranger offered to show me some of the most remote mountains in Taiwan, weeks after I had arrived on the island, I should have said no–of course I should–but I wanted to say yes to life, and this offer was filled with the promise of adventure.
I should have backed out when I met the group. We were four: the guide and his girlfriend, plus me and another naive tag-along. None of us were skilled enough for the hike we had planned, and our guide was terrifying in his bravado–popping pills for an injury that would have been an excuse for anyone else to pull out. We met in a run-down hotel, hours before the dawn transfer which would bring us to the start of our route. When are you in so deep that it is too late to listen to the voice telling you the truths you don’t want to hear?
I prepared as well as I could based on our guide’s vague answers and my own research. The only information available about this route is in Mandarin, though, and written in the more complicated traditional characters used in Taiwan. Our goal was to visit two remote alpine lakes: 雙鬼湖 (shuangguihu), the two ghost lakes. The lakes are sacred to the local Rukai tribe, said to be the spiritual home of their ancestors. Few venture into these forests, but those who do observe certain rituals, and I was advised to do the same. I should offer betel nuts or alcohol to the first forest spirit I met, introduce myself, and ask for safe passage.
I recognised her as soon as I saw her–a huge, spreading banyan. It felt silly talking to this tree in front of strangers, but I knew the fear of this place was in them, too. I had bought a tiny bottle of Jameson whiskey at a 7/11 just for this; something from home to tell the spirits that I’m not from around here. When I had flicked the alcohol in three directions and made my plea, I took a swig of the burning liquid and felt we had a deal. I would respect this place and its spirits, making each step a thanksgiving for another moment of life. I chose then to perceive everything in that forest as being full of awareness. The gnarled trees were silent guardians, bird calls warnings against unseen dangers.
And those mountains were full of dangers. They were covered in a dark, dense forest of tortured trees, and every surface was thickly moss-coated. Tattered ribbons bound to ancient boughs promised safe passage, but they were few and far between. Our eyes played tricks on us, creating ghost paths to lure us deeper into the forest. The only signs of other humans were the bright sweet wrappers that littered the path occasionally. At first, I was angered by them, but I soon became grateful for these glittering relics that served as intermittent reminders of humanity. There were snakes and bears to fear, but my vigilance was quickly replaced by a more present concern–leeches. They were waiting on every rock and root we used to cling to and climb the mountainside. Sensing body heat, they would uncoil and writhe wildly, dancing for our blood.
Our days were spent sidling along spiny ridges that threatened to shake us off and tiptoing across the scars of old landslides with stones shifting restlessly underfoot. With so little experience and no satellite phone, any mistake could be our last. On the first day, after hours of heavy climbing, my foot slipped, and the weight of my bag pulled me down as my legs were swept out from under me. It felt like being gathered up into invisible arms. There was no time for fear, and I did not cry out. In the brief and endless moment of falling, I felt oddly peaceful. With no control over the situation, my body relaxed fully, and time seemed to slow. Finally, I found myself nestled between the shrubs and stunted trees that cover those ridges, and for a moment I just lay there as my mind caught up with my new position. If this had happened anywhere else on the trail, it would have been my end.
I convinced myself that the spirits of this place existed and would grant us safe passage. I clung to the feeling like a life raft, knowing it came from my own mind but needing the comfort of it. At the same time, I spent my days teasing E., the other tag-along in our group. He was the son of missionaries, and my scepticism of organised religion would have made me avoid him in any other situation. I wanted to dislike him, but he had a sort of sweet innocence that verged on wisdom, and a life experience so different from my own. His obsessive intelligence gave him a deep and infuriatingly narrow knowledge of life, so that speaking to him felt like shouting into an immense system of caves. He was a patient victim, though, and willing to meet my doubts with honest debate.
Again and again, we stumbled upon the remnants of a peaceful giant. Blind and deaf, heedless of the passage of time, the 知本林道 (zhiben forest road) plods its way over these mountains, hardly noticing the slow disintegration of its body. Built during the Japanese occupation of the island, it was once wide enough to carry a steady convoy of logging trucks, but has spent the last century or so quietly fading into the forest. Now, short sections of it accompanied us towards our goal, or offered a safe place to camp at night. We found old sake bottles and shattered insulators from the power lines that once ran along it, from a time before this forest had turned its back on humans.
It was on this road that I lay awake listening to the roar of mountains shifting restlessly around us. E. prayed, and for the first time in my life, I envied someone for their faith. I wished for a true belief in something, anything, anyone who could take control of this situation. I wished for the benevolent and guiding consciousness of E.’s god instead of the indifferent and almighty force making itself known in everything around us.
And then there came a voiceless command which drew me into the night and towards my fear. I left the tent and walked into a darkness so deep it pressed on my eyeballs, soft and soothing. When the blackness enveloped me fully, I waited. The forest grew cathedral-quiet around me, as if everything was holding its breath. Then, a thousand points of light blinked silently into existence. It was not the season for fireflies, but here they were, floating around me in a twinkling cloud, sometimes coming to rest on my outstretched hands. A calmness came over me then, and for a moment, all my fear was replaced with awe. As the sparkling cloud swirled around me, I felt the imagined separation between myself and the rest of nature grow thinner, and I knew that all would be well.
Despite the awe that this place inspired in us, E. and I knew that we needed to leave. Neither of us felt skilled or well-equipped enough to find our way out, yet staying in this situation was becoming more dangerous by the day. Pitched atop a bare mountain after a day spent warring with the other two group members, we huddled together amongst tufts of golden grass. We watched as the sky faded through pastels and flared red before turning to blue velvet and filling with diamonds. Long into the night, we sat in that deepening darkness, brooding on a way out of this beautiful nightmare. Suddenly, as if in answer to our silent pleas, fire flared on the mountain opposite us. The spark was faint enough for us to think we’d imagined it, but then came another flash of orange and finally a steady glow. We watched its glimmer grow stronger until it was impossible to deny–someone was there. It was as likely to be a hunting party as another group of hikers, but we knew that whoever sat at that fire, we would be safer with them.
The next morning, golden light was slanting through mist that rose from the bed of clouds below us. The world up here was at peace, and finally, a truce was reached in our group as well. Our guide and his girlfriend were set on completing their mission, but E. and I would split off to take our chances with the other group. First, we all needed to go together to the next water source, near where the strangers were camped. On the way, E. and I continued our ever-deepening debates. Again and again, I asked him what we meant by God, but no answer would satisfy me. Each explanation danced around something that I could almost grasp but not accept, and each time my question grew more insistent. I thought I wanted to trap him in the question, but also wanted an answer. I didn’t know what I was fighting when I was fighting the idea of a God. Was it the same force I chose to believe in as the fireflies swarmed around me, the guardian spirits I chose to feel all around us? I came no closer to an answer, of course, but I do know that our guides had grown tired of us by the time we found the strangers’ camp, and were happy to be rid of us and our convoluted conversations.
The embers of a fire were still glowing when we reached the strangers’ camp on the Japanese road, and we soon found them returning from the nearest water source. It was a large group of older Taiwanese hikers, mountain rescue volunteers, and expedition leaders. They emerged from the forest one by one, colourfully clad in worn-in gear. For E., they were angels; for me, forest spirits. They seemed so at home in that place, as if they too should be covered in the moss that claimed everything else in this forest as its own. While the strangers were kind, it was clear that they were not eager to take on these fools who had landed themselves in such a situation. Our reluctant saviours were moving fast, going out of the forest the same way we had come in. They wouldn’t wait for us while we collected and filtered water, but if we could catch them at their next camp, they would guide us out.
For the next few hours, E. and I were alone. Several days’ walk from the nearest town, we were painfully aware that getting lost here could mean death. All we had were my basic navigation skills and an offline map on my phone, with a GPS signal that bounced around and only occasionally showed us where we were. When there was a path, it was crisscrossed by muntjac trails, as if the forest were trying to keep us there. We stumbled and scrambled along a barely-there route where nothing felt familiar, and the forest seemed to grow darker and more tangled with every step. When we spoke now, it was only to give words of encouragement, denying our own fear to calm the other. I clung even more firmly to the spirit guardians I was believing into existence as E. prayed to his god of choice.
In the end, our differently-shaped beliefs are part of what carried E. and I through long and fearful hours of walking. When we finally emerged from the tangled woods onto an open ridge, a single plume of smoke was rising from the valley. Our whoops were answered by disembodied voices which guided us towards the strangers’ new camp. That forest had seemed a pathless wilderness on the way in, but now the trees parted willingly and we seemed to float down the mountain. Where our first guide had ranted and raged, these people moved calmly and quietly, swift steps leading us out of the forest and back to safety.
