It's 2008 but I haven't finished posting my stories happened in 2007. Well...so let's time travel back to 23rd Dec 2007.
I went hiking in Erge Shan with my friends. When hikers go hiking there in a nice day, they can see splendid views of Taipei City and Taipei County as the above picutre shows. We, unfortunately, went hiking in a overcast day. When we arrived at the platform on the mountain's top, we could see nothing but foggy surroundings.
I have known two of those three guys, Azic and Eikai, for almost 10 years, but it's interesting that the times we met in real life are probably near only 10 times. We are friends of the Internet known each other via a BBS-- the World of Psychology, and we had a lot of conversation via BBS. We had discussion everyday in the heyday of the World of Psychology. And they were excellent company when I was in the most difficult time of my life.
They are extremely smart people, and they taught me a lot in many perspectives even though we rarely meet in real life. We tried to figure out when we had a get-together last time during the hike. It happened about 2 and a half years ago, in Danshui. The memories was so vague that we barely recalled the details. Damned! We are getting old.
Four of us were psychology majors. Azic turned his focus on career to Chinese medicine after few years (or monthes?) clinical practice. Eikai seems in his burnout period, after being a counselling teacher in junior high schools for years. He is studying Creativity Development instead of Counselling. I still can remember his face was full of enthusiasm when he talked about teaching in school before, but now he rarely mentioned things related to counselling in high schools. What a pity! It seems that schools' environments of counselling in Taiwan have huge space for improvement. It's my first time to meet Accede, it seems he is in his career turning point.
Azic, Eikai and Accede are extremely smart people, and we were all once psychology majors so we had a lot of ideas in common. During the hike, I found out that this group is the most noisy hiking group I have ever had. They shared many phenomenon they have obseved, which leads me to see things in differnt ways. We had a lot of interesting topics, specially from Eikai's contributions. He shared his ideas and experiences about creativity development, which fascinated me. I know well that it's very difficult to measure creativity because I had tried to understand this concept before. It's fun to learn the anecdotes about what he is studying.
I had great time with those friends.
And a funny thing happened to me during the hike. I had registered at a hiking acitivity of an online hiking club, Zhou Zhou Pa Jiao Shan, before Azic invited me to organize a hiking get-together. I had to drop out Zhou Zhou's event. When we were on the trail of Erge Shan, I overheard a conversation of a group of hikers, and it turned out that they were hikers from Zhou Zhou Pa Jiao Shan. We recognized our screen names after a short conversation. They are nice and energetic hikers.
It's great to meet people who love hiking on trails.
Hiking in Erge Shan
Erge shan in Caonan (草楠) is one of my favoriate hiking trails, it is close to where I live, and it has spectacular scenic view. It usually costs me around 3 hours to finish the route. Hiking to Erge shan a good half-day outing in the moring when I have to work in the afternoon.
The above picture shows the trail's landmark in the side of Caonan in Muzha. When hikers talked about the trailhead of Erge Shan, they often indicate the entry near the banyan tree in Caonan.
There are many entries to Erge Shan. Hikers can go to the trailhead by bus. They only have to take Bus Xindian to Pinling at MRT Xindian station and start their hike at Laoliao (栳寮) on the road No. 9 (北宜公路). I have a scooter so I usually ride to Caonan and start the hike from the trailhead at Zhinan Road.
1 comment:
I love the Ergeshan hike, and hope to do it again sometime soon!
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