Eddie Sure and I stood on the top edge of the long slope on Hu To San which would soon be a take off for paragliding. Mr. Soon, the surveyor was down the hill with a very long tape measure. Eddie and I had recently signed a contract to develop his land.
It's 9 in the morning, I have been here over night. I slept in the van. I still have the sleep in my eyes. I was up at 6, watched “The Rising”, when the morning fog rises up from the town below. The magic is still with me. Two eagles are gliding at our eye level. The morning thermal isn't strong enough to sustain flight, for either of us. They call back and forth. I hear them calling me to the sky. Eddie and I cradle our coffees to warm our hands.
I break the silence, “My friend Paul tells me that centuries ago, this was the site of a large scale massacre of aboriginal peoples .”
Eddie looked up,” I'm not surprised. This land here was once a fishing village for the local tribes. They came down from the mountains in the spring time and caught fish right here.”
“Here?” I asked incredulously, looking for some sign of water.
“You see this whole valley here, “ he gestured with his arm spanning the whole town of 60,000 souls, “was once a lake.” Then there was an earthquake and that gap,” Eddie pointed across the valley to the west, where the highway comes through the tunnels into the valley, “broke open and all the water drained out. There have been archeological digs here and they dug up some artifacts.“
“Any dead bodies?”
“Hah, hah. Not that I know of. I hope not.”
“You told me once that so many people want this land. Anybody from the tribes?”
“Not a problem, the Spirit of the mountain will not let them have it.”
“The what?”
“ Everyplace has a spirit. Come on,“ he chided condescendingly.” you been in Taiwan so long, you don't know Tu-di-sen?( Local Spirits)”
“Oh, I see,” I was more familiar with the term Tu-di Miao, or local shrine, which, of course is to a local God, or Tu-di-Sen.
“The Spirit of the Mountain favors me,” he continued
I said, “I see.” I thought, well, then, the spirit of the mountain must really, really like me, Praise be to God!
I told Eddie the story of how hundreds of years ago, a troop of mainland Chinese soldiers were charged with restoring peace among the settlers here. They came into the valley and sent a message to the tribe inviting them to a peace banquet with lots of food and drinking. When they got them good and drunk, they killed all the young braves and made a pile of their heads. When the other tribes people heard about this they retreated to high on a mountain overlooking a waterfall and wailed loudly non-stop for a month. And this is documented in the historical archives of the Chinese and the Spanish who were here at the time.
“I bet that didn't make the Spirit of the Mountain very happy.”The following hiatus seemed to me a moment of memorial.
“I wonder if the local Tribal leaders might be interested in recreating a small replica of the fishing village. It would be a nice dedication, and a tourism draw card,“ I suggested
11pm, and I sit around a fire with several local friends, watching the moon traverse the valley, the stars pirouette. We beat drums, strummed guitars, sang songs in 3 languages. We drank drank cheap whiskey, beer and wine. “That'll make the Spirits happy,” quipped Peppermint Patty, Puli resident, college student.
Mark,another Puli resident, told us a story about his neighbor, who had come up the mountain one evening and wasn't seen again for over a week. When he came down the mountain again, he thought that he had been gone only a day. He said that he had been sitting in the fog, and he was drafted into the military. But they wore strange uniforms and carried muskets and sabers and spoke Japanese.
One by one my friends headed back down the mountain.
At 1 am, the fog gathered in the town below, thickening like New England clam chowder and only the tower of Mordor protruded, a giant middle finger gesturing obscenely to the sky. Soon the town disappeared completely. The fog continued to grow, it's upper surface rising up to meet us at the cliffs edge, waves on a shore lapping at our feet. I imagine ancient aboriginal dugouts rowing out on the clouds to catch fish. Soon we were completely engulfed in it, unable to see 5 meters in any direction. I heard the voices of the long dead weeping and wailing. I saw the dead get up and walk. I drank a libation to the souls who walk, swam, fly this mystical place, smiled and went to bed.
At 5:30 I woke to the sound of the “Health Holler”. I had my own health holler which started with caffeine and nicotine while standing over a long yellow stream. Walking to the edge, I noticed a large fresh hole in the earth. It was as if something had been removed from the ground, but no hole had been dug. There were no shovel marks, no footprints. The earth had been disturbed, leaving a depression, about 1 meter deep, in the shape of an adult body in the fetal position. I set down my morning toxins on the dirt. I lay down in the hole, curling my body to conform to the shape and was amazed at how neatly I fit. With a little effort, I thought, I can pull enough dirt over me and die here happily.
The morning mountain devotees trudged 2.5 km up the mountain, emerging from the cloud, like zombies, huffing and puffing, their breath contributing to the now receding fog.
With my can of coffee and cigarettes, I sat on the edge of the cliff and watched the morning mist raise up the mushrooms, and rebuild the city, brick by brick, atom by atom.
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