(UPDATE: Click on images for larger version)
The first time I ever left the US, when I was 20, I took my bike to Ireland to ride around the country for three weeks. Before going, the general consensus among those I talked to was that I would never see a place more green than Ireland."It's so green." "So lush." "Fifty different shades of green."
I'm not saying they were wrong, but they've never been to Taiwan. I'm almost hypnotized by the mountains and forests here. They seem almost dangerously green and vivacious. You see a tree sitting atop a giant rock, it's roots snaking around the hulking mass, determined to live where it shouldn't, and you wonder, if your not careful, is a tree going to swallow your Binglang stand or are vines going swallow your children whole?
Then, perhaps, you remind yourself to lay off the Shel Silverstein books.
Anyone who's seen the gray skeleton forests of the Appalachian winter, I think, would be enamored by the verdant cool of a Taiwanese mountain in January.
