When I first heard about ICLP’s trip to Shei-Pa National Park’s (雪霸國家公園) Xueshan Mountain, I was immediately very excited. After all, I’ve always enjoyed going for hikes and love mountain views. Of course, the trip was actually even better than I could have imagined and brought a lot of surprises, both with the hike itself, as well as the personalities revealed. One of these surprising moments in particular firmly lodged itself in my brain and is a highlight of my time at ICLP so far.
On the second day, after having woken up early to climb the first small peak by sunrise, we reached the base lodge, albeit somewhat tired and winded. I immediately laid down on a table top and soaked up the sunlight as I stared blankly into the massive valley near the lodge. I enjoyed this so much that when it came time to continue the hike, I decided to stay to spend the day there in meditation. Two classmates seemed to like this idea as well and also decided to stay.
At one point later in the day, after wandering through the surrounding forest, we saw a nearby peak and decided to attempt to climb it. However, as an old man at the lodge warned us before we left, there was no path up, which meant this was no easy task. Thirty minutes into the climb, in fact, we found ourselves pushing through dense, high bamboo, slowly toiling our way to the top. In the next hour or so, we soon learned to crawl up fallen tree trunks and make use of the surrounding bamboo as arm holds, but even this knowledge didn’t go very far in our quest to climb, and I found myself exhausted. However, although I imagine that each of us was individually he or she unsure would make it to the top, we always helped encourage each other, and as a result, eventually made it to a clearing near the top of the peak where we were able to look out.
Upon attempting to look out over the mountainside, however, I immediately lost my breath and balance, as I found myself literally in the center of a cloud, a glowing white fog surrounding me in a twenty-foot radius. Although I had expected something a lot more panoramic and similar to the lodge’s view near the valley, the all-encompassing mist of the cloud shrouded me in a type of peacefulness that may, in fact, only exist in a void; I felt an absence of thought, of mass, of time, and of space. That absence washed over me in a muffled wave.
After whatever period I spent in this state, I slowly began to recover.
As my thoughts returned, I remembered a book about warfare that I’d found in a dumpster as a kid. Its description of a certain type of grenade, the Flash Bang Grenade (Stun Grenade) had always captivated me:
“Upon detonation, the brilliant flash of light produced by the grenade momentarily activates all light sensitive cells in the eye, making vision impossible for several seconds until the eye restores itself to its normal, un-stimulated state. Compounding this effect, the incredibly loud blast produced by the grenade disturbs the inner-ear fluids, creating a ringing followed by silence, as well as completely disorienting the victim.”
Years later, sometimes in boredom and sometimes in an attempt to control my temper, I often imagined what experiencing this detonation might be like: brilliant white light, with all life muted. No sense of direction, orientation, or gravity. Only a pure, glowing void.
I wanted to spend all day there, to spend the night there if I could, and had it not been for my classmate’s insistence that I be reasonable and climb down off the boulder I was perched on, I very well might have. By then, the daylight had already begun to fail and the sun began to set as we all thrashed, slid, and bashed our way down the mountainside. As we made our way down, I laughed at the image we cut: three entirely unnatural shadows, gracelessly sifting through the nature around us.
