 |
| The entrance to Yeh Liu Geo Park. Photo Credit: K.H. |
Driving past Taipei and under
the shadow of skyscrapers, we quickly transition from highway, to provincial
road, to side road, to “is this a road?” Along the way, there are beach
resorts, paraglider rentals, and plenty of seafood restaurants. Eventually, we
find a sign pointing to what we are looking for, “Yeh Liu Geo Park.”
Parking our car and buying a
ticket, we’re surprised by how many people are here, and how many foreign
languages are being spoken, despite the pandemic. We are reminded that Taiwan
has a large and eclectic foreign community. We look through all of the
different language brochures until we find English (a testament to the
popularity of this place), and I read the title:
Welcome to Yeh Liu Geo Park! The closest place on Earth
that you can get to the surface of Mars.
I laugh at that, but, looking
at the pictures in the brochure, I get their point. We walk down a large,
sand-colored stone path, flanked by trees on either side which graciously
provide us with shade from the mighty Sun. About fifteen minutes of walking in
shade abruptly ends when we reach a bridge. It connects Taiwan to the Geo Park,
which is situated on two separate stone peninsulas that slowly descend into the
Pacific.
As we walk among the peculiar
rocks, we notice an employee with a large straw hat and sleek sunglasses
standing beyond a red painted line that divides the park roughly in half. As we
watch him, we realize that he is essentially The Catcher in the Rye. His job is
to make sure nobody crosses the red line over to the side by the ocean which is
considered too dangerous. We talk with him, projecting our voices a bit from
the safe side of the line, and his face lights up as he talks about the rocks.
“Oh, yeah!” he says happily, and
he begins pointing his fingers as he talks. “So you just walked through the
Mushroom Field. Over there is Ice Cream, and down that way are the Candles.”
I’m sure he has said this to tourists every day for a long time, so I
appreciate the enthusiasm with which he says it.
 |
| Very Big Mushrooms. Photo Credit: K.H. |
We look back at the Mushroom
Field. The bottom halves are lighter stones that have been heavily eroded by
the tide, while the top halves, darker and crannied as if shot by many rounds of
bullets, appear to be ocean rocks or coral that were pushed up a long time ago.
I cannot get my imagination to see the Ice Cream, but the Candles are beautiful
divots with round stones inside, supposedly placed naturally, to make the
wicks. We walk on top of the red line, but never cross it, and look back at the
man every now and again to see if he cares or if he will say anything.
 |
| Candles might work if you don’t have a lighthouse. Photo Credit: K.H. |
We see many other special
rocks made by countless years of wind and erosion, with names like Elephant,
Snake, Dragon, and, my favorite, Flip Flop. Finally, we see what we have been
looking for.
She has a long, slim neck, a small indent of a mouth, a little nose, and a large, pointed crown. She looks
fearless, as if she knew who Medusa was and still dared to look her in the eye
anyway. She is the Queen’s Head, a symbol of Taiwan, right alongside Taipei 101
and bubble milk tea.
 |
| Her Majesty. Photo Credit: K.H. |
A line of people is waiting to
take a picture with her, and when it is our turn, we run up next to her,
quickly put our umbrellas down and squint our eyes in the Sun until the picture
is taken. Moving out of the way so that other people can take a picture, I turn
back to her for another look.
Her neck is almost
cartoonishly skinny, balancing her giant head. Later I would learn that she has
been losing about a centimeter of her neck every year due to erosion, and that
she probably has about ten years left before she falls. Discussing this with my
family later on, we decided that perhaps a veil could be made to go over her head and
down to the ground, made of strong metal to give her extra support.
Perhaps, but then she would
lose some of the magic, that she is a work of art made solely by Mother Nature
herself.
Artificially propping her up
would feel inauthentic, but it would also follow a human pattern of first
hurting Mother Nature’s creations, only to then become the stewards of those
creations’ continued survival.
We are hurting her,
and accelerating her decapitation. Not only because we are careless tourists, who
cannot resist the urge to touch her and put our arm around her, but also
because the typhoons she must endure every summer are becoming more intense
because of human-induced climate change.
If she is to survive beyond
2030, then, humans must intervene to save her, after nearly killing her. Is
there a difference then between the Queen’s Head and polar bears?
But even without humans, the
Queen’s Head would indeed fall one day. After thousands of years of working on
her, Mother Nature was always going to destroy her eventually.
She is impermanent, just like
me, but in that moment our two impermanents met.
* * *
As a New Hampshirite, seeing
the Queen inevitably reminds me of the Old Man of the Mountain, the rock formation which
used to be perched at the top of Cannon Mountain in northern New Hampshire,
before it fell in May 2003. A couple hundred years before that, US senator Daniel
Webster said of the Old Man:
Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades;
shoemakers hang out a gigantic shoe, jewelers a monster watch, and the dentist
hangs out a gold tooth. But up in the mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty
has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men.
It is truly an epic quote, although I do realize that the use of "men" is outdated. But to me, the quote means that strong, diligent, and independent people, men and women, come from New Hampshire, and I feel proud to be a part of that tradition.
But now,
we must ponder its antithesis.
Now that the Old Man has
fallen, are there no more strong people in New Hampshire?
 |
| The Old Man before the Fall. Photo Credit: Wikipedia. |
* * *
There was mourning when the
Old Man fell, and some talked of artificially putting him back up there, but
finally it was decided to do nothing. The people of New Hampshire are steadfast and independent, as Daniel Webster observed long ago. We don’t need a rock on a
mountain to prove it.
What, then, does the Queen’s
Head mean for Taiwan? Perhaps it is the Old Man’s opposite; New Hampshire’s
strength and resolve complimented by Taiwan’s beauty and grace.
Or maybe it is Mother Nature’s
signature, after having finished her masterpiece that is not only Taiwan, but
all of our wondrous Earth.
Or maybe it’s just a rock, and
it is silly to spend so much mental effort trying to project meaning onto her.
In truth, I don't know what the Queen’s
Head means, but, like the Old Man to New Hampshirites, I do know that the Taiwanese
do not need her message.
She will fall when it is her
time, as all things do. But until then, we will admire her beauty, and after
she falls, we will remember her.
The Queen will be dead one
day, but she will live long in our collective memory.
And maybe, though our lives
are too short to comprehend this, Mother Nature is just creating a fresh canvas
on which to make another masterpiece.
 |
| A sign that will almost certainly outlive its subject. Photo Credit: K.H. |
No comments:
Post a Comment