Handmade trails spark a small revolution in the suburban hills, and the Thousand-Mile Trail's round-island microcosm (2)

Text by Hsu Ming-chien (Deputy CEO, Taiwan Thousand Miles Trail Association)
Photos courtesy of the Society of Wilderness and the Taiwan Thousand Miles Trail Association

In the early spring of 2012, amid several cold fronts and the occasional drizzle in Taipei, something different was stirring. A group of people took tools into the city's suburban hills and, working close to the earth, built the walking and living space they envisioned, one hoe and one stone at a time.

Protecting Natural Trails from the Ground Up

In mid-February, after the Lunar New Year holiday ended, the Society of Wilderness, the Nature Trail Association, and the Taiwan Thousand Miles Trail Association called for volunteers to improve the muddy, hard-to-walk trail on Fuzhoushan by hand. Volunteers who joined ranged from the youngest elementary school students to a 73-year-old grandmother. Hauling gravel aggregate, raising the trail bed, and fixing the drainage system all depended on a group of volunteers whose enthusiasm was enough to melt a cold front.

This stretch, the Cherry Blossom Trail in Fuzhoushan Park, is the end point of the government-paved concrete trail and retains a natural dirt path. A while earlier, because of the mud, local residents reported the problem to the neighborhood warden, who petitioned the city councilor to demand that the project be improved, and the project's response was to keep laying concrete. It sounded like the typical "once and for all" solution, yet the existing concrete surface is even more slippery when it rains, hard paving damages the knees, and Taiwan's cement consumption ranks second in the world, 5.2 times the global average. In the developed areas of Taipei, the proportion of permeable ground surface has fallen to less than 16%. With less land that can breathe, insects and amphibians that depend on the soil for survival surely also feel that "living in Taipei is no easy thing."

Fortunately, an enthusiastic fellow mountain-goer, Mr. Cheng, when he learned that this project was going ahead, sought out the neighborhood warden to express a different view. He also made a simple questionnaire and surveyed passing hikers, finding that most of them wanted to keep the natural surface. He then approached the Society of Wilderness, which had adopted the famous Fuyang Park. With the help of professional teachers, the Society of Wilderness had previously carried out a similar hands-on project on Mount Dalunwei, improving drainage on a muddy, hard-to-walk trail and turning it into an easy route.

After the Society of Wilderness, the Taipei City Government's Parks and Street Lights Office, and the coordinating neighborhood warden and city councilors discussed the matter, a public hearing was held to explain a method that could improve the mud without concrete, along with the spirit and case examples of hand-built trails. The city government agreed to provide materials while civic groups called for volunteers, achieving the goal of improving the mud in the most economical way. This led to the first public-private cooperative suburban hand-built trail in Taipei, at Fuzhoushan.

Since the trail volunteer movement began to be promoted in communities across Taiwan, in Indigenous tribal areas it usually follows Indigenous tradition, with local tribal elders leading a mountain-entry blessing ceremony. Here in Taipei's suburban hills there is no clear cultural tradition, and because Fuzhoushan is a suburban hill park converted from a former public cemetery after the graves were relocated, the volunteers discussed the matter and decided to combine tradition with innovation to develop a groundbreaking blessing ceremony.

"Dear Mountain God, we will be very careful, and we hope we will not hurt you"

First, volunteers spontaneously brought fruit and invited representatives such as the neighborhood warden and councilors to take part, using the traditional ritual of lighting incense and making offerings, combined with the Society of Wilderness's practice of forming a reverent connection with nature before outdoor activities. This time there was also a mountain-honoring prayer written by Teacher Hsiao Yeh. As Teacher Hsiao Yeh led everyone to recite it line by line, giving thanks to Mother Earth and promising to work carefully in a way that would not harm the land, everyone's hearts grew solemn and quiet, treating their actions in the mountain forest with care.

To be prudent, after confirming the trail improvement plan, they also invited the green-clad members of the Nature Trail Association to first conduct a plant community survey around the trail, marking plants that must not be touched and setting up sample plots to record conditions before disturbance and even to track vegetation recovery for a period afterward. In addition, after repeated discussions with all parties, the trail design was revised. For example, at the lowest, dampest, muddiest section of the trail, nearby residents had planted a row of banana trees along the edge. Because that spot had been damp and waterlogged year-round, it had also become a place where frogs and even fireflies appeared. They wanted to keep the standing water to benefit the animals and plants, but they also had to solve the problem of slickness that made walking difficult. In the end, the trail was slightly curved, and through slope control and raising a permeable trail bed, the path stayed dry while the habitat for animals and plants kept its natural standing water, giving each side what it needed.

Making good use of on-site materials may be easier to imagine in other natural environments, but amid this heavily graded, man-made woodland, using on-site materials became an interesting process of turning waste into useful resources. Waste building bricks dug out of the ground and old discarded railroad ties from the trail respectively became the base for raising the trail bed and the boundary separating the side ditch from the trail.

Fallen Leaves Are the Best Paving Material

Also in the early spring of 2012, at the site by Zhongzheng Bridge where an idle space left by a demolished old house was being converted into a small green park, the Taiwan Thousand Miles Trail Association also experienced the process of excavating waste building materials. Whole old red bricks were used to edge a garden path, two layers of red bricks still firmly bonded with cement were used to build stone steps, broken red bricks were smashed and laid as the trail base, marble building materials were crushed and used as bedding, and only the top layer was backfilled with gravel and fine sand.

At the time, a well-meaning person suggested to the neighborhood warden that new red bricks be donated, and we politely declined. I picked up an old red brick covered with moss and even a layer of green grass sprouting on it, glinting in the sunlight with traces of time and the freshness of life, and convinced the neighborhood warden why we loved using old red bricks: because here, red bricks would carry on the story from the old house to the park.

And these several times of bending low and raking through the city's soil felt like following the life-cycle journey of waste building materials. Imagine how clay is dug, sent into a kiln and fired into red bricks, becomes part of a wall, and then because of renovation or various reasons is hauled away and dumped in a so-called empty lot. Digging into the city's land, one does not immediately reach native soil; instead one must dig through a layer of discarded building materials, and then sand and gravel from a riverbed or newly kiln-fired bricks are brought in from elsewhere, covering it layer upon layer, bearing witness to how extravagantly the human carbon footprint keeps wasting away on this land.

After layer upon layer of aggregate in different proportions and layer upon layer of careful tamping, once the path was finally laid, we spread fallen leaves and fine twigs collected on site so that it looked integrated with the surrounding natural landscape and, mixed with the on-site soil, softened the hardness of the gravel so footsteps could be light. This also seemed to challenge city residents' feelings about fallen leaves. On concrete streets, those fallen leaves must be swept away every single day, treated as garbage, yet they are the most important element of a natural trail's surface, making a newly completed trail immediately seem like an original trail that belonged there all along.

Lovable Volunteers, A Fun Game with the Earth

The most lovable part of hand-built trails is the volunteers who take part. Even if their backs ache and their legs hurt, they still enjoy it endlessly, almost becoming addicted. This time at Fuzhoushan, veteran volunteer Mr. Kuo displayed the hand-built trail tools he had made himself. One was a mesh bag for carrying stones modeled on those used by American Appalachian volunteer crews; he made it from the super-durable material used for inflatable canoes, stitched and fastened with canvas straps and rope, so the number of carriers could change according to the size of the stones. The other was a tamping tool: two discarded long pieces of timber nailed to discarded on-site railroad ties, making a device two people could carry to tamp the trail surface. The volunteers' discussions and creativity about trails enriched the design of hand-built trails.

Community residents, fellow mountain-goers, and teachers and students from elementary and middle schools around Fuzhoushan also came to watch, and could not resist joining in this fun game with the earth, or brought fruit to share with the volunteers, or helped by chattering at the side to explain the before-and-after comparison of the work. A trail is not merely a space for an individual to take a walk; it became a place where volunteers took part in public affairs, and a public sphere where a group of citizens carried on diverse dialogue.

Is this first volunteer-completed natural trail in Taipei City finished just like that? No! On 2/28 and 3/9-11, everyone is welcome to come and join us in building it by hand!

※ For related information, please watch the Society of Wilderness and the Taiwan Thousand Miles Trail website