Momomi 60 days after transplanting, rice growth record on the road of farming

Night falls, and the mountain trail leading to Jiaming Lake is pitch black. Along the whole path only c remains, nodding along with his headlamp as he presses forward in silence. He treads on a surface piled from slate and shale like a forced night march; the trail is utterly bare, because every year too many people come to make a pilgrimage to this "Angel's Tear." In just these two days alone, more than three hundred people have filed back and forth along this path, and that round trip means the ground has been stepped on more than six hundred times. If the silent rice paddies had a scene like that, surely not a single blade of grass would be left in the fields. But tonight only c walks this path alone. Sometimes, not paying attention, his black rubber boots kick a crisp-sounding slab, and the stones strike one another, producing a sound as pleasant as an aluminum bat hitting a baseball. At this altitude of 3,400 meters, the nighttime temperature is at most 7 degrees, and c walks fast as if trying to push himself to collapse, his lungs simply gulping and contracting greedily, wanting to inhale more of the thin, icy air...

Today is c's last day working on the mountain, and also c's sixth day living up here. In his heart c misses Silent Rice down at the foot of the mountain. Every time he sees the sea of clouds halfway up the slopes, he worries about whether the weather below is sunny or rainy, whether the soil in the paddies is moist, and whether every stalk of Silent Rice has drunk its fill of water and is growing vigorously. It has been 60 days since Silent Rice was transplanted. Although the tillering is not as dense as under ordinary conventional farming, with an average of only about 10-15 stalks per plant, the spacing is wide and airy, no fertilizer has been applied, and it has never once shown yellowing. With natural cultivation, no pesticides and no fertilizer, c does not need to worry about rice blast caused by over-fertilization, nor does he fear bacterial leaf blight from rice plants rubbing against one another because they are planted too close. Taking advantage of the drying period, when there is less farm work in the paddies, c has run off to the mountain to take a side job as a porter, thinking that on one hand he can go hiking, and on the other he can earn the rent into his pocket, plus that secondhand iron ox (a tiller) still being paid off in installments.

As autumn arrives, the bamboo forest on the back hill at c's home is the first friend to reveal the signs of autumn to him. He sees only the bamboo in the mountain turning yellow, while under a strong high-pressure air current the sky stretches cloudless for thousands of miles and looks deep blue. The nearby pineapple fields have recently been busy collecting slips, and one small pineapple after another is piled onto trucks. Beside the road, the Taiwan goldenrain trees have already put out patches of rose-colored capsules. c does not understand plants or fruit; his friends told him all that. But he had long since felt the cool, dry autumn air; even standing in the sun during the day no longer leaves him sticky with sweat. The arrival of autumn in Taitung is unmistakable. c loves this season beyond measure, because this season is the best for hiking and river tracing, and both the weather and the stream flow are very stable.

During this week at Jiaming Lake the weather was so good it made people reluctant to blink. Every day c carried 30 kilograms up the mountain, stayed one night in the mountain hut, and the next day at first light went down again, ready to carry another load up. The wages from one such round trip were enough to pay one month's rent, but the heavy aluminum frame made c feel that every step was bitter toil. The deep marks left by the shoulder straps made it impossible to breathe, and from time to time he had to use a sweat-soaked headband to shift some of the weight onto his spine. The contents of his pack were a motley assortment, most of it meant to be eaten, such as vegetables, white rice, dried goods, hot pot ingredients, and even vacuum-packed Wanluan pig trotters, along with some necessary supplies like gas canisters and sleeping bags and tents. c had also carried some stranger things, such as concrete stakes or the antenna of a radio base station. That antenna was five or six meters long, wrapped in a thick layer of paper rolls, and hauling it up by human power along the winding, forest-thick mountain trail was truly a killing ordeal.

But now, under the night sky, only c is left alone. At seven in the evening he hastily finished washing the twenty-five aluminum pots and countless serving tongs for tonight's dinner for one hundred seventy people, then quickly packed the necessary water and food, stuffed in warm clothing and rain jacket and rain pants, and after lighting the headlamp with freshly changed batteries, flew out the door as if shot from a gun. When others asked where he was going, he did not even turn his head and only said he was going to Jiaming Lake to see the sambar deer, leaving the camp without pausing for even a second. He strides across the vast, rolling slopes of Yushan cane grass. The cold wind whistles along the ridgeline, and the shape of the mountains is clearly discernible, only because those dark, pressing peaks look as if a pair of scissors had cut black holes straight into them. The light of night goes into the mountain and never returns; the gorges, forests, and boulders on the mountain cannot be seen, but that only makes the pitch-black mountain forms seem even more precipitous. The farther c walks, the colder his spine feels. When he first set out he was only a little afraid, and felt extremely excited, but as he got farther and farther from camp, his sense of security grew smaller and smaller. The excitement disappeared, and most of it turned into fear, unease, and tension. His mind went blank and he could not think, and the more he walked the more hurried he became. He walked tensely, constantly looking around, his steps chaotic as he kept tripping over stones. Sometimes he would meet eyes with pair after pair of sambar deer hidden behind the slopes. The deer's two eyes gave off a marble-like gleam, and in an instant they would leap and run, sometimes plunging steeply down into the fir forest, sometimes scrambling violently up the grassy slope and then turning back to answer him with two cold glints. c's curiosity about the sambar quickly turned to unease. Their sudden appearances and disappearances, the intimidating thunder of their two pairs of hooves striking the ground, and yet the sound would already be receding before he could even see them. They always let out a sharp, short cry by his ear when he was unprepared, and every time it made him shudder coldly, desperately sweeping his headlamp around, filled with anxiety, within that pitifully small field of vision defending the last little bit of his safety zone.

This mountain frightened him, although he knew nothing would harm him.

He did not turn back; that thought did not even appear in his mind for a moment. He stopped in awe and introduced himself to the distant sambar deer (eyes), saying his name and why he had come, speaking apologies as if atoning, saying he merely wanted to come and see them, and that he did not know why either.

These past few days, crowding into the mountain hut with a big group of people to live was an experience c, who had always come and gone alone in the mountains, had never had before. He loved the mountains, as most people do, but he had never seen a scene like this, with such a large crowd on the mountain at the same time. Yet with one or two hundred people eating, drinking, and relieving themselves in the little hut on the mountain, even if each person brought only a little bit of the human world up with them, it was still enough to pile up bag after bag. On the mountain there are some things c and most hikers would not do, especially water-consuming tasks like washing dishes, brushing teeth, bathing, or even washing feet, because water on the mountain is too precious. If after a meal there were greasy food scraps in the bowl, they would certainly pour in a ladle of hot water and stir it, treating the dishwashing water as tonight's after-meal hot tea and leaving it at that. Toothbrushing definitely would not involve toothpaste, otherwise where would the rinse water be spat out? The elders who hiked in earlier times even left behind a superstition saying that if you brushed your teeth in the mountains, tomorrow would surely bring heavy rain. c had always thought these were the tacit understandings everyone naturally shared once they went up the mountain, that the mountain had another customary way of life, and that it was precisely these things that made people temporarily living on the mountain different from their usual selves, temporarily leaving civilization behind and freely feeling nature as it truly is. But these past few days c watched many people bring up piles of food they could not finish and then throw it away without the slightest care, and use water as if it had come piped in from the waterworks. c saw all of this with his own eyes and kept enduring it. He watched coldly, and even had to indulge himself in using dish soap to wash their leftover pots, bowls, and pans. c's heart was full of struggle...

The journey took two hours, but c reached the lake in only one and a half, and was now no more than two hundred meters from Jiaming Lake. All around was darkness; he could not see very well, but he knew It was there. He was surprised to find himself a little disappointed. He had originally half hoped to see one or two tents lit up by the lakeside, so that he could go down and chat with them, warm himself, and perhaps drink a cup of hot tea. Now he looked down from above. The night sky overhead was full of stars, and clouds and mist filled the mountain hollows. The clouds were flat, thick, and vast, reflecting the starlight and covering the whole world below an altitude of 3,000 meters, like an ocean covering the earth. One high mountain after another suddenly became islands floating in the night sky, and c was like the only islander among them.

c decided to sit down and wait, so he put on the rain jacket and rain pants he had prepared in advance, and before putting on the rain pants he first urinated a hot stream nearby. He turned off his headlamp. All around was quiet and still, with only a slight wind bringing the rustling sound of Yushan cane grass.

Waiting for what?

c did not know either. He had not even had time to think clearly about where tonight's impulse had come from. He only knew that in the mountain hut he had felt intense anger, shame, and helplessness. All around was still terrifyingly dark, and c felt his senses magnified to the limit. His ears, his eyes, his nose, and the pores all over his body were all scouting and standing guard. Like an animal afraid of being preyed upon, he caught every stir of wind and grass, every approach of anything, and even the stars blinking in the sky seemed to be within his awareness. He felt the mountain at night was terrifying beyond measure, and his mind could not stop thinking that a sambar deer might come out and frighten him when he was unprepared, perhaps licking the urine he had just passed, since they love the salt in urine most of all. Thinking of this, he felt excitement and anticipation in his heart again. Suddenly he felt extremely conflicted.

He looked at the watch glowing coldly. Only five minutes had passed since he sat down, yet it felt as if a long time had gone by. c felt himself ridiculous. He had come all this way, as if fleeing far away, to leave the crowd behind and come here, and after only a short five minutes he was already planning the time to stay and the time to return.

In the end, for what reason do people climb mountains and want to draw close to nature?

c forced himself not to turn on the headlamp. He groped around in the darkness, using his hands to make sure that aside from the short, stubby Yushan cane grass there was nothing prickly around him like juniper or alpine thistle. So he lay down, and the whole sea of stars rushed at him in an instant. Ever since he had lived in Taitung, a whole sky of stars had no longer been anything rare to him. This familiar night sky entering his view instead made him relax. Gazing at the vast, boundless universe, his love for the mountain and his fear of it, his wish to leave the crowd and his longing for the crowd, all existed in his heart at the same time.

Early the next morning before dawn, beside the mountain hut a whole row had already formed, people wrapped tightly in colorful Gore-Tex jackets, everyone breathing out white mist and holding cameras aimed east, ready to capture that instant of sunrise. But c had already put on the same torn pair of pants he had not washed in seven days, and with a light pack was walking down the mountain. When he rounded the last contour around the main peak of Xiangyang, the sun came out. A red glow spilled across the entire slope of withered yellow Yushan cane grass, dyeing Xiangyang Mountain a coppery red. At that same instant, the mountain hut erupted with the sound of shutters rising and falling and a chorus of astonished admiration. c, meanwhile, remained on the side not yet touched by sunlight. He stood blankly on the boundary between darkness and day, not daring to cross for a long time, only because all of this was too beautiful, unbelievably beautiful, so beautiful that it made him afraid that if he took one more step the magic would vanish. And yet It still vanished. As the sunlight strengthened, it made the people in the mountain hut unable to look straight at it, and left c no time to think.