Taroko gorge

Beyond the window the dark slopes converging with cloud, higher today, allowing glimpses of upper slopes although their summits remain shrouded in secrecy, distances implied by darker tones peeping through the white. The air's damp but there's no rain yet, coffee and toast to fuel the weary morning. 

Into the gorge, a bus to Tianxiang along winding roads cut into the living rock, sheer cliff faces rising, tunnel roofs rough surfaced beneath the weight of the mountains through which they've been carved. The highway is amazing, an incredible feat of engineering,as it cuts through the gorge bridging steep sloped valleys as pillared tunnels appear, from a distance, to form a shallow layer within the vast expanses of the naked rock. This place, cut by hand and at a high cost of lives reminds you of the ingenuity of our our species, a sense of wonder at the bravery and determination of those who designed and built it, the sacrifice and perseverance which laid its foundations. 

And yet, within its context it's but a little thing, a trinket cast upon the immensity of the surrounding landscape. It's mind boggling, my little brain understanding the geology but finding comprehension of the forces, the timescale, impossible from this vantage point. Beneath me clear blue water of the Liwu river trickles in small streams between scattered limestone and marble boulders deposited along the course by flood and landslide, worn smooth by heavier flows, winding back and forth as it continues upon its journey to the ocean beneath marble cliffs rising veined and weathered.

Between slopes suspension bridges hang upon air and mist, smaller gorges and paths spanned by their fragile strands, wisps of cloud flowing around them. Small waterfalls explode from holes, discolored stone beneath as they spray foaming droplets into the air, drifting upon breeze as they continue  the long descent towards the valley floor. Dry gulleys hold a residue of rocks, waiting for rain, foliage spreading around and above, shrubs and trees clinging to slopes expanding upwards.

I wonder at the point of aiming a lens at this place, of prose description; here seems to be one of those places reserved for poetry, for art, an essence beyond the reach of the practical and mundane. And then the rain, caught upon wind funneled and condensed by the narrowing walls, the clouds descending as the light dims, hillside abstractions at play where dark slopes protrude briefly before fading, once again, into this mystic landscape and reinforcing the scale and grandeur of nature