The Dead End

Brian Markley is a US citizen who made the impromptu decision to move to Taiwan in 2013. This is a story of one of the many adventures he has had while living in Asia.

I have been thinking about adventures I’ve had and the best story to share.

This one has entertained a lot of dates…

A few years back, I became close friends with a missionary named Sam who has since moved back to the US. We hung out quite a bit and went on a lot of hikes. Taiwan has a lot of great hikes because the island is so green. Well one Saturday morning, Sam took me on a hike along with a Taiwanese guy from our church and our pastor’s roommate. The four of us took the MRT to the end of the line west of Taipei and then got on a bus. Sam had only been on this hike once before and we missed our bus stop. The thing about missing the bus stop for your hike is that it just makes your hike longer. So we started our long hike, which was mostly stairs.

We made it to a mountain peak and it was all worth it. The view was incredible. There is a crack in Taiwan called the Danshui River and a river town called Danshui, all of which we could see including the edge of Taipei City in the distance. So after pictures and selfies all around and soaking in the blissful scenery, we began to hike down the back of the mountain. There were no stairs. Instead, there were ropes to clench onto while slowly stepping down the muddy trail. Eventually the trail ended at a mountain road. The roped trail was actually quite fun.

Walking down the winding mountain road got boring after awhile. At one point, we passed a dirt road heading straight down the mountain. We decided to hope that it was a shortcut and walked downward. After walking for maybe five minutes, we realized that we had just walked down a dead-end path to a crypt.

So just as we were thinking of backtracking and getting back to the windy road, I said to my friends, “Hold up, I’ll quickly run down to the end just to be sure that it’s a dead-end and that there’s no way through.”

So I jogged down to the end of the road. Sure enough, there was a cliff there. As I turned around, I noticed that as far as I could see, the dirt ground was covered in brown spiders running erratically. Nearby was a large stump and without even thinking I ran and jumped onto it. I looked down at my shoes to make sure that none crawled up on me. But looking at this place with spiders everywhere was like a nightmare. Next I did the only thing I could do, which was to take a deep breath and sprint like hare being chased by a fox back up the path. I made it back and leaned on Sam to catch my breath as he just stood there looking at me quizzically. We had dinner, took a ferry across the river, and took the MRT back to Taipei.