Xitou
Xitou, Nantou County, March 30, 2026
There are so many memories tied to Xitou that sometimes memories from different periods blur together, making it hard to tell which year certain things actually happened.
My earliest memory of Xitou dates back to elementary school, when I joined a school outing with my parents. Most of those memories have faded with time, but I know that from then on, I fell in love with the forest environment there.
After that first elementary school trip, I visited Xitou several more times, but none of them compared to my junior high school graduation trip.
I’m not sure whether junior high school is simply the age when people form their strongest memories, or whether it’s because almost everything experienced at that age feels like a first time. Even now, many of the most vivid memories of my life come from those three years in junior high.
To this day, I can still vividly recall details from that graduation trip to Xitou. I remember taking the tour bus from school, choosing seats with close friends, and one particularly mischievous classmate bringing a portable stereo onto the bus. Whenever we stopped at a red light, he would blast striptease music toward foreigners riding motorcycles outside the window, and the foreigners would jokingly play along and dance as if performing a striptease—without actually taking anything off, of course.
The three-day graduation trip spent its first day entirely in Xitou. For many classmates, it was their first time there, and everything felt new and exciting. But I was already familiar with many of the trails, so I headed toward the Sacred Tree area early on. Sometimes I would walk with classmates I knew well until someone got tired and stopped to rest, while the others continued ahead. Other times, I would randomly run into friends along the trail, chat casually for a while, walk together for a short distance, then part ways again. There was something especially carefree about that feeling. Some of the more energetic classmates even wanted to hike Phoenix Mountain, though in the end we never made it all the way there.
After that, I lost count of how many times I returned to Xitou. Around 2009–2010, however, the overwhelming influx of tourists into Taiwan’s mountain areas began to change the atmosphere, followed by government subsidy programs that encouraged large numbers of elderly tour groups to visit Xitou, further degrading its recreational environment. Since then, even though I’ve revisited several times, I’ve never felt the same affection for it as before. From my own observations, many of Taiwan’s mountain forests stopped being truly quiet places around that period.
Last year, I happened to capture some beautiful sounds in Xitou, so this spring I specifically returned to record the forest ambience there. Nowadays in Taiwan, for any forest that can be reached easily without much time or physical effort, the only chance to record truly natural ambient sound is usually during the late night to early morning hours. And even that is already considered fortunate—some forests no longer have any real quietness at all.
At Xitou, because the park has operating hours, there are almost no visitors creating noise after around 9 p.m. Occasionally, you still hear sounds from outside the park or nearby lodging areas. During this recording trip, however, I noticed that Xitou itself is not nearly as quiet as Taipingshan. I’m not sure whether Taipingshan is simply blessed with exceptionally low background noise, but in Xitou and many other mid- to low-elevation forests I’ve visited, there is always a faint low rumbling in the background. I suspect it may be distant human noise being carried into the forest.
This time, I recorded two dawn choruses, but unfortunately, before the park even opened, staff members had already begun working around 5 a.m., riding motorcycles and driving vehicles through the area. As a result, large portions of the recordings were contaminated by engine noise. In the end, I decided to share instead the dusk chorus recorded between 7 and 8 p.m.
溪頭
溪頭的回憶太多了，有時候不同年代的記憶混雜在一起，分不清究竟是哪一年發生的事。
對於溪頭最早的記憶，是小學時期跟著父母參加自強活動。雖然那時候的記憶大多已經模糊不清了，只知道從此就喜歡上那裡的森林環境。
從國小第一次去溪頭後，後來又去了幾次，但怎麼樣也比不上國中的畢業旅行。
不知道是不是國中的年紀是對於一個人來說記憶力最好的時候，或者是說人在那個年紀接觸到的事物幾乎都是第一次發生，以致於我現在對於人生中最印象深刻的回憶都是在國中那三年發生的。
現在我幾乎都還可以感受到國中畢業旅行時，從學校搭乘遊覽車前往溪頭所發生的部分細節，包含比較要好的同學選一起坐的位子，還有就是班上比較愛玩又皮的同學帶了一台手提音響，紅燈停車時對著車窗外騎機車的老外播放脫衣舞的音樂，而老外也很配合的跳起脫衣舞(沒有真脫)的事情。
為期三天的國中畢旅，第一天都是在溪頭度過，很多同學是第一次到溪頭，對於一切都很好奇，而我則是已熟悉許多路段，早早的就往神木的方向走。有時候碰到比較熟的同學，就一起走一段路，直到有人累了休息，其他人就自己先走；或是走著走著不時遇到認識的同學，隨便哈拉一下或是一起走一段又分道揚鑣，這種感覺特別的自在。還有體力比較好的同學想要去爬鳳凰山，雖然最後並沒有走到。
後來去溪頭的次數，已經數不清了。大約是2009~2010後，台灣人一窩蜂的習性造成山林的遊客氾濫，接下來又是台中補助年長者的優惠導致溪頭休閒環境的惡化。此後的溪頭，就算我又去了好幾次，卻再也沒有當年的喜歡了。就我自己的觀察，其實大多數的台灣山林，在那幾年後都已經不是能夠享受清幽的地方。
去年偶然在溪頭錄到不錯的聲音，所以今年特別選在春季想要錄下這裡的森林環境音。現在全台，只要是一般大眾不必費很多時間和體力就能到達的森林，可以說只有夜間至清晨這段時間才有可能錄下純自然環境音，而這已經算很好的了，有些森林甚至不存在安靜。
在溪頭這裡，因為有開放時間的關係，所以夜間大概9點後就幾乎不會有人在園區內製造噪音了，有時候只會聽到園區外或是住宿區的噪音。這次的錄音中，我發現溪頭本身並不像太平山那樣寧靜，不確定是不是太平山得天獨厚擁有很低的背景雜音，溪頭和其他我去過的中低海拔山林，背景音是有一點轟隆隆的，我猜或許是錄到遠處噪音的關係。
這次我錄了2個dawn chorus，但可惜的是園區開門前，工作人員大概在5點出頭就已經騎著機車和開車開始工作了，結果就是整段錄音有好多部分都有引擎的聲音，所以我最後只好分享晚上7點到8點之間dusk chorus的錄音。