My job as a 97.22% teacher and 2.78% hiker

By: Candace Brown

I have a pretty sweet gig as far as education goes. I work at a Christian international school with an American curriculum in southern Taiwan. For 97.22% of my school year, I am teaching. For that last 2.7778%, I am a hiker. It’s not vacation; I get paid to do it. Our school has a program called Impact; each secondary grade has a 3-to-5-day trip meant to encourage personal growth and foster learning with various focuses with a purpose of leaving a positive impact on the world. The 10th-grade focus is “Leading with Character.” What better way to see someone’s character at work than to put them on a beautiful mountain hike where they may have to poop in a hole they dug, lead tired classmates on a challenging trail, or hike from before dawn to after dark in pouring rain?

I’ve been living this 2.78% hiker life since I started working at this school (though there have been a few years where I had to miss the hike or the trip was changed to accommodate health concerns or regulations from Covid). I tell students that the 5-day, 10th-grade Impact trip up Beidawushan (or North Dawu Mountain, one of Taiwan’s “100 Mountains” and the tallest mountain in southern Taiwan) is my favorite week of the year. I get to build the relationships with students I may have only known in an English classroom context. Many tell me after the trip that they didn’t really think they would enjoy talking to the teachers who chaperone the trip because of that limited context (but they do!). It’s an awesome opportunity to tell stories, swap riddles, laugh heartily at silliness, work as a team, and dig deep; after all, what else is there to do when hiking for hours each day?

I don’t mean to insinuate that talking is the only option for entertainment on the mountain; the nature is beautiful on Beidawu! The first day of hiking cuts through lush forests of ferns and Taiwanese evergreen trees. The temperature drops from the southern Taiwan tropical heat to a Seattle-esque foggy chill as you go from the current parking area to the old entrance to the Beidawu trail. Day 2 means a hike from the old entrance to the Cedar Lodge.

The Cedar Lodge, or Kuaigu Inn, is a campground and lodging area named after the red cedar that the Japanese saw on the trail (in fact, the Japanese called the area “Kuai (Taiwan red cedar) mountain”). Taiwan’s complicated past of colonization and invasion creates interesting layers in its names and significant places. The Japanese created shrines on the mountain close to its peak. In fact, we call one of the shrines we pass the “false peak” because it’s the first of 6 or 7 steep up-and-down points we hit before the actual peak of Beidawu. The aboriginal Taiwanese kept destroying the shrine repeatedly and the Japanese kept rebuilding it until the Japanese occupation ended. Now, you can still see the ruins of the shrine. One year, we only made it as far as this false peak and had to turn around to avoid too much risk of hiking late into the night on the steep switchbacks characteristic of the end of the day’s hike.

Day 3’s hike starts around 3am and ends after dark, anytime between 7 and 10 pm. The speed at which we go up and down the mountain depends on whether or not students have soreness or exacerbated prior injuries with an unintentional step. At the top of the mountain, there is a triangulation stone, a cubic rock with a plus sign etched into the top. It is bad luck to touch or sit on, says the instructor hiking with us. It was also built by the Japanese in conjunction with 2 other stones around the mountain by which surveys were done.

We don’t hike up this 3,092m (10144.36 feet) mountain with just an English teacher as a guide, though. We partner with Outward Bound Taiwan, a branch of Outward Bound stationed in Taipei. They have led this trip– from coordinating safety measures to mapping out the trail to giving instructional lessons on how to poop in a hole (using rocks as the metaphorical poo, of course)– for almost a decade. I usually have two other staffers who hike with me. One, a coworker named Mark, had done hiking trips for Impact for as long as they’ve been a tradition at our school. When I came to the school in 2017, I became the other “regular” chaperone on this trip. His daughters hiked with us last year on a different trail; one of them left me a chestnut to commemorate the trip. Mark and his family moved back to the US last year. When he left, he gave me a sewing kit his mother had made for him 20 years ago out of an Altoid tin so that I could keep bringing it on the trip. This year, I took pictures with my Altoid tin and the chestnut all the way up.

Days 4 and 5 are challenging for different reasons than the first 3. Because we have to get back down the mountain the way we came, we are obviously and suddenly going downhill, sometimes in steep, technical terrain. This causes our speed– and the need to be ‘reeled back’ to avoid injury– to be increased. I myself have a strange injury tradition from this trip: hiker’s toe. For at least a few months after this trip, I can’t feel the tips of my big toes. I like to think of it as my reminder that I’ve done something that not many people who grew up calling the Hogs in Arkansas could say they’ve done.

I still can’t believe I get paid to hike through magical forests, solve riddles, and see the view from the top of the world.

All photos provided in today's blog were provided by Candace Brown.

About Candace!

Candace Brown (she/her) is an Arkansas-raised, Taiwan-living adventurer. Candace has taught humanities for the last six years in an international school in Taiwan. She loves Jesus and is always looking for waterfalls.