Dragons Have Long Backs
Last Sunday, a few of us hiked a trail called Dragon’s Back. Along the way, a giant spider hung over a part of the trail. The trail was only wide enough for one person, so to cross, we had to duck under the spider one at a time.
When we first came up to the spider, we gawked at it for a bit. Well, first, someone pointed out its existence, then we gawked at it for a bit. “Spider!” “Where? Where?” “There!” “Oh.”
The spider was gigantic — if this were a conversation I’d use my hands to show you how big. But it was far too big for anyone to pass under it without mustering up emergency reserves of bravery. It was mostly black — I don’t know if it was a black widow though. I should have paid more attention to the pictures in those Doring Kindersley books. And finally, the spider was in the center of its web, which had such neat angles and evenly drawn open spaces between each line of...silk? The spider dangled over the trail like a gatekeeper, no doubt vetting us for whether we were worthy of entry into this part of the mountain.
I wish I took a photo of it, as I have been taking a lot of photos recently. But I made a quick calculation in my head — there’s not much point in documenting anything if I die. Well, now I’m alive to tell the story, and the proof is missing. I can imagine how time travelers must feel when they can’t take any evidence with them to their own time, and no one believes them. I guess you’ll have to rely on this approximation of reality for reference.
The large spider kind of felt like those spiders that dangled over you in a side-scrolling adventure game, where you had to duck under them. I googled “side-scrolling adventure games”, and in a rare stroke of luck found this great image from a game called Ardentryst. This was exactly what I was looking for from Google images with my very vague search input! How often does that happen. Anyways, the spider didn’t shoot fire at us (or maybe that’s the character shooting fire back), and there was only one rather than three, but otherwise this picture is a pretty accurate depiction of what happened. Image source from “Duskfire’s Blog”: https://duskfire.wordpress.com/page/14/.
Anyways, I’m making quite a big deal about this part of my weekend, dramatizing an ordinary event into a larger than life story about life, death, and barriers to entry. The real spider, rather than the one in my imagination or in a game, really was calm and restful. It may or may not have been lethal, but it was peaceful. All of it was — the spider, its web, the trees. Walking through the trail was peaceful.
Some photos from the rest of the hike:
Climbing up the foot of the dragon. I’m in the blue shirt. Photo credits to Emma Pred-Sosa; this is just one of her scene-stealing shots
Us at top of the hike, ready to plant our imaginary flag. One long hike for man, no progress for mankind.
The four elements on full display: earth, water, air, concrete.
These are maps of the trail from a blogger who looked at the trail through Google maps (left) and Google Earth (right): https://trailhiker.wordpress.com/2018/11/11/hong-kong-trail-section-8-including-dragons-back/.
Source: Apple Maps on my iPhone. Hong Kong’s country parks never stood out to me until after the trail. Whenever I looked at a map of Hong Kong, my eyes always glazed past those big green patches that cushioned the roads. I was aware of and saw those green patches, but I never really noticed them. There were no roads there, so it always seemed empty. If I was wearing a beret and holding a paint brush, I might be dropping the term “negative space.” I’m kicking myself for realizing just how not-negative at all that space is, how those parts are just as full of life as Central. When I opened my GPS this week, it was impossible not to notice all the reserves and country parks each time. I feel a little bit shameful at how, in spite of the fact that I literally live next to mountains and have been reading up on Hong Kong, I still looked at maps of HK with terrible filters for so long.