That train was never meant to carry people

The sky is still dark, and the little Zhushan-line train is already full. The air on the platform is cold enough to clear the head at once, floating with the high mountain's particular cypress fragrance and a thread of diesel; a breath goes white in the beam of a headlamp, the tip of the nose soon red with cold. Most in the carriage are wrapped in coats and woollen hats, hardly speaking — past four in the morning, half still asleep — only a shared, quiet expectation binding these strangers gently together.

The train sets off, swaying as it climbs, the rails creaking in steady rhythm on the curves, as if counting out a beat for those not yet awake. Outside, almost nothing can be seen, only a station lamp or two flashing past, drawing tree-shadows long and snatching them back. Someone leans on the cold glass and falls asleep again, head swaying with the bends; a little girl in the seat ahead keeps her face pressed to the window — outside is plain black, yet she watches with deep attention, as if waiting for something to grow out of the dark.

This railway was never meant to carry people. A hundred years ago it was laid to carry the mountain's cypress down, log by log. The Japanese had set their eyes on Alishan's thousand-year sacred trees and built this forest railway spiralling upward; the timber goes down no longer, but the rails remained, the cargo changed — to carriage after carriage of people climbing in the dark, only to watch a daybreak.

At the viewpoint, the sky is still unlit, and the crowd stands in a row in the cold mist, no one speaking, only the occasional camera shutter and a clear cry or two from some unnamed bird far off. Then the horizon lightens, little by little — first grey, then orange — the sea of clouds slowly rolling underfoot, the distant ridgelines floating layer upon layer above it, as if someone had just set them carefully in place. The instant the sun rises out of that whiteness, warmth seems to return to the body, and an old man beside murmurs, "There it is," and the whole crowd lets go a breath at last, their white breath joining into a thin mist.

The light strengthens and lights the trees along the track — only now is it clear how old, how tall they are, bark thick as some kind of breathing wall, night dew still beaded in the crevices. The people who felled these giants and carried them down by the cartload are nameless now; but the rails they laid remain, glinting cold and iron in the morning light, lying quietly at the foot of the sacred trees, like an old saying no one reads any more, yet still legible.

Coming down, the sky is full daylight, the whole mountain as if just woken, birdsong, voices, engines returning one by one to the ear. People in the carriage begin to talk low, someone leafing through just-taken photos, and the little girl who pressed to the window all the way is now, of all things, asleep. A carriage of strangers who had watched the same dawn together carries it back down this way, no one saying anything in particular. And I think you will understand this quiet: what you boarded was not only a train, but a stretch of time left behind and still going on — and you happened, on its run today, to ride a single stop.