The Ride Back

The collective forests were supposed to be about 30 minutes from the village, but after about 5 minutes of driving, our little Toyota van was bottoming out on the rutted road and we had to get out and walk. And walk. And walk. Uphill for about 2 hours. We finally arrived to the site and did our transects, but it was starting to get dark so Mr. Yu called the Leigongshan Nature Reserve office and they sent a truck for us. We were all pretty thrilled about that. All nine of us crammed into the truck and bounced happily back to Xijiang. [NOTE: The truck was designed to comfortably accomodate five people]. 

Collective Forest

This is what the landscape looks like after hiking six kilometers up the mountain behind Xijiang. Collective forest of shamu (Cunninghamia lanceolata) with a mix of various broadleaf species. Took awhile, but we finally found a place flat enough to run a transect.  Sllpping and sliding and everything that you grabbed when you started to fall had a thorn on it (Smilax). [NOTE: Flat is used in a relative sense here. The site where we put the transect was anything but flat].