I had the great good fortune to travel with Professor Lin Yun around the island of Taiwan. Everywhere we went, the rivers were dry. It was quite disconcerting, and we asked a lot of questions. Here is what we learned.

The rivers on the island are very short because the mountains lie very close to the coast. During the rainy season, the water runs fast and furious down the steep slopes to the sea. This happens very quickly, and then the rivers run dry. Yet, millennia of torrential rain have done much to shape modern Taiwan.

Wind and water have worked away at the mountains. Toward the east the torrents of water have created sharply etched river valleys that rush into the sea. I have included a picture of one of these valleys.

To the west, however, similar rivers have annually deposited masses of eroded tailings from the mountains into the much shallower seas between the island and Mainland China. The deposits from these rivers have created a large and fertile plain down the west side of the island. This natural construction project continues. Sites and geographic features such as the coastline mapped or settled by the first European explorers, traders, and colonists four hundred years ago are now well inland. We visited Fort Zeelandia, once the scene of great sea battles, now about five miles from the coast. Physically, at least, Taiwan continues to progress toward China.

However, this natural construction has been interrupted by the construction of highways around the highland. Normally, during the rainy season, the silt is rushed out into the sea. Then, during the dry season, the wind blows the sand and earth back up the river preventing erosion. Now, because of the highways, the sand does not return and the island’s growth is being limited. The natural cycle has been destroyed, and the highways are unnaturally controlling the edge of the ocean.

You can see in the pictures included here, the wind blowing the sand back up river. It was astonishing to see, and to be traveling along the very highway that prevents this sand from reaching its most natural destination.

We saw, first hand, the effects of wind and water, and the presence of man in relation to both. It was a day to remember.