Taiwan - Chenjean's Village, Spiney Plant / The Birds and the Bees

Whole lotta life in that jungle.  I've said before that a photographer that can spot wonder or beauty could spend a whole day in just his backyard and come out with hundreds of awesome photos.  Surely out here one could spend a lifetime doing the same, and come out with a million from just one mountainside.

And while I'm there it's amazing to think that I'm actually in the jungles of Formosa, a land I read and dreamed about in elementary school.  Here I am, taking pictures of monkeys and giant spiders and plants such as this.  And it is here more than anywhere that I harken back to a conversation I had one day with my mother, when I was six years old.

I remember sitting at the kitchen table and we were having a talk about the birds and the bees.  This led to marriage as the most appropriate venue for such activity, which in turn led to the fact that there is somebody out there for everybody.  Mom and I then entered into a guessing game on where these individuals were at that very moment.  "Is there someone for Allan?" (my nine-year-old brother)  Yes.  Where is she now?  (turns out it was two different girls in two different places)  Tentatively I approached the inevitable, scarcely believing it could be true: "What about me...is there really someone out there right now that I'm going to marry?"

Mom said, "Yes there certainly is!"

My imagination filled with the possibilities of what she looked like and where she was at that very moment.  "Wow, where could she be right now?"

In a heartbeat her reply was, "Anywhere...even on the other side of the world!"

And here it is, 54 years later, where my darling bride-to-be was living at that moment, on the other side of the world, being prepared by God for a life with a naive, and sometimes challenging, husband-to-be: