Early morning hike through the forest

Driving from the city of Benxi, the road to Guanmenshan Forest Park undulates, leaving no time to appreciate the scenery along the way, feeling like a combination of Guilin, Wuyi Mountains, Huangshan, and the Alps, one could say it incorporates the strengths of each. Riding into the valley, the shade of trees covers the sky, a cool breeze blows, the stream babbles, birds sing, flowers give off their fragrance, the road undulates and winds, and the scenery is too much to take in at once. Only the mosquitoes buzzing around one's head are incessant. On the same sightseeing bus were several greening workers heading to the mountains for work, their features tanned and dark. When they missed the bus with a group of middle school students, the lovely students shouted in unison: 'You've worked hard!' 'Not hard, not hard, it's our fate. Haha, study hard, don't do what we do...' There is no high or low, noble or humble in work, each has its own pleasures and troubles. The greening workers in the mountains, despite their extraordinary hardships and the inevitable mosquito bites, also find joy among the fresh air and the fragrance of birds and flowers. Throughout the morning, the canyon was sparsely populated with tourists, and I was the only one walking down from Mingcui Valley along the stream, in ultimate comfort. When traveling to different places, whenever we encounter canyons and streams, we always unconsciously stop to take a few more looks and listen a few more times, which is very healing, and hiking through the dense primeval forest is even more memorable. The Guanmenshan Forest Park under my feet ingeniously combines the two. Hiking in the canyon, sometimes you pass through a dark and dense forest that is even slightly terrifying, with ancient trees on both sides of the wooden plank road, their roots and trunks thick and towering, wrapped at the base by thick moss, standing proudly before me, watching over the slow time in the valley, unaffected by praise or criticism. The stream in Mingcui Valley is very shallow, so shallow that almost all the moss-covered white stones are exposed, and the sound of the babbling stream, sometimes slow, sometimes rapid, occasionally high-pitched like striking a stone drum, mostly crisp, whimsically flowing down from high places. The feeling of tracing the stream is somewhat reminiscent of Guizhou's Xiaoqikong or Yuntai Mountain. At this time, the valley can be called a summer retreat, with large swathes of maple leaves still a refreshing green. If one were to come again in autumn, the mountains would surely be filled with red that reaches the sky.