As its name suggests, the Homemakers' Union and Foundation is a group whose founding members are housewives. But not all are housewives, and some, including Chang Hsi-hsiung, are not even women.

Since his wife, a long-time HUF member, convinced him to join the group as a nature guide three years ago, he has become an expert on the Chihshan Rock area, and his "crass" worldly desires, as he describes them, have been quelled by his contact with nature.

Recently my wife has been getting after me to write an essay about my experiences quitting smoking. Quite honestly, it is something I'm very proud of myself about. I think it's easier for men to quit drinking; all you've got to do is not go to business dinners and the opportunities to drink will be greatly reduced. But you can smoke any time. On average I used to smoke one cigarette an hour, and it was really hard to quit. I tried to quit numerous times but I never succeeded until I joined the HUF as a nature guide.

My wife is an HUF volunteer, and three years ago she got me to take a nature guide training course. I have often guided kids' groups or parent-children groups, and when I saw how cute those kids were, I felt it would be cruel to smoke and have them suffer my pollution. Smoking doesn't seem to fit with the image of a nature guide anyway. When I first started volunteering I had serious cravings, and I'd run off and have a few smokes away from the group to tide me over until I finished the tour. Then I got to the point when I could go the whole morning without a smoke. Eventually, I asked myself why I couldn't bear it for a whole afternoon and evening too. In this way I gradually quit smoking.

After I started working as a nature guide, I changed many bad habits and have begun to feel pretty healthy. In my leisure hours these days, apart from leading groups up into the mountains, I read up on things and gather information so as to add to what I can say on my tours. I've got no time to fool around gorging myself and getting drunk. And because I've come in touch with another kind of culture, it seems like I was living before just to earn money. All I did on my time off was eat and drink. It was really pretty crass.

For instance, I was born and bred in Shihlin and always felt that I knew that district like the back of my hand. But the first time I went on a tour I discovered that the guide knew more about the place than I did even though he wasn't a local. My piddling knowledge about my own hometown shamed me, and I decided that from then I would do my best to learn as much about it as I could.

When you really throw yourself into work as a guide, you discover that there are thousands of things to describe on even just a short walk. Take Chihshan Rock Park. You can walk around the entire park in half an hour, but if you want to talk about everything-from its geology and scenery to its animals, plants and architecture-you could spend more than seven days on it. Can you believe that?

For instance, the geology is unique here. From the sea urchin fossils embedded in the rock, you can surmise that before geologic activity caused these mountains to rise, Taiwan was once under the sea. More proof of this can be seen from the coastal plants that grow here, which prove that the land of Chihshan Park was once a small island. Since the coast is now 20 kilometers away, it gives you an idea about how much things have changed around here.

In the early history of Chinese settlement on Taiwan, this place was a stronghold where migrants from Changzhou defended themselves against their rivals from Quanzhou. And so the place is built like a fortified town, with four walls and a gate on each side. They may just be crumbling remains now, but I hope that my historical descriptions-with a few mythic elements thrown in for good measure-can excite students' imaginations so that they can get a better feel for how hard life was for the pioneers.

All in all, although I didn't become a guide until I was already half a century old, it has been a really eye-opening experience for me.

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After becoming a "greenman" for the HUF,

Chang Hsi-hsiung, who works in a construction company, experienced a greening of his whole life.

(photo by Vincent Chang)

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If we understand how to coexist with nature, that is one more thing that we can rely on for spiritual support.