A Walk with Wojtek…………….
28.10.06
With no festivals on today, for once, I was required to make my own amusements on a beautiful Saturday in Korea. Wojtek and I had been talking on Friday night about heading for a little walk on Saturday up north, no not that north, just a little way from Sokcho, a little ramble through the countryside if you will, and made plans to meet around 12:30 at Gimpap Click for a quick bite and then head out.
Before the day’s festivities I had to go get a haircut as I was getting a tad bit shaggy so I got up early and headed down to the Headline Barber Shop for a little trim.
My first haircut here in Sokcho was pretty uneventful. I picked out my hairstyle from the book; sort of a Brad Pitt/Edward Norton look, and the lady in black went to work.
The lady in black was the only actual hair stylist in the place. Dressed entirely in black, hence her name, she was tall and thin with, you guessed it, a mane of thick black hair that cascaded like black ice over her shoulder and down her back. On her hip were a veritable holster of scissors, combs, shears, and other assorted implements of her trade. As I sat down in the chair, I knew I was in good hands.
I was literally strapped into the chair by one of the two assistants that stood at the beck and call of my stylist. Around my neck, against the bare skin, a hard plastic color was secured. Over that came a cloth half shirt, and over that, the typical cloak to catch the falling hair. When everything was in place, she started to work.
As the scissors snipped and snapped around my head I looked in the mirror thinking the other two girls in the shop were also stylists who were just not cutting hair at the present time, but served a far more valuable purpose.
As the lady whacked my hair into shreds the roles of the other two women came into play. As the shears neared my ears, the lady in black clicked her fingers and one of the assistants sprang into close proximity to me. Moving quickly to position she proceeded to hold first one ear, then the other in place as the scissors zoomed around them. Now I understood, the women who seemed like stylists were just trainees, or maybe assistants, there to help the chief Shearer in every part of the operation.
After a little while, no more than fifteen minutes, I had my new cut and proceeded to meet Wojtek for lunch.
After a quick stop for sundubu, hot spicy soft tofu stew with pork, clams, and rice, we hopped the number one bus and rode out north.
As the bus speeded down highway seven we looked out at the countryside spinning by and wondered where we would get off to begin our little stroll. A few bus zoomed by but the surrounding countryside seemed to unappealing for us and we waited for our moment.
Finally it came, a small seaside town with a decrepit beach on one side, and across the road little hills, ridges, and a few villages, perfect.
We walked down to a mangy beach first, filled with rubbish and debris from the storms that we have had in Sokcho, it was deserted except for a few fishing boats and old nets that the storms had tossed up along a breakwater. Climbing a small hill we came to a scenic overlook with a pagoda where we stopped and got some pictures before turning inland, towards the rice fields and mountains that really interested us.
We headed across the highway towards a low ridge and pounded down the side, past some old bunkers with firing slits still in place and a Republic of Korea ammunition dump with armed soldiers and extremely stern signs saying keep out and forbidden in Korean, Russian, English, and Chinese for some reason.
After a while we reached a broad plain filled with rice fields and migratory birds that were eating the fallen grain, gleaning, while the farmers moved their small combines up and down the fields, cutting the grain in straight lines and shooting the chaff out into waiting trucks. The air smelled fresh, like things growing with an undercurrent of diesel fuel from the farm machinery that littered the plain.
As we crossed a large river, running swift and clean, straight down from the mountains, we entered a small, very rural village, no stores or busnisses of any kind but filled with friendly people who kept stopping us and asking why two waygooks would be running around their neck of the woods. When we told them that we found their part of Korea sunningly beautiful they nodded thier heads knowingly and wished us a good journey with waves and thank you's for the respcet that we showed their land.
1. A waterfall streaming off of Miseyrong Mountain. I did not take this on the walk today but it is a great picture. Thank you to Kelly and Shawn for taking me up there to get this shot.
2. Drying red peppers in a small courtyard.
3. A traditional house, still inhabited in the small village we went through.
4. Drying seaweed next to the beach. Seaweed is loved in Korea, rich in iodine this will be boiled into soup.
5. Garlic drying in the fall sun
