Hiking Up a New Mountain

For the past eight months, every time I wake up in the morning, I look out the window at this very peculiar cone shaped mountain that is just a few miles away, and every morning I think this will be the day that I will get up there and climb that damn thing. Well last Sunday was the day of reckoning.
After a fairly short bus ride on the one bus up north and a short walk through the rice fields that surround the base of the mountain, Conor and I finally reached the bottom and scouted out locations from which we could make it up the summit.
After a little while we had picked out our route and began moving slowly but surely upward through tangles of thorns and brush, following game trails and rock falls as we went up and up.
You could tell that this area had undergone massive trauma in the fairly recent past. All along the hike we found evidence that a massive fire had swept through the area no that long ago. Every where we looked there were half burned stumps and trunks of trees that were blackened by some sort of fire. The devastation was so complete that there was no growth younger than bushes on the mountain side.
After awhile we stopped to rest on a sort of saddle between a lower peak and the higher one that we were trying to get to. We were looking west, away from the sea, and down into a valley behind our little spot of heaven. From where we sat we could see a Buddhist temple and more graves than you could shake a stick at. It was obvious that at some time something really terrible happened here at some time. Korean graves are not usually together, they are usually placed in solitary areas with family groups. You almost never see this many graves together.
Moving on we saw something really amazing, especially here in Korea. For the first time in almost twenty months in this country, I saw a large mammal as a few yards ahead of us and slightly below, we kicked up a small deer that ran from us as if we were the hounds of hell. Knowing Koreans propensity for killing all things wild and eating them, it was probably a smart move on the deers part.
Moving on through even more thorns, I really should not have worn shorts this day, we finally reached something really strange just below the summit, a network of firing positions and bunkers with trenches connecting them. We found out the reason for this as we followed the trail connecting them towards the summit and looked back down the mountain on the south west side towards a huge army base buzzing with recruits doing what ever army conscripts do with their time here in Korea.
Moving up the trail on a well worn path by this time we finally reached the summit and were treated to a gorgeous view of the sea and the Diamond mountains in North Korea. Oh, I almost forgot, there was one other thing on the mountain top. A ring of white rocks that spelled out the letter H, a freaking helicopter pad.
Pictures.
1. Flowers thriving in the burnt stubble of the mountain side.
2. One of the many bunkers on the way up the mountain.
3. Looking to the east, rice fields and the sea.
4. Looking to the west, the Diamond mountains of North Korea are just to the right of the picture in the far distance. Yes I really am that close to our fraternal friends in the North.
5. With Buddhas birthday coming up you see these paper lanterns hanging every where.

Sokcho Spring Festival

Pictures
1. Catapults lining the path by the lake. I was unaware that these were a Korean invention, and judging by the fact that they only threw a small piece of wood about three feet, have not been refined in the last couple of thousand years.
2. A horse among the cherry blossoms.
3. Going back a thousand years. A Korean shaman/preistess bows before an offering to the gods for a good spring planting season.
4. The band gets ready to take the stage.
5. Two guys, on the stage, saying something that I could not at all understand, but the masks were kind of cool.

The Sokcho Spring Festival

16.4.07

This past weekend was the Sokcho spring festival. Judging by the banners that I had seen all over town the preceding weeks featuring an archer on horseback, I kind of assumed that the festival would consist of arrows and horses, hopefully in combination. But, being that this is Korea, the land of not quite right, I was disappointed. While there was archery, and horses, putting them together was just not an option.

Aubrey, Conor, and I headed down to Yongnanho Lake to take in the sites and sounds of the festival on a pretty gorgeous spring day. As we strolled along the lakeshore we started to run into loads of people. Some were roller blading, others running and walking, everywhere there were kids playing outside, with not a computer or television in sight. It was great to see the kids being typical here. So often they are trapped in a never ending cycle of cycle of school, studying, and hagwon, that they rarely get to be outside, running and enjoying the fresh air.

The festival itself was pretty cool. There were parts of it that showed what people in this part of the world did for thousands of years such as the drumming, which was really neat, and the alter of offerings that was bowed before by a line of women wearing white. Watching this, not really knowing what it all meant, I felt that this old spirit world that I was seeing was really a vision of what life must have been like for thousands of years, for people all over the world.

The reset of the festival, outside of the drumming and dancing, that did not go on for very long, seemed like a celebration of traditional life. There was archery, albeit with plastic bows and arrows, kids playing on stilts, and a tug of war contest, and everywhere you looked, were people in traditional costumes. It was a pretty neat day.

Cherry Trees

One of the really beautiful things that happens in Northeast Asia in the spring is the almost mystical flowering of the cherry blossom trees. Every year, without fail, as soon as the weather warms and the chill of winter has been chased away, the white flowers start to appear on the trees that are scattered throughout China and Japan.
The first thing you notice is that little pink buds start to appear on the ends of the trees and in the nodules of the branches. Then, ever so slowly, as the wather warms a few degrees more, there appears a white flower. First just one or two but after three days whole trees and groves of the winding trunks are covered with the white petals.
It doesnt last long, this display of nature, one week, maybe ten days at the most, but while it is here people travel from all over by bus and car, loading up the whole family, just to see these white flowers.

The Coming of Spring

The Coming of Spring

1.4.07

Pictures

1. A magnolia tree in almost full bloom. Look at the colour of the sky and notice the yellow hinge, the haze, this my friends, is a prime example of yellow dust.

2. Coming out of a tunnel in the foothills of the mountians I miracously found the road free of cars and was able to snap this picture of some sort of yellow flowers that lined the road.

3. The start of the cherry blossom bloom

4-5. Early spring flowers

The first thing that I do every morning, as most of us do, is sit up and fling open the curtains to check the weather. I, like almost every other human being, want to know if the day is cloudy or sunny, and from this information I plan my activities for the day.

Today I followed my usual routine, a little later than usual, it was Sunday after all, and looked out of my window to a strange sight.

It seemed to me that an eerie sort of twilight had descended on the little town of Sokcho. Everywhere I looked was this pale, sickly, mustard yellow; there was no sun, no cloud, just this ugly haze covering the city. Odd really considering that there is almost no heavy industry here in town to cause such a massive level of pollution on this scale.

When I looked down from my sixth floor window to the parking lot below I saw that this strange yellow hue did not affect just the air. The cars, lined up in their semi-neat rows, were covered with a fine yellow dust. When I got down to the parking area and ran my hands over them they came away tinged with a pale, gritty, yellow, substance, almost like……..sand!

There kids, is the answer, the yellow grit, the haze in the sky, the lack of sun, and the low clouds, well, they were all the gift of China to Korea, yellow dust.

Yellow dust comes to us from the great, open, sandy expanses of the far western edge of China, the Gobi desert. After the cold of the winter leaves the soil, winds whip the yellow dust into a frenzy and push it ever eastward. Along the way, luckily for us in Korea, it sweeps over the massive mega cities that line the eastern edge of China, and picks up all sorts of heavy metals and pollutants from the mass industrialization programs that are taking place along the rivers and seas of the great country of China.

As the wind blows eastward, towards Korea, it sweeps across the Yellow Sea, carrying all of the topsoil, heavy metals, and manufacturing by-products that it has picked up along the way. By the time it reaches the western shore of the Korean peninsula the dust has became laden with all the great things that China is giving to the rest of Asia.

The first you hear of it is on T.V. as the warnings and dangers of the yellow dust storm are broadcast for everyone to hear, then the masks come out and everyone stays indoors to weather the storm, everyone, that is but me, who thought it was a fine time to head out and shoot some pictures of spring flowers.

traditional dances

Traditional Dance
1.4.07

At Expo Park the other day I got to see some traditional Korean dance and was able to snap some pictures.
While pictures 2 and 3 are pictures of the dance, picture one is a book that I saw on sale at a flea market. Notice the title.
I hope that you all enjoy the new layout of my blog, any feedback would be appreciated. As always you can reach me at jonofragusa@yahoo.com
Take care

A Soju Saturday

A Soju Saturday

Pictures

1. The view from the bridge to nowhere, the houses of North Korean refugees who fled the D.P.R.K. at the end of the war in 1953. For some reason these humble homes occupy some of the best sea front property in all of Sokcho, fronting a wide sand beach with a great view of the sea. How long will it be, next year, maybe the year after, when all these humble homes are torn down to make room for hotels and mindless monuments to consumerism?

2. Looking back across the small pond that this mamouth bridge crosses.

3. I love dogs, and can never take enough picutres of the nice puppies that I find around the town.

4. The fishing port of Sokcho. This is where the boats dock when they are not at sea. On the far side of the channel you can see the back of the main street of Sokcho.

5. Squid boats under the bridge to nowhere. These are squid boats, the mainstay of the Sokcho industry. These boats head out night after night, sweeping the seas clean. They use the powerful lights that you can see to attract the squid to the lines.

Conner and I went for a long ramble through the streets of Sokcho today. Fueled by generous amounts of soju, Korean traditional liquor, that we drank with a late lunch of scallops and squid down by the port, we had the energy, the will, and the drive, to conquer the streets of Sokcho.

After a late lunch down at the port, we spent the day exploring the streets of our little town. We rambled far and wide, hitting both the high points and the low, from the bridge to nowhere to a bit of North Korea, it was a grand adventure.

A Sunday Stroll

A Sunday Stroll

Picutres

1. Korea, like Japan, is well known for its cherry blossoms. Down in Gwanju they have a festival for them and its is incredibly bueatiful. Up here, where it is cooler we do not have the mass of cherry trees they do in the south but there are a few scattered around. These blossoms, outside a little farmhouse in the country, are the first I have seen this spring.

2. When I walk and drive in the c0untryside here I often stop and look at the old tumbeled down buildings that somehow litter the landscape. It is amazing to me, that after thousands of years of war, strife, invasion and colonization that there are any old buildings left, but here they are. How long has this wall stood on this spot? How long have people been living in this village? A hundred years, a thousand?

3. Rural village, street scene. No stores, no schools.

4. A couple boys enjoying there sunday off.

5. The dog.

Finally spring has come to Korea, well at least up here in the far northern reaches of the peninsula. Down south the weather has been great for a couple of weeks now. In Gwanju the cherry blossoms are already out and in Busan people have been enjoying temperatures in theT sixties for a couple weeks now. It has been so much warmer that my buddy Greg down in Pohang, about two hundred and fifty miles south of here, has been seeing mosquitoes in the fields and his apartment.

Up here, in the cold and snow of the far north, we have, just last week, seen significant snow fall both the mountains and in town. While the migratory ducks and geese have been flying over us for a week, heading to their summer homes on the taiga of Siberia, the land here has been locked in the tight embrace of winter.

But today, just today, spring finally arrived. When I got up around eleven I could feel, by putting my hand outside of my window, that the wind was finally blowing from the south, bringing with it the warm air of the tropics. Well, not really the tropics, but it was a lot warmer than it has been.

That being said it was time for a stroll around the countryside. I grabbed my friend Connor and Aubrey and Paul and headed for the countryside to take in the sights and sounds of early spring.

Walking along, climbing the pass of Chundaesun mountain, we could hear birds singing, and on a few trees, the first pale green buds of spring poked their way out of their winter homes.