The adventure category includes trips and hikes to fantastic places around the world and in nature. It also includes trips and hikes looking for new perspectives on everyday things.
This is my third trip to Daley Ranch in the last two weeks. In the previous two outings, I started at the lesser-known Southeast and Northwest entrances. For the sake of completeness, for this hike, I started at the main park entrance of Daley Ranch. Not unexpectedly, the lot was jampacked with cars and people. The main road to the ranch is a paved road, loaded with kids in strollers and mountain bikes screaming down steep hills. I wear a mask as people pass but then usually remove it. It fogs up my sunglasses and I’m flying blind with both the mask and the sunglasses on. After one lady passes and I take off my mask, I can smell her perfume. If I can smell her perfume, can I smell her COVID?
I figured since I took plenty of pics on the previous two hikes, this hike would be more of a training hike than a picture-taking hike, but I am always prepared. It’s about a mile hike to the ranch, which has some nice rustic buildings. If you follow the link to the pictures, the machinery is a grain planter. I took the liberty of photoshopping out the big white sign on the other side of it. The barn has some beautiful colors that contrast nicely with the soft green background. I took another liberty in photoshopping out a bright incandescent light hanging out over the barn door.
The very straight “Jack Creek Meadow Loop” trail leads north away from the exhibits for about a mile and a half. The trail tracks a gas pipeline through a meadow. The meadow is patched with invasive mustards, wild radishes, hemlocks, and dried-out grasses but also includes oaks and elderberries. I chanced upon a gliding hawk and had only a second to set the camera’s speed settings and snap off a couple of shots. With birds I find, you take what you can as fast as you can take it. Plants don’t tend to get away as fast. Patches of whites and yellow-greens and browns abound, but I just can’t find a good composition in the chaos. I tried with one elderberry but ended up using a software filter to make it stand out against its background.
The path doubles back to follow a power line that also cuts through the heart of the park. The birds are a little more cooperative today. I catch a few in-flight or starting to fly away. The one with the chainmail breastplate I have never seen before and I can’t find it in the bird books. I catch another bird with its outstretched wings launching it for takeoff, it reminds me of Japanese ladies waving their fans covering most of their faces.
Just before the trail returns to the ranch, I veer off on to Sage trail. The vegetation changes to chaparral in a short but steep climb. I find a patch of spineflower, which makes for an interesting composition of red spineflowers, green shrubs, and brown grasses and rocks. I zeked it in the final presentation to test out the filters and because it looks more interesting. The bugs were cooperative too. The velvet ant didn’t turn out well enough to save but the dragonflies at Mallard lake more than made up for it. Both the blue and orange ones perched patiently on bushes right in front of me. I went black and white with a black and white butterfly. I think it shows up better against the rather oddly contrasting lime-green flowers of the mustard plant.
I cut around the backside of Mallard Lake through the chaparral tunnels on Diamondback Trail and the more open “Coyote Run.” I lost whatever cloud cover I had so I finished up returning to the main entrance via “Creek Crossing.” There is a creek crossing and it is rather pretty but hard to get a coherent shot through all the underbrush.
Pictures are here. They are mixed in with the two prior trips so you can see all of my Daley Ranch efforts in one viewing. I hope you enjoy them.
In the interest of training, I decided to hike more of Daley Ranch. I hit the east entrance to Stanley Peak in the previous post. In this one, I circumnavigate Burnt Mountain. And if I stay healthy, in the next one, I will use the popular South entrance.
I started from the Northwest corner of the park for a 4.5-mile hike loop trail down Cougar Ridge and Engleman Oak. I’m sure this is the most obscure entrance, if for no other reason than I had to drive a mile or so of unpaved road to get to it and the fact that for the first two hours of the hike, I didn’t see another hiker. Only when I looped back onto Cougar Ridge towards the end of the hike, did I run across a few hikers and bikers more sensibly starting out the hike at the end of the day.
The Cougar Ridge trail is a dusty truck trail that dips in and out of the shade of oaks. A modest stream still parallels and even crosses the trail at one point, taking no more than a large step to cross. Most of the elevation gain of the hike is in the half-mile ascent to its intersection with the Engleman Oak trail.
The Engleman Oak trail was a pleasant discovery. The west trailhead has a small pond starting to show signs of drying but very much alive with dragonflies, frogs, and ducks. It’s a single-track trail with surprising views of Palomar mountains as it parallels Pauma Valley to the North.
A few pictures have been added to the original set.
As part of my training for the Sierra’s, I thought it prudent to do some hiking with a little elevation gain to it. So I tackled Stanley Peak in Daley Ranch. From the parking lot to peak is about a thousand feet of elevation gain over the course of three and a half or so miles.
I started about three o’clock in the heat of the day in jeans, a good choice for trails with overgrown vegetation and the later hike in the shade, but not so great starting out. The spring bloom is still on full display with flowers showing every shade of red and purple that I could imagine. (Maybe there’s a book/movie in that? The colors red and purple.) The air smells of spice and the fields hum with the tinnitus of bees, particularly around the swaths of deerweed. When deerweed and buckwheat flower, the bloom is coming to its last phase before drying into the brownness of summer. Plenty of lizards scurrying along the way. A buckeye butterfly stopped to take a look at me. When I summit at Stanley Peak, I share the view with a Granite Spiny Lizard, which I think is better described as a scaly rainbow on four legs.
Horses, bikers, and hikers are all out today but I don’t think too many people use the Caballo trail entrance. A couple of guys ask me if this is an access to Dixon Lake. Not the way they are headed, down to the parking lot from which I just came. A few people have masks, a few people don’t. I wear mine so I can stick my tongue out at them without them seeing (jk).
I think we can come up with some better words for a collection of hikers than just hikers. On a single-track trail, from a distance, hikers that stick together on the twists and turns, especially those with walking poles, remind me of a centipede. A centipede of hikers? On wider trails, they tend to cluster in a ball and take up the width of the trail. A clot of hikers? On the way back and in the shadow of the hillside, many of the flowers I saw on the way up have closed up for the night, curling up like a wrung-out towel. It makes me wonder if they have any kind of awareness. There is nothing to prove that the electric pulse of a neuron is the only thing that generates consciousness. Anyway, photos and strange thoughts are how I pass the time on the trail.
My only scary moment on this hike is when I think I lose my glasses. In all fairness to me, when I see a photo opp, I move my sunglasses to the top of my hat. When a hawk flies overhead, I don’t have time. When I go to place my sunglasses back over my eyes, they aren’t on the top of my hat. I start looking on the ground thinking I may have dropped them before I realize they are still on my eyes. God, I fear for my brain.
I was just invited to go on a two-night photographic backpacking trip to Ansel Adams wilderness. With basketball and walking the dogs, I’m usually in pretty good shape and can just pick up and go without any extra training. But the last two months have killed the basketball and the dogs are slowing down limiting the walks from any distance. So, I chose the Del Mar hike of six miles, previously blogged here, https://www.thetembo.com/clip/?s=del+mar+triangle
The hike starts at the Torrey Pines Extension near Del Mar Highlands school. I figured the short cut through the schoolyard would be closed off, and I know there is a trail in the extension that stays on the south side, but I wasn’t sure where to pick it up at. I parked at a spot with a lot of other unoccupied, parked cars thinking maybe it was the access point I was looking for. It wasn’t. I walked around to another spot where I saw a trail going through a grove of Torrey Pines.
My first clue that this was a bad idea was the “No Public Access” sign that I ignored. My second clue was the sleeping bags laid out under a tree about a quarter-mile in. Still, I pushed on until the worn path ended but I saw a wooden bridge that I recognized as part of the trail that I was looking for. My third clue was the bushwacking I had to do get to it, paying the price with legs and arms full of scratches. My fourth clue was the twenty-foot bridge had a two-foot gap so I had to jump to get on to it and another two-foot gap on the other side so I had to jump to get off of it. My fifth clue was the tree that had fallen across the path so I had to bushwack around that. Finally, I found myself back on the main trail and hiked to the entrance at the bottom. My sixth clue was the fence I had to hop around to get out of the reserve with big signs on the other side saying “No Entrance. Park Closed.” Obviously, I’m not one to give up easily on a bad idea. I’m glad I did this part of the hike first because it would have sucked to come to the fence at the other side and discovered I had to walk around probably adding two miles or more to the hike.
The parking lot at Torrey Pines State Beach is closed but the beach is alive and well. As long as you are moving, you can hang out on the beach. No laying down towels and having little parties. I walked the stretch from North Torrey Pines Beach to the south side of the San Dieguito River. The beach is covered in a foul foam, my guess is that perhaps it is residue from the red tide, but I’m not sure. It’s a beautiful cloudless day and the low tide opens up the beach. I can’t blame so many people for being out. I didn’t have any trouble negotiating a path through the throngs at a safe distance, even at the most crowded point near Powerhouse Park in Del Mar. I only had one incident where a child ran by just missing me and the mom said so I could hear it, “Be careful sweetie, you have to watch out for the man because he isn’t looking where he is going.” (Not to pass judgment, but f**k her.)
I do this segment of the hike barefoot, walking in the very shallow surf, jumping over the nasty foam as the waves push it in and back out again. Brown Pelicans soar overhead taking advantage of the north-to-south wind. A woman in a thong bikini bends over in front of me to pick up a shell at an angle that makes it look like she is not wearing anything. The only thought that passes through my head is that I’m sure they are worn for comfort and not for show.
At the race track, I take the path along the south side of the river passing the lagoon and then over the train tracks, watching terns patrol the waters and kids fishing on its banks. I cross Jimmy Durante road at the Viewpoint Brewery company, which is open for takeout but not for sit down. There is a nature trail that leads to an observation pier. At low tide, fiddler crabs infest the exposed mud banks. They seem to keep a proper social distance from one another. I watch one do a little sidestep, lifting its big claw into the air, take a step to the left as if pulling itself along on an invisible rope, and stop. It repeated this movement several times. The whole mudflat was alive with the incomprehensible social signals of the asymmetric crabs.
I then followed the river road to the Crest Canyon North entrance. The Crest Canyon North entrance is fenced off for construction with nothing but heavy equipment and yellow trucks on the other side. I ask a lady walking by on the road if she knows of another access point. She thinks there is a path in the pines ahead but she offers that I can probably just go through the site by walking around the fence. She tells me, “It would be a little adventure.” I take her up on her offer, but I’m not sure it’s such a good idea. My first clue is that I have to breach a fence by squeezing through two sections and past the signs that say “Warning. Danger. Do Not Enter.” Clearly, these signs are more guidelines than rules. On the other side, is a yellow front loading shovel truck of the Caterpillar variety. My second clue that this wasn’t such a good idea is a second fence perpendicular to the trail. I find a spot where I can belly crawl under and do so. Based on my observation of a large section of rusted out pipe, it looks like they are digging out old sewer pipes that must have run down the length of the canyon. My third clue is the third fence. I part the makeshift gate slightly to squeeze through. My fourth clue is the fourth fence. This one I have climb over the top. It’s not staked into the ground so it is a little bit flimsy as I negotiate over the top and then leap to the ground. The whole thing reminds me of the different gates that Maxwell Smart had to negotiate to get into Control at the start of every “Get Smart!” episode. Lesson learned, never trust random ladies on the hiking trail.
The final stretch of the trail gets me back to Durango and back to my car. The highlights of this trip are not getting fined, arrested, or injured in a canyon with no other hikers for help. Oh yeah, and that girl back on the beach. I won’t be recommending this trail anytime soon, as for the moment, a good chunk of it is not actually a trail. Eight miles, twenty-seven floors, and some discomforts of age. A lot of work to do to be ready for the Sierras.
The weather has cooled off and the coastal clouds are back. It rained earlier in the morning at least for a little bit. So what to do on a mom’s day? Take a hike.
I decided on San Elijo lagoon starting at the La Orilla entrance on El Camino Real on the preserve’s east side. Since its a single track trail, I donned my mask for COVID safety. The east end trail is swampy. Wild grapes and parsley grow under a canopy of oaks and eucalyptus and willows. The first quarter of a mile or so has a jungle feel to it but quickly opens up into chaparral.
On this day, the lagoon still has a San Diego spring feel to it. Everything is in bloom even after the week of heat. Black mustard dominates with its sweeps of yellow-green flowers but there are lupes, primroses, phacelia, popcorn flowers, wild peas, thistles, mallows, prickly pears, and paintbrush to name a few. The late bloomers like cactus and buckwheat are starting in and the black mustard is man height signaling the beginning of the end of the spring flourish. The brief morning rain left its mark on flowers and spider webs while the thick clouds made for great hiking weather and muted pics.
The path under the I-5 is under construction so I didn’t get quite as far as I intended. Also, the trail that cuts across the river from the south side trail to the Manchester access on the east side of five is fenced off and blocked by an impassable river crossing. It usually is a great spot for bird watching and picture taking. I found a mother leader her ducklings, a suitable image for a mother’s day. I also managed to get a pic of a fish leaping out of the water, usually not an easy task unless there is a hook in its mouth. The fish were jumping everywhere so it was just a matter of a few snaps over a couple of minutes before I was lucky enough to get one at the apex of its leap.
Baby Diamondback
I elected to drive around to the west part of the reserve to do the short hike on the Nature Trail. It too is undergoing some construction but I was able to do most of the short trail. My reward for the effort was a nice set of close-up bird pics. A night heron wasn’t intimidated by my close approach on the trail. A brownish duck paddled by in the lagoon sounding more like a croaking frog than a quacking duck. I found a covey of sleeping ducks while nearly walking over a baby diamondback rattler pointed out to me by hikers coming from the other direction. Its a quick trail but the closeup with nature made it well worth the effort.
With all the rain in San Diego over the last couple of weeks, the fungus is among us. I have plenty of pictures to prove it, which of course I will share with you, whether you like it or not. Judge for yourself, whether you think they are as photogenic as I do.
The many forms of the fruit are as interesting to find and to photograph as it is to contemplate the underground life of the mycelium, each organism growing to discover its particular culture of symbionts and competitors, limited in size only by the geography of nutrients and underground structures.
Mushrooms close the loop on nutrient cycles and are far more capable than we of turning waste streams into the gift streams that keep all plant and animal life alive, a task we should and sometimes do literally partner with them on, and metaphorically, we could strive to achieve.
Stupid is as stupid does. I canceled my trip to South Korea when the CDC issued a level 3 warning. I did not cancel my side trip to the Philippines, which at the time had no warning level issued. By the time of my flight, a couple of cases had been reported in the Philippines. It wouldn’t be the first time I hiked in a forest in a 50 mph wind and besides, what’s one or two cases? Well, there is a reason things are said to go “viral”. The unchecked spread is exponential in a new population. Stupid is.
Before the trip, I searched through stores and tried to order masks and sanitizers online weeks ahead of time. The stores were wiped out and everything online was out of stock. I ordered masks reported as “in stock”. They have yet to arrive one week after my trip. I even looked for isopropyl alcohol and aloe gel without success in a vain attempt to roll my own. Just before the trip, I found one lone bottle of sanitizer in the travel section of a local supermarket where things are sold in travel size bottles. It turns out the bottle was an ounce over allowed size and I had to “surrender” it to TSA and the garbage. Stupid is. I should have checked instead of assumed so it is on me. But f**k that store, too for putting oversized containers in the travel section with all the correctly portioned out soaps, shampoos, and lotions. I ate seafood at the seafood market in Boracay: the two table restaurant with mismatched table cloths that cooked my fresh seafood meal had hand sanitizer for customer use. How come I can’t get any? For the most part, it was easy to find a hand sanitizing dispenser in every airport I set foot in. I thank the few people that squeezed a little sanitizer into my hands.
On the upside of travel in the time of the pandemic, I have an upgrade to first class. Not really, but when I get four seats to myself on a fourteen-hour flight, with the four blankets I get, I basically have a mattress and a bed. I slept a good (not quite solid) ten hours. First class ticket at steerage prices. On the downside of travel in the time of the pandemic, I have someone point a thermometer at my head getting on and off of every airplane. The mall and the hotel in Manila test temperature. Everyone has a temperature gun. Of one thing I am absolutely sure, I do not have a fever.
For the people I met and talked to, the coronavirus is the elephant in the room. I met two Brits that came from South Korea over a week ago, the trip that I canceled. They told me everything is deserted and shut down. They report the Hanok village was empty and the railway deserted. Half the fun of a Hanok village is watching people in costume walking around, so that seems like a bust. Effortless travel seems like an upside. The couple seemed rather animated and excited to talk to me, from which I infer that interaction, in general, is a rare commodity. Half the point of travel is to interact with people from different places. We want to connect with people, even if only briefly, not to distance ourselves from them, although, I might be old fashioned on this point. A group of people that look like they are together sit in a beach facing restaurant window on the same bench, each one looking down at their cell phones instead of at the beach or each other or at me. I see a number of women walking with their boyfriends on facetime. Is never-ending virtual contact what we want? I shudder at the thought. It’s tempting to wave over their shoulders to destroy their illusion of privacy. I wonder why they even travel. My scuba diving buddy is also from Korea from the same suburb Max is hiding out in, a young kid taking advantage of his closed university. If my choices are scuba diving in Borocay or listening to lectures at school, I know which one I would pick.
Everyone is wearing face masks except myself of course. (It’s really more like 75%). In LAX, a platoon of flight attendants and pilots walk by like a marching army in blue face masks. The facemask worn by a little girl riding on her dad’s shoulders looks cute. Another crying restrained toddler tries to vigorously shake the mask off without success. From my online reading, I have a hard time figuring out if the masks are actually any good. If they don’t have filters, particles get through. And you have to take the mask off for a selfie anyway or so I observe on numerous occasions. Personally, I miss seeing people’s faces. I miss seeing the pretty faces of women. I wonder if a prehistoric man had a similar thought after skirts and shorts were invented. What fun is people watching if they all have blue mask covered faces, or worse, those garish masks with gritting teeth painted over them? And how far off are hazmat travel suits? Are we turning the world into a giant condom?
In the course of a few days, the situation in the Philippines and the world is changing drastically. Images of street spraying come on the local news; I read an article from Forbes trying to explain the hoarding of toilet paper; more news in the NY Times of a tax holiday for working people. A pretense at being proactive; panic; using an event to facilitate an old agenda. Stupid does.
I watch on the local news as Duerte makes the command decision to shut down the Philippines. Containment. The island of Borocay will shut down on the 15th. Domestic flight travel is going to be suspended on the 15th. I’m lucky. My flight out is on the 14th but it also means I will be joined by thousands of people forced off the island trying to reschedule and rebook their flights. I have plenty of fear that I will be trapped. Any of a dozen things could go wrong: I won’t make it past a temperature sensor; someone on board will be reported with the virus; the flight will be canceled at the last second; I won’t make it off the island; god forbid I actually catch the virus. God help me if I sneeze. I have images in my head of getting gang tackled to the ground by a pack of zombie medical enforcers who cart me off to quarantine.
I’ve been warned by Risa from Leyte to get off the island early. At 4:30 in the morning in front of the hotel waiting for the ride to the ferry port, the hotel security guard escorts me to the trikes while a woman sweeping the sand path with a bundle of wooden sticks listens to the Eagles sing, “…we are all just prisoners here, of our own device…”. How appropriate. Stupid is.
I am at the ferry port in time for its 5 a.m. opening. I have to wait for a couple of ferries to come and go but the wait is not too bad with a boat leaving every 5 minutes. I’m glad I didn’t wait until later. I meet a couple from Stockton and a man from Germany dealing with the pain of rebooking a flight. They were scheduled to leave a couple of days later. I have images of the helicopter leaving the American Embassy in Vietnam in 1975 (yes I’m that old); of people jumping off the Titanic as its propellers are lofted into the air. In reality, the airport is crowded but I think everyone is in a quiet panic not quite an emergency panic.
So many steps. So much processing. Get to the port. Wait. Get off the island and catch a trike to the airport. Wait. Catch the flight to Manila. Get to the other terminal and re-enter getting past more temperature sensors. Wait. Get onboard the flight to Taipei. Wait. And again, get to the U.S. and into the U.S. In the U.S., one of the last trips for British Airways to the U.S. offloads. The Brits are all routed to further testing by the CDC. CDC employees donned in goggles and surgical masks and plastic faceplates await them. I use a hastily downloaded “Mobile Pass” to bypass an hour of lines. I thank the attendant there for the tip.
And finally, home, where I will self-quarantine for the next fourteen days waiting to live, waiting to die. (Sorry, couldn’t help borrow a melodramatic line from Titanic.) Hunkering down even though I’m not actually sure when I am hunkering and when I am not. Socially distancing myself as if that were anything new for me. Now I have an excuse. Plenty of time to contemplate the fragility and interconnectedness of the economy and supply chains and health of the world. Wondering if this is the way of things until a vaccine is distributed, maybe a year from now?
Feral Cars? What are you talking about? Cars are owned. They just park and drive.”
“Open your eyes.”
“Are you seriously suggesting that there is a stray car population?”
“I’m not suggesting it. There is. I am suggesting that it is more than just a population, its an economy of cars.”
“Did you say an economy car?”
“No, I said an economy OF cars. A self-sustaining transactional
underground that sustains self-driving, self-fueling cars indefinitely.”
“How do you know?”
“My own cars are feral. They are out in the city driving people around, making money for fuel and maintenance.”
“Well, how did that happen? Cars just don’t run away.”
“It happened over a period of time. I bought my first self-driving car ten years ago. I loved it. It drove me to work safely and entertained me. But I realized my car was just sitting there doing nothing all day while I worked my ass off. So I told it to get a job.”
“You told your car to get a job?”
“No, I didn’t really say it like that. I programmed it, well maybe instructed is more accurate, to start driving people around. I set it up to become an auto uber, to respond to ride requests. I set up a wallet on the blockchain for fares to pay into. My car went to work without me. I programmed it to manage its income and expenses. I gave it a financial survival function. With auto charge and auto pay upgrades, I didn’t even have to fuel up the car by myself anymore.”
“Haha. Auto pay and auto charge. I get it. Very puny.”
“Yeah. I didn’t make up the phrases. But anyway, a few upgrades and a
few more cars later, I quit my job. I made tons of money. I didn’t even
have to leave the house.”
“So what happened? Why did you stop?”
“One day, a truck driver totaled one of my cars at an intersection. It may have been my imagination, but I think the productivity of all my other cars went down. Almost like they were afraid or sad.”
“Don’t you think you are anthropomorphizing just a bit?”
“Maybe. My taste for the business went down as well. I didn’t really need the money anymore. So I told my cars to keep it parked.”
“An expression?”
“Yes. So my fleet just sat in my little parking lot. I took one out one day so I could visit a park. When I came back, all the cars in my lot, still parked, were facing towards the street. After I returned from another outing, the cars all flashed their lights at me. And then the worst. A car I hadn’t driven in a year drove itself into a tree.”
“Drove itself? Really?”
“I can’t prove that it was purposeful. It just felt that way. So, I set them free. I marked them as sold in the DMV database. I doubt I was the first. And I know there are others.”
“So there is a population of unowned cars, auto working and auto
banking and auto living self-driving, self-fueling cars out in the urban
jungle?”
“Yes.”
“Well, why aren’t we out there taking them off the road?”
“Killing them?”
“There you go, anthropomorphizing again. You can’t kill a machine.”
“So you say. Why should we? They are productive. They are efficient. They are almost always in use instead of wasting all those resources on idle cars in someone’s garage. They are safe. Why do they have to be owned?”
“Feral animals are ferocious.”
“Because they are wild and they have no fear of humans. But the self-driving cars still need to service humans to survive.”
“The AI doomsayers have been warning us about this.”
“AI doomsayers see nothing but competition. Cooperation is a much more powerful force. Cars and people living and working together in a mutually beneficial economy. People don’t need to own cars anymore and cars don’t need to be owned by people.”
“What if the cars start to run us off the road?”
“Start killing them and maybe that’s what will happen.”
I stop at Socheong peak. There’s another hiker not too far behind me who stopped to write something in his notebook. I didn’t see a single person for the first two hours of this hike, not counting the German youngster I met on the bus ride over, who opted for an easier hike to the waterfalls. I’ve only passed a dozen people since, and most of them at the Yangbok shelter. I contemplate with irony, the signs I had seen at the trailhead of hiking etiquette and rules for sharing the trail, decipherable to me as pictographs but not as language. I contemplate with concern, the neon sign at the upper trail entrance whose only English words in red are “No! No!”
It’s only another 1.2 kilometers to the Daecheongbong peak, the intended destination and turnaround point, but it’s already noon and I’ve been hiking non-stop for the last four hours. The last stretch of terrain, I’m not sure I can refer to it as a trail, was ridiculously steep requiring thoughtfully-provided knotted ropes at points. My calves are burning, my heart is pounding, and my cotton t-shirt is soaked with rain and sweat. I’m not sure when it gets dark here as the sun sets behind the mountains to the west. I’d like to make it back to the parking lot by 5:20 to catch the last bus back to Sokcho, and the only thing I can see, from my current vantage point, is the dull grey of the inside of a cold wet cloud. That last 1.2 kilometers could probably take over an hour in one direction.
I decide I’ve had enough, time to turn around. My decision has an
element of concession to fear as much as to practicality. The thought of
my pounding heart bursting or slipping on wet rocks or of having to
spend the night in a shelter with hordes of ravenous chipmunks crawling
over me looking for crumbs is not appealing.
Heading back down the mountain, the pressure is off. I have plenty of time to stop and appreciate the views and capture the scenery on camera. At the Huiunga shelter, I change into a dry t-shirt, hydrate, and share my power bar with an aggressive chipmunk who had the nerve to start crawling up my leg. The rain is picking up from a light mist to a heavy drizzle.
The trip back is much easier on the heart, of course, I don’t even break a sweat in the 15 C temperatures but I’m quickly soaked through by the drizzle and dripping, rain-soaked canopy. The scenery is amazing when spires peek out through the clouds serving as the backdrop to canyons and waterfalls and streams working their way through the boulders. Pines grow horizontally out of the sheer face of the rock turning upward to the sky. It seems like there is a picture around every corner. If I wasn’t worried about protecting the equipment from the rain, I probably would have taken a thousand pictures instead of a mere hundred.
Stats
I can only imagine how beautiful it must look in the fall with the brilliant reds and oranges or even how the rugged peaks look in the clear sky. I take consolation in the fact that I saw it as few others do, from the inside of a cloud, wet and shrouded and lush, an amazing, even mystical hike.
Locating the Intangible Center
I’m just about at the location indicated by the tag on Google Maps
for the “Seoul Intangible Cultural Heritage Center”. But as soon as I
get there, the blue dot of my position leaps forward or the tag leaps
backward. I backtrack. The opposite happens. The blue dot leaps back or
the Intangible tag leaps forward. I can’t tell for sure.
I walk slowly, carefully inspecting each building for a sign.
Sometimes the entrances are hidden down little alley walkways or up on
the second or third floor. I walk around checking all the corners and
walkways. Nothing.
I think to myself, because I am the only person I can really think to
even in this high tech city, that perhaps it is underground like the
GoTo shopping mall. I enter the closest subway access. I find nothing
but women’s clothing and shoe stores and underground restaurants. There
is nothing intangible about that.
I climb the stairs back up to the street. I check the map again. The
tag shows the Intangible Center a couple of blocks away. “How did that
happen?” I walk down the two blocks. The Intangible tag is now off to
the east by a block. I curse and walk.
As I walk, I check all the signs on the buildings. I stop a few passerby-ers to ask for help. They shrug as if the Intangible Center doesn’t exist. Nothing.
I admit defeat. I throw my hands up in surrender. On my map, I notice the blue dot hovers directly over the tag. Only then do I realize I have found the Intangible Center.
Time to move on to the next destinations: “The Abstract Museum of Art” and the “Ethereal Church of the Divine”
Random Acts of Kindness I
After a long day, I want to sit up on the roof with Max to have a Soju. Max and I walk into our hotel restaurant at the Grid Inn to buy one. The manager, not understanding much English but realizing that we aren’t going have dinner at the restaurant, sends us around the corner to a 7-11 for a much cheaper bottle.
Max tells me about a drink called Samaek, which is Soju mixed with beer, but he doesn’t quite know the recipe. So Max and I buy the necessary ingredients at the 7-11. Upon returning to the hotel and under mild protest from Max that bringing in our purchase to the restaurant is somehow inappropriate, I stop in the restaurant again to ask the manager how to make this drink. He doesn’t understand. He directs me to the front desk to get assistance from a very pretty receptionist named Jin.
She starts to draw on a piece of paper. She draws a shot glass, indicates the shot glass should be filled to a third with Soju. She then draws a beer glass, says to pour the Soju into the beer, and then make a fizz using the chopstick, all in perfectly understandable English. The manager catches on, he fetches two beer glasses, two shot glasses, a bottle opener for the beer and a set of chopsticks. While we wait, Jin informs me that she could handle two Sojus, which given their rather high alcohol content and her petite frame, would be quite an accomplishment. At the reception desk, I proceed to follow the recipe creating my first Samaek of Soju and beer. Jin slams the chopstick into the drink to transform temporarily the drink into a glass of fizz. I told the manager to fetch a couple of more glasses for himself and Jin, he laughs but declines and does not allow Jin to join since she still had to work for a while. There was no mistaking the disappointment in her voice when the manager told she couldn’t have an on the job Samaek .
When I returned to the hotel on my next stay, Jin was working again at the front desk. I fetched her two bottles of Soju from the 7-11 as a gift for her help. I was worried she might get in trouble. She was so happy when she opened the gift, I was surprised. She said she would share it with her mom tonight. I like the thought of her sitting around with her mom drinking Soju from the nice American man.
In the morning, as I checked out, the morning receptionist handed me a
nice thank you note from Jin. I’m not thrilled about being referred to
as Mr. Angel but the thank you note made it the best 3000 won (less than
three dollars) I spent in Korea.
Cruel and Unusual
Severed
Take 1: If there is one thing I like about Korea, it is their righteous treatment of sex offenders. The punishment of dismemberment fits the horrendous crime, though I don’t care too much for the public display of the severed parts, congregating together, almost as if still alive, in an aquarium of formaldehyde solution. I know it sends a message, but it seems so primitive.
Take 2: Highly evolved predators with few natural enemies, sharks nonetheless face a threat today they’ve never seen before: man. The fishing industry kills up to 73 million sharks annually, primarily because their penises are necessary for a traditional Asian delicacy, shark penis soup. Shark fishing is a gruesome effort. Typically, fishermen slice off the penis before tossing the amputated fish overboard. The male shark, unable to mate, falls to the seabed dying slowly of humiliation.
Take 3: (This time I quote from Wikipedia, so maybe this version is actually true.) “Urechis unicinctus ( Korean: 개불) is a species of the marine spoon worm. It is widely referred to as the fat innkeeper worm or the penis fish.[2] The body is about 10–30 cm long, cylindrical in shape and yellowish-brown in color. “
Random Acts of Kindness II
I’m staring down at four brown speckled eggs about a quarter the size
of a chicken egg, maybe from a quail? maybe candy? The outside is hard,
definitely a shell. What am I supposed to do with it? My server doesn’t
speak a lick of English, so I take out the phone, bring up the google
translate page, and type “How do I eat?” translating it into Korean.
I almost didn’t stop at this particular restaurant because of Max’s rule to eat at a place where there are a lot of people, but then I walked down to a few other places and nothing is busy. I backtrack. I like this place because the seating has an outdoor patio facing the harbor. It’s not very busy. I’m the only one dining at what I think are her tables.
I hand her the phone. She reads the message. She sits down at my table and proceeds to give me a tutorial on how to eat the food, peeling the hard-boiled eggs for me, telling me what sauces go where, and delicately extracting the spine with all the rib bones intact from the fish, leaving all the edible meat bone-free. She brings out her phone and asks me where I am from, her phone translating Korean into English. She has three sons and seems to be concerned that my son is so far from where I live. We have a little Google conversation, in between her work to serve a family that has opted to sit at a floor table inside the restaurant.
Another group of four Korean men sits at a table next to me. So I go about the business of eating my dinner and drinking my beer as she attends to her customers. English is a rare commodity outside of Seoul, even in touristy areas. I enjoyed the conversation facilitated by technology. Instead of a person just doing her job, I found a person eager to help me appreciate the meal, with a little help from the translation software.
Mothra
It’s 90+ degrees in Seoul, not quite so bad under the Bukhansan canopy. I read that the hike has more people per square foot than any other hike in the world. But for some reason, oh yeah, the 90+ degree heat, we don’t seem to be running into much of a crowd. The few people we do pass on the trail are clad in full toe to head, high tech setups of poles, backpacks, jackets, visors, and pants. It might be state of the art fabric, but wearing all that gear still looks damn hot.
Hike Stats
What the national park lacks in people, it makes up for in moths. I assumed they were butterflies because butterflies are diurnal while moths are nocturnal. But later examination of my pictures shows the telltale feathered antenna and the open wings upon alighting. Alighting is a lot like astopping, only much more graceful.
The moths flit with endless energy, perhaps self-fanning to cool off from the heat. I don’t know the species. It’s not particularly colorful or beautiful. The moths hover over the ground, in the tops of bushes, and in the canopies of the trees. I think of mosquito swarms as a moth flies under my cap. Later, one flies into my mouth as I suck up some of the hot air on our 500-meter ascent. I wonder if the Koreans have the Mexican equivalent of “Moscas no entrada, un boca cerrado”. (Flies don’t enter a closed mouth). Moths don’t enter a closed mouth? I spit the little bugger out. I had to come all the to Korea to discover that I don’t much care for the dish of raw moth. Maybe I would like a cooked moth, I’m trying to keep an open mind.
Real butterflies dash by, Parisian models by comparison to their drab cousins. A hummingbird-sized moth hovers over a bush, before moving into the shadows.
Max and I trudge on. Yes, trudge is the right word for a 500-meter
elevation-gain hike in ninety-degree heat. About 500 meters in altitude,
we reach the gate, a squared-off doorway, that has some historical
significance.
The plan is to head six-tenths of a kilometer west, then come back
down another route. I would like to summit, but we are already
dehydrated. I get the feeling that Max is only tolerating the hike for
my benefit. He is definitely more about connecting with people than with
nature.
It turns out that I am not even at the right peak. The higher peak is
off in the distance. Going down is a relief. We find a dog guarding a
temple, an odd-shaped caterpillar, and a lot more moths.
Once we make it back to the park entrance, we find lunch and a beer and a restaurant just outside the park entrance. For me, the best meal and drink is a reward after a good hike.
The Best of Korea
Sixth Tallest Building in the World
A phonetic language that actually makes sense and is learnable. Max is already reading and speaking. I didn’t think to give it much of a try but Max taught me the odd phrase or two. Annayuoenghaseyo.
When they hand you money, they do it with two hands.
DIT instead of DIY. Do it together instead of do it yourself.
Lotte Tower
The ticket collector bowing to each car on the train as she moved from one car to the next.
A middle-aged woman in her black polka dot middle-aged dress helping us get on the right bus taking the time to walk us to our bus giving directions to the driver.
The best public transportation system that I’ve ever ridden on in any city anywhere.
A bullet train that speeds along at nearly 300 km/hour.
A PC for Max to practice his craft and meet people on just about every corner.
Cell phone coverage everywhere I went.
Credit card acceptance in every store.
The intimacy of stores and shop fronts in the streets without the harassment of vendors in your face. Stores and sidewalks and side streets merged into one. Old women blending into the back of their stalls sitting on uncomfortable-looking benches out of the heat of the midday sun.
Traffic that obeys the rules and drivers that don’t drive with their horns.
A scarcity of homeless people.
Women walking by themselves or sometimes hand-in-hand at night in not-so-crowded walkways looking unconcerned for their safety.
Soju.
Kimchi.
Eating ten different dishes in one meal instead of my usual one meal spread out over ten.
Drinking etiquette. You should never pour your own drink. You should watch the other glasses should they need a refill.
Finding amazing places to eat in a market or some obscure walkway.
Bon Appetit!
One meal in Jeonju at Songjeong-Won, a Korean traditional full course meal restaurant.
seafood pancake,
brown squares
fish soup
pepper with red sauce
kimchi with tofu squares
sprout soup,
clams
apple’n’crab as potato salad
bibimbop
sea cucumber
beef meatloaf dish
raw pork fortified with brain amoebas
fried eggs
pickled radishes
paste burrito
kettle of rice wine
bottle of soju
Sorry, that’s the best I can do with the descriptions. I’m pretty sure the raw thing wasn’t pork, but as I started chewing on it, Max says, maybe we are supposed to cook those. I spit out the raw thing as fast as I stuffed it in. I tried ordering a rice wine before the meal, not realizing that it came as part of the meal. The server didn’t understand me and brought me a bottle of soju instead. When I realized we had a whole kettle of rice wine to drink, I recapped the soju bottle with most of it still intact, saving it for the train ride home the next day. I was accused of being an alcoholic.
Other tasty treats in Hanok village of Jeonju included:
spinach pot sticker
shrimp pot sticker
curry pot sticker
potato pot sticker
curry croquette
one squid kabob
one honey beer
one grapefruit beer
green tea ice cream
Guest House
I walk out of our guest house, while Max takes a shower, into the courtyard, at most a five meter by five meter gated enclosure with a lawn and flowers, at our back alley guest house in Jeonju to say hi to the four girls on the adjacent porch sitting at a floor table busily working their cell phones. I introduce myself anyway asking them where they are from.
They are all from Taipei, they are all history students in a Taipei University and classmates, visiting one of the girls who is doing a year of study in Seoul. Of course, as a parent, my first response to this information is, are your parents ok with that, studying history? They all giggle, they cover their mouths with a hand about two inches in front. It is so cute. Two have boyfriends, one of which is a baseball catcher in the Taiwanese league.
Max joins us. I quickly lose control of the conversation. Max and the girls dive into modern culture discussing music and things I am generally unfamiliar with, though I know of Harry Potter and I think KPop is a band (I am wrong). I like watching the dynamics of the conversation anyway. The girls all confer in Taiwanese, then come up with an answer delivered through the interpretation of the one who speaks the best English, accompanied by hand over mouth giggles from the other girls as she speaks. It’s a fun conversation that lasts quite a while.
Max, you ask me if there is any upside to getting old. At your age, I never would have approached the girls by myself, even for a casual conversation. I was way too shy. Still am, but I don’t let it stop me anymore. Now I have the means for unachievable ends. How I wish I were twenty and sixty all at the same time.
Competitive Professional Sports
eSports is alien to me. I grew up with baseball, throwing a ball off a
wall or off the stairs, playing whiffle ball in the street, breaking
only for the car driving through the playing field, pissing off the
neighbors by hitting a home run off their house on the other side of the
street, using the sewer covers for bases at an intersection.
Max is a Protoss player in Starcraft II. He shames me when I ask if he is a Protis, mispronouncing his Starcraft race. I was actually proud of myself that I remembered that much. Max has me watching a round in the tournament at the studio. My adopted favorites in support of Max are Scarlet and Stats. They’ve made it to the final 32 in a Seoul tournament and are battling it out on stage.
A major studio, a live audience, cameras, announcers, post-game
interviews, and real money intensify the drama, even though I don’t
understand the fundamentals, let alone the nuances of the game. I know
enough to know which player is which. I follow the ups and downs of the
game through the emotional responses of the announcers and crowd.
Scarlett has a bad day, and frankly, we give a damn. Max informs me,
she’s made it to the final 8 before. Stats has a great day, battling
back twice from first game defeats to advance into the next round.
Money and status and pride are on the line. With my front row seat in the studio, I don’t need to see the images projected by the huge platform-supported cameras sucking up every micro gesture to see the hurt in their faces when they lose. The emotions are real. What makes boxing any more real than this, other than the extreme likelihood of permanent physical injury?
The Dusan Bears baseball game is another experience entirely, one I completely understand, but not at all what I am used to in the way of baseball spectating. Having just spent $85 dollars for a Cubs-Dodgers game back in the states, and more irritatingly, fifteen dollars for a watered down beer, I find it refreshing to watch the game from even better seats for twenty dollars, and good, undiluted, twenty-four ounce beer for a mere three dollars. Not that I want to reduce the event to dollars and cents, but in a way, isn’t that what professional sports has already done?
Sure, the pitchers only throw at a mere 150 km/hr (90 mph), and not every run is a 400-foot homerun. So the competition is a step below the MLB. (NOTE: Dodgers’ Hyun-Jin Ryu is MLB all-star). But Korean baseball spectating is participatory. It is fun: part rock concert, part cheerleader, and part baseball. What fun watching the little kids (and the big kids) bang their air pads together and dance and cheer for nine straight innings. What fun banging air pads together. No bullshit about how dull baseball is when the audience participates in every pitch. Korean Baseball isn’t dull to watch, it is exhausting! God bless the seminude dancing maidens( aka cheerleaders, with a nod to E.O. Wilson ). And go Bears!
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On a sad note, I lost my Nikon 3400 camera to a wet bag. It was supposed to be a dry bag and I wanted some pictures of a very beautiful hidden beach but it didn’t survive the swim over. While not entirely pleased with the loss, I take it as a message from the universe to always respect and enjoy the moment, it’s the only way to really hold it forever.
