Winter's Come and Gone, A Little Bird Told Me So

Both of my English teaching stints in Korea are unique, to say the least. Last year, the nationwide EPIK program placed me in a 5,000 person casino/resort town in the beautiful but often cold and bleak Gangwondo mountains. Sabuk is a special place, even warranting a documentary by a female Korean filmmaker. Its radical history correlates with the Gwangju Uprising, which is where I'm at now.

Back in September, I found out my position would not be renewed, which was followed by a frustrating but ultimately great decision to transfer to the Jeollanamdo Language Program. I was happy and grateful for the chance to go back to the States for 6 weeks in between contracts.

I left Korea on a high note, collecting chicken eggs and munching on fresh greenhouse strawberries at the always great Hansol Farm in Namyangju. It was nice to leave on March 1st, Independence Day - spring was proudly announcing its arrival after the long and harsh winter months.

Goats at Toluma Farms

The bridge on the way back to the city

Beans the fat cat

I came home to a week-long warm welcome from my Bay Area, California-based family: aunt, uncle, cousins with a baby on the way, cousin's grandparents and old Boston friends who had migrated to the bright and sunny West Coast. Delicious food, fat fuzzy cats, a hike in the Redwoods, revisiting the Mission and Oakland. The second week of March was a much less certain and secure endeavor: road trip from LA to Houston.

A Berkeley park at dusk

Redwoods hike

In the end, it went off with flying colors. I spent a surprisingly pleasant 4 days in LA - a city I didn't know at all - with my cousin's younger sister, her boyfriend and her adorable house dog and baby kitty. I roamed the pre summer heat LA streets, indulged in vegan food, the beauty of an enormous downtown public library, Venice Beach, Koreatown. Finally, instead of hitchhiking, I rode the train to near the end of the Eastern line and met up with a Craigslister who posted his almost too-good-to-be-true van ride offer from LA to Houston.

Venice Beach sunset

Venice Beach madness

Four days on the road before I was finally back in Houston. Grand Canyon, Albuquerque, Roswell, Carlsbad Caverns. I loved what I saw of the Southwest and would go back there in a heartbeat for an extended stint. Not least for the Navajo culture. That must be the Wild Wild West that still remains.

Route 66 sign at a gas station, somewhere between Cali and Arizona

Looking into the Canyon

Towards New Mexico

As we drove across the New Mexico/West Texas border at twilight, I caught the last glimpses of the magnificent mythical American desert. The trip was also my first introduction to US truck stop culture, complete with cheap showers and sleeping in parking lots. I will never forget my first return Texas meal at a West Texas truck stop restaurant.

Goodbye New Mexico

Hello Texas!

Houston - a place that refuses to get worse as I go back, but only better, more welcoming, more relaxing, more active. I wrote down my grandfather and father's life stories - these are men whom I disagree with on many things but their presence in my life is enriching. Austin - a few days of sunny catching up with an old friend and future travelling companion. The people I saw, the way I saw them, was exactly as what it was supposed to be and I was healed of much past trauma.

Renaissance Festival near Austin

Brother at The Orange Show, Southeast Houston

East Side Social Center bookstore and library, Houston

The night I landed back in California, instead of spending every moment I could with my family, I ended up in a screaming argument in the middle of the Mission District. But sometimes even the most interesting people need to be cut from life, if they are bent on destroying themselves and those around them. Back at the goat farm where a friend worked, with my family in tow, we milked goats, sheep, saw more than one placenta-covered hooved baby in the straw and indulged in deliciousness. I slept in my friend's trailer that night, we reminisced on where we came from, where we are and where we might be going. And then the bus took me to SFO airport and I was again flying far far away.

Even during those spacious 6 weeks, how many missed opportunities for real connections? How many conversations cut short for no reason? How many times I could have listened instead of talked and if I talked, only to ask questions? How many times I valued fleeting acquaintances over my own blood? Yet many said I was much better and I spread positive energy. Many people hugged me, many people enjoyed dancing and one-on-one adventures.

April 15,  I woke up in Korea again. Only to find out that the Boston Marathon was bombed. And so would start yet another series of tragic events all across the US, over which I could only hope to tear my hair out through the intangible Internet. What I wanted instead was to be there holding people, physically and emotionally, as we grieved and shouted and fought together.

I still want that and I wouldn't mind having it right now. But my new southwestern Korean life has taken some beautiful turns of its own.

Learning to Breathe on Jeju, Part I

January 5-7, 2013 
Seoul - Jeju

I'm lying on a tattoo artist's couch in Seoul. Next to me, the only female artist in the studio is tattooing a huge and painful-looking flower pattern on another Western woman's ribcage. She is wincing and nearly crying. Me, I'm just getting my long-awaited sailboat with "you come in on your own and you leave on your own" in a circle around it. A new marking, new memory for a new year.

At the Silim jimjilbang, I can't go into the baths because of the new ink. But I'm able to give instructions to some Singapore tourists. Never thought that would happen. At the lockers, I meet two Western female university students - it takes me too long to realize they are Moonies. Strange encounters. I sleep soundly. The KTX train to Mokpo the next morning doesn't seem too long. There is still snow on the ground all over Korea.

I enjoy the time with my friends and suddenly realize I'm travelling again. I'm ready to go to Jeju for the second time, 5 months down the road. I board the ferry from Mokpo and begin to conjure up the same feelings of adventure I had going last time. I spend as much time as I can to handle the stares and wind on the roof of the boat. Some college kids from Jeonju ask for their photos taken, but otherwise, it's a noneventful 4.5 hours. Grey. Windy. Chilly. Peaceful. Bikeless.

Sunrise From Mokpo - Jeju Ferry

Goodbye For Now Mokpo

Pink Dolphin Jeju Ferry Fins

Hello Jeju City

As Jeju City comes into sight again through the distant fog, I'm wondering about what magic this nearly 4 weeks will bring. Four weeks - that's a long time. The taxi driver from the ferry is friendly and tells me all about the biggest cities in the world, Jeju being one of the smaller ones. The people of this island are some of the best I've ever met.  I'm loaded down with luggage and it takes me a while to catch the right bus from Jeju City Hall to Susan-ri, where I'll be spending the next 2 weeks as a WWOOFer at Mulme Healing Farm.

The city seems endless, but finally I realize the bus is nearly empty save for a few farmer ladies. The Jeju countryside appears out of nowhere. The bus comes to a final stop and Susan-ri it is. I walk west up the hill, passing a field of lovely greens. I stop to look, to listen, to feel. The world is full of noise, but less so in the country. Birds and near silence. Another bend in the road and finally there are the totem poles. They surround a quiet guesthouse, which says WWOOF but it's actually the big orange house next door. A gray calmness in the late afternoon. I have arrived.

Greg, the American farm manager and friend of Yang Heejern the farmer, tells me I missed the big crowd. A Korean from Busan had brought students from her nature school to learn primitive bamboo firemaking, gathered in the forest near Mulme. My timing is never quite right, but I believe that things happen as they happen. I will meet them sometime in the future.

I didn't expect to see a second WWOOFer, but I'm somehow also not surprised to see Ben, an American traveller I met at Hansol Farm's December Hankyoreh newspaper report day. Heejern the farmer and meditation master makes a brief appearance, but takes off back to his house in the city. This would be the trend for the remainder of my time at Mulme. No matter, his presence is somehow felt even in its absence.

It's a Monday evening, the sun is beginning to set, we have no work until the morning. So what is there to do? Run from the guesthouse to the tangerine farm, of course. I'm not a runner and I don't enjoy the temporal experience very much - the actual experience of having a body. But I know that our bodies are meant to be used and not for sitting on chairs and desks all day long. As the colors spread out across the sky, I'm feeling the rush of the mild Jeju winter's country air.

Jeju Field of Greens

Glowing Tangerines

I had just finished reading Derrick Jensen's "The Culture of Make Believe" and as we ran, the conversation naturally drifted to the destructiveness of civilization. Greg and I agreed on a lot of things, but Ben provided more balance. By the time we got to the farm, the locked gate wouldn't open and we slowly headed back to the house, with the promise of fresh tangering picking looming in the morning.

When people move from the artificial city clock time to country time, our bodies often seem to adapt to the rhythm of the sun. Early to bed, early to rise. Greg made us dinner, and I knew I would be eating more meat during this stay than I hoped. When working hard, food is food I guess. The guesthouse was heated by copious amounts of chopped wood in the stove and this made for a smoky hot shower. And yet a not-so-warm night.

I am ready to start breathing.

Jeju Winter Sunset

Tracing My Roots - Inspired by Korea, Part 2

When my friend in Texas recently told me she wanted to take the Transsiberian railroad trip starting spring 2014, it sounded like the perfect opportunity to visit the motherland. The seeds for the journey had already sprouted.

This past weekend, instead of firemaking, I called up a Korean friend that I had met by chance (magic?) and travelled to where she lives, one of the better cities, Chuncheon. It wasn't random - I was finally picking up a guitar! She was working the afternoon-evening shift both days, but first we met for spicy Mexican food. 

My friend encouraged me to visit an art gallery while she was at work. Sadly, I couldn't find it the first day and so I wandered around the increasingly cold city, which although nice, is still a city. Once I got my hands on the guitar, I was happy to just sit inside the warm apartment and listen and watch my fingers making sounds. She got back from work with three of her girl friends from high school visiting from Seoul and we all squeezed in together. Over drinks, late night snacks and endless music videos until the wee hours of the morning and the next day, we also discussed both of our future travel plans. She tells me she is endlessly surprised at foreigners' positive reactions to Korea and how many interesting people and places I've been able to find. I showed her my most recent magic Internet find, a book written by a Korean woman raising her daughters in nature by herself. For her, it is almost time to take off for Western shores again and learn farming and nature in Europe. I was happy to share Jo's blog with its wealth of information. 

When I first arrived, almost immediately, she told me about her recent visit to an art space not far from her place, called '야생 갤러리' which means 'Wild Gallery.' As she told me the story, I almost couldn't believe what I was hearing. An established Korean wildlife documentary filmmaker and photographer, who teaches part time at Kangwon National University where my friend has gone to school, runs this small space in Chuncheon. But that's not even the half of it. 최기순 Choi Ki-sun has been working in the Russian wilderness for 15 years, documenting wild animal life, particularly amur leopards, bears and tigers. He also owns a property in Hongcheon, outside of Chuncheon, where Korean students and nature lovers come to stay.

Finally, on Sunday, before we parted ways she gave me his phone number. "I remember - he is not here now," she said. "He is in Seoraksan looking for a cat." Wow, said my brain and probably my face. So I finally found 야생 갤러리.

And then, after a couple of days of text messaging in which I foolishly pretended I could speak Korean, 최기순 drove to meet me in Sabuk on his way to work in Taebaksan. After a brief misunderstanding, we ended up meeting for nearly 4 hours. In broken Russian and Korean, he showed me endless photos of his work in Russia. He has followed a family of amur leopards for 10 years, a nearly extinct species. With some rangers, he has taken care of orphaned bear cubs for 2 years, nursing and sheltering them before letting them back out into the wild.

His eyes were bloodshot from fatigue, from staying in a dugout cave in the snow near Seoraksan and Inje, on the watch for wildlife. He would be working more in the next days and soon going back to Russia to shoot more footage. After years of work in broadcasting, he hopes to make a full-length film for showing in theaters. The Russian word for wildlife photography is "foto ohota" which literally means photo hunt. Though I don't want to make light of serious work, I can't help but think of this well-loved cartoon from my parents' generation.

When he is not living and trekking in the wilderness, 최기순 is teaching at the university and putting his heart into the Hongcheon center, which he named 까르 돈 'cardon' after the Russian name for the special house where the natural preserve guards live. His partner, an American musician who is also an English teacher in Korea, now helps run the center, which flourishes in the summer with students and visitors.

When he showed me his work, I felt no sense of bragging or showing off. Only 100% laser-sharp focus on his passion and sharing it with the world. The leopards, bears and tigers' eyes seem as though they are looking through at your soul in the photos and videos. Between his trips to Russia, I was so fortunate to have a chance to meet this person. When I told him I was interested in having land and building a community somewhere, maybe Korea, he immediately said 'no! buy land in Russia, there's so much wild beauty!'

So from seeing these photos, I am really hoping I can see at least a few of these places next year. Vladivostok and Kamchatka, for a start. Maybe I won't get close to the animals, but I can at least get close to the land.

The journey continues.

Tracing My Roots - Inspired By Korea

In just one short year in an ever-modernizing South Korea, I have seen commonplace things that are remarkable to my American eyes. Boyfriends, girlfriends, husbands, wives are often together but hardly touch. Instead, girl friends hold hands and link arms. Boy friends sit on each other's laps with their arms around the other's waist. Young mothers to old grandmothers strap babies to their backs, holding them securely as they stroll through the neighborhood. In public, fathers cuddle their little sons and daughters as they sleep. Mothers, sisters, daughters, girl friends shower, bathe and steam naked together, scrubbing each other and chatting away about their everyday lives. (Probably similar on the male side). Families and groups of friends and coworkers dig into communal plates for their meals, no matter whose chopsticks or spoon or lips have touched the food. If it is a restaurant, there is no question that the older or senior person will pay for the meal. So normal. So natural.

Why is this is so striking to me? I was born in Russia, but I was raised in the United States. I have spent most of my short life in a culture that at its best is open, friendly, and fiercely independent. At its worst, American culture - especially in The City - is isolating, alienating, devoid of communal feeling or solidarity with those around us. Families live divided and far apart, friends have time to text and instant message but are too busy to meet for a drink, aging sickly parents and grandparents are put away in retirement homes, out of sight and out of mind. We barely exchange words with the next-door neighbor with whom we share a wall. Touching people of the same sex means you're gay or creepy. Family members overly touching children, especially naked children, raises eyebrows. Everybody needs their own personal space. We are afraid of making a commitment.

So what do we do? If we are alternative-minded, we try our best to recreate the communal structure that we so yearn for but have grown up without. Those who identify as women organize special circles to discuss our struggles, our hopes, our dreams, our triumphs. We choose our friends to be our family in collective houses. We cook, eat and do chores together. We try to support each other in our individual pursuits while also working for common causes. We work to be honest and transparent in our romantic and sexual partnerships.

People who value freedom may say that having no rules is a virtue. Relationships are naturally rife with uncertainty and complications. But after spending time in a culture with an unwritten social order, where everyone knows their place - I have come to see this flip side as a kind of liberation and a blessing. As opposed to the West, where laws seem to govern just about every part of our lives and we are encouraged to police one other, Koreans are brought up with certain implicit behavior codes. This is the only place I have lived where people routinely leave their personal belongings in a public place - train, bus, cafe, restaurant, movie theather - and don't worry about it getting stolen. People look out for each other and help each other because it's the right thing to do.

***

In the fall, I wrote this in an email to a friend back home:

Being in Korea, a land where people have roots going back thousands of years, who are descended from the flesh and blood of early nomads, villagers, farmers. Most of us in Amerika don't know this meaning of identity, of truly belonging to a piece of land instead of owning it. Amerika committed a great crime by systematically erasing people whose identity was bound up with the forests, mountains, rivers, valleys of this land.

But as you say, we have paid the price for our freedom. We have paid with our psyches, with the violence, seen, heard, felt, that we inflict on ourselves, on each other, on our surroundings in a desperate attempt to own and to control that which is just outside of our grasp - belonging.

After a year here, I have become determined to see if going back to Russia and tracing my family history will help me become a whole person. My family comes from the city and they were blue and white collar workers, whatever that means in Soviet times. But what secrets may lie within these intertwining stories? What kinds of things are hidden in the past that may help me understand who I am today and where I may be going? From Moscow, to Moldova, Ukraine, Belarussia, Siberia, all scattered across the great Eurasian continent, what kinds of men and women were my ancestors? What paths led them to create an evolving family tree? What were their passions, their skills, their hopes and dreams?

I know longer want to be a rootless creature with no attachment to the land. I want to know the place from where my life has its roots. So, in 2014, after my second year in Korea finishes, I plan to take the Transsiberian railroad from China and Mongolia to my true motherland. I want to visit villages, farms and forests. I want to see and ache for the disparity between the crumbling countryside and the gleaming cities.

I want to unlock the doors. More to come...

[Jan. 2, 2026 Note] For some reason, this journey did not happen in 2014 but in the summer of 2017, and it was very different from how it was described here. Here are the photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/26711227@N06/albums/72157686008021722/

How the City Became the Illusion and Nature Became the Reality, Part 2

December 2010

A cold winter night in the 5-story Lille house. I'm trying to sleep. In the morning, I'm taking the train to Paris. From there, I fly to Athens. Greece, the land of riots and possibly the end of civilization. All I know is, it must be less cold than the air in here.

I'm trying to sleep. It must be 3 a.m. But above me, there is clanging. There is stomping on the old creaky floor. My housemate is packing to go stay with a woman he doesn't know but thinks he loves, in some snowy remote corner of Western France. I can't stand it. I want to get up and shout, to bang on his door and tell him to stop being an asshole.

But I stay put in my bed, quietly seething. I'm trying to sleep. From somewhere in the distance, I hear music. Cocteau Twins? Elisabeth Fraser, 'the voice of God?' Do I have my music on? I get up and follow the sound. It gets closer. Light slowly filters through the room. I walk through my door into the light.

I seem to pass through the door directly onto the tree in the garden. The big, beautiful live-giving tree. The one in the eastern corner of the impossibly high garden wall. The wall that keeps out everything but birds and cats. How did I get so high up in this tree, sitting with my legs swinging down from this huge branch? It must be summertime. I'm wearing my red dress.

Something compels me to turn my head slowly to the west. It seems that my room has been transplanted outside to the garden. There is my bed, right in the same corner that it should be. Only it's not a bed. It seems that my bed has fallen through a hole of its same size and shape in the ground, leaving what looks like a grave.

I never climb down from the tree, and I can't feel the ground but I am approaching the bed. I'm so close. Almost there. It's right before me, ready for me to lay down to sleep again. Suddenly, an intense, split-second spasm of dread goes through my body, up to my brain. And then my body is no longer my own. After dread and fear comes total liberation. In my red dress, I can almost see myself as I am stretched out and lifted from the grass. Suspended in the air, hovering next to the bed in the ground, I feel for the first time what it must mean to be free.

From answering the call of the music, to floating in the garden, the whole thing lasts no more than 15 seconds.

And then I wake up.

What happened? Where did I go? I go back to sleep and in the morning, I am still the same.

Or am I?

Summer 2011

Greece had struck such a chord from the first visit, even though most of what I saw was the sprawling Athens metropolis. I sat on four hilltops and from way up high, I saw a city sprouting like a concrete forest. When the ancient Greeks looked down from these hilltops, what did they see?

There is more to Greece than this. I knew I wanted to go there for my first WWOOF stay, three weeks of Greek mountain magic.

Seeds. Oak trees. The Rhodope Mountains. An old woman on the porch. A dog following me on my bike ride through the woods. A tiny monastery. Coffee shop conversations. An ancient Christian ceremony of dancing barefoot on coals. A bike group riding from London to Palestine.

This was my first extended stay in a small town and natural place. Sandwiched between two short stops in the northern, second-largest city Thessaloniki. Bursting with revolution, people camping out at the harbor, a several story squat on the main street near the train station, an anarchist free school.

Going from the endless mountain expanse to the city feels like being trapped back under a snow globe. Someone is shaking us to make us move. We are not in control, it moves whether we want to or not.

But during a Saturday morning service at the monastery, the dream came back. Only I wasn't sleeping. The flash light as I stood with the sun streaming through the windows told me that the East, Korea was where I had to go next. There would be something awaiting me there, if I only answered the call.

And so I did.

Houston, August 2011 - February 2012

Worn out from travel and needing a space and a job before Korea, I put myself squarely back under the snow globe. The longer I stayed there, the less certain I became of the future. Would I stay here and engage with the radical community, living collectively, gardening, cycling, never being cold?

I worked a crappy job. I struggled with family relationships. I strugged with other interpersonal relationships. I developed new friendships. I read books. I had long bike rides. I danced to live music. I learned to appreciate Houston.

Korea, February 2012 - Present

I came to Korea because I wanted to explore Eastern culture and find inner peace. WWOOF Korea, living in the mountains, Jeju Island, meditation and most importantly, the people I've met every step of the way have put me back on a path that is no longer so easily reversible.

Suspended in the air, hovering next to the bed in the ground, I feel for the first time what it must mean to be free.

Keeping Warm and Bright in Korean Winter

As the days got colder and darker and as my students became increasingly more focused on their tests and absolutely nothing else, the weekends were still interesting. While the anti naval base peace march finally reached Seoul the first weekend of November, the friend I had made in the high school invited me on a very interesting trip. The remains of the Baekje dynasty, which ruled Korea before the Silla dynasty are headquartered in Chungcheonnamdo province. The towns of Gongju, Buyeo and Nonsan comprise the Baekje legacy and we spent one night and two days exploring. It was such a privilege to be a part of this group, my friend, her brother and his wife and their friends from university days in Chuncheon. It's not every day you get to experience a truly Korean tour like this and to be the odd foreigner, but in a good way. These are progressive teachers, mostly, so political discussions abounded and it's too bad my Korean is still not enough to keep up. Someday.

Persimmon season is a beautiful part of the fall in Korea, the orange fruit hanging from so many trees. Eating is actually less exciting than just seeing it everywhere. And the lush leafy colors, no less than New England. We saw the Baekje king's tomb and slept in a pension that used to be the army general's headquarters. The Gongju fortress is like a mini Great Wall of China.

I felt a lot of positive energy that weekend, like I was connecting with interesting adults and being treated with a lot of genuine curiosity and respect, as I think I stayed on my best behavior. I observed a lot of closeness among Korean couples and a group of friends - really beautiful and harmonious relationships, at least from the outside. No one asked me about my relationship status, which usually always happens, but I wonder if it isn't because my friend is an older single woman. Overall, it was lovely to actually learn more about Korean history in this kind of atmosphere.

Despite everything, I want to say that I straight up hate November. Some people may have a different view. It is always the most difficult month for me wherever I am. The sun sets so early, it's so cold I don't want to be outside and the atmosphere is just dark and dreary. The answer? More farming! I believe it was a record four weekends in a row of WWOOF Korea trips to break the monotony of endless deskwarming and early winter blues.

Temple in Buyeo

Nonsan pension party

Colorful Buyeo

Looking into Baekjae king's tomb

Ganghwado - this island off the coast of Incheon (where the airport is) is really cool and someday I want to explore more. We were (still) dressed in light shirts for a lively romp through the fields at Refuge Weekend Farm. Naturally farmed soybeans and cabbage the size of small children were slung in the afternoon sun. So many interesting islands in Korea, each with its own village community and culture, away from the big city. I love it. Back in Seoul, we mused on how best to expand WWOOF Korea without commercializing and I was once again filled with positive energy for the future.

The next two weeks, I was really feeling melancholy so experimenting with planting omija and grapes at the old Hansol Farm in Namyangju was a great detractor. Students came to interview us - more interest for WWOOF Korea and discussions on how to get more young Koreans involved. I also love the peaceful atmosphere in Namyangju, despite the dam and somewhat corny tourism surrounding the organic farming tourism. I look forward to the 2013 Slow Food Korea Conference, which will include guests from Oceania countries. Wonderful people involved in all these projects.

I enjoyed the first weekend of December the most, when a journalist from Hankyoreh - Korea's first progressive newspaper founded in the 1980s - came to work with and interview us at Hansol. It was a bright and shiny day, lots of new faces and new future ideas on the farm that day. And stoked to be in the news story (only in Korean). Farming with a journalist and talking about why I do this and why I like being physically active outside instead of sitting at a desk - that's the best of my life right now.

The rest of December and beginning of January was truly the coldest month ever and it was full of Gangwondo partying and end-of-year wrap-up, including a nice get together with teachers and a Korean friend in Chuncheon. Peaceful but fun and full of positive energy for the future it was, as I hope 2013 will be.

The year has started with a second trek down to Jeju Island - the topic of the next post.

How The City Became the Illusion and Nature Became the Reality

I never lived in the "country." My family is from Moscow. Some Russians have a dacha, a vacation country house. I'm not sure of the number and I don't think it's only wealthy people. I've always heard about it and have extremely vague memories, or at least photos, of myself bathing outside at a family dacha as a baby and toddler.

But that's just a "vacation." The full time "real" life is Moscow, where in the past the amount of cars on the road today was unimaginable. People lived by the metro and with their feet. Once the Soviet machine started grinding down, "Western" life seeped in and nowadays materialism has the city firmly within its grasp. As so often happens after a stint with the devastation of war, food shortages and state economic repression. In Korea, as well.

When my family first left the motherland, we moved West to the Rockies. Surrounded by mountains, I took them for granted. Then, because of lovely oil, we spent my middle and high school years in the Texas suburbs, a mushrooming landscape of cookie-cutter houses and lawns and strip malls that slowly but surely kills the rural community that used to be there. In high school, each drive across 3 massive highways to the heart of the museum district and downtown was like a pilgrimage to the light outside of the tunnel. The city was everything I ever wanted. I applied to Columbia because it was in New York, the fabled center of everything. I ended up living in Boston and then Lille, wonderful lively places that I would go back to again in a heartbeat. Over time, I began to eat fresh food and visit the places where it was produced. And made a movie about one of those places. And so began the re-awakening.

And now I've reached a point where something deep inside of me wants nothing to do with the city. Despite the art shows, basement shows, social centers, collective houses, bike rides, farmer's markets and bridges over water, in the city I feel less than human. I am missing an invisible layer of skin. The separation from nature makes me a monster, someone who cannot even relate to and communicate well with other people. I care about sexual and gender politics and worker's rights and collective living and dumpster diving but even more, I have come to care about working outside with the soil and letting nature teach me things that "society" has never done.

I've only begun. Last year, in Greece, I began answering the call of the night dream I had in Lille that told me to find my home in nature. In Houston, I sought out the community gardens where the din of the busy streets was outside these havens. And now, in Korea, I am beginning to dig really deep.

Jeungsan area, on the way to Hambaek, Gangwondo summer bike ride near Sabuk

I know next to nothing. The more I try to grow small vegetables, volunteer in big fields, read on farming, primitivism, eating well and its relationship to radical politics, the more big and complicated everything seems. It's complicated because for 20 + years my brain has been filled with only the things I've learned in confined classrooms, sitting at confined desks. Even at the university level, my classes and film internships were based on facts and figures and computer screens and enclosed walls. The process of unlearning and learning annew is more entrenched, requires far more engagement and openness than formal "education." So does the process of creating vibrant natural, rural communities when so much of the young, energetic excitement is clustered within the urban walls. But it's happening and will continue to happen.

I say this as someone from privilege beyond most people's wildest imagination. I am a white upper middle class American from an immigrant family that has, by and large, achieved the "dream." I've had access to the best education money can buy. I have never wanted for anything or even had to work that hard. (Oh, also I am cis and hetero). They gave me and others so much privilege for the price of our real freedom. While we still have nature on Earth, still have people clamoring for an end to madness, I intend to take the privilege to be here, now, doing what I can for as long as I can. There will be failures. And I will probably still return to the city again and again. But I'd rather fail on the road to reality than stumbling to chase a bygone illusion.

***

WWOOF Korea photo. My dirty grape gloves.

WWOOF Korea photo. Us in the sun.

October was a month close(r) to home, including two trips to Handemy Village - a Korean ecovillage! - in the mountains of beautiful Danyang, not far from Guinsa. I got over my Guinsa mishaps quick as 13 of us finished off grape picking season for our October group WWOOF.

I really enjoyed this place, even for just two days. So much that I went back 2 weeks later to volunteer for the first English camp. Best of all, it was a Halloween theme camp, complete with carved pumpkins, a treasure hunt and painted faces. These elementary and middle school kids are great - full of energy, though still often tired from so much activity.

The story of Handemy is that several years ago, the founder revived the school that was to be shut down in the area and renovated this traditional village. There are still regular Korean families living on the grounds, but now it's also a place where children learn in the classroom and out in the fields and WWOOFers come from all over the world.

The next time I go there - hopefully for the next English camp! - I'll be sure to snap more shots. For now, suffice it to say that I was really inspired by the project and it made me feel - again - that Korea has so many amazing things going on right under our noses but not quite broadcast far and wide. Teaching kids language through farming - sounds like a great idea and it plays out well. There is a young Korean woman working there, who studied in the US and speaks English and Korean perfectly. She comes as a real asset to the kids and community in many ways. Living in the dorms with the loud, rambunctious Korean children can't be easy, but it seems that the unstructured and outdoors-focused life is very rewarding. For me, it would be a perfect gig. Just visiting, volunteering and enjoying the atmosphere is enough of a lovely experience for now, though.

 

Seoraksan Scenes. Photos by Hannah.

In between the Handemy trips was a second and triumphant trip up the northeastern Gangwon coast. We started with a low-key EPIK teacher/coteacher YangYang conference and ended with a beautiful weekend traipse through Sokcho and up Ulsanbawi peak at Seoraksan. This second Seoraksan visit,  during a weekend festival was absolutely mobbed with people. The fall colors were only just starting to turn and the daytime weather was absolutely gorgeous. Fall is prime hiking season in Korea, though I've noticed over time that its not quite as popular with younger people. A shame, too, because I love hiking. The seaside northernmost city of Sokcho proved to have many delights as well, from watching the fishermen at dusk, surrounded by all kinds of beautiful dead starfish, to the lively established North Korean refugee enclave.

The last weekend of October was one of the hundreds of local traditional festivals - Yang Yang Salmon Fest. I got there too late to catch a fish with my bare hands, but we all enjoyed eating it surrounded by Korean families immensely impressed with our American friend's salmon seasoning. We got massively lost trying to find a Halloween party in the woods so we ended up at a super expensive noraebang in Gangneung and a nice motel. The next day, we enjoyed the last of what can properly be called warm weather, around Gangneung and Jeongseon.

Yes, this was the last of single layer clothes. It was a good ride before winter.