Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Back on the Baekdudaegan

After a rather trying flight in which Liz discovered that airplane food leads to airsickness, we arrived in Korea to the smiling face of Liz's Incheon emo. There is a new bridge that seems to span about 20 miles of ocean between the airport and our aunt's house cutting the drive time between the airport and her house more than in half. You would understand what a joyous discovery this was if you ever spent more than five minutes in the van with our aunt driving. We went straight to bed, got up early the next day, did a little grocery shopping, had a fun tour of Korea's back roads and in less than 24 hours of arriving in Korea we were back on the trail.

Oddly - it's three years later, but it's like we never stepped off the trail. No more than one hundred yards after leaving the road, an overwhelming sensation of familiarity set in. The feeling of walking along a ridge with the terrain dropping off to either side of the narrow footpath at your feet becomes engrained while walking the Baekdudaegan. We only hiked a couple of hours that day, but everything felt like a familiar rhythm - the flora, the trail, the steady up then back down, looking for a campsite, and looking for water.

We fell asleep to cool breezes and the sound of locusts (and this crazy ground bird that haunts us at night). We awoke the next morning to dense fog. The next four days of hiking are easily described as such: It rained. We hiked up. We hiked down. We put our tent up in the rain and hid. We took our tent down in the rain and hiked some more.

Luckily we came down from the ridge and it stopped raining, although looking up at the ridge from town we think it might still be raining up there! Hot showers and hot Korean meals never felt so good.

Back in the saddle! We'll post pictures next time we're back in town!

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