Micro-Adventuring: Erosion Control & Arboretum

We've been doing "micro-adventures" as a family.  We're living in Korea (this still shocks me sometimes, and I shout like a hysteric goat "I LIVE IN KOREA! HA HA HA!") but as the semester goes on, our schedules and general weariness keep us pinned to this mountain-top campus.  Which is a lovely place, to be sure, but still.  If I do not regularly get off campus and explore the world, this is what I write to friends about my daily life: "I like to sit with my q-tips and a little bowl of rubbing alcohol (1000 won at any Korean pharmacy) and hunt/destroy the tiny spider mites on my plants. Quite satisfying. I need my reading glasses, though, which kind of ruins the warrior woman feeling. " Hmm.  Definitely time to get off campus.

A couple of weekends ago I managed to wrangle not one but TWO micro-adventures out of the family. On Saturday, we went "on an easy hike," as I advertised to the children.  It's just twenty minutes away, I said.  And we can pack snacks and pop, I said.  My standards for ethical persuasion have perhaps tapered off some.  But away we drove, north to to the Erosion Control Memorial Park (you can perhaps see why I didn't share this enthusiasm-numbing detail with the kids) which quietly boasts miles kilometers of paved paths, sneaky opportunities for geo-political education, and plentiful places for David to break his arm again.  (Is it sad we're at the place in life where the likelihood of yet another broken bone doesn't even raise my heart rate?)

We had a lovely afternoon together. David, predictably, bounced off walls and threw stuff at very patient frogs; I sniffed at flowers; Nick pondered the political clout behind the massive earth-shaping forces characterizing this region's recent decades; Elisabeth happily caromed among us, our never-resting butterfly (who might possibly have some teensy claws when provoked).

Cast Iron Cow With Man. And Elisabeth.

David climbing a stone tower.
Note the spot high on the hillside behind him, where (fake) workers demonstrate erosion control work.

Why, look!  An extra person on the hillside, learning some erosion control measures.
Ah, David.

American hikers (us) = casual.
Korean hikers = in Regulation Hiking Gear (available at hundreds of shops in town).
We could not explain why the blue-jacketed, be-gloved woman kept checking her rear end.

After a couple of hours, we went to The Love Boat (I kid you not), a "ship" next to the ocean that we've often driven past and wondered about.  Today we stopped, thanks to a friend's tip that the place was not a seedy "love motel" nor a restaurant of deep-sea creatures waiting to be selected and ravished with chopsticks.  Actually, we had a very good pizza and bowls of pickles (because that's what Koreans serve with pizza.  Always.) as we admired the ocean view. 

Ponds and boardwalks at the Erosion Control Park, just across the street from
the Love Boat restaurant and the East Sea.

The next day, none of us had any obligations at church, and it was such a beautiful day, and I so loved our previous day's adventure that I...wheedled.  And it WORKED!!!  North we drove to the Gyeongsangbukdo Arboretum, for which we'd seen signs in the past but had never visited.  (For the uninitiated, Gyeongsang = our province; buk-do means north).  We finally found it along an extremely winding road up steep wooded mountainsides that reminded us greatly of the Black Hills or the Smoky Mountains. We sagely commented upon the various erosion control techniques, including terracing, nets, and big fences to keep most of the falling rocks corralled off-road.

The map's winding road was not even close to the reality.

Have I mentioned that both the ECM Park and the Arboretum are completely free?  I love that Korea values culture and education so much that places like these are completely subsidized. (America: are you listening?)

David is already tired.

The Arboretum's small visitor center had your classic pinned butterflies and dioramas, but also some surprises.  

Lots of clever insect carvings on the wall - far larger than life-sized.

The visitor's center display of a native warthog and her babies was darn intimidating.
We've heard rumors of these creatures in the woods around campus but haven't seen them.

Close up, however, it seemed that mama warthog's nose had seen better days.   

Carved 8-feet tall herons guarded the doors to the visitor's center.

View from the visitor's center.

Along the shady trail we walked, enjoying conversations among the labeled trees and flowers. Elisabeth and I took one path and the menfolk took one parallel to us, confident we'd meet soon. After far too long, however, the women stopped at a map, trying to figure out where we were (the numerous red dots with Korean labels didn't tell us much).  In stilted Korean, I asked a pair of men hikers where we might be on the map.  They pointed to the series of red dots (um, yes, I'd seen those) and asked where we were from.  Um.  Not sure of the right answer in this case - the US? Pohang?  the Visitor's Center?  I went with Pohang, but that resulted in a puzzled face and a question whether E was my daughter.  Nay. (Which is Korean for "yes," of course, unless you're trying to vote at our international church's council meeting in which case no one is quite sure if "nay" means Korean yes or Scottish-American no.)  In stilted English, Hiking Men asked our goal. For hiking? Um, we're just walking. And with that, they left us, not a whit wiser as to our location.  Being a foreigner is exhausting sometimes. 

We turned along a trail we thought might just meet up with our own menfolk, and I asked a passing Korean dad with two little boys if he'd seen doo-myeong way-gook-en (two foreigners) and, nay, he had! And then he kept going before we could work up to deep topics like "where?"  It makes one want to sigh deeply and beat one's head against a solid surface.  But down the trail we continued, coming upon a mountain-top view with a pagoda (of course) and, happily, our menfolks (who claimed to have called for us).  

Korean scenic view centers are uniformly gorgeous.

Scary tiger mouths ring the second floor of the pagoda.

Elegantly designed lamp along the trail.

Even amid the grand vistas and intricate workmanship, what grabbed my heart at the arboretum (of which we maybe saw only 10% before declaring picnic time) was this lovely butterfly on some humble clover (what Iowa farm folks like to classify as "ditch weed"). This little spot reminded me of childhood, of sucking the tiny drops of sweet nectar from the purple flowers and chasing butterflies around the backyard with my sister.  Home.