fires at midnight

I've spoken at length about this topic before, and I don't intend to repeat myself. But I'm going to say a few words in defense of my friend Jethro. 

Jethro Tull, that is.

I just downloaded their 1977 album Songs from the Wood from iTunes, and it is glorious.

Time was, I'd go to a music store (say Barnes & Noble, or Best Buy when they still had CDs). I'd pick a band I liked and listen to a few of the sample tunes on the provided headphones. If I found an album that had at least two songs I loved right away, I'd buy the album, take it home, and listen to it all the way through. Usually, on the second or third play-through, I'd start finding other tunes that I liked. Five or six of them, usually. Maybe I wouldn't like them as much as the original pair that had caught my ear, but they'd still be listenable. Customarily there'd be one or two tracks that I just couldn't stand, and I'd always skip over them on subsequent play-throughs.

I knew I had a winner in Songs from the Wood when every single solitary track tickled the pleasure centers in my brain. Every one. I've already gushed about this on Facebook, but every song on that album is a gem, unique and mellifluous and utterly addictive. It's only ten tracks, including the bonus items, but I've never spent $9.99 more wisely. I just can't get enough of that wonderful, wacky bard Ian Anderson and his restless flute. I was already familiar with the title track and "The Whistler," but they withstand the test of time. My particular favorites from the album are "Jack in the Green," "Cup of Wonder," "Fire at Midnight," and "Beltane."

"Fire at Midnight" is a particular love of mine due to its evocative lyrics. Listening to it, you can just feel the damp chill outside the door of your cottage, the warm crackle of the fire, the rich gold of the hot toddy on the mantlepiece, the soft rugs and wood floor beneath your feet. It just makes you think of cold spring nights and mist and quiet evenings and cheery conversations and delicious drinks and all the lovely intangibles that go with them.

Oh yes. I believe in fires at midnight. Here, I'll show you:

Yes, I added text to this picture, but the original image isn't mine. Boo-yah.

If you want my advice, go to YouTube (or better yet, iTunes) and look up that song. "Fire at Midnight" by Jethro Tull. Give it a listen. Click on the image I've provided (to expand it to full size) and stare at it while the music plays. You'll wonder why all your day's stress just vanished in smoke. I dare you not to make yourself a hot toddy or go stargazing or pen a few romantic verses afterward.

Double-dare you.

Day Six: Jeju

Trust Lonely Planet, not the blogsphere. That was the lesson I learned today (one of them, anyway).

According to the blog I read about Jirisan National Park in Gyeongsangnam-do, the trail Jeff and I would be hiking could be completed in six hours. Ha-ha. Yeah, maybe if you were Jesse Ventura and had quads the size of beer kegs. We didn't exactly dawdle and we still didn't make it up the mountain before sunset, even factoring in delays.

However, my hike on Hallasan today was everything the Jirisan hike should've been. Less, in fact. My Lonely Planet guide said that the trails I'd be hiking (Eorimok, 4.5 hours, and Yeongsil, 1.5 hours) would take no more than six hours, tops (as you no doubt deduced just now). I did it in four, and that's including all the breaks I took, and about ten minutes of backtracking when I tried to find an informational placard and get the name of an oreum off of it.

What's an oreum, you ask?

Well, that's the Korean word for "parasitic lava cone." Short and sweet, ain't it?

There are dozens of them scattered all over Jeju, bigger'n Dallas. They have the look of stumpy volcanoes: they're basically overgrown hills with craters. They were created in the fiery genesis of the island itself, when subterranean lava tubes burst their boundaries and thrust upward out of the newborn ground, warping it like it was butter, or something. I didn't have time to hike all the way up to the main crater of Hallasan Mountain (Baengnokdam, elevation 1950 meters, highest peak in South Korea). So instead, I opted to do the shorter, easier hike up to Witseoreum, an oreum not far from Baengnokdam.

It was easy as pie to get to the trailhead, albeit roundabout. I took a bus to Jeju (as of yesterday I'd learned not to muck about in Jungmun) for 3,000 won; then got the bus to Eorimok Trail for another three grand. After a brisk walk uphill from the bus stop...

...I was at the trailhead.


Without further ado I plunged into the verdant undergrowth.


The first stage of the hike was rough. Reminiscent of Jiri, it was all uphill...nothing but rocky stairs. I was going directly up the mountainside. I don't understand why Koreans have this masochistic compulsion about staircases in the woods. It's freakin' annoying. I came to hike, not to climb stairs. If I wanted to burst my heart and rubberize my legs I'd just run a marathon or something. That's not to mention the sweat. I've never been that soaked. It was another muggy summer's day in Jeju, and under the trees there wasn't a whiff of a breeze. I was literally sopping. Sweat started running off my forehead and dripping off the brim of my hat as I climbed the undoubtedly scenic but seemingly endless staircase through the quiet, leafy, green deciduous forest. I counted myself lucky that the bus had thankfully dumped me off at 1,000 meters above sea level and that I only had another 700 to go (Witseoreum sits at 1714 meters).

After about 400 vertical meters and two horizontal kilometers, things finally improved. I got to the top, or at least the ridgeline. My mood, which had been battered to almost Jirisan-esque depths by the staircase, skyrocketed suddenly. I found myself on an easily-negotiable wooden boardwalk, in a humpy field of shrubs and green azalea bushes and stumpy Korean firs, flicked at by wisps of passing cloud.


Yep, we were right at cloud level, and the whole field was shrouded in fog. It was ethereal. I could see the fibrous underbellies of the clouds passing between me and the shrubbery all around. The air was marvelously cool and moist. It was like emerging from a heated battle into heaven itself. I wandered about in awe.

Then I reached the first spring, and my mood improved further. Ice-cold mountain spring water, imbibed from a metal dipper (and poured liberally over my sweaty head and handkerchief), did wonders for my mood. Immensely refreshed, I set back out upon the trail with renewed vigor.


As I trekked further, the sun broke through the clouds, and my sense of being in a heavenly wonderland only increased. It was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. I was walking, jumping from rock to rock, over rolling green pastures of plants and bushes and those small stumpy firs, hearing roe deer bark at each other in the distance, the towering white pillars of cumulus clouds looming overhead and reaching for the blue sky. It was worth the climb already.


The trail wound between peaks. As with all Korean trails I've been on, it wasn't so much a bare patch of ground as a more orderly tumble of rocks.


At times the fog lay thick everywhere; seconds later it would dissipate and reveal the meadow or valley I was climbing through; and then in an instant all would be misty again.


Eventually, I finished the ascent (little to my knowledge) and began working my way along the relatively level. The sun really began to shine and the scenery was...well, killer.


Several smaller volcanic formations dotted the landscape on the way. This was a long-extinct crater of some sort, I believe. I don't remember the name.


I never actually saw any roe deer, but I could hear them barking at each other, just out of sight along the moors and in gullies, and on faraway hillsides.

And gradually, the huge hump of Hallasan's summit came into view, so close and yet so far. My path would take me near it, but not up it. I would have to settle for a spectator's view. After wandering for a couple of kilometers through the Elysian paradise, I reached Witseoreum.



After taking a lunch break with some hot noodles and a chocolate pie (purchased from the shelter there), I headed out again...only this time down the shorter Yeongsil Trail, which led down the other side of the mountain. I paused for one final look back at the summit, then plunged down the trail. It was sublime.


Imagine wandering through a fir forest...


...or past sheer cliffs, over cloud-riddled ridges, hearing ethereal birdsong piping in the distance, and the wind creeping through the foliage all around.


It's impossible to describe.


You have to try it; you'll never go back to documentaries about the Scottish moors, that's for dang sure.

Lickety-split, it seemed, I was off the trail and in the Yeongsil parking lot. It was another 2.5 kilometers down to the bus stop, but what the hey; it was a nice day, so I walked it, humming and mentally composing this blog entry in my head.


I had to wait about half an hour for the bus (and wait among a whole crowd of noisy, smoking Korean university students)...and furthermore it was the bus to Jeju City. Ah. I didn't care. Another hour and a half on the bus gave me more time to unwind and reflect on the soul-airing experience I'd had. I got back to my room, took a nice bath, and got a pizza and some cheese sticks at I Want Pizza, a nice little pizza chain I've seen nowhere outside Jeju. I ate my dinner on the bank steps, had a beer at New York Bar (not much going on in there), then went back to my room and watched Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer with Korean subtitles. I don't care what anybody says, I think it was better than the original. You get to see the Four in action, and Doctor Doom, too.

Tomorrow's itinerary is simple: loaf around the whole day. I've earned it.