Mount Halla Back Girl

There it was – glorious Halla Mountain … spread out before us on a chilly, overcast morning. All 2000 or so metres of her (the highest peak in Korea). And my brain was not letting me forget about the staff party from the night before – the inside of my skull was as cloudy as the skies above.

I left off having arrived on Jeju Island, Korea. I would be a chaperone on a school trip with approximately 350 grade 10 Technical High School students. On the first morning of the trip I faced an intimidating task – my first attempt at scaling a peak.

My mood was lightened by the t-shirts of my students:

“Marc Jacobs & Robert Duffy would like to say LOS ANGELES for getting naked”.

“Why is the woman getting tired”?

“I detest the thought of speaking English, but I want it all over every t-shirt I own.”

The Hallasan hike was a marathon: 4 hours of pain straight up, straight across, and then straight down. At 2000 metres the sky that we were now in disappeared, replaced by dense fog and punishing wind. I could only imagine what the narrator from Arirang TV’s ”On the Road” might have said about this scene:

The smoky, whispy clouds seemed to dance against the harsh mountain backdrop… players in a delirious Shakespearean drama. I couldn’t help but be swallowed up by its endless, infinite tranquility and splendour. My eyes, unable to comprehend the bountiful beauty before them, almost turned to gold. I realized once again that on the first day, God created Korea.

Man staring at mountain: As menacing … as the iron fist … of Zeus.