Islands, pt 2 : Silence, and the sky

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We were on a high promontory, an overlook called Mangkkeut that gave us a view over the water, pretty close to the same time as of day we had arrived 24 hours before, and we could see what was very likely the same ferry boat arriving on its regular schedule and pulling in to the pier at Hwangdungpo, the single community on the island, which we could see from this vantage was only two streets with another small one connecting them.   

The ferry we had come in on had carried three cement mixing trucks, a family SUV and two small fish transport trucks of the kind I’ve seen make deliveries to seafood restaurants in Seoul, and other boats and small ships carrying only freight could be seen over the large expanses of water all around. Despite the quiet and the seeming lack of movement in every direction as far as the eye could see, there was really quite a lot of activity going on, quite a lot of business and commerce.

From up here, you notice how the fishing-net pontoons array themselves not only in neat rows but also in rectangular segments, very similar to gardening plots. Most of the fishing – shellfish, primarily, but also various species of finned creatures – is done by the use of small traps and pulling nets up from the water into small engineless craft that appear big enough to hold no more than four people. Marker buoys and ropes embedded with floats designate separate plots assigned to different families, who draw lots each year so that the most productive ones get spread around. Much of the sea in these parts is relatively shallow, which explains the rather small size of the ferries (six vehicles is about the limit, I would think) and the high-voltage power lines marching off both to and away from the mainland told me this place was not unique, and there would be other places to explore if we ever decided to. Aside from the electricity, everything that could not be grown or caught from the water had to come in my these boats, which have to travel a specified route each time.

A while later I was looking to buy cigarettes and tried the door of a pharmacy, and found it locked up and deserted. An old halmoni cruising by with a basket of shellfish on her head told us the proprietors spend their days fishing this time of year, so we ought not expect them back until very late. We saw a couple of goats on tethers near the road, and it occurred to me that amongst the rocky terrain there did also exist places where food could be grown, yet looked as if it never had been tried – apparently people make so much money from the ocean that they don’t need to get their hands dirty by digging in the ground.

That afternoon on Bogildo, the sky was an unbroken expanse of azure, and in the evening, another dazzling sunset. The moon in half-phase came out from behind a bank of cumulo-stratus that had positioned themselves like shelves over a nearby mountain, and for at least ten minutes I watched a slow strobe-effect, bright to dark to bright again, as the descending sun popped in and out, the clouds becoming lacy and brightly-etched, like pieces of a puzzle visible only briefly before disappearing and bringing another into view.

I used to live in San Francisco, just four blocks from Ocean Beach, and when conditions seemed promising I’d walk those blocks in the early evening and let the salt wind into my hair, feel the fine bits of sand enter my clothes and the presence of the water in front of me, the enormity of it. The water below and the sky above had an effect on me that was both calming and enervating and at the same time incredibly stimulating, creating an intense awareness of the body and its connection to the outside world.

We spend the bulk of our lives, most of us, with our surroundings in the middle distance, often in rooms, most of everything around us tending to be less than a dozen meters away, and mentally we always place ourselves in the center of whatever is around us. But standing on soil or rock or gravel with water in front and blue or cloud-dappled heavens above puts us in our place, so to speak, and gives at least an inkling of how we stand in relation to a larger picture of the world – and this is a good thing, of course, to truly feel the reality of how insignificant most of the things that give us stress, the goals we are sure are so very vital and important.

And since I’ve come to Seoul there have been only rare instances when I’ve been able to enjoy a firmament unblocked by tall, and often very ugly, buildings. True, I live a short walk from the Han River, but it’s an option I seldom take an advantage of, with so many other distractions and obligations. My apartment includes a roof, but again, I seldom make use of it except for parties, and when I do, I am aware of other buildings under construction within my sight, a little higher each day, and each day subtracting another tiny percentage of the horizon from my view.

I enjoy living in urban environments immensely, and for a variety of reasons, but access to the sky is one of the first things we city dwellers sacrifice.

More than a half-dozen years have gone by since we made the trip I’ve been describing, and I’ve seldom thought of it in the intervening time, and have done so recently mainly from having come across a notebook I’d done some scribbling in over those afternoons. I haven’t been back, though I’ve been thinking about it lately.

Fact is, I don’t really like to travel – sounds odd from someone living so far from the country of his birth, I know – but I do enjoy being in a different locale, and being able to look at things I’ve never seen before.

And this city is such a noisy place.

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