Kevin's Walk 9

I don't really know how things are going to be this coming fall. Will I be employed? Self-employed? Some weird hell-realm in between? Hard to say. Always in motion is the future. But as a way to cheer myself up and give myself some added purpose, I'm going to walk the Four Rivers trail for a psychologically significant fifth time this year. This will mean all of the new and usual stuff: practice walks to prep, a thorough taping-down of my feet, a review of my planned route (motels occasionally disappear, so I have to plan for new ones), the making of walk-related tee shirts, etc.

There are some walks that bear repeating, and some I'll never do again. I won't do the east-coast walk ever again: too much noise and civilization. I'd like to do Jeju Island again, maybe walking the perimeter, then walking some of the roads that crisscross the island's interior (although Daniel mentioned, the day we met, that there are now packs of wild dogs near Halla Mountain, in Jeju's center). While I'm there, and if my balance holds, I might try the Seongsan Ilchul-bong (성산일출봉, 城山日出峰, maybe Seong* Mountain Sunrise Peak?) walk, which looks like an all-day project for me. I'm definitely going to do the Nakdong River trail again: that one ranks right up there with the Four Rivers trail, which is my favorite, and which I can do over and over again without getting bored. My boss suggested the west-coast trail, saying it's quieter than the east-coast one. I'll have to do some exploratory walks to see for myself: I have a kind of once-bitten-twice-shy attitude about coastal walks now. Commenter Paul suggested a coast-to-coast walk straight across the peninsula; I'll be exploring that route as well. I also want to do the relatively short Geumgang trail, which is just under 150 km and can be done in a few days.

Lots of life yet to live, and I'm on borrowed time. Let's just try to get through this year.

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*An argument could be made for "Fortress Mountain" since 城/성/seong can mean "success," "attainment," or "fortress," but as Charles pointed out in a long-ago comment, natural English renderings of hanja (Sino-Korean character) names often don't involve literally translating them: exposing the etymology doesn't always make for a good translation. Take the phrase "a Presbyterian church" in English: the word Presbyterian comes from the Greek presbuteros/πρεσβύτερος, meaning "elder," and how would it be if I insisted on saying "an elder church" every time I passed by a Presbyterian church? The proper noun itself acquires a significance in context such that literal translation becomes a mistranslation.