Jirisan

Sitting here at Cafe Lu with a warm glass of sweet lemon citron tea is Part One of my treat for finishing the backpacking trip at Jirisan yesterday. Part Two will be at Burger King this evening when I use the gift certificate I've been holding on to since April. (Yay for finding long-forgotten birthday gifts!)

Three years ago on our school trip to Jirisan, we took the “easy” course and it about killed me. The second day, my legs were sore and the third day they were searing. I didn't know how I could keep climbing. This time we were supposed to take the “hard” course, which I heard even professional hikers stay away from. (What classifies a 'professional' hiker, anyway?) Anyway, I was pretty worried.

Each teacher was assigned to a group of eight or so students to hike and eat meals with. They assigned the best English speakers to my group, and the two girls did a great job keeping us on schedule and preparing the food, which consisted of rice and side dishes which the students brought with them. The choice side dishes for hikers here are SPAM, dried seaweed laver, and tuna. Entrees were instant you-name-it: curry, hamburger, teriyaki chicken, meatballs—and dry, pressed soup cubes that unraveled into seaweed strips or broke off into fish bits and were really the most real thing we ate besides the rice. For snacks and boosts of energy, we each had a bag of assorted candy and chocolate. I never thought I'd tire of sugar, but I was surprisingly envious of the man I saw eating a cucumber on day three. “Oh, to eat a real vegetable!”

Well, it turns out the “hard” course differed from the “easy” course only on day one, and only in that we hiked up to the trail head instead of driving to it. It was four strenuous hours of climbing rocks, sweating profusely, and breathing in noisy whooshes of hot air. But there was nothing about it that required professional skill, only perseverance and muscle.

The second and third days we followed the same course as a few years ago. It was fun to recognize all the lodges where we had previously eaten and slept.

On the fourth day, we got up bright and early at 4:30am, in time to see the sunrise over Cheonwangbong (천왕봉), the highest peak on the South Korean peninsula. It was hard climbing and I'd forgotten my flashlight so had to keep pace with the students ahead of me. The wind picked up when we got to the summit, so it was very cold but exciting to see the sunrise. Usually it's too cloudy to see it, but both years we were blessed with clear skies.

We came down by a steep route of rocks and boulders that looked like dirt-covered potatoes, some still half-buried and others fully snatched from the ground. If you see any photos of Jirisan trails that are not COMPLETELY covered with rocks, those photos are not representative. Here are a few, and you can find more on Facebook. Enjoy!

  

 

My favorite flower at Jirisan (지리바꽃, or Aconitum chiisanense Nakai)



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If you've still got some time, scroll on down for an embarrassing story and some reflection. :-)

I have no idea how it happened—stepping from one rock, over an eighteen-inch gap, to another—did I look up and miss the second rock completely, or did I just step awkwardly, teeter and then fall? Anyway, I very suddenly found myself leaning backwards over a rock, facing the way I'd come, on my back, upside-down, with my legs straight up and my feet swinging aimlessly above my head. I let out a cry of surprise and started laughing from embarrassment and confusion, when Bom Jun, a boy ahead of me (fortunately, there was no one behind me!) ran back, yelling, “Teacher! Teacher! Are you OK?” I quickly sat up, relieving my backpack from its suffocating position between me and the rock. Bom Jun picked my Nalgene bottle up off the ground and wedged it back into the pouch on my pack and then handed me my hat, which had also fallen on the ground. After making sure I was OK, he started to hike on and then turned back and said, “Teacher, your bag is life.” I thought he meant it was like a good luck charm that had kept me from getting hurt and I chuckled agreeably. But when I replayed the incident, remembering me lying backwards over an unyielding rock, ponytail touching the ground, feet in the air, backpacking smashed beneath me, I realized what he meant—my backpack had greatly cushioned my fall and kept my back from being hurt. Even today it's not a bit sore.

As I mentioned in the last post, I've been reading this book, One Thousand Gifts, about being joyful in the grace all around you, and like the author, I tried to thank God for everything about the situation, believing it all to be grace, and mindful that it had all passed through God's hands before I experienced it. Thank you for my backpack, and for Bom Jun, and even for that embarrassing fall—Why not? It all turned out okay. And I was thankful and felt loved and blessed, knowing I'd been spared great injury. It all ended well and, yes, God is good. But then I questioned, as the author and so many others have, What if it hadn't been OK? What if I had not been spared? What if in a freak fall over a rock, I had cracked a vertebrae and been paralyzed? Would that still have been grace? What of God then? Is God still good? Is God still Love? These are not just hypothetical questions. It's easy to say God is good when things work out. But what about when they don't?

Perhaps it's like Bom Jun said: “Your bag is life.” That bag I'd carried over 6,283 feet of rocks and bridges to the top of a mountain and back down, that bag that made my shoulders ache with tension and my abs with strain, that bag that had been a burden to me, which I had so eagerly shrugged off at every chance, that very bag had saved me from much greater harm. It was God's grace to me for my journey.

I'm not sure just how that metaphor fits with the theology of laying your burdens down, but I believe the hard things we have to bear in this life—the things we have little, if any, control over—are opportunities for God to be glorified and us drawn closer to Him. That bitter weight hanging around your neck, the one that's bent your head heavy toward the ground, sling it around behind you, and let it be the weight that pulls your head up toward heaven.