Ankle Deep In Dead Dogs

     
     About five weeks left in Korea and it's going fast.  This is the second week that school is in session and I still don't have any classes scheduled.  The entire English staff is new here and only one of them can speak with any level of proficiency.  I think they are so confused with the new school, new government implemented teaching methods, and the construction that actually scheduling me to work is the least of they're worries.  There is a part of me that really wants to get back in the classroom and actually do some teaching but if I'm going to get paid to work on my writing projects, catch up on some novels, and drink coffee then I'm not going to complain.  Well, aside from the usual weekend distractions a few days ago I also managed to go on the longest and most interesting hash thus far.  Allow me to tell you about it with a drastic switch in tenses.  
     For the first twenty minutes the pack runs a confused circle through the dowdy neighborhood, an impoverished area hugging the back walls of the base, the last bit of settlement before the endless farm fields across the highway.  A "true trail" marker keeps bringing us back to the rear gate of the airfield from which we started.  Unlike the front gate a few miles away which is busily celebrated with traffic and bars and storefronts, this entrance is orderly, quiet, and resists attention.  Taking notice of our confusion, a camouflaged guard shouldering an M-16 informs us that he saw a hare leaving a marker close to the bus stop across the street.  Another hasher spots the checkpoint under a car and within an instantt the 40 strong pack is dashing through gardens and off into the moor like countryside.  
     We run through fields and rice patties, woods and shrub covered hills.  An abandoned rusty bulldozer sits on the abandoned scar of an incomplete road that leads to the abandoned construction of several half-finished and degrading houses.  We follow the chalk and toilet-paper markers over crumbling brick, broken glass, rusted siding, nail-strewn 2X4's, and finally past an active farm where a sizable pen of smelly cows scatter at our hollering advance.  As the miles disappear behind us the excitement of the finish line grows and we press harder and faster.  Eventually a turkey-eagle split cuts the pack in half.  Some walk across muddy flat lands, the rest sprint up through a dense forest rifled with prickers and vines.  The shape of a crumbling cement structure materializes through the foliage and upon approaching it we see the word BEER scrawled on a wall above several carefully deposited bottles.  I stop long enough for a few mouthfuls of water but leave the Cass untouched before taking off again across a barren highway.  

     In the adjacent orchard the trail leads down into a stream and we follow, halting when we reach a cement embankment twenty meters tall.  The creek trickles underground into a tunnel barely four feet high. Scrawled above the mouth of the opening are the taunting words ON-IN-YA.  I hesitate for a moment while looking into the dark.  I can see a pin-spot of light barely visible several hundred yards through the blackness.  Without  another second to reconsider I plunge myself into the hole and make my way rapidly down the corridor.  Moments later I am ankle deep in mud and sewage.  There is no avoiding it.  When we were kids my Dad used to yell at us for playing in corrugated run-off pipes and now, in the dark, his exaggerated warnings about flash floods casually come back to me.  I exit the other side safely and climb up onto the damp, grassy bank.  My feet are soaked through and  mud is splattered up to my knees.  There are only four of us who braved the pipe and we take off single file through another stretch of unplanted fields.  

   We are coming over a small rise when I notice something unusual about the ground.  Unlike the dark, fertile soil we've been trudging over for the past several miles, this terrain is soft, white, and comes up in clumps that sticks to our cross-trainers.  I look around and can see that this strange substance covers the ground for at least 20 yards in every direction.  I am wondering to myself why it took me so long to notice this very peculiar incongruity when we happen upon the first of the corpses.  Dogs.  At least twenty of them in a late stage of decay, deflated and blending into the ground.  It is a mass grave of canines.  Then it occurs to us that the white tuft stuck to our shoes and ankles is the rotting matter resulting from years of dead animals decomposing on this spot.  I am surprised that I am not overcome with horror.  Instead, my head calmly fills with questions.  Why so many?  Were they used for fighting?  Why weren't they eaten?  Why dumped so carelessly instead of buried?  We press on.
   Eventually the trail brings us to an abandoned playground.  Small fruit trees grow in and around old sliding boards and swings.  There is something sinister about this place, sitting deserted and alone under an overcast sky.  We continue through mud and low grasses until we reach a subway platform where, having neglected to bring my wallet, I guiltily hop the turnstile.
   Before long we're back at the Lion's Den, commemorating the past 8 miles with Red Rock and fraternity humor. Later in the night I'll make my way to Hang Dae, where my inclination towards awesomeness late in the evening will only be exceeded by my infallible tendency to make an ass of myself early in the morning.    
  
Cool Thing About Korea #48:  Jeong Ji-Hoon, better known as Rain, was the lead role in Ninja Assassin, which was probably one of the greatest cut-em-up action movies I've ever seen.