Daegu | Apsan Autumn

I have been watching the leaves change all around the city from our 17th floor apartment. The bright oranges and reds and yellows have been slowly creeping down the top of the mountain and peppering the trail beside the river. It’s been raining a lot — practically every day in November — and it wasn’t long before I started noticing the piles of fallen leaves swirling around in the wind and pockets of naked trees signaling winter was just around the corner.

Even though this is my favorite time of year we have spent most of it either traveling or holed up in our apartment eating copious amounts of baked bread and other homemade goodies. Lack of Vitamin D, the dreary rainy days (that we usually love), and a brief cold I caught left us with the fall blues. Instead of feeling invigorated like we usually do during fall we felt tired and worn out.

Nothing a walk in the woods couldn’t cure.

roasted sweet potatoes are popular this time of year — one of my most favorite smells (and snack) in Korea!

Sly had Veteran’s day off so we made the most of it and took a hike in the mountains across from our apartment. The rain finally stopped and every now and then the tiniest patches of blue would peer through the clouds.

This guy decided it was a nice day for a hike too

The leaves were so vivid they almost seemed fake.

Every now and then a gust of wind would shake a bunch of petal-soft bright yellow ginkgo leaves from their branches. Unlike the crispy brown piles of leaves that I have come to associate with fall, these delicate gingko leaves floated down to the ground ever so gently and created the softest carpet of velvety yellow.

We followed the trail of leaves, first along the easy paved trail where bug-shaped speakers blared classical march music. Some gentler, more soothing classical tunes might have been better-suited for a hike like this (or not at all).

When the paved trail ended we doubled back, this time taking a smaller dirt path that followed the slightly hilly terrain. There weren’t any people on this trail — nobody talking loudly on their cell phones, nobody playing their own Korean music on their portable radios, no large hiking groups  (either dressed in nearly matching outfits or wearing fur coats and carrying designer bags), no classical march music playing over loud speakers. Instead we opted for the gentle rustling of leaves in the wind, the sound of our footsteps as they tread on packed wet dirt, the crunching of leaves beneath our feet, and the occasional rustling of roosters and other huge mysterious flying birds in the brushy landscape.

It was just us, the dirt, and the leaves. Just the way we liked it.

more high school senior portraits

We only hiked an hour or so but even in that short amount of time our spirits felt immediately rejuvenated.

At the end of our hike we took a long break at one of the leaf covered picnic tables while yellow leaves floated all around us. It seemed like a good spot to take our annual tossing leaves photo.

“Don’t we have a million photos like that already?” Sly asked.

“Yes,” I replied, “Now can you go sit over there while we take another?”

I don’t know what it is about tossing leaves in the air, but I swear it’s impossible to do it without laughing. It’s like instant happiness and it never gets old. At least not for me, anyway.

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It took me forever but I finally made it to my new blog! The name doesn’t really make sense now/match (I created this website for a project that I was working on a while ago) but I’m just going with it until (IF) I decide to change it at a (WAY) future date. At least if I did change the name in the future it would be a much simpler and quicker process.

What do you think? It’s not drastically different but from my end there’s so much more functionality that I never knew I missed. Had I known from the start how much time it would take me to migrate I’m not sure I would have even entertained the idea. But once I started, I couldn’t stop — the whole doing it right the first time mentality. There are still a few bits and bobs that I want to tweak, but for the most part everything is up and running. WHEW!

Any requests for upcoming posts? Recent travels? Korea? Super old travels? One thing that was made clear when migrating all my piecemeal blogs to this one was how bad I am about keeping up to date with blogging. I have so many backlogged travels I’d like to (eventually) blog.

Oh well, some things will never change.