Well now I'm really sick. Doctor prescribed antibiotics and steroids for my nasal passages. Said I should start to feel better by Friday but it's only Tuesday and I feel worse now than ever before. Stayed home today sleeping. Hard to resist the sunshine though, so I walked down the hill to ProLab to drop off all the film from the trip. The trip. Seems I can hardly remember what happened.

We rented a car that last weekend in Seoul, a little Hyundai Avante that stunk of stale cigarette smoke. Someone had written on the dashboard and there were scrapes and dents on every surface of it. We had to drive with the windows down to avoid nausea. Good thing it was a sunny spring day and we wore our sunglasses while my hair whipped and the roar of the wind eddied in our ears.

Liquid rules. Lane lines are mere guidelines. I learned while living in Korea that if you miss something by an inch, it is the same as missing it by a mile. If there is a space, someone will fill it. A U-turn culture. Pardons can be bought. It was wonderfully exhilarating. Have to be so much more aware of the space around the car. Have to be aggressive to push through those fresh red lights at the last second, through pedestrian flues.

Radio tuned to Armed Forces Network, windows rolled low. Gas tank filled and spirits high. North and east we traveled into a forest and then toward Chunchon. On the map there were red lines for freeways, blue lines for two-laners, green-lines for village roads. We stayed mainly on the blue lines once we learned that the green ones were paved levees between rice paddies to be shared with little old ladies hunched into right angles and small children. Blue lines. Curving up mountain sides, around lake sides. Pulled off on a green route toward a temple high on mountain. No bus leads visitors here, this is the village temple. And the village itself lie in the valley below as if untouched by modernization. The little Hyundai labored up the rocky hillside. Left it parked just below the temple buildings. We sat alone in the main building with our shoes off and the doors open. Wind rustled in the pines outside and clanked the chimes hanging from all four corners of the roof. We sat in the peace.

Round the giant reservoir toward south. Little blue line road twisting and climbing. Hairpin curves with mirrors perched on the elbows. Magnificent vistas at each crest. Ooohs from the front seat. A ridgeline shaped like a sleeping dragon and the sunset on a lazy river. Lights from village houses began calling to us from their up-valley seats and we drove on till one house with an entire string of lights drew us in. Minbak - we could rent a room here. But we just ate - ate the spiciest mushroom stew this side of Seoul in an old house with clay walls and a thatched roof. Paper on the walls, lacquered floor with the ondol heat seeping through it. Friendly folks out there, where the stars twinkled overhead. No traffic. No crowds. The sounds of farmland.

And when we passed through those mountains back into the city, illuminated with millions of souls and many more light bulbs, it was future and impressive and beautiful. So beautiful. Driving in that river of reds and whites through canyons of neon rainbows. The grimy haze over the city glowing soft and silver. Light.

Next day we went again, except south and for shorter. Took a green line road up a little river valley only to find tucked way up in there American-style suburban homes wearing skirts of lawn. Also hidden, a military base whose soldiers walked the perimeter razor wire and an old village still living there beside those big new houses. A country of pocketed secrets.

Not far from there we stumbled upon Mr. Shin's mushroom house by accident. I turned around the car and sat at the end of the driveway astonished at having had no idea I was in a place I had been before. It was a place I wanted to return to and had thought the chance was gone. But here I was.