Once More to the River > IDEAS & IDEALS

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 "The Child is father of the Man"
                                         William Wordsworth(1770-1850)

     As years go by, I find myself going back, very often, in memory, to the days of my boyhood spent in a small river town, Yang Pyung, about 20 miles off to the east of Seoul. And most of the memories I have made about the place and the time are inseparable from the river - the upper part of Han River. Although it was a gentle river as it is now, there was something to a child who had not seen the sea yet infinitely wild, mysterious, remote, and primeval about it. It lured me, challenged me, and awed me. It still calls me.

     I liked to walk along it, especially in summer. I used to take off my shoes and held them in my hand. I liked the feeling of the soft and moist sand crumbling under my bare feet. I had to put on my shoes again when I walked over a bed of large pebbles heated hot by the merciless sun. What made me keep going was the tracks of mussels on the clean and ribbed sand in the shallows. I could guess the size of the mussel by the thickness of the track even before I picked it up. My heart leapt whenever I saw a large and thick track. I also knew where the big river shrimps were hiding: in the empty cans rutting in the water, or under the dark, smooth, old, water-soaked sticks and twigs, undulating in clusters on the bottom; or under some conspicuously flat stones. I turned them all over or frisked under or around them. They kicked violently in my palms when they were caught. They turned red when boiled or roasted to eat.

     One day I went too far. When I realized the fact belatedly, the sun was sinking slowly in the west. The sky and the water of the river were crimson at the sunset. I felt it was beautiful and sublime, although I could not articulate it in words at that time. And I was afraid. I knew I had long way to go back home and the sun would soon go down and it would completely get dark before I reach home. I knew I had to hurry. I looked back at the distance I had made and felt dismayed. I had come too far. I was even very far way from the old elm tree beyond which I had never tried before.

     This gigantic old elm stood by the river throwing its huge branches over the water and formed an arch through which people passed. It was always cool and dark under it. The tree was very old, they said, and it had one or two very interesting as well as creepy stories about it. The trunk of the tree was virtually empty and it seemed some spooks are lurking in it and ready to spring out any time to pounce upon anyone. It was also said to be haunted. Most of the boys in the town shunned it. I dared not come to near it. But I passed the tree by far and plenty that day. The ceaseless tracks of the mussels engrossed me so much.

     I cannot recall clearly how I came home that day, especially how I passed that feared tree all by myself in the dark. But I remember I cried in my father's arms when I met him who came out in search of his son. He looked happy and angry at the same time when he saw me in the dark. He took a cursory look into my willow basket heavy with the day's harvest, grabbed it from me and threw it into the river, basket and all. He seemed really angry because I worried him so much by being so late.

     Many years have passed and many changes have been made to the river since I left and lived away from it. Some changes had already been being made even before I left it. The sailboats disappeared first because the river became too shallow for their passage. Then the great rafts of logs and lumber ceased to come floating down from nowhere  and  the melancholy songs of the men who steered them. The jolly and strong ferryman lost his time-honored job because there had been constructed a huge and modern bridge across the river. The job had been handed down from his grandfather to his father, and now to him. He shed tears, I heard, when he was cited for the service he had done for the townspeople in the ceremony held to celebrate the completion of the bridge. He was very popular, I remember, among the country wives for his good-looking and coarse jokes he freely made to them. Often we swam in the wake of his ferryboat, climbed on it, totally naked, and dived into the water in the middle of the river. It was real fun.

     Most of the fun is gone now from the river. Boys rarely swim in the river in summer, nor do they skate in winter. They go instead to the swimming pools or the ice rinks constructed for commercial purpose. They dare not dive from the jutting rocks as we used to do. They are not as much enthusiastic about catching minnows as I used to be. To my great disappointment, the minnows, which were so numerous and bright in that transparent water, are all gone with the disappearance of the fast-flowing clear current of the river. They have built a dam for electricity somewhere down the river, and the river became something like a big lake.

     In a very cold January afternoon last year I went to the river once more. It was windy and dreary. I was accompanied by my child of seven who did not show much interest in the river. He complained of the weather and insisted on going back. I walked along the muddy shore. I passed the elm with a smile that my child would never understand. It was still there but it looked so small and common. The water was lapping the shore ceaselessly and the sound of the waves was so familiar to me. The tall dry reeds were fluttering and singing in the wind as usual. I saw countless dots on the water in the distance. They were wild geese and ducks that came to winter. The evening sun was going down as gorgeously as ever. My child took me by the hand. He seemed afraid of the approaching darkness. I turned to him, and saw in his face the life and death of me. Many years have passed; nay, no years have passed. Time has always been standing still.
           (January 15, 1995)