Tag Archives: mountains

December 23, 2012

Visual Fiction – Birds of Hope

I had toiled many days through the snowy mountains until my strength and spirit were almost gone. I was about to despair when I came to an area where stone lanterns sat, capped in snow. Nothing was moving, save a few small birds, which filled the air with their chirping. I tried to move on, but they fluttered around me, always blocking my way.

Taken in Odaesan National Park, Korea

I finally held out my hand and one of the birds came and perched on it. It may have been my fatigued state, but it seemed to me that the bird spoke to me. “There is hope,” it said. “You have wandered many days and do not know, but today is Christmas. It is a day when all people can find hope, for it was the day that the great Hope came into the world.”

With that, it flew away and although it would not come back to my hand again, I followed the birds to a hidden path and found myself at last in the land of life and hope.

12 Comments | tags: birds, Christmas, Gangwon, hope, Korea, mountains, photograph, snow, temple, visual fiction, winter | posted in Visual Fiction

December 9, 2012

Visual Fiction – Phantom Mountain

By David Stewart

Jun-Young’s breath caught in his throat as he stepped outside and saw a mountain rising out of the mist, where before there had only been fields. It was Gwishin-san, the phantom mountain, which appeared every century, for one day only.

He had to leave soon. He had less than twenty-four hours to reach the peak.

taken in Wanju, Korea. (click to enlarge)

9 Comments | tags: creepy, fog, ghosts, Korea, mountains, photograph, visual fiction | posted in Visual Fiction

November 10, 2012

Visual Fiction – Dawn Guardtower

By David Stewart

“The sentry gripped his spear with sweaty hands, watching the shadowy figures moving in the valley below. The final assault was beginning and it was likely he would not see another day. Behind him, the sun rose, a blazing orb setting alight the funeral pyre of the world.”

I took this picture from my kitchen window, as a matter of fact.

11 Comments | tags: guardtower, mountains, sunrise, visual fiction, war | posted in Visual Fiction

October 28, 2012

Visual Fiction – Mountain Valley Map

By David Stewart

What do you see when you look at the picture below? My wife said it looked like an amoeba. What it is, is a topographical map I drew of part of a world I’m creating. Here’s what I see:

It’s a valley with steep mountains around it.
This map was originally 16 pixels to a mile, so it’s about 35 miles across.
Each elevation line is 1000′, so the highest peaks are about 16,000 feet off the valley floor.
The darker areas are the mountains. The green areas in the middle are depressions in the valley floor.
There are 137 mountain peaks, ranging from 3250′ to 16,340′ tall.
The circular area on the right is a deep lake with high mountains all around it. There is a waterfall falling off the northern face.

This is why I love drawing topographical maps. I can look at them and see the places in my head. To some people, it may just be a bunch of lines, but for me, it’s truly inspiring.

16 Comments | tags: fantasy, fiction, map, mountains, MS Paint, other worlds, topographical, visual fiction | posted in Visual Fiction

September 13, 2012

The Recruitment of Bruce Riansson

By David Stewart

The leaves were what first spoke to Bruce Riansson and told him that maybe there was still some hope in life.

He sat on the damp, pungent leaf mould of the clearing just where the squad of soldiers had left him, with all that he now owned in the world: a satchel with enough food for two meals, a small knife and three copper coins. He had been exiled to the wilderness and they had left him three copper coins. It was a mockery of charity.

He wished they had just killed him. He had been sentenced to death, but the king, with a wicked glint in his eyes, had so graciously, so magnanimously commuted his sentence to exile. Now he would die a longer, more painful death than any executioner’s axe could give.

He had been sitting that way for some time when he heard the leaves rustling and whispering above him as the wind played them back and forth restlessly. There were no words in their message, but as he listened, he felt better. He was still alive and he was free now. There was still hope.

Bruce stood up and with a start, noticed a woman looking at him from across the clearing. She had black hair and was wearing a dark red cloak of a style he had never seen before. She smiled at him. “I was wondering when you would stand up. Those leaves are quite persuasive, I see.”

Bruce looked at her warily. “Was it you who made them shake like that?”

“No, that was only the wind,” she said, walking towards him. “But I had a feeling they would have that effect on you. My name is Klista. Remember it, please. And you are?”

“Bruce Riansson,” he said, with a feeling that she already knew.

“How is it that you are sitting out here alone, Bruce Riansson?” Klista asked, putting a hand on her hip. It was a gesture both familiar and imperious.

“I was exiled from Indrake,” he said. “The traitor and former pirate, Sir Denvé, came through our village as he was fleeing capture. I let him stay at my inn.”

“And you knew that it was him?”

“I have never turned away anyone from my inn. I have always considered hospitality to be a matter of humanity, not politics.”

Klista nodded. “That’s a very mature attitude. Very rare indeed, actually. Now, Bruce Riansson, I have a proposition for you. I knew you would be coming here and I was waiting for you. If you wish, you may work for me, work with me even. The work is not what you are used to, but I’m sure you will be suited to it, nevertheless.”

“Who are you?” Bruce asked, his apprehension rising again. “Why would I want to work for you?”

“I have already told you my name,” Klista said. “I did ask you to remember it, you recall. Besides that, think of me as a type of guide. I show secrets to people who need them and who are worthy. Does that not sound intriguing? As for why you should work for me, you are exiled in the wilderness in late summer with almost no supplies.” She gave him a look as if the choice were obvious.

“What would I have to do?” he asked.

“Ah, we’ll get to that in time. First, I have a test for you. I have to be completely sure about you first.” She took a leather bag off her shoulder and rummaged through it. Bruce caught a glimpse of a jumble of strange objects: a purple conch shell, a white tube with blue stars on it, and a key shaped like a spreading tree. Finally, she pulled out a box with a glass window in it and handed it to him.

“This is a compass,” she said and then saw his blank expression. “It has lodestone in it and always points in the same direction. What you have to do is follow the direction of the needle. Several miles away there is a high pass between two mountains. Reach that pass by sunset and look over the other side and you have passed the test.”

“That is all? It sounds too simple.”

“You have not seen the way yet. Remember, you must follow the needle exactly. There will be an easier way up, but do not take it. Sometimes the journey taken is more important than the destination reached. Sometimes the destination depends on the path taken there. Now go and I will see you at sunset.”

Klista walked off briskly. Bruce picked up his pack and looked at the box. The needle pointed into the trees, away from where Klista had gone. He started walking.

At first, the way was easy. There was little underbrush and the ground was level. After half an hour, the ground got steeper and soon the way was choked with brambles that tore at him with thorny claws.

He had just climbed over a pile of rocks when he saw a well-defined trail off to the right. He ignored it and kept fighting his way through the underbrush. The trail crossed his path and for a moment, he was tempted to follow it for a little ways, until he remembered and re-entered the tangle of bushes.

The mountain trail zigzagged back and forth up the slope and by the time Bruce had crossed and re-crossed it four times, he was torn and bleeding in multiple places and his clothes were shredded to rags. Already the light was decreasing, softening to the peaceful glow of dusk. He pressed on.

He crossed the mountain trail for the last time and it disappeared off to the left, going straight and following the ridge of the mountains. Above him were two steep peaks like horns, their summits tinged with red from the approaching sunset. Between them, he saw the high pass, only several hundred feet above him.

The final climb was the worst. He scrambled recklessly up as the sky darkened above him, ignoring the sharp bite of razor-like granite edges cutting into his hands. Finally, he pulled himself up to the pass and looked over.

The valley below him was a mass of trees, like a vast carpet of greenery. Bruce looked farther and in the orange glow of the day’s end, he saw strange structures rising out of the trees. They were like huge blocks of stone, a hundred feet high or more, but he could see the light glinting off rows of windows. It was a vision of some alien city.

“You pass,” Klista said from behind him. He turned quickly.

“How did you get here?”

“I take my own paths,” she said. “What do you think that is?” She pointed to the distant structures.

“I do not know, but it looks like a city of some sort.”

“It is a city, although not one of this world. This is what I wanted to show you, a tiny taste of what is hidden behind real life. The world you were living in yesterday was infinitely smaller than the world you will be living in tomorrow.”

“Is it really over there or is it only a vision?” Bruce asked.

“It is really where it is,” Klista said. “You will find that a word like ‘there’ has very little meaning. If you mean, could you reach it by walking, then yes. You were able to see it by following the compass and you could follow it to the actual place too. But that is a long, hard road and I travel by quicker ones. Now, do you still want to join me?”

“I do not know what I can do, but yes, I am willing,” Bruce said. He offered her the compass, but she shook her head.

“You keep it. It will be very useful to you in the future, I think. This is the not the end of your journey by far, Bruce Riansson: this is only the beginning.”

11 Comments | tags: Bruce Riansson, fantasy, fiction, Klista, mountains, other worlds | posted in Dusk

September 2, 2012

The Curse Mound

By David Stewart

It was Halloween and I was hiking in the mountains alone. It all started because I hate costumes. My friends were all dressing up and having a party or something but I couldn’t make myself get into the right spirit. So I went hiking.

I hadn’t intended on being out late, but that is one of the hazards of hiking unfamiliar trails in Korea. The sun was going down and the light was just turning golden when I came to a pile of rocks by the side of the trail.

At first, I thought it was natural, but then I saw the thin pieces of shale positioned up and down, like knives, behind a flat stone that looked like a small altar. There was a smaller stone lying on top of it. I picked it up without thinking but then dropped it immediately when I felt a sharp pain in my fingers. I saw blood seeping out of thin, red lines in my fingertips. I thought that the edges of the rock were just sharp until I flipped it over with a stick and saw that someone had attached razor blades to the sides of it. I clenched my bleeding fingers into my fist and tried to quell the fear that had suddenly sprung into my heart. Someone had purposefully put the blades there as a trap.

In the middle of the small rock, between the glued-on razor blades was a red circle with four Chinese characters in it. Normally, I would be fascinated by such a thing, but at that moment, I just wanted to get off the mountain. I took a picture of stones, then carefully pried the blades off the small stone and took it with me. Night fell before I could make it back to a main road, and for the first time while hiking in Korea, I walked fearfully, looking around me and starting at every night noise.

The next day, I showed the stone to a co-worker of mine, Mr. Soh. He looked at it with a frown, then asked, “Did you make this?”

“Of course not! I found it on a mountain,” I said. “Can you read the characters?”

“Yes,” he said, as if it were obvious. “It is like a name seal. The first three characters are someone’s name: Park Jong-In. The last one though—usually it is the character for “seal”. But this one is the character for “murder”. Is this is a joke?”

Not a very good joke, I thought. Neither did he, after I showed him my bandaged fingers and told him about the razor blades and the mound. “I will do some research,” he said.

It took him two weeks. I didn’t want to press him, so I didn’t mention it again. My fingers healed and the strange stones were pushed to the back of my mind. Then, late on Friday, Mr. Soh came to my classroom and put some photos on my desk.

“Do you know why Koreans build stone piles?” he asked.

“I thought it was something women did if they wanted a son,” I said.

“Sometimes. It is for any wish, or to have a prayer answered.” He showed me a picture of a short tower of stone, shaped like a beehive. I had seen many like that.

“But the one I saw—”

“I found that too. I talked to a very old mudang, a shaman who had heard of such a thing. They are not used now at all.”

“What is it, though?”

“It is a curse mound,” Mr. Soh said. “For cursing or killing someone you hate. It is the closest we have to black magic.”

I thought of the razor blades cutting my fingers and a shiver went down my back. “Do you think I’ll be okay?”

He laughed and patted me on the shoulder. “You scared? I think it will okay. The mudang said that they used to sacrifice an animal on the curse mound before putting the name stone on it. Maybe this person wanted to use human blood instead. Don’t worry, it’s a very old custom.” As if that made it any better.

When Mr. Soh left, I searched for the name Park Jong-In for almost an hour. There were hundreds of them. Just before five o’clock, I came across one article and my breath caught as I saw the words “Park Jong-In” and “body”. I could have read it in Korean, but I was impatient and I dragged the whole thing into Google Translate. As I read the clunky machine translation, my fear grew until my heart was pounding. The article read:

Last night, the body of Park Jong-In was discovered in the mountains east of the Wonju. He apparently alone path for hiking and slipped. His family on October 31, he is missing and search efforts continue after that was announced. Police unsure of the cause of the wound, but the cause of death was loss of blood due to several large wounds on hands and arms. Dominated the incident an accident.

15 Comments | tags: creepy, curse, fear, fiction, Korea, mountains | posted in Dusk

July 20, 2012

Alone on Top of the World

By David Stewart

Dawn came far earlier than it did for those down below. The bright, cold rays hit the upper edge of the valley, making the bare rock glow as if on fire. The sheep began to get restless. Aerin woke up.

It was bitterly cold in her small valley on top of the world. Even an hour later, when the sun reached the grass on the valley floor, she walked around in her huge, wooly cloak that made her look twice as big as she really was. The sun rose, pale and watery in the thin air, and shone its cold rays on her little world.

It was just her, in that tiny valley on the summit of Mt. Odinokii—her and her flock of Ambrulo sheep. Everything about the valley was special. There was a special reservoir cut below the valley because rain almost never fell that high up and every drop that did was precious. The grass was special since normal grass would not grow in such cold and thin air. The sheep were bred specially for high altitudes and it was said that it was the thin air that made their hearts delicious beyond imagining.

Aerin herself was special. She had been chosen and had trained for five years until she was an expert on everything concerning the Ambrulo sheep: breeding, diet, surgery, infant delivery, psychology. She stood alone in expertise concerning the Ambrulo.

She led the sheep out of their pen and into the long fenced-in lane towards the water trough. As they walked, the sheep pushed against levers that drove the pump that brought the water up from the reservoir below. Aerin walked next to them, calling them by name and inspecting them. Once they had all drank and started grazing, she went over to the pulley and looked down.

The pulley was her only contact with the world. There were actually two pulley and two platforms: when one went up, the other went down, a thousand feet or more to the first staging platform. Beyond that, there were more ropes and pulleys and then a narrow, treacherous road that wound for miles down the side of the mountain until it reached habitable regions.

Every two weeks, she sent a sheep down and in exchange, received its weight in food—her only food for the next two weeks. The sheep was then brought down the mountain and two hundred miles to the palace, in full haste and with a full security detail. There, its heart was prepared by the one chef in the kingdom who was qualified, and then eaten by the king and his nobles.

Aerin went to the grazing flock and walked through them, burying her hands in their thick coats as she passed. “Nivis, perhaps? No, let him grow a little more. Jasquet, maybe? No, let her stay with her lamb a little longer. Peros? Okay, let it be Peros.” She guided the chosen sheep out of the flock and towards a scale where she weighed it.

A flash of a red flag far below told her that they were ready. She guided Peros onto the platform, then closed the gate. A lever pulled, the anchor released and the platform swung free. She began adding small weights to the platform, until a moment later, sheep and platform began to descend.

Aerin stood looking out over the world, waiting. The darkest of blue skies above her reached out in all directions until it reached the curving horizon far away. Below, the land spread out like a mosaic of greens, browns and blues, except where huge white masses of clouds obscured her view.

Many minutes passed before the ascending platform arrived, filled with food and the next shipment’s weight requirement. Long before, there had been notes for her from family and friends and the workers on the lower stages. No more, though. She unloaded her food in silence and carried it into her cave.

She lay on top of the observation tower, her high platform built in the very center of the valley. The sun had passed its zenith and was slowing dipping towards the western curve of the Earth. Aerin lay looking up into the featureless dark blue and this was how the high-air sprites found her, as they always did.

“Aerin, Aerin, come play with us. Come fly with us.” Every time, like a greeting.

“I have no wings, my friends.”

“Neither do we,” they laughed. “Wings would do no good up here. Come, though, and be like us.”

“But who would take care of the sheep?”

“What care do they need? There is nothing to harm them here.”

“Who will give them water?”

“Let them figure out how to walk through the fenced lane by themselves. If they are too stupid, then maybe they do not deserve to live.”

“Who will send them down every two weeks to the king?”

“The king? He will not starve without an Ambrulo heart to eat every two weeks. Do not worry about him.” There were many sprites around her now, laughing, playing, beckoning her towards them. “Come, come be one of one, Aerin the Lonesome, Aerin the Solitary, Aerin, Queen of the Upper Airs.” They laughed, but they were not mocking.

“And how would I become like you?” she asked, although she knew what they would say.

“Leave your confines. Jump from the edge of the mountain. Fly up among us and soar through the atmosphere, higher and higher. Too timid, too shy, too tied to the cruel, hard earth.”

“I am not like you,” she said, as she had said many times before. “The Earth has a pull on me which I cannot escape, even if I tried.”

The sun had reached the borderland of the western horizon. Already, at the base of the mountain, it was full night. Aerin got up and herded the sheep into the cave, shutting the heavy doors against the freezing darkness that encroached on them.

She went to stand at the western edge of the valley and watched the sun descend to meet the Earth in a rack of fiery clouds. As she looked down on the world, alone, her heart ached with a pain that had nothing to do with the cold or thin air. The sun went down and black, icy night covered everything.

The sprites were playing and shouting in the air far above here, dancing among the cascade of glittering stars that pierced the blackness. The ache in her heart eased as she watched them and she smiled as she pulled her hood up around her head.

Life is still beautiful, she thought.