weekend drive

The day dawned cold, bright, and clear,
The idea spawned from within a beer:
On Ben and Parky’s last weekend with us,
We would spend the day driving
Without real direction through the mountains,
Perhaps finding some good food
Or discovering good drink,
Most definitely good scenery,
But certainly, above all,
We’d just find good times with friends.

It was a mid-morning gathering
In front of the convenience store,
Coffee in hand and a bright outlook
Toward what the day held in store.
Minds unfettered, normally bloodshot eyes
Today as white as the driven snow,
We seven clamoured into the rental van
And set our course for west into the hills.^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
As we slowly climbed from sea level,
The snow became more ubiquitous
The conversation more ludicrous
The decision-making more dubious.
Hairpin turns, untouched meadows
Flush with unwrinkled blankets of powder,
An icy road leading up to exhilaration,
But, in the end, a downhill-only
Snowboard course for us because
The quality of our rental van
Fell short of the necessary requirements
To negotiate such slippery treacherousness.

Ben driving, Ryan reading, Nathan pondering,
Wives sleeping, all amidst the wintry scene,
Phillip and I blathering on incessantly
While awaiting our first beer stop around midday
In a forgotten town of icicles and obsequiousness,
It was from this remnant of Yeti’s footprint
That the fun and hijinks really began.

We climbed even further up into the hills
The beer loosening our tongues,
Galvanizing our witty repartee,
Broadening our vision in the brightness,
And sharpening our awareness of
The subtle signs all around us,
Warning us, admonishing us,
To be alert for whatever the future might hold;
Conveying to us, opening our souls to
The merging of alpha and omega,
Of up and down, of right and left,
Of slow and fast, of error and ignorance,
Of the climging and climding,
but rarely of the climbing.

Those signs of wit and wisdom
disappeared temporarily from our psyche
And we slipped into a lull of somnambulism
As we proceeded steadily toward our lunch
With the chicken, the dog, and the boiling goat.
We dined with the contentment of
Travelers long without sustenance,
We drank with the effortlessness of
Drinkers long without reluctance.
Outside, a hawk, in search of its own lunch,
Floatingly dueled its old, blustery Nemesis,
Its graceful jousting matched by
Our relentless pulls at the kettle of liquid gold
And the pulse of existence unique
To mountain towns everywhere.

A post-lunch trip to buy beer
Kicked the drinking off into real earnest
As we left Jungseong, our site of repast,
To access a northward path
Through mountains that belied their smallness
By towering over us and the winding road.
Frequent stops to empty bladders and
Refill our thirst lost to the ravages of talk
Took not away from the spectacular views
That continued to accompany our every move
Nor from the curiously entertaining road signs
That dotted the road from time to time.
Friendly smiles and shocked compliments
Toward us foreigners traversing their lands,
Speaking their language, eating their food,
Depleting their supplies of alcohol
Were as ubiquitous as the blue skies and deep snow











As the sun sunk into the western ridges
We began our descent toward the east.
The clouds darkened skyward, plump with snow
The cans fell floorward, devoid of contents
Which led to the last stop of the day
At a rest stop not too far from
Where recorded Buddhist chants
Swayed incongruently with
The furiously falling snow
The injuriously smelling bathroom
And the curiously funny sight
Of chickens on the window sill
Peering in at us and clucking madly.
It was the perfectly unusual--
But nonetheless queerly suitable--
Cap to a smartly-conceived day.