Sunday ritual

I've walked along parts of Cheonggyecheon stream perhaps a dozen times, but I haven't been down there since it got hot in the summer. Since the summer days seem to have passed, I decided to go again today. When they opened the stream last October, I went down and thought, "This is nice." However, most of the vegetation had just been planted and I had visions of hordes of people trampling everything and throwing garbage everywhere.

Today, I have to say that the Cheonggyecheon stream restoration is perhaps the nicest thing that has happened to Seoul since I have been living here. It's really nice. The grasses that they planted have grown to waist height and a lot of the small trees are now 2 to 3 meters tall. Everything has filled in nicely. It's quite lush. And, it's remarkably clean. I think that they have a lot of "wardens" who pick up garbage and tell people to be good.

It's not exactly wilderness, but I heard crickets and grasshoppers. I saw ducks, an egret, a heron, some gulls, and a bunch of sparrows (I hesitate to try to identify the birds precisely since someone with Birds Korea might correct me) . I also saw hundreds of dragonflies and a few butterflies, including one fist-sized black swallowtail butterfly. There were lots of small fish (perch-like) and I saw one fish that looked like a trout (speckled greenish body with a red tinge on the tail). I don't know if the stream has been seeded with fish or if they have just naturally found the stream. I suspect that, since the stream that the Cheonggeycheon flows into is a black, foul-smelling mess, the fish didn't come from the downstream area but were released in the Cheonggyecheon by some government agency. There are a couple of small streams that empty into the Cheonggyecheon that I've yet to explore, and it's possible that the fish came from them.



Okay, you're probably thinking, "Why is this video on its side?" The answer would be that I'm inept. I keep forgetting that I have to hold the camera level when taking video and that I can't manipulate it later. However, I thought you could still hear the stream and, if you put your head on your right shoulder, it looks okay.

The water flows quite quickly for the first third of the stream where it is quite narrow; then it doubles in width through the middle and the water slows down; then the final third is quite wide and the water flows gently into a larger stream at the south end. The stream is about 8 kms long but has at least three different types of ecosystems. I like the middle part best (near the old supports left from the elevated highway) because it seems the most overgrown and wild.

I got to the City Hall subway station at 9AM, went to the Starbucks in the building with the Canadian embassy, and was walking along the stream by 9:15. I got to the Hanyang University subway stop at the other end at noon. That's a fairly long walk and I could probably do it in 2 hours if I walked steadily without stopping, but it was just such a nice pleasant walk and there were lots of places that I just stopped and sat that it took about 3 hours.

Along the lower end of the stream, there are a lot more cyclists, runners, rollerbladers, power walkers, and others getting their exercise. There are at least three places for "foot-volleyball" (sorry, I don't know the real name for this). There was also a group of older women having a picnic.



I really enjoy this area. I think I will make it a Sunday ritual although I think I'll start at 8AM from now on. By 10AM, the vehicle pollution is noticeable, so an 8-10AM walk should be exactly what the doctor ordered.

I took a lot of pictures today, but Blogger beta has a glitch that doesn't allow me to upload them to this post today. I'm assuming that this is a temporary thing. I'll post them on my Yahoo Photos site. The link is on the right sidebar - "My Photos" --> "Cheonggyecheon Sept. 2006"