Summer — Rivers, Valleys, and Catching Freshwater Snails
Summer is heat, and the answer to heat is water Korean summers are humid. Not the dry heat of Southern California or the Mediterranean, where shade provides real relief. Korean summer heat comes with moisture — thick air that wraps around you, that makes the shade only slightly better than the sun. In the cities, people retreat to air conditioning. In the countryside, they go to the river. The Korean countryside is well suited to this response. The rivers and streams that descend from the forested mountains are cold — fed by springs and shaded by trees for most of their upper courses — and the concept of 계곡 (gyegok, mountain valley stream) is inseparable from Korean summer culture in a way that has no precise equivalent in most Western countries. ...