Kukkiwon 1979 3

Kukkiwon 1979 2

Kukkiwon 1979 1

Good and Bad

Good and Bad

Master Hyong

4/4/12

In 2009, I purchased eight acres of land. I wanted to start a farm. I thought it was a good time to get out from the academy. I’d been teaching over 1000 students per week, over 30 years, so I was ready to get some time away from people and to spend time in nature. I learned how to farm from my mother. She was a farmer, and I would watch her when I was growing up in Korea. After we moved to the United States, if there was any small patch of land by the house, she always ploughed up the grass and planted seeds, and I would help her. I thought this was a very healthy activity. So I bought eight acres of land, and the following year I bought five more, for a total of thirteen. I planned to build a house sometime soon.

In 2010, my first year of farming, I farmed approximately an acre—that was more than enough for me to handle. I had pumpkin, watermelon, green leaves, jalapeno, Korean hot pepper, all kinds of things. There were also quite a few weeds growing. My wife wanted to make sprouts at home so I decided to have black beans, instead of purchasing them from the market, but regular beans from the United States wouldn’t sprout, so when I went to Korea, I brought black beans, and I seeded them in the ground. They were very strong plants, but there were too many weeds. To my mind, the weeds were very bad, and I wanted to pull them out. A visting scholar, Professor Roh from Korea helped me. That whole summer we fought against the weeds. And always, we were thinking, this weed is really, really bad.

Then, one day, after I had been weeding on my land, a strong wind approached. It must have been around forty to fifty knots an hour. It was extremely fast and blew up a lot of dust. But through the dust, the sky was clear. I didn’t understand what was happening. I walked over to a nearby street which runs East and West Then I looked to the west, and saw a cloud coming very low and very fast, and I realized there was a storm coming straight for my farm.

I started to pick up all my farming equipment, threw it into my jeep, and began to drive toward the west. I wanted to see if Tonato touch down. I had a nice Cannon Camera next to me. It started to rain so heavily that I couldn’t drive anymore. I stopped the jeep at the crossroads—1100 N and Race Street—and I picked up my camera and looked to the west once more. It did not seems like any Tonato, so I drove to North toward my home.

The next day, I went back to my small farm, and I saw that in all the rows I’d weeded, the beanstalks were bent down to the ground. But in the rows I’d left alone, where the black beans grew with the weeds, none of them had fallen down. And I sat down and felt my whole thought system changing in that moment. The weeds I had thought were so bad had actually protected my plants in the storm. I saw that good and bad exist together, side by side. 

The big sky country

The big sky country

Many Korean visitors have a comment about this area: "There is nothing to see." Korea is where 70% of the land is mountains and it is surrounded by the sea on three sides. The location is geopolitically complicated but it is a beautiful country. The visitors are used to seeing the beauty from the mountains. They also see the sea. It is very different here. When they are here, there is nothing to see. That is the common complaint.

I believe that the beauty is not only out there but rather inside of your mind and heart. Both the weather inside and outside need to be cultivated.

Native Americans named this area as "The Big Sky Country." The viewd of this area are endless prairies that touch the sky. Is there nothing to see in between? Spend time with nature, there are many things you can find in between. Depending on where the clouds, sun and moon are, you will see different views and unique beauty. There is not only one type of beauty. Wild flowers, tall grasses, birds, many layers of green. 

My children spent time together with me on Saturday because I taught in the evening. I had the idea, if I cannot spend time with them now, I will never have any chance to spend time with them and will never be able to teach them who is their father. It took a while to persuade them. Once I got their agreement, we did many things together. One of our favorite activities was I took them out with a camera and drove outside of town to take pictures of the prairie wild flowers. Usually we could see many beautiful flowers in the ditch in country road or near rail ways. My two daughters are more interested in taking the smells of flowers and happy to watch. However, my son actively took pictures. At the end of day, I took many negatives to Walmart, printed them out to find the good pictures and enlarged them, brought home with wall frames. A weeks later, I displayed them. When they walked downstairs, I showed them their pictures in frames. Oh! It's beautiful! Stunning! Great! My son asked me, whose pictures are they? I was laughing and said to them all of you did them! 

One visitors offered my son to sell his picture. He sold it for $50.00. A person who bought a picture thought that picture was very good picture for her. It was a valuable experience for my children that some said the picture were very beautiful. There was a flower picture, I don’t know the name of it, only I remember it was a red flower and the middle of flower was black. It makes strong contrast.

If my children are not able to cultivate their heart to see the beauty, I am sure they will not come back to this area. If they think there is nothing to see in this area, they will not appreciate this area and themselves. If we cultivate ourselves to see the beauty from our back yard, then we will see the beauty every way. I travel with family every summer all over the U.S. It is very different, one place to another, but each place has its own beauty.