[LIFE'S OLLE TRAILS 6] Discovering deer carcasses at the tea museum

Two deer eye a human intruder on Jeju Island. Courtesy of Rachel Stine

By Rachel Stine

The deeper I went into the woods, the more dissatisfied I became with some of the negative patterns I had picked up in Seoul.

This became very clear at work. In February 2022, I decided to limit my relationship with the teaching environments of Jeju Island and Daechi-dong, where students compete so viciously for university admissions they compare their lives to "SKY Castle."

Instead, I took a new job at an English library. The student demographic there was mixed, with some students attending elite boarding schools and others at local public schools.

My new boss also enjoyed hiking. When she asked for new field trip ideas, I suggested we explore an Olle Trail near our campus.

That's how I ended up in the backseat of a minivan, reading an Olle Trail plant guide to second graders. If a time traveler told New York Rachel that her career would involve not only hiking, but hiking with a screeching pack of second-grade girls, she would have spit out her coffee.

Truly, I was a long way from home.

After our field trip, my boss drove me to my bus stop in her white minivan. "Where did you learn so much about plants?" she asked.

"Oh, you know. Just around. I love all that outdoors stuff."

The words felt stupid even as they left my mouth.

"I love all that outdoors stuff?"

My childhood was spent in a bean bag chair doing completionist runs of Spyro the Dragon. "Connecting with nature" meant ordering grass-fed steak at Outback Steakhouse.

When did "outdoors stuff" happen?

Other strange things started happening, too. One morning, while I was walking my dog, Miracle, by cow fields, I heard rustling in the gotjawal. I pulled her leash back. "That's a deer," I thought, as we backed away to create a respectful distance.

Seconds later, a Siberian roe deer stumbled out of the underbrush. Her hooves clapped against the sidewalk as she straightened up, turning her radar dish ears to examine us.

Miracle was intrigued. She approached, wagging her tail. This spooked the doe, which bounded back into the subtropical bramble. We watched her go. Then, I adjusted my headphones and we continued on our walk.

Seoul Rachel wouldn't have been able to identify that sound. Seoul Rachel would have thought: "Lord, I'm gonna get kicked to death by the moped-sized goat."

Which…is pretty embarrassing to type now.

In fact, when I first arrived on Jeju, I had never heard Siberian roe deer bark. The first time I encountered the noise ― which sounds like a bobcat scream ― I took a video and sent it to a friend who worked in wildlife rehabilitation. "Have the aliens landed?" I whispered into the phone.

But what can I say? Deer calls aren't usually something a Jersey Shore kid is familiar with. On Jeju, these animals are part of the culture, whether they're grazing in fields, painted on murals or carved into bus terminal walls.

Perhaps that's why I was so surprised when a coworker mentioned that she hadn't seen any.

"Nah," I insisted. "They're in the cow fields every day."

Still, she insisted she had never seen any deer. It was only later that I remembered ― she drove a car everywhere.

While many assert that a car is required to fully access Jeju, I believe one loses critical aspects of island life by driving. On foot, one is forced to walk olle, or "narrow pathways from houses to main streets." This hyper-specific Korean noun is unique to the Jeju dialect, and it's where the Olle Trails get their name.

Once, while in a meeting with my boss, I off-handedly mentioned seeing hummingbirds while walking to the grocery store. She was shocked.

"There are hummingbirds on Jeju?"

There was the car curse again. When one drives a vehicle to complete errands, even a hiker can miss microscopic moments of beauty.

Exploring my neighborhood on foot became a hobby all its own. Since I enjoyed the Olle routes so much, I decided to walk the trails behind O'Sulloc Tea Museum as well. The endless rows of tea hedges are breathtaking at sunset. It's also where the roe deer seem to go at the end of their lives. One can find their bodies scattered throughout the tall grass, as though they knew this ethereal landscape would provide comfort in their final hours.

Or maybe the farmers are just, you know…poisoning them.

I prefer the romantic version myself.

The first few times I stumbled across a deer carcass near O'Sulloc, I wrinkled my nose in disgust. But as time went on, the sight stopped bothering me; it was just another woods thing my second graders wouldn't have thought twice about.

All children have some innate connection to nature, don't they? Even I explored the woods growing up, but by age 11 it lost its appeal. Soon, my schedule was dictated by homework, drama club rehearsals and a cashiering job at GameStop.

By 17, my free time was extremely limited. I drove to all my various school events in a Jeep Wrangler that was so rusted you could see the pavement while you were driving it. I rarely ever went outdoors.

The only time I thought about hiking was in my senior year, when I noticed a copy of Bill Bryson's "A Walk in the Woods" at a supermarket checkout. My English class had read a section of it during a practice AP exam. I laughed out loud when Bryson wrote: "I wanted a little of that swagger that comes with being able to gaze at a far horizon through eyes of chipped granite and say with a slow, manly sniff, 'Yeah, I've shit in the woods.'"

I bought the book…and never read it.

Needless to say, I never tried hiking, either.

By high school, the woods were more of an abstract concept than a real place. Except, of course, for when I listened to "The Memory of Trees" by Enya.

Enya makes you spiritual, right? Sort of like Manhattan ladies who fancy themselves Earth Mothers because they shop at Whole Foods.

When I moved to Manhattan for university, I couldn't afford to shop at Whole Foods, so I got a $16-an-hour job handing out free samples there instead. I read milk carton labels that talked about family-owned farms and convinced myself that this constituted respect for nature.

In 2013, university graduation liberated me from free sample jobs. I moved to Osan, and later, Seoul. By 2020, trees really were just a memory.

Sure, there had been camping in the Serengeti and trekking in Thailand…but these were backpacking trips. I spent a week in the savannah at most. Throughout my 20s, I sharpened the edges of myself in skyscrapers. The college applications of high school were replaced with a LinkedIn profile, and midterm papers evolved into newspaper articles.

As for the AP exams? I found that I loved teaching Korean high school students how to survive them, which opened up a smorgasbord of job opportunities in Apgujeong, Daechi and Jeju.

Unfortunately, the test prep industry was where my workaholic streak found a dangerous outlet.

A young deer on Jeju Island / Courtesy of Rachel Stine

Like most expats, I started teaching at a regular English academy, working 40 hours a week and earning 2.1 million won per month. By 2019, it was only 17 hours a week for 3.5 million won. Then I moved to private one-on-one coaching sessions, offering highly specialized SAT/AP prep classes to get Korean kids into universities abroad. My salary more than doubled.

That was where I got into trouble, psychologically speaking.

After I left my job at PEAI ― the most effective, most socially progressive academy in all Korea, in my estimation ― my mental health started to suffer. My boss, Dennis, wasn't around to model emotional balance anymore. Korean "Education Fever" became a socially acceptable way to indulge my own struggle with perfectionism, which, in turn, fueled my OCD. I just didn't realize it at the time.

Every student who went to an elite boarding school, or placed in a national contest, or got a perfect TOEFL score was another hit of dopamine ― another subconscious form of validation that echoed my own stressful high school career. At speech contests, I felt like an American football coach pacing back and forth, analyzing every play from the sidelines.

It was unhealthy for everyone. But instead of admitting that, I caught the fever myself.

Mirroring my students' late-night studying, I dumped literally thousands of hours into writing and studying Korean. I insisted that my workaholism was a sign of cultural integration.

Teaching debate, the SAT and writing…it wasn't hurting anyone. There was structural inequality inherent in the Korean cram school system, sure. But I had student loans to repay. Test prep jobs allowed me to share literature and tackle student debt at the same time, right?

It took hiking the Olle Trails to realize my workplace was intensifying my own battle with perfectionism. Ultimately, it was perfectionism that formed the sticky, oily heart of my OCD.

Jeju Island held up a hand to that old demon and said: "Enough."

LIFE'S OLLE TRAILS 1 How hiking Jeju's 437km of trails changed my life
LIFE'S OLLE TRAILS 2 Fighting agrarian anxiety attacks on Jeju's paths
LIFE'S OLLE TRAILS 3 Carrying a grandma through Yaksu Station
LIFE'S OLLE TRAILS 4 Going full white lady in the woods
LIFE'S OLLE TRAILS 5 Getting ice cream and umbrellas from strangers
LIFE'S OLLE TRAILS 6 Discovering deer carcasses at the tea museum
LIFE'S OLLE TRAILS 7 Healing perfectionism on Pyoseon Beach
LIFE'S OLLE TRAILS 8 Confronting OCD in Woljeong-ri
LIFE'S OLLE TRAILS 9 Reading a poem about death in the woods
LIFE'S OLLE TRAILS 10 Confronting the subconscious saboteur
LIFE'S OLLE TRAILS 11 Worrying about comments section chaos
LIFE'S OLLE TRAILS 12 Saying goodbye in Gueok-ri
LIFE'S OLLE TRAILS 13 Walking back, fast or slow

Rachel Stine has volunteered in the North Korean human rights sphere for over a decade. Her writing has appeared in The Huffington Post, The Korea Times and other major news outlets. You can view nature photography from her journeys around the world at flickr.com/photos/rachelstinewrites.