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It started early on. My nature of leaping into things that is. My mother has oft reminded me that in the early wake of toddlerhood, I resolutely eschewed the art of crawling and leaped ahead instead to the walking phase. It is an interesting aspect of human nature that even at the dawn of youth our proclivities shine forth and accompany us into adulthood; for here I was without a shadow of doubt trading in my corporate day job for an island adventure. The East coast shores of South Africa marked my journeys provenance and after five flights and two extended layovers I finally reached the place where “X” marked the spot: Jeju Island. Just a few weeks earlier this South Korean island wonder had been a complete unknown entity to me. In my trademark preparation of travels abroad, I pored over numerous online resources, reading and researching all about this island into the early hours of many a morning. After reviewing multiple images and viewing clips of the island in her daily motions; my mind settled on a pastiche of its own design which would serve me until my arrival. Exactly 37 days after my decision to leave, the familiar African soil beneath my feet transmuted into unfamiliar territory strewn with the island’s ubiquitous, black volcanic rock. It wasn’t the island’s only ubiquitous feature for soon after arrival I caught my first sighting of dol hareubang (stone grandfather), the island’s stone-carved protectors and a symbol of fertility and fecundity. Darkness cloaked the island as I peered through the bus window trying to survey the rest of my new environment. After roughly 50 minutes of travelling from north to south, our bus came to a standstill depositing myself and three new colleagues at our apartment building in the small southern town of Seogwipo. The elevator up to the eighth floor was peppered with the strains of our various English accents. Once we had manoeuvred our cumbersome luggage into our separate apartments and crossed the threshold of our new homes; I was now free to unpack my thoughts. Arriving at most destinations in the dark of night is somewhat of an enigma. The shapes and forms of night play in the shadows revealing only snippets of reality beneath subdued streetlights or if fortunate, the moon’s bathing light. However, the view from my balcony revealed to me alarming lights of a different kind which I would only decipher a day later. Dawn brought with her answers and vistas. My balcony view now revealed to me a glorious view of the ocean and Google revealed to me the source of the alarming night lights: squid trawlers. It would be a sight that I soon moved into the file of familiarity after learning of the islander’s fishing traditions. Another familiar sighting would be the picturesque rows of the same squid hung out to dry on elevated lines along the coastline. A rarer sighting that for me took on a more auspicious nature however, was that of the island’s sea women; the iconic haenyeo divers. These remarkable women are a cohort of largely elderly, free divers. They scour the ocean floor in descending bursts of energy, ascending again with a myriad of delicacies which you can find them subsequently preparing for locals and visitors in makeshift kitchenettes on the adjacent rocks. The ensuing 12 months I spent on the island would continue to be an undertaking of explorations and an unfolding of revelations; both of the islands varying treasures as well as those of a personal nature. It is no secret to explorers that often hidden within the realm of each odyssey are keys of self-discovery and new strands of life’s wonders which we weave into our unique tapestries. Some become tightly interwoven and others hang loosely still, awaiting their coalescence with strands yet to come. A few months later I sat atop Halla mountain, the island and South Korea’s highest peak. Surrounded by the chattering of foreign tongues I slipped into silent reflection, pondering one of life’s paradoxes; that it is most often in the shadows of the unknown that we see life with greater clarity.