Explorer: Along the Trail of Korea’s Mountain Spirits

Joe Ray for The New York Times

Overlooking a roof at Haeinsa, a Buddhist temple.

THE titanium spork was a Christmas gift from my brother Gregory, a choice that seemed random at the time. I had no use for ultra-lightweight dual-use cutlery. But nine months later, almost 7,000 miles from my home in New York City and nearly catatonic with exhaustion, I was thankful for its lack of heft. Gregory; my husband, Joe; and I had been hiking for 12 hours while hoisting a 30-pound backpack over steep and slippery rock in a thick mist. After nightfall, headlamps fading, we spotted dots of light below us in the dark, and heard the eerie whoosh of a wind generator. We stumbled down to the Satgat-jae shelter, a basic cabin for hikers perched at over 4,200 feet in South Korea's Deogyusan National Park. I unpacked my spork.

It was Gregory, now living in South Korea and flush with the zeal of the newly expatriated, who had suggested we hike a portion of the Baekdu-Daegan trail. The Baekdu-Daegan is a mountain system running the entire length of the two Koreas, some 870 miles. On maps, it appears as the topographical backbone of the Korean Peninsula, but I soon realized it was also a psycho-spiritual one. The notion first occurred to me when Gregory told us that his city-dwelling Korean girlfriend said he would understand her better if he hiked the Baekdu-Daegan. And when Joe and I checked out of our ultramodern hotel in central Seoul, the receptionist clapped when I told her what we were about to do.

South Korea may be among the most wired and densely populated countries in the world, but its first religion many centuries ago — before the arrival of Christianity, Confucianism and Buddhism — was based on the worship of mountain spirits. The Korean version of feng shui, known as pungsu-jiri, holds that the nation's energy flows south along the Baekdu-Daegan ridge and outward along its branches. By the time of our trip, I had developed a theory that the mountains are to Koreans as the Wild West is to Americans: even if a New Yorker, say, has never set foot on a ranch, he likes to think he's got a little bit of cowboy in his soul. It's part of the collective unconscious.

Since the '80s, as both freedom and wealth have spread in South Korea, so has the popularity of mountaineering. As it has, the South Korean portion of the Baekdu-Daegan has become hikable along nearly all of its 457-mile ridge, with trails built and maintained by the Korea Forest Service, part of the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. Weekend warriors tackle it in chunks, and a hardy few attempt the entire length as an epic two-month trek.

In the spring, Gregory had mailed me the only English-language guidebook to the trail. The spork had been a subtle lure, but I took the guidebook as an all-out invitation and began making plans for a September trip. My brother had lived in South Korea for much of his 20s, but, always too busy or broke from my own globe-trotting, I had never visited. Now he was moving back there at the age of 37, in love with Korea, the Korean language and a Korean woman. I wanted to better understand his decision, which seemed to be either a bold gamble on personal happiness or a crazy one. And I wanted to know the place that might be his permanent home.

Gregory is younger than I am, but he became our leader, particularly after we left the capital and entered the countryside, where we saw no other foreigners and heard virtually no English, and so were dependent on his Korean skills.

The section of trail we had chosen began in a southern farming region and took us north into 90-square-mile Deogyusan National Park. Clouds clung to the hills, a reminder of the unseasonably late typhoon that had passed over the peninsula the day before. As we ascended, we were almost immediately passed by a hiking club — 15 lithe men and women in the black hiking pants favored there, made from panels of high-tech-looking fabric. Their leader broke his stride just long enough to tie a ribbon to a tree marking their passage; some branches we passed were festooned with these brightly colored strips.

In height, South Korea's mountains are more akin to the Appalachians than the Rockies — the highest mainland peak is 6,283-foot Jirisan. They can, however, be jagged in the extreme. We planned to cover just seven miles on the first day, but the steep and constant ups and downs soon had us aching. We often had to climb using our hands, and in many places we used the chains and ropes that the forest service had helpfully attached to the rocks.

As we limped into our second morning, we decided to rethink our itinerary. Instead of sticking religiously to the trail for six days, we would weave our way on and off, stopping at villages and temples along the way. Things immediately improved. For one thing, the sun had come out. For another, we were going downhill. Soon we were following a stream, broken up by waterfalls and pools through a deciduous forest of maple, hazel and birch. We stopped to talk to a pair of Korean hikers on their way up. I would hear Gregory explain our presence so many times over the course of this trip that I began to pick up the words for sister and brother-in-law. "People look at you differently when you're traveling with family," he said to me after another encounter with fellow hikers. "You're not a suspicious bachelor."

Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang

Explorer: Along the Trail of Korea’s Mountain Spirits

Dengan url

http://travelwisatawan.blogspot.com/2012/12/explorer-along-trail-of-koreaas_7.html

Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya

Explorer: Along the Trail of Korea’s Mountain Spirits

namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link

Explorer: Along the Trail of Korea’s Mountain Spirits

sebagai sumbernya