Hiking GuRyongSan Mountain

The temple on GuRyongSan Mountain in 1997

GuRyongSan Mountain in Winter of 1997

My student, “Anthony”, used to bring me to see places and to experience Korean culture. He could practice his English, yes, but he could help a foreigner to feel welcome also, which is what many Koreans felt they should do, I was told. While I was teaching in Seoul, a number of Korean people said they knew I was a stranger, alone in a foreign land, and they wanted to help me. In December of 1997 there was a bit of snow on the ground and on a Sunday Anthony took me to “climb a mountain”. The mountain wasn’t high and was an easy hike. There was a beautiful, small temple on it and I saw some other very interesting things as well.

This is where we parked, I remember. Today, it’s too dangerous to park here. GuRyongSan ìs on the right in this photo.

I didn’t know where we were or where we were going when we parked next to the tunnel in Southeastern Seoul that day. It was a bit scary for me when I saw the tunnel because we didn’t have such tunnels in Canada. I knew that Lady Diana had been killed in a tunnel like that. It turned out we were just in the neighborhood beside Karak-dong.

I often had to trust that everything was okay and put my fear aside when I was in Korea. It usually worked out very well. The mountain had mostly deciduous trees growing on it. On every mountain I saw in Korea, there was never any underbrush on the ground, as though people had been everywhere in the woods before. Whereas in Canada, there was always a lot of underbrush(small bushes) and Canadian forests seemed wilder and more untamed to me than Korean wooded areas did.

This isn’t my photo but I wanted to display a picture of what it was like.

This is a picture I took of Anthony on our hike.

I stopped to look at a black squirrel who was up in the trees above us making loud chirping sounds. He had long, tufted ears.

I remember that Anthony thought it was foolish of me to want to watch an “ugly Korean squirrel” but I was very interested in watching it. I hardly came across any Korean person who liked any birds or animals at all while I was in Korea. I found it strange. They did really like dogs, however.

This is a Eurasian red squirrel like the one I saw that day. It’s called “red” but squirrels can have different colour variations, like brown, red, black or other.

We came upon an army foxhole. It might have been very old or it could have been there for training soldiers. Like most things I wanted to know about while I was in Korea, there was no information about it there. And Anthony didn’t know why it was there.

After a while we came upon a colourful temple with some little buildings. I was thrilled.

This is what suddenly appeared after we were hiking for a few hours.

The main temple hall. It was very ornate, with dragons holding gold balls in their mouths.

The temple was small and these structures weren’t big, but they were covered in paintings and lotus designs. Many colours like aqua, purple, pink and green were all over. Some granite steps with lion statues on the hall were impressive as well..

Some Korean people were visiting this temple on that day, as a third of the population was Buddhist back then. A little girl played on the granite steps. I never entered any of the buildings in any temples that I visited while I was in Korea, but when I was here I looked inside a very small building and took a picture. The building was like a small shed and people had placed candles and little statues inside on its shelves.

Little building where I took a picture of the inside.

Inside the small shed-like structure were paintings, candles and lotus flowers that represented wishes and offerings.

We came to an open area and looked down at a group of apartment buildings and a lot of lumps or humps of ground on a hillside. The hill was a graveyard and the humps were where people were buried! It’s not like that in Canada. Canadians are buried six feet (183cm)underground in long boxes(coffins) with no piled up ground on top. Some Canadians are cremated.

I’m happy that I hiked on GuRyongSan Mountain with Anthony that day. I loved the temple, the squirrel and the many tall, skinny trees. For me, it wasn’t cold and it was just like a walk, not a hike. Seeing the graveyard and the army foxhole was very interesting too. These were all sights I never would have come across in Canada.