Olive and I took a hike up Umyeonsan (san = mountain) on Saturday. The day was fairly cold, about 6 degrees C, and breezy. I had olive well bundled with an ear-flapped hat. It seemed ok to me.
But not to Pauline (the Korean Pauline) who tsk tsked extensively, and begged me to reconsider my mountain hiking plan. She wanted me to stay at her art studio with Netta. But I was not to be deterred.
The day was cold, as I mentioned, but with a predominance of sun along with the puffy clouds, and the warmer than freezing temperature, it counted as a nice day for Korea in the early spring. Also, a dreaded bugaboo of the Asian spring, the Yellow Dust (blowing off the contaminated deserts of central China) was not in effect. And I love the mountains!! So off we went.
Umyeogsan is uphill from the Seoul Arts center, on the campus of which is the National Gugak center, (Korean music center) where I see a lot of concerts and take some classes. I like the place.
Umyeonsan is about 300 meters tall - - hardly a mountain really, but reasonably strenuous with a toddler on your back. Getting to the top involves going up at least a thousand steps. Some are rough granite, others are wooden with inspirational Korean sayings on them.
Before too long, we got to the top, and I pointed out things in the view to Olive (I forgot I had the camera until a little later.. sorry!) It was pretty clear, so you could see Seoul Tower, the river, the mountains North of Seoul... magnificent.
There was snow on the ground from a late snow, and it was exceptionally muddy. There were parts of the trail that were outrageously muddy, and I was in danger of slipping with Olive on my back and turning us both into mud- covered waeguk beasts. (waeguk = foreigner) But thankfully I didn't.
On the way there was a bathroom, but it was a "port-a-squatty," a portable squat style toilet. Olive refuses to have anything to do with a squat toilet, wisely because they are often filthy. Oh well.
On the way down, we visited Daeseongsa. (sa = buddhist temple) There's a spring there, water coming out of the mountain into a beautiful carved granite fountain. I went there in the midwinter, and had to break the ice to scoop water to drink. Today, it was thawed, but very cold.
The water comes out of a granite turtle's mouth, then a dragon and another dragon – through a series of three progressively dirty pools. We drank out of the turtle's mouth, and I washed the mud off my neoprene Korean hiking pants with the lowest pool.
Around this point I remembered I had the camera. The rightmost turtle is where the drinking water comes out.
Olive next to the dirty pool trying to look like one of the dragons. You can just see a sitting Buddha there to the left of the frolicking turtles.
The carving looks kind of medieval-european. It's a spiritual character, but all the same he looks worried. Some of them are small, but you can see a bunch of little Buddha characters. Some of them look finely wrought and expensive, others like little toys. It looks like people just put their own there.
Unrelated picture!!! But it's too cute not to post.
