As darkness fell over the forest, my hearing awoke. I began to hear sounds around me. ‘Thrust thrust.’ The forest guide I was walking with told me that it was the sound of a magpie’s cry. The pitch-black night seemed to return us to a world without navigation devices. The only things that faintly illuminated our feet were the lanterns and luminous bracelets we were holding. We were voluntary night walkers who had lost our way.
I attended a night hike held at the National Arboretum in Pocheon, Gyeonggi Province on the 31st of last month. It was the last day of ‘Summer Night! Gwangneung Forest Summer Bloom’, when the National Arboretum opens its doors at night for only three days a year. The 200 or so people who participated in the event walked along the arboretum’s forest path from 7 to 9 p.m. and saw the longicorn beetle, a first-class endangered wild animal, and the Victoria water lily that blooms at night.
![The whispers of nature revealed by darkness… The night arboretum opens the senses [김선미의 시크릿가든]](https://dimg.donga.com/wps/NEWS/IMAGE/2024/09/07/126895168.1.jpg "The whispers of nature revealed by darkness… The night arboretum opens the senses [김선미의 시크릿가든]")
Each group was divided into groups of about 10 people, and each group was assigned a forest interpreter. After entering the arboretum, the forest interpreter asked under a tree, “Everyone, what can you smell?” No one could answer.
“I think it would be good to wake up your senses today, so I’m going to keep my words short. Open your eyes, nose, and ears wide and feel the forest air. I can hear the sound of a owl over there. The dark and quiet Gwangneung Forest is a place where owls can sleep. It’s inconvenient for us because there are no streetlights, but other creatures can sleep thanks to it. Can you hear the sound of crickets? Where there is the sound of water, there is a chance of encountering fireflies. Yesterday, someone found 10 fireflies. I also met a wild boar on this road.”
What an exciting story. Before my senses were awake, the spirit of the explorer was already rising. In the night arboretum, fear and curiosity were only a sheet of paper apart. Although we had just met, there were fellow explorers walking the unknown path together, and the night was reborn as a world of imagination and mystery. “It’s a firefly!” The first discoverer was a child who came with his grandparents and parents. On the other hand, the adults kept losing sight of the fireflies fluttering around the forest near the water. Since they had sacrificed their sense of direction to smartphones and GPS, had they lost the ability to find fireflies? I closed my eyes tightly and opened them again, and the moment I saw the fireflies, they resembled the luminous light of the bracelet on my wrist and were stars that had landed in the forest.
The reason I was able to walk safely through the forest path even in the dark was thanks to the 460m forest ecology trail built in the Gwangneung Forest Natural Forest. It is a deck path with a low slope and adjusted width for those with walking difficulties. It felt like a troll fairy would pop out of the forest where old trees were breathing on both sides. I felt the vitality of the wild in the cool night air exhaled by the forest.
The night arboretum is reminiscent of a pious monastery, as there are no streetlights to violently drive away the darkness. People walking along the path together may hold hands, but they are sparing with words. Even without trying to explain, the landscapes of our inner selves will overlap and meet along the path.
The last part of the National Arboretum night hike was to lay down a mat on the arboretum forest path and look at the stars. “Don’t you usually have time to look at the stars? You’re busy, you’re tired. How about you hold the stars in your hearts today? If you take a moment to think about ‘I used to have this kind of dream, I used to have this kind of hope,’ you can check if you’re going in the right direction. It would be good to find a star that can act as an unwavering compass and carve it into your heart.” Since it was the last day of the month, I could clearly see the stars that twinkled like sugar with my naked eye. As I stretched out on my back, the heavy stress that had been weighing on my shoulders seemed to melt away. I just wanted to fall asleep in the forest.
In Korea and abroad, urban arboretums open at night with a flashy party atmosphere. However, UNESCO Biosphere Reserve arboretums organize programs to meet wild animals and birds while trekking on a star-counting night. It would be nice if the night opening program of the National Arboretum, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, could be a little darker and quieter than it is now. This time, I thought that walking, an act of thought, goes well with the arboretum at night.
On the way out of the arboretum, the forest guide asked, “Is this the place I first asked you about? Do you still not smell anything?” Finally, I could smell it. The sweet dalgona scent of the cinnamon tree leaves! My sense of smell had been opened. I think I will tell people about it for a long time in the future. “I still remember the night arboretum, the walk along the forest path.”
Pocheon = Reporter Kim Seon-mi [email protected]
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2024-09-08 04:08:24