Guksabong

Every runner has a route they could do with their eyes closed. Mine goes up a mountain. Guksabong, 國師峯 — the Peak of the National Preceptor, after the title Goryeo and early Joseon gave their most revered monks — is a small mountain on the line between Dongjak and Gwanak, and I run it as often as I can, at whatever hour the day leaves me.

The photos give it away. 9:33 p.m. in July, the city glowing through the leaves. 6:35 p.m. in August by the flagpole and the summit stone. 11:31 p.m. at the pull-up bar. 10:34 p.m., the stone lit up like a stage. A Sunday morning in August, shoes laced.

Running a mountain over and over changes what a mountain is. It stops being a destination and becomes a habit, like coffee. Thoreau said he couldn’t keep his health and spirits without at least four hours a day sauntering through woods and over hills. I manage less than that. But the direction is right.

I labelled this folder ‘Dream Forest in summer’. The timestamps say April 22nd, a Monday, barely two weeks after the cherry blossoms. The forest had simply decided early: every branch fully green, light coming through leaves instead of petals, yellow flowers crowding the edge of the dirt trail.

I walk these same few hundred metres of trail again and again, and that’s exactly the point. Climbing the same small mountain all year teaches you that a season isn’t a date. It’s a colour.

Guksabong is my home mountain — the running log above tells that story — and on its lower slopes in Seonghyeon-dong there is a small forest park, the Seonghyeon Dream Forest. On a Tuesday in April, a little before nine, the cherry trees there had reached the exact moment between full bloom and falling.

Petals on the path like spilled rice, a wooden pavilion under a roof of blossom, and through the bare branches higher up, apartment towers carrying on as if nothing were happening. That’s the strange luxury of a Seoul mountain: five minutes from the street and you are somewhere else entirely.