The last time I talked with my mother, she shared an aphorism with me that’s been rolling around in my brain: “Before enlightenment, there are trees. After enlightenment, there are trees.” This is probably a paraphrase of something aptly Buddhistic, but I like the simplicity of it.
I was thinking of it, and looking at trees, yesterday, as I climbed up the path up the mountain behind my hotel here in Gwangju. There were many trees, in various stages of springing forth, from bare branches to luxuriant pale, glowing green, with lots of blossoms too. Some of the trees had little labels on them placed by the local park service that maintains the park, and so I set to trying to learn some of the Korean names of trees – assuming I could identify the tree in question based on my own somewhat stale knowledge from my classes in botany of 20 years ago.
It was a steep climb – good exercise to reach to top. The view out over Gwanju wasn’t spectacular: there were too many trees. But it was beautiful. And I had the space mostly to myself, since rain was threatening. It’s pretty rare to have park-trails to oneself, in Korea.
Here is a picture.
