Gyejoksan Mountain

Your bare feet press down into cool, wet red clay. It feels soft and a little strange against the skin at first. Then, after a few steps, it begins to feel good. This is Gyejoksan, a mountain rising on the edge of Daejeon. People know it for one thing above all: a long path where visitors take off their shoes and walk on the bare red earth.

Gyejoksan stands in Daedeok-gu, in the northern part of the city. It rises a little over four hundred meters above the land around it. That is not very high as mountains go, but it is high enough to open wide views over Daejeon and the green hills that ring it. The climb up is steady and long rather than sharp and steep, so most people can manage it.

The name Gyejok means chicken foot. People say that the ridges of the mountain, when you look down on them from above, spread out wide like the splayed toes of a chicken's foot. Once someone tells you the name, you start to see the shape everywhere, in the way the trails branch and divide and run off in different directions as you climb higher.

The thing that truly draws people here is the barefoot trail. Workers spread soft red clay, called hwangto, in a thick layer along a long path through the forest. Visitors take off their shoes and socks and walk straight out onto it. The clay is cool and gives slightly under the weight of each step. Many people believe it is good for the body and the blood. Everyone agrees it feels unusual and pleasant.

Walking without any shoes changes the whole way you move. You slow right down. You feel every small dip and rise in the ground beneath you. You pay close attention to each step in a way you simply never do on a flat, hard street. By the end of the path your feet are stained deep red, and you carry your shoes in your hand, the same as everyone else around you.

The trail runs the whole way through pine forest. The trees grow tall and straight, and the air beneath them smells of resin and warm earth. Sunlight falls in soft, shifting patches through the high branches. Even on a hot summer day, the forest floor holds onto the cool. The deep red of the clay set against the dark green of the pines is the picture that people carry home.

There are water taps and washing places set along the route and waiting at the end of it. You rinse the red clay carefully from your feet before you put your shoes back on. The water comes out cold. After a long, slow walk in the warmth, that cold splash wakes you right up. Then you sit down on a step, dry your feet, and rest a while in the shade.

Near the top of the mountain lie the remains of an old stone fortress. People built thick walls up here long ago, to watch over the land and the roads spread out far below. Today only parts of the rough stonework still remain standing. You can walk up and stand beside the old wall, and look out across the distance the way the watchmen here once did, long before you.

The mountain holds events at different points through the year. At certain times there are outdoor concerts held right in the forest, where live music drifts among the trees while people sit and rest their bare, tired feet. It is worth checking before you come. If your visit happens to line up with one of them, it is a rare and fine thing to sit and hear music out in the woods.

Bring a small towel and a light bag with you. You will want the towel to dry your feet at the end, and the bag to carry your shoes in while you walk the clay. Wear clothes that you do not mind getting a little dirty along the way. The deep red of the hwangto can rub off, mark the cloth, and stay there long after you have gone home.

The full loop around the mountain is long, and you do not have to walk the whole of it to feel it. Many people simply do a shorter stretch of the clay path and then turn back the way they came. The point of the walk was never really the distance covered. The point is the plain feeling of cool earth pressing up under your feet, and the deep quiet of the pines.

So stop for a moment. Take off your shoes and your socks. Step out onto the cool red clay and feel it press up gently between your toes. High above you, the pines bend and move in the wind. For this one walk, at least, there is nothing left between you and the bare ground, and that is what you came up here to find.