Night sky full of stars

By Kim Sun-ae For more than 10 years, I have wanted to live in the countryside. This autumn, I had an opportunity to experience rural life, staying in Inje, Gangwon Province (the northeastern region of South Korea), for two months. The air in Inje is very clean because 90 percent of the county is covered in forests.

Here, wherever you are, you can see beautiful mountains. In October, I took part in a program in which participants could see the night sky at Mount Hanseok in Garisan-ri, a village in Inje. The leader who guided us over the mountain has climbed mountains a lot.



I could feel her inner strength from her not-so-big body. Before walking, we had a dinner cooked by some of the villagers. Three participants including myself were vegan, and we were grateful that they prepared a delicious vegan meal for us.

The purpose of the program was to become one with nature in a place without artificial lights. We went up the mountain a little by van and walked for about 30 minutes. Then, when we arrived at a wide space in the mountain, each of us chose a spot where we wanted to lie down.

We put a mat on the ground and lay down in a sleeping bag. A soft breeze blew. The cool autumn wind touched my cheeks.

The half-moon and stars were shining beautifully in the vast sky. The wind dropped and the night deepened. Lying in the darkness, I could see more and more stars that I couldn’t see at first.

Although some people don’t know they are shining, all of us are shining like a star. Some tiny shining things crossed the sky slowly, and I wondered what they were. Later, the leader told us they were satellites, which would become space debris in the future.

After looking at the night sky in the quiet for about an hour, we stood up again. Our sleeping bags were covered with the night dew. We went back to the spot where we had started the walk.

The leader told us, “Let’s walk by the moonlight and starlight.” Her words touched me. Why do we live depending only on artificial lights like electric lights? The moon and stars shone our way down the mountain.

After being without artificial light for an hour, we could see the path even in the dark, as our eyes grew accustomed to the low light. When the trail started getting steeper, the leader gave each of us a flashlight. After some point, my flashlight stopped running, maybe because it was out of batteries.

However, the lights from other people’s flashlights were sufficient to lead the way. We walked slowly in the moderate darkness. It was a precious experience to feel that we are small members of the universe, embraced by the night sky full of stars.

Kim Sun-ae (blog.naver.com/everythingchanges) wrote "Old Potato, New Potato" and translated "Little Lord Fauntleroy.

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