Impossibly balanced rock pinacles at Horse Ear Mountain

One weekend in December, Will Alanna and I set out to see some of Korea's parks. Actually, Will and Alanna had both seen them before, but wanted to see them in winter and show them to me, so it worked out. First was Maison Provincial Park, a tiny area packed with lots of wonders. The park's name means 'horse ear mountain' since the odd rock formations look like pointed ears. The rock is odd and would seem out of place anywhere, and especially rising from the plains the way it does with nothing around it. The rock itself is pockmarked. We walked up a snow-dusted slippery trail of wooden steps to the pass between the ears, and tried to go higher but the path was closed off by people with more sense than us when it comes to judging what is reasonable to climb in winter. There was a small temple on the way down, Unsusa, which had a shrine to Dangun, the mythical founder of Korea, and which let you ring the giant bell, which Will promptly did. A bit further down the valley was Tapsa, another Buddhist temple but one that is truly unique. There are Buddha statues in the alcoves of the rock overlooking dozens of balanced stone towers. A Buddhist hermit named Yi Gap Yong (1860-1957) spent much of his life creating stone pinnacles that somehow survive despite being made 50 years ago without any mortar. Once Alanna's hands were frozen from taking her mittens off to take pictures, we continued our walk down past another newer temple, whose golden roof looked interesting from a distance but gaudy up close, and on to a restaurant that served delicious wild black boar black pig. We got a bus onward to the base of Wolchusan National Park, where we got a room and slept on mats on the floor in preparation for the next day's hike.