like the easy pale food. I felt the need to walk briskly, but that wasn’t
about to happen.
First, there was tea. Not exactly a forest ranger, Park is more of a
ranger-slash-shaman. Remarkably, that is pretty much his official job
description. He is part of a new breed of Korean Forest Agency
employee known as a forest healing instructor. He’d actually gone to
graduate school for this, passing rigorous entrance qualifications. He
did not always aspire to this profession. He began his career as many
South Koreans do, in a competitive corporate job—in his case,
general manager of a hospital clinic in a city a few hours south of
Seoul. But then, at age thirty-four, he received a diagnosis of chronic
myeloid leukemia. He had a wife and three small children. He sought
peace and recovery in the nearby woods, and it worked so well he
decided to orient his entire life to the cypress trees. Here, in his
mountain aerie, he stands at the forefront of South Korea’s project to
medicalize nature, beginning with its immediate sensory effects.
Park greeted my translator and me in the visitor center parking lot
of Jangseong Healing Forest and ushered us inside. The building was
brand-new, constructed of blond woods and redolent of the pleasant,
slightly acrid smell of hinoki cypress with its robust notes of
turpentine-meets-Christmas tree. Park apologized for the low table in
the conference room, asking me if I’d be okay sitting cross-legged on
the floor. Of course! I said. Not all Americans are stiff-legged blobs
of hopelessness. We drank the tea, made from benzoin tree flowers
harvested here in the summer. After twenty minutes I desperately had
to shift position, and pined once again for the promised walk. He was
telling us that between 2,000 and 3,000 visitors come through here
every month, including three to four groups per day specifically
geared to some kind of healing, from cancer patients to kids with
allergies to prenatal groups and everything in between. Depending on
the program, participants may do activities like guided meditation,
woodcrafts and tea ceremonies. But the heart of it all is walking in the