Goblin | Woljeongsa Fir Forest Path, Pyeongchang — The Walk Through the Snow

Snow, and a corridor of fir trees forty metres tall, and two people walking under them working out what they are to each other. The forest does most of the acting in that scene.

The path runs about 1.9 kilometres from the car park up to Woljeongsa, a temple founded in the seventh century on the slopes of Odaesan. Roughly seventeen hundred fir trees line it, some of them three hundred years old, and the track underfoot is flat packed sand — this is a walk, not a hike, and it is manageable in ordinary shoes. The Odaecheon stream runs alongside; in deep winter it ices over and you can hear water moving underneath it.

Come in snow if you possibly can. The drama shot it white and there is no substitute — the trunks go near-black, sound drops away completely, and the corridor effect the camera exploited only really exists when everything else is buried. Failing that, early morning mist in autumn is the second-best version.

Practical notes for winter: the tourist information office shuts around half four, so if you have come by taxi, arrange the return leg before you start walking. There is a temple-stay programme if you want to stay past dark.

Walk it slowly and stop halfway, where the trees close over the track completely. What the scene understood is that a fir forest in snow is one of the few places on earth quiet enough that two people have to say the thing out loud.

Cover photo: Woljeongsa, by Steve46814, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. The temple at the end of the path, not the fir corridor itself.