March 9th. It had been a bit warm, but there’d been lots of rain and it was hard to gauge, beforehand, just how cold it remained in the mountains . . . so we Hearty Hikers had thought we might get one more chance to walk across the gentle Aozasa ridge in the snow.

But it was not to be. A bit of frost remained on the trail, here and there . . .

. . . but no snow.

No snow to glide through.

There was, however, a lot of snow on Mt. Fuji—and a beautiful blue sky.
And when Fuji smiles at you, under a big blue sky, you can’t help but tingle and smile back.

In my new novel, When a Sissy Climbs a Mountain in May (scheduled release late spring/early summer 2019), the narrator meets a woman and falls in love at first sight. Then it’s autumn, and the two of them are relaxing beneath a persimmon tree. The narrator’s brought his very own baby persimmon tree, just a few weeks old, to show her. He’s an odd fellow, all right, but give him a break—he’s coming out from a dark, dark place. Anyway, he tells us . . .

     We lay side by side looking up, the baby tree at our feet. We saw the same thing—the love coming through the blue, the warm glow of the orange.

I’d turn towards her, and she’d turn toward me and smile—and I would tingle.

What do you call a smile that makes you tingle?

A smingle?
SMINGLE seems a pretty good word for the phenomenon, so SMINGLE it is.

Fuji-kun was not the only smingler this day. We Hearty Hikers, as you can see . . .

. . . brought our own.

And to be honest, in the end it was hard to tell who was smingling whom—and who was smingling more.  The blue sky, Fuji-kun, and . . .
. . . our own lovely Hearty Hiker, were all smingler and smingled, all at once.

The day became, believe me, a true smingle fest.

And I would say (albeit from in my very limited experience) that there are not many things better in this old vale of tears than a good smingle fest. Actually, I can’t think of any. Not at the moment.

Those guys in NDuaDuo were there with us, too, and they were so impressed by all the smingling going down that they started singing right there and then—I love to see you / Smile / Smile like you do / Your eyes / Always say / Something so true. They went home that night and recorded a new song. A first cut, they say. I’ll paste it in down below. Give it a listen if you’ve got the time.

But I guess we’re going to have to give the Top Smingler of the Day award to our beloved and trustworthy friend, Fuji-kun.

He smingled us from beneath branches big and small.

  He smingled us through circles of branches.

He smingled us through circles of trees!  He perched himself   high in the sky and smingled us through a winter-branch garland.

And yes, even through the clouds that inevitably rolled in.
On a day with so much smingling, you don’t have to think twice about showing a little gratitude. Thank you, Jizo-san.

Song title: “Cedar Shade”

Artist: NDuaDuo

Genre: Po-po-f(aux)k