“Don’t worry, my dear ones.”

“This is our world. It always has been. Though it’s getting braver by the moment. I’ll be back soon—and what a fine dessert we’ll have to top off our dinner!”

“Yeah, I see you. We had a deal, didn’t we? You asked if you could live amongst us—and we said all right. And you promised to let us be, and when you can, to work with us. So at least here, between the bricks and the concrete, we can enjoy, yes? We’re good?”

A few of these delightful blue berries, you won’t mind, will you?”

“Oh, yes.”

“We do understand each other, don’t we?”“Ah, just one more. “

“All right. Well, I guess you don’t look particularly dangerous—and I believe we are good. Yeah? All right, then. Be seeing you. Have a good day. Best to you and yours.”

Off to work. Bicycle commuting.

Fortunately, we’ve got some yoyu (余裕), that is, spare time, time to go slow and let our brains breathe. . . . So when we spot, a hundred meters or so off our left shoulder, the mountain plums blooming, blooming just in front of the bright spring green bamboo, we can, with no worries, make a little detour.

Yes, we’ve left home a little early, so we can make a detour like this if we want to, and still get to work on time. We’re on our bicycle, so we don’t have to worry about the road getting congested.

The plum tree is up on the mountainside, so let’s be content to take a few pics from below.

Our modest camera can zoom in a bit, but maybe not as much as we’d like–and not with as much precision as we’d like . . .

. . . so when we spot movement in the tree, little birds flitting about, we can’t zoom in enough, and all we can take are  fuzzy grey shots.  We look at a shot we’ve taken on our camera screen and see the vague outline of a bird—but none of it’s natural color.

When we get home, we can use our software and remove most of the dark shadows .Then the colors of the mejiro (the white-eyed) will appear. We can make each shot a little less like a photograph, a little more like a painting, hide the blurry, grainy aspects of the original–pretend that we’d never hoped for a crystal clear shot.

But now we’re still standing under the tree. If we’re going to see the lovely color of the mejiro, well, we’ll just have to imagine it.

Fortunately, that’s not so hard to do.

We’ve got some pretty good software, too.

Sometimes, though, you need a bit of yoyu to remember that.

Back to Aozasa—the “yuki-ga-arukiyasui” mountain. The “easy-to-walk-in-the snow” mountain.

Last week most definitely was arukiyasui. We had another snowfall, though, and this time (Feb. 4), the snow was significantly deeper.  Still arukiyasui for me—but I’m not sure how it might have been for you. Here and there, the boots sunk in pretty deep.

But it was a great day to be out on Aozasa.

The snow was beautiful. The sunshine was beautiful. The blue sky, well, the blue sky was that deep, deep blue just-this-side-of-royal-purple-blue-priest-robe blue—beautiful.

And I’d just read, in the last week, two articles from two major U.S. news outlets, two articles that made me question my own sanity.

One was titled something like, “Why going outside is good for you.”

The other, “Why sunshine is good for you.”

All I can say is I’m so, so, so happy that I—it’s me, I’m talking about, not you!—that I don’t really need to read articles trying to convince me that the sunshine and the outdoors are good for me.

In the Aozasa woods, the sun filters through the cedar trunks, turning the snowy floor into a dazzling display of both glowing light and shadow. Sometimes rays of sunlight shoot through the green boughs, sprays of light, as if they’ve been shot out of a garden hose.

And as I walk along, I feel (as always) that I am no different from the trees. I want to stretch my limbs and touch that light. Yeah, when the light is filtered through a forest canopy, I do stretch for it. Up, up, up, I go.

Others, too, I’m pretty sure, think  that’s true. When they’re up on the ridge, out in the open sun . . .

. . . they enjoy the basking, but when they’re down there beneath the trees, they stre-e–e-e-etch for that light. That’s the better part of the walk, I often hear them say. Moving toward the light.

I believe my “stretching” exercises up  on Aozasa are the most meaningful “stretching” exercises I’ve ever undertaken.

I’ve got lots of books I’m waiting to read. Just don’t have time for the sunshine article.

Nor for the one that suggests it might be a good idea to step outside.

Might be?

Hmmh.

All right, got to go. Need to stand up and see if I can touch my toes.

At the very least, I’m going to glance down and see if they’re still there.