桜だ！(Cherry blossoms!)
私が大好きな桜だ! (My dear and beloved cherry blossoms!)
嘘でしょう。この木、私が独り占め。(Are you kidding? I have this whole tree to myself?)
蜜全部吸えるかな。(Hmmm, I wonder if I can lap up all the nectar.)
とりあえず、吸ってみよう！(Well, anyway, let’s give it a try.)
最高だ！(This is the greatest!)
ああ。本当に最高だ! Hearty Hikers, 英訳、ありがとうございます。(It really, really, really is out of this world! Hearty Hikers, thank you for translating my feelings into English.)
March 23rd. We Hearty Hikers woke up in Phoenix with the Palo Verde trees in full bloom.
These “green-trunked” trees are all over town. Not surprisingly, they are Arizona’s state tree.
But our main mission was not to explore Phoenix, but to get in a rental car and drive to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. It took us about five hours. Some might have driven a little quicker, but living in Japan as I do, I’m accustomed to “slightly” lower speeds. I’m also used to driving on the left-hand side of the road.
Basically, from Phoenix, you drive up and over mountains—and then just plain old UP. We might have got a better picture of the Saguaro, but we were driving 70 miles an hour and worrying about getting whacked by those driving 85 or 90.
The prickly pears we photographed during a rest stop.
As we did these cute little purple guys. Would’ve never noticed them if we hadn’t gotten off the expressway for a while.
And then, voila!—there we were at the rim.
Well, not exactly voila! We had to wait in line for about 30 minutes, just to enter Grand Canyon National Park, and then once we were near the South Rim village, had to scramble for a parking place. The one we found wasn’t very close to the Bright Angel Lodge, where we were staying, and to be honest, I don’t think it was really a parking place, but everyone seemed to be parking wherever they could, and so did we. (TIP: If you want to get a good parking place inside the South Rim village, get into the park before 10 AM, at least in the busier months.) Indeed, though our “parking place” was a bit far from the lodge, it was still only a ten-minute walk back to the rim. And who complain about getting to the Grand Canyon after walking only ten minutes?
And so then, VOILA!, we were at the rim.
The Grand Canyon is big.
I’d like to say more than that, but I’m not sure what. Occasionally, I read and listen to a bit of sports news. Everything is “awesome,” “epic,” “insane,” and “freakish.” I lose track of what those words mean. So for the canyon, for the time-being, I’ll stick with “big.”
But what a first glance it was! What a . . . big sight it was!
Honesty, though, compels me to say that some of the locals (even though perched on the very edge of the rim) seemed absolutely unconcerned with the view. At least this rabbit was kind enough to stand still and let me get a photograph.
Which is more than I can say for this Western Scrub Jay. He was only still for the fraction of a second in which the shot was taken. Consider it a miracle that I found him in my lens just then. He’d had me and my lens chasing him for about fifteen minutes.
As I said, we were staying at the Bright Angel Lodge, and where I was strolling the rim was very close to the Bright Angel Trail trailhead, so it was not at all surprising to come across an angel dancing on the edge of the rim.
California condors are also known to sail about around this part of the rim, but I didn’t see any.
But the canyon itself, what can we say?
Yes, it’s big. In my next post, I’ll try to think about this more, when I share pictures of our descent inside the canyon and down to the Colorado River. I’ll try to get into it more.
But for the meantime, I’ll stick with big.
But suddenly I feel like posting a song I wrote a week or two before coming to Arizona. Maybe it expresses a bit of what I felt standing on the rim, though lyrics-wise it has nothing to do with the Grand Canyon . . . unless, of course, you think of the Grand Canyon as a place that can make you tremble.
As usual, I’ve recorded the song making full use of Persimmon Dream’s pocket studio. It’s my first attempt to record something with my new eight-string uke.
Komorebi
Do you still believe . . . there are places you can go?
Can you still conceive . . . of faces you’d like to know?
Oh, do you remember?
Oh, do you remember?
Her hair . . . shining in candlelight
Your love . . . burning deep into the night.
And oh, do you still tremble?
Do you still imagine . . . mountains deep and blue?
Do you still have passions . . . fountains that well in you?
Oh, do you remember?
Oh, do you remember?
Snow so soft . . . you walked another mile
Hopes aloft . . . his talk, his smile.
And, oh, do you still tremble?
Will you still slip your feet . . . in streams of biting cold?
Do you still try to free . . . your dreams from strangleholds?
Oh, do you remember?
Oh, do you remember?
Sunlight . . . kissing leaves so new
Your hand . . . holding all that’s true.
And oh, do you still tremble?
Do you still believe . . . there are places you can go?
Can you still conceive . . . of faces you’d like to know?
Oh, do you remember?
Oh, do you remember?
Your eyes . . . gazing on rosy sea.
Your heart . . . craving such energy.
And oh, do you still tremble?
And oh, do you still tremble?
And oh, do you still tremble?
After a day of driving, the wait to get into the park, the struggle to park, and a two-hour stroll along the Rim Trail, we Hearty Hikers were ready to get into our room in the Bright Angel Lodge. It’s a beautiful place to spend a couple of nights and I highly recommend it to you. TIP: They fill up fast—and start taking reservations thirteen months in advance.
There’s beautiful color all around.
I’ve got pretty good eyes, and pretty much every day I climb up pretty high, find a nice perch, and look all about.
Primarily, it’s about daily sustenance—but in my mind . . .
. . . the beautiful color is a big part of that.
I don’t worry so much. I’m pretty lucky. I’ve got . . .
. . . someone special in my life. And we’ve got a place . . .
. . . a humble place, to live. Actually, it’s a rental—but it’s enough. From it, we can see the color and secure our sustenance just fine. Much of the time, we’re together, at home and out.
But sometimes . . .
. . . I take wing alone. Yeah.
But it’s best, as much as possible, being up here—up here, high enough to see—together.
Some people have seen some of my photographs of Shizuoka City and told me that I’m quite lucky to live in paradise.
I agree. I am lucky.
But wherever there’s nature, there’s beauty . . .
. . . and if there’s beauty around, you must be in paradise.
I’ve spent the last couple of days in Watkinsville, Georgia and the surrounding area (including a drive out to “Happy Valley”)—and taken a little hiking trip to Stone Mountain Park.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget how much nature there is to explore—in such short distances from your front door . . . wherever your front door is.
Easy to forget how close paradise is.
It’s good to remember what Henry Thoreau had to say about that.
My vicinity affords many good walks; and though for so many years I have walked almost every day, and sometimes for several days together, I have not yet exhausted them.
An absolutely new prospect is a great happiness, and I can still get this any afternoon. Two or three hours’ walking will cary me to as strange a country as I expect ever to see.
A single farmouse which I had not seen before is sometimes as good as the dominions of the King of Dahomey.
There is in fact a sort of harmony discoverable between the capabilities of the landscape within a circle of ten miles’ radius, of the limits of an afternoon wlk, and the threescore years and ten of human life. It will never become quite familiar to you.
Cheers.
We didn’t have so much time, but we wanted to get out and walk in the woods a bit, so we said to each other, more or less, “How about Ryuso?”
That’s sort of how we think of Ryuso Mountain: It’s a regular walk. The usual.
But we’re really blessed to have such a nice mountain nearby, one that we can see every day as we commute to work or go out for shopping—or, being in my new digs, I can see as I look out the window of my study.
We’re blessed to have a mountain that we can get to so easily.
When we climbed on March 7th, we met a group of three ladies. They told us they “only” climbed Ryuso about thirty times a year, but that “those guys over there climb three times a week—and one of them is 79-years-old.”
The same mountain. More than a hundred times a year. I’m pretty sure that makes the mountain family. I know I climbed Ryuso about twenty times a couple of summers ago and it became family for me.
It had rained a lot the day before, so the orange wood of barkless cedar trunks was slick and bright, and the saturated moss had turned a vivid yellow-green.
The moss reminded me of a passage in The Red Pony. The boy, Jody, is hoping the rain will hold off until the end of November so that he can begin riding Galiban on dry ground, but the rain comes. The rain worries Jody, but Steinbeck’s description of how the rain changes the landscape makes us understand that Jody is dealing with something much, much bigger than he is, something eternally in flux, something he can’t control, but with constant beauty on display—if we know where and how to look for it.
Jody had wished it might not rain before Thanksgiving, but it did. The brown earth turned dark and the trees glistened. The cut ends of the stubble turned black with mildew; the haystacks grayed from exposure to the damp, and on the roofs the moss, which had been all summer as gray as lizards, turned a brilliant yellow-green.
Here’s why climbing Ryuso is great. It’s family: things are familiar—so you feel comfortable there . . . but there’s always something that surprises.
At some point you realize you can’t control your children—and that’s for the best.
You’ve walked the trail fifty times, but today your partner stops to strip off his jacket at a place you’ve never stopped before. So you look around. Suddenly you feel as if you’re in a place you’ve never been before. Even though the place has always been all around you.
To the northwest, the clouds shift and the sky brightens, and you look off in that direction for the first time ever from where you happen to be standing right then. And you see a clump of tree branches that you never have before. And there’s something neat about the contours and the shapes the branches and the sloping ground create. You take a couple of pictures.
And it makes you realize how very little you actually do see from day to day. It’s a humbling thought—and fortunately one that makes you worry less about whether or not you’ve got everything figured out (because you know you haven’t, because you know you haven’t even seen what’s right before your eyes—you walked past that camelia bush thirty times before you realized it was there!).
And at the same time, you feel inspired to see as much as you can. You go home, sleep—and wake up with hungry eyes. The mountain, like supportive parents, or a supportive partner, is there, ready when you are.
Gradually, like Mr. Fuji, on a cloudy, hazy day, you assimilate—you feel a part of the mountain. And the mountain being as big and strong as it is (even if you can climb it in a couple of hours), well, that makes you feel a part of something big and strong.
That’s a nice feeling.
You might even shine a little bit.
At the top of the mountain, you might feel like expressing your gratitude to the little lady keeping her mind’s eye on everything.
And yes, we Hearty Hikers got a couple of special “bonuses” this time up Ryuso.
The mitsumata (in English, “Oriental Paperbush”) were about to bloom. Paper can be made from its bark. (Nope, haven’t tried it.)
And when we were almost back down, I heard a frog croak. It wasn’t the deep sound I most associate with frogs. It was more of a cry, or a whimper—a puppy dog’s whimper.
We stopped and listened—and finally pinpointed the sound. It was coming from a little hole, surrounded by moss and fern.
And we just listened.
Listened to something (as old and feeble as we are) that we’d never heard before. Felt those guys were communicating something very important down there in that hole.
A bouquet for you! . . . From the cherry trees that dot the ridge of Shizuhata Mountain.
Blind spots can absolutely amaze. I’d lived in Shizuoka for more than fifteen years, been actively hiking for last three or so—and had never walked the Shizuhata ridge.
It isn’t hard to find. Starts right downtown, out the back of Sengen Shrine, and goes about 8 kilometers to Sakura Pass and the Kujira (“whale”) Pond. If you go up the other side of the Sakura Pass, you’ll eventually get to the top of Ryuso. The walk from the Sakura Pass to my house is maybe two more kilometers.
With a group hike planned for early March, I thought I should give it a go by myself, to see how much up-and-down there was. . . .
That’s a funny thing to say: if you’re anywhere in town, you can look over your shoulder and see the ridge, you can see how far it is to the pass, you can see the up-and-down.
I walked from my house (near the Sakura Pass) downtown—just one way—on January 24th, by myself. On February 23rd, I did it again, this time a round-trip, with a fellow Hearty Hiker.
Times and such. On February 23rd, walking into town, we stopped to take a lot to take pictures—and also stopped a lot to watch the birds, especially the kites. Kites don’t say poo-tee-weet. They say piiii-pyo-ro-ro-ro-ro. They’ve got keen eyes. They circle high, say piiiii-pyo-ro-ro-ro-ro, and use their keen eyes to search out tasty morsels in the woods, citrus groves, bamboo thickets, and tea fields that blanket the Shizuhata ridge.
Yep, that’s what you’ll walk through when you walk the ridge. Throw in views of the skyline of our beloved “The Big Mikan,” and good views of Fuji-kun, Suruga Bay, Izu Peninsula, and you might feel you can see everything in Shizuoka.
Okay, okay, the times and such. Slow pace (taking pictures, watching the kites) from my house: House = 8:50, Sakura Pass trailhead = 9:15, Fukunari Shrine = 9:50, Sengen Shrine = 12:50. A faster pace, after lunch, going back, though there’s a bit more climbing up going back: Sengen Shrine departure = 13:20, Ippon-no-sugi = 14:15, Fukunari Shrine = 15:30, Sakura Pass trailhead = 16:00, House = 16:35.
The kites prove that keen eyes are necessary to make the most of a hike along the ridge.
But you don’t need keen eyes to see the blue sky, to take joy in the way the various oranges shine under it.
And you don’t need keen eyes to enjoy the plum blossoms . . .
. . . or the cherry blossoms either.
You’d have to be blind not to see them.
Nope, you can’t miss the tea fields, either. Parts of the trail will have your hips brushing the leaves of the bushes. Most likely you’ll see how the fields form a ladder to the sky. Go ahead. Climb on every rung.
You could miss Fuji-kun, especially on a hazy day, or a day on which the clouds are shifting a lot, if you don’t think to look up from the trail and peer off in the right direction.
Little plots of vegetables are everywhere, and signs warn that wild boars abound, but the only fierce beast we came across was this lion.
The ridge, however, possesses an artistic spirit and an extraordinary life force that you may not see without keen eyes. Keen, focused eyes.
Wood sculptures, big and small, dot the course.
Look for them.
And faces pop out from trees when the light hits them just right.
Sometimes the trees themselves seem to express a force of mobility that isn’t often recognized. For some reason, this guy got worked up, and jammed his own fingers into the hard dirt off to his right, and got them stuck. When you go by, see if he’s gotten them unstuck. Or if he’s maybe decided to “stand” on that hand.
And this tree may seem to be a pitiful sort of guy at first glance—battered and lumpy, barkless, his better days behind him, out of place among the bamboo—but actually, he’s quite the painter, and doing quite well, as a closer look reveals.
I took the liberty of naming this canvas “Ophelia in the Stream at Sunrise,” but when you come across it, you can name it what you like.
If you’ve got the time, stop and watch the birds. See how they go about their day. Listen to their chatter.
I remember that when I was a little boy pigeons were often hated, mainly because they pooped in places where poop was not appreciated. Here, though, they’ve got the whole mountain at their disposal. Their pooping probably won’t bother you. (Probably.) And once you’re past that issue (after all, even the camels that carried the wise men to see the baby Jesus stopped to poop once in a while), you can look into their eyes and see their personalities, see their moods.
Sometimes they seem at peace with things.
Sometimes they seem to have a chip on their shoulders—want to know what you’re looking at.
Imagine that.
Sign speaks for itself. No one likes bombs dropped on their home.
On October 22nd, 1837, Henry David Thoreau decided to begin a journal. Years later, he’d written right around a zillion pages. Only a slight exaggeration.
The third little thing he jotted down that first day was this: “The Germans say — Es is alles wahr wodurch du besser wirst.” The quotation is from Goethe. “Everything is true by which you become better.”
I thought that was just plum beautiful.
And it was a great thing to have in mind the night before a day of plum-viewing.
The plum-viewing was just behind a friend’s house, which backs up to the Setonoya River and the plum trees that grow down by its banks. 
It was warmer than in past years. We all seemed content, under the blossoms, to let the day flow on by.
Under the trees . . .
. . . the words would sometimes pop into my head:
Everything is true by which you become better.
Of course they did.
One cherry tree was down there, too. He couldn’t wait another month to bloom. Wanted to be out and about with the plums. Who could blame him?
Risshun just passed, and on the old calendar, the New Year has just begun. This morning seemed the perfect time to take the Hearty Hiker who missed the January 1st Sunrise Hike due to a cold another chance to ascend Ryuso Mountain in the dark . . . in time to see the sunrise.
I suspect that a person or two out there might have wanted to ask (had I not just told you the reason: to see the sunrise), “Why would you want to walk in the dark?”
It’s a fair question. My first instinct would be to say, “You’d better be willing to walk in the dark—or you’re going to get yourself stuck in bad places a lot more than you want to get yourself stuck in bad places.”
But before I attempt to answer this why question, let me handle some easier ones. 1) “When did you start?” Answer: 4:37 AM. 2) “What time was the sunrise?” Answer: 6:43 A.M. 3) “How does one climb in the dark?”
Answer: With a light.
You take your light and just point it down at the dry leaves that cover the trail. Just follow the big, dry leaves.
Follow them up for about two hours.
Okay, now, WHY?
Well, let’s head on up the mountain and see if we can find the answer.
Or as the famous poet said, as he prepared to climb a mountain in the dark, “The answer, what is it?—Let’s go see—let’s go and make our visit.”
So here we go. We follow our lit-up leaves, one after another after another, and before we know it (after an hour or so) . . .
. . . the sky, off to our left, begins to lighten. Black goes dark blue . . .
. . . and the horizon goes all rosy (at least on this day with a bit of low cloud cover). And then you jig-jag through the cedars, come to where you can see out off your right shoulder, and low and behold . . . 
there’s a magical mountain—floating in the sky.
And when you’re face-to-face with such extraordinary beauty, you stop asking “Why should we walk in the dark?”—and start asking, “Why don’t we walk in the dark more often?”
In case you wondered, we weren’t the only ones out and about in the wee hours of the morning.
This guy, too, seemed to think it was a special time of the day. He’s a Japanese Serow.
So no more questions. Let’s get to the summit.
And enjoy the sunrise. (Yes, we got up there with a minute or two to spare.)
I think you know I have a thing for persimmon orange . . .
. . . and that I think that I can feel love coming through the blue. (For details on blue and orange, visit a previous post.)
. . . So it was a great morning.
And the sun, as we sometimes do, kept getting bigger. It got, as we sometimes do, really big.
Ah, two New Year’s hikes in one year! Marvelous! So lucky!
I imagine there will be a lot of special images floating around in my noggin for a long time to come.
Open up your eyes now.
It is no surprise now. What you see is me.
How grateful I am that I can commute to work by bicycle!
Always with the freedom to stop and just look in wonder. Whenever. At whatever.
It doesn’t matter where you live. Or how long the commute. (For the record, mine’s about forty-five minute now.) Or how deep your water is. If you’re on a bicycle, you can always stop. Stop and look.
There’s always so much to see. In any season.
And you wake up the next morning, remembering all the things that gave your eyes joy the day before, and it just seems so easy to walk out into the cold February morning, right past the car—and get right back up on the saddle.
Well, I was getting my dinner ready when suddenly there was a knock on the door. It was one of those two Shizuoka Duo guys. The one that’s a bit high-strung. (You get used to it. At least I have.)
The first thing he says—the only thing he says—is, “I wanna sing.”
“Well, then, sing,” I say.
I’m at the genkan, and he’s still out on the front porch.
“I mean,” he says, “I wanna sing for Persimmon Dreams.”
I finally ascertained what he had in mind, so I invited him in, and made him a glass of yuzu tea. Then I went upstairs to look for the Persimmon Dreams recording studio. I found it, pretty quickly, in the pocket of my hiking jacket.
I got everything set up for him downstairs. He tuned up his ukulele. I pressed the record button.
And then he says, “Did you go for a walk today?”
“No,” I say. “Kind of cold out.”
“That’s why you go for a walk.”
“Is this one of those prose pieces?” I ask.
“We’ll go for a walk after I do this,” he says.
“Are you ready?” I get ready to re-start “the equipment.”
“Sure,” he said.
And this is what he sang. I leave it here as a record of my day.
She . . . said to me
We . . . don’t need to be
And I . . . could only sit
And cry.
She . . . said to me
I . . . am going to leave
And I . . . could only sit
And cry.
Lean into December light / Feel the warmth before the night
Lean into December light / Watch the ravens taking flight
She . . . left me there
I . . . knew not where
And I . . . could only close
My eyes.
I looked within
My heart . . . so paper thin
And I . . . could only see
All awry.
Lean into December light / Feel the warmth before the night
Lean into December light / Watch the ravens taking flight
Watch the ravens taking flight
Watch the ravens taking flight
DECEMBER LIGHT
“Let’s go for a walk,” I said, when we were done.
