The last day of May and I was back on the trail up Yambushi. The two or three days before, I’d been feeling worn down (legs tired), but somehow once I started the climb, I felt refreshed and did the whole walk at a brisker pace than normal, a little over four hours up and down, including a 20-minute break at the top, five minutes for snake observation, and the time it took to take 130 pics.

Maybe it was the oh-kin-kei-giku I met on the drive up. The pic above could be titled “On the Road to Umegashima,” but also “What it looks like in my mind when I’m on the road to Umegashima.”

The hike up Yambushi follows the Nishihikage Creek up to the Yomogi Pass, then wanders waterless through the woods to the top of Yambushi. In all, it’s a rise in altitude of about 1200 m over a trail distance of 4.3 km–a fairly steep go.

Recently, like almost all other teachers all over the world, I’ve been struggling with online classes, trying my best to give every student the best experience I can. One assignment I gave my first-year university students in my “English Communication” class was to interview me, via video-conferencing, on any topic they liked, and then to produce a “newspaper feature,” based on the interview, so that I could encourage both their speaking and writing abilities. The students had heard me say I like hiking, so unsurprisingly, not a few of them decided to focus their interviews on my hiking experience—and most of those asked me, again unsurprisingly, “Why do you like hiking?”

So as I hiked up Yambushi, I began thinking about that question myself. Thinking about that question again.But it’s all pretty simple.

1. Hiking (walking) is good for health, especially when it requires a bit of exertion. (But it doesn’t have to be exhausting. You shouldn’t have to gasp for breathe. In fact, you shouldn’t gasp for breathe.)

2. Hiking is good for breathing, and good breathing is good for your soul. Good breathing relaxes. Good breathing makes you feel how alive you indeed are.

3. Breathing well and feeling alive makes your mind work better. You feel creative. You see things in ways you haven’t before. The words to explain a vague conception you’ve “kind of” had suddenly come to you. (And I’m surely not explaining as well as I could if I were still on the mountain walking!)

4. If you are hiking with someone, it suddenly becomes easier to talk. Not just easier to “chat,” but rather, easier, to open your heart. This is because you’ve left behind (however temporarily), the society of human beings–a place where (at least to some degree, you make the judgement), lies and ego and selfishness exist. None of those things exist on the side of a mountain. On the side of a mountain, walking, you feel less afraid to open your heart to others—or so it has seemed to me.

5. If you are really breathing well, you begin to feel as if you are not just breathing in from the cubic meter of air most immediate to your face . . . but breathing in the all the air up through the treetops and beyond—you may even feel as if you are breathing in the whole mountain, the dirt beneath your feet, all the trees, and more or less, all the universe. It’s possible, if you’re breathing well, to realize that you are the universe and to feel you are the universe. And that is a pretty good thing. Here, I’m reminded of the passage from J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, in which Franny is trying to explain to her boyfriend Lane what it means to pray without ceasing. In my mind, Franny’s “praying without ceasing” is fairly synonomous with both my “walking” and my “breathing.”

… if you keep saying that prayer over and over again — you only have to just do it with your LIPS at first — then eventually what happens, the prayer becomes self-active. Something HAPPENS after a while. I don’t know what, but something happens, and the words [breathing] get synchronized with the person’s heartbeats, and they’re actually praying without ceasing. Which has a really tremendous, mystical effect on your whole outlook. I mean that’s the whole POINT of it, more or less. I mean you do it to purify your whole outlook and get an absolutely new conception of what everything’s about. . . . You get to see God.

Franny’s pretty much right, I think. Breathing really well, and just being there in the present . . . well, why don’t you try it yourself, and see how it feels—see what you see.

6. Nature is beautiful. That means, of course, the beauty of the bright spring green leaves and the beauty of the bright blue sky, and the beautiful sound of the river, and the beautiful smell of the river air that makes the breathing beside it so refreshing . . . but it also means, more or less, everything in nature, including mosquitoes, spiders, and those slithering snakes.

Anyway, when I’m absorbed in a walk, and I’m breathing just right, and there is nature all around, I feel all in nature is beautiful. And I like that feeling.

6. When you walk, walk and breathe, walk and breathe in nature, feel the universe, feel you are the universe, the problems that you’ll return to, back down in town, seem less overwhelming—and you can deal with them (live with them? solve them?) with a lot less anxiety.

7. When you are hiking, you almost always see “something new,” even if you’ve already hiked the trail twenty or thirty times. And this is a good thing to experience. To realize how limited your point-of-view often is. To realize how the world is always in flux.

Everything’s changing. Everything’s always changing.

Walking. Breathing. Breathing just right.

To finish up, here’s a short passage from When a Sissy Climbs a Mountain in May.

On the way up, I’d understood about the breathing. I’d felt as if I were inhaling not just the air, but the trees and the sky and the mountain itself, and exhaling all of them, too. Effortlessly. Well, maybe not EFFORTLESSLY, but comfortably, smoothly–the trees hadn’t gotten stuck in my throat going in and out. And for a few seconds–do I dare say this?–I’d felt I held within me, all the good energy of THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE.

And of this I had no doubt: This good energy, once enhaled, has a way of finding the good things inside you, of arousing them. And this is why the Violators can attack you relentlessly for days, weeks, maybe YEARS–and yet you can climb a mountain and remember that you HAVE experienced joy.

So happy hiking!

(from Persimmon Dreams: When you’ve got a spare moment, check out our music/nature videos on our “Persimmon Dreams” YouTube channel, or Steve’s books, When a Sissy Climbs a Mountain in May and Along the Same Street, available on Amazon, or directly from us. And if you enjoyed this post, consider sharing with others. Thank you!)

Spring is bursting out everywhere and it is glorious . . . but it somehow seems at odds with the ways many of us are feeling in this coronavirus pandemic.

Only spring isn’t at odds with anything. It is what it is . . . as is the coronavirus.

The current moment reminds me of a spring a few years back. I have a lot of Facebook friends who are people I went to high school with. Some of them I remember very well, some not so well.

There was one guy, though, who I hadn’t known all that well back then, but became interested in reading about on Facebook.

When we’d been in high school, he’d lived just up the street from me, maybe a quarter a while away, but he’d been a couple of years younger than me, and I just hadn’t know him very well.

On Facebook, though, I saw that he was an artist, a painter—perhaps he’d been one all his life, I didn’t really know—but his paintings intrigued me. I felt I could see something inside him when I looked at them, and the something I could see inside him seemed a lot like a something I could see inside me.

I felt a connection, that’s for sure.

And then he passed away. Apparently, he’d been in poor health for a while, maybe for a long time. He must have been in his mid- to late-fifties.

It tore me up inside. I really grieved. . . . And I didn’t even know who he was, not really—just knew what he could paint.

It was May. The azaleas were in full bloom all over Shizuoka City–far, far away from the United States of America, and I wanted to cry, and I think I did cry, actually—a little, anyway, and I picked up my ukulele, started strumming Em and Dm . . . and wrote this song. I’m not sure why I changed the “he” to “she,” but I did.

My best friend . . . she passed away

All the while . . . the azaleas stayed ablaze

Unlike me . . . they stood unfazed

Oh, those colors . . . how they did amaze

Then I . . . could see . . . all . . . that she meant to me

Yes, I . . . could see . . . all . . . that she meant to me

You can watch the YouTube music video here.

(from Persimmon Dreams: When you’ve got a spare moment, check out our music/nature videos on our “Persimmon Dreams” YouTube channel, or Steve’s books, When a Sissy Climbs a Mountain in May and Along the Same Street, available on Amazon, or directly from us. And if you enjoyed this post, consider sharing with others. Thank you!)

It was a few years back that I took my first walk along the Yatsuyama ridge (yama = mountain), here in Shizuoka City. I was in a pretty bad way, agonizing over a situation I felt obligated to make better, one in which I wanted to relieve the suffering of a person I loved very, very much, but I was in a position in which I could do nothing.

Fortunately, I’ve never been prone to self-destructive behavior, so in order to cope, I did not take to heavy drinking, nor to any other desperate means. But I needed to do something. Something that would keep me from going completely crazy and growing completely despondent.

So I climbed Yatsuyama. Once, twice, many times. And then I realized that Ryuso Mountain was not far away and I could climb it, too. And then I realized—they’d always been there to be seen—that I could also climb around in all those mountains an hour’s drive away in the Umegashima area.

But I climbed Yatsuyama first.

Some people would say that Yatsuyama is not really a mountain. After all it rises a mere 108 meters above sea level. But it is a mountain. Because you can climb it. Because you begin to breathe harder going up. Because you can feel so very much alive with the breathing required. Because, as you go up, your view of the horizon broadens.

When you begin to breathe deeply, you begin to feel the air of the mountain circulating through your lungs, and it’s a very nice feeling—you feel part of an infinite system. If you feel this very strongly, you might feel that with each breath you’re actually taking the whole mountain — the trees, the birds, the dandelions, the wild strawberries, the bamboo, everything into yourself.

And then you’re likely to feel that you and the mountain are one. You’re not alone. You’re NOT SEPARATED from anything. You’re a significant part of the universe!

You might also realize that you’re a significant, but small part of the universe, that human beings and human society are a small part of the universe. This might make your troubles seem less overwhelming.

No, feeling the universe does not make your social problems go away. And yes, your human relationships and your position in human society are important. Of course, they are. But the mountain, the walk through the woods, can put it all in perspective.

I found a piece of a broken bowl. I don’t know why you sometimes find fragments of bowls along the trails (what are people doing?), but you do find fragments. Back when I was having so much trouble, I began the habit of picking up these pieces of broken bowl and putting them in my pocket. Soon, I had a pile of them on my dining table.

And I liked having them there. Whenever I looked at them, my emotional pain would ease.

Because I’d realize that pain was just a natural part of things, a natural part of human life. Sometimes there are “broken” things in life that you can repair. Sometimes, though, you can’t repair them. But you can live with them. You have to live with them.

About that time, I started writing a novel, When a Sissy Climbs a Mountain in May, and I decided to have my narrator write a song about broken bowls. Here’s what he wrote.

Have you heard of the temple of the broken bowl?

A place where we can pray?

Is there really a temple of the broken bowl?

Is there anyone who can say?

We fend off all the blows

We mend so many holes

Pretend we surely know

And we build with a broken bowl.

Yes, we build with a broken bowl.

Yes, we build with broken bowls.

The bowls sometimes break, but the mountain brings joy.

Sometimes when I’d walk the ridge of Yatsuyama, I’d feel this joy so strongly.

But then I’d wonder how I might ever communicate this feeling of joy to someone else, someone who’d yet to “climb the mountain,” but I never could figure out how to put it into words . . . not words that someone in a very difficult and painful situation would understand.

As I worked on my novel, I decided that I’d let my narrator decide if he could figure out how to explain this joy. He especially took pleasure in the leaves and flowers of the yashio (in Umegashima) and deep in the woods, the komorebi, the sunlight filtering down through the leaves of the trees, but he never became confident that he could explain it to anyone else.

But one day, when he was walking with a lady he’d come to care about very much, he asked her if she had the words to explain why the yashio and the komorebi brought so much joy.

And here’s what she said — what she said with the palm of her hand on his breast.

“If you focus, if you concentrate on your heart center, you can feel the energy inside yourself—and that is life, that is all life. I think you know this. . . . This energy, here, in your heart center, is calm and peaceful and infinite. You may forget about it sometimes, but it is always here. Always. And your energy here connects to all the energy in this world. . . .

“The energy I feel inside my own heart is also in your heart. . . . We humans are blessed with powerful brains, capable of extraordinary thought. But sometimes our thoughts can control us, and that’s when we forget the energy, forget how to feel the energy—the energy here. And when we forget this energy here, we can no longer connect to all the energy around us. . . .

“When you look up at the komorebi, or look up at these yashio leaves, the energy you can sense has extraordinary power. The light is energy and the green is energy, and you see it all with such clarity. It is a stimulus that no heart can shield itself from. . . .

“So if you have lost touch with the energy here, inside your heart center, you will suddenly feel it’s intensity. In either case, you will feel so strongly how much you belong—and you will feel love.”

(from Persimmon Dreams: When you’ve got a spare moment, check out our music/nature videos on our “Persimmon Dreams” YouTube channel, or Steve’s books, When a Sissy Climbs a Mountain in May and Along the Same Street, available on Amazon, or directly from us. And if you enjoyed this post, consider sharing with others. Thank you!)

For pictures of yashio, click here, or here.

Warning: there’s a song, an audio track, at the end of this brief musing. But if you prefer a song over prose, by all means, skip right down to the song.

It seems many of us are wondering what exactly this period of coronavirus is good for. Of course, it is a time when we must do all we can to stop the spread of the virus, and to find ways to treat the sick, and to figure out ways to help those whose economic/educational/working/social-interacting/emotional selves have been put in jeapordy as a result of the pandemic.

But beyond that, what to do? Some seem to think it’s a good time to inject a healthy dose of humor into our lives—that that will ease our anxieties. Others are saying how it’s a time to let art and music wash over and soothe us. And yet others seem to think (especially those of us prone to contemplation) that a time of disruption is a time to re-think who exactly we are, we living human beings, and what exactly we’re all about.

I think everyone is more or less right.

If there’s one thing the pandemic makes clear, it’s that there is really no way we can separate us from them. The virus knows no borders. We are all in the same single environment. And we are all vulnerable.

It’s natural to want to be less vulnerable, but an obsessive struggle for invulnerability is true madness.

I disagree with many things that David Brooks, The New York Times columnist, has to say, but I almost always agree with a part of what he says. His March 19th column is no exception. He is so right when he writes, “Don’t expect life to be predictable or fair. Don’t try to tame the situation with some feel-good lie or confident prediction. Embrace the uncertainty of this whole life-or-death deal. There’s a weird clarity that comes with that embrace. There is a humility that comes with realizing you’re not the glorious plans you made for your life. When the plans are upset, there’s a quieter and better you beneath them.”

“We’re all going through the same experiences,” he continues. “People in Seoul, Milan and New Jersey are connected by a virus that reminds us of the fundamental fact of human interdependence.”

Interdendence. Yes, to me, this tough, tough time of coronavirus is a good time to think about whether it really is possible to think about a world/universe in which it’s possible to ever be separate from anyone else—or for that matter, anything else.

The following may sound obsessively pedantic, but I don’t think it is at all: A man sits in a chair. He breathes. Air comes into his lungs. Deep in his lungs, oxygen is taken into his bloodstream. Oxygen is delivered to all his cells. In this process, where exactly can you draw the line between him, the person, and his supply of air? If you were pushed, I’m not sure that you could. But even if you insisted that the man and his air supply are different, where exactly would you draw the borders around his supply of air? Could you do that? I don’t think you could. And there would be a hell of a lot of trees all across the globe contributing to that air supply. And there would be all sorts of beings here and there relying on those trees.

And so on.

Personally, it’s hard for me to imagine that there could be any doubt about our inseparability, and I would have thought that if there were such a doubt, global climate change would have destroyed it. Apparently, though, it hasn’t.

There is one world. We are all one. That’s really all there is to it.

But I know that some folks don’t think so. One of my favorite books for young people is Stargirl, by Jerry Spinelli. This has one great scene which presents the different ways of thinking very clearly and concisely. The hero, Leo, a high school student, is madly in love with Stargirl, an outsider, an individual thinker. He loves her because she is “different,” but is irritated in his daily relationship with her because she is different. He thinks that both she and they (the couple) would be better off if she would just recognize the need to follow the ways of his high school clan. He certainly believes in separability. If she would just recognize that there is both an inside the group and an outside the group, everything would be better.

“This group thing, I [Leo] said, it’s very strong. It’s probably an instinct. You find it everywhere, from little groups like families, to really big ones like a whole country. How about really, really big ones, she [Stargirl] said, like a planet? Whatever, I said. The point is, in a group everybody acts pretty much the same, that’s kind of how the group holds itself together. Everybody? she said. Well, mostly, I said. That’s what jails and mental hospitals are for, to keep it that way. You think I should be in jail? she said. I think you should try to be more like the rest of us, I said.”

We are all one. I think Leo would like to believe it—ultimately, that’s why he’s attracted to Stargirl, the girl who roots for both teams in a high school basketball game—but he just can’t. For him, there has to be an inside and an outside—a duality, and thus he loses the love of his life.

When we divide things into groups, or people into groups, we are doing so for our own convenience, giving them names and categories—to make things easier for us. When we adjust the borders, whether we do so with political, economical, social, religious, humanistic, or even altruistic motivations, we are slicing the world up in ways that seem “good” for us—are to our advantage, you might say. But these slices are not slices that are a natural part of the world, and in making them we tend to commit the sin of thinking that all beyond our man-thought-out borders are somehow less important than we are.

I’m not suggesting that we avoid breaking up into groups, but only that as we do, as we create societies, we remember that we are doing so for practical reasons, selfish reasons, really, and that any temporary slicing we do does not change the fact that this world is one, and that every person alive is our brother or sister.

And let’s hope Leo is wrong about groups. If everyone in a group “acts pretty much the same,” then some of the people are acting pretty much untrue to themselves, because every person has a unique inner nature—an inner nature that must thrive for a person to find life worth living. We don’t need any groups that don’t allow for that.

But for sure, when we refuse to see ourselves as one world, we do tend to see others in a lesser light. We create a strong sense of values within our group, evaluate our group highly—and in so doing, devaluate all that lies outside it.

A garden metaphor might be helpful. You and your group want to grow some summer vegetables. You work like hell to cultivate, you plan precisely, you plant and water, but then some other plants that you didn’t anticipate start poking their heads out from the soil. They grow like crazy, faster than the veggies you planted. They take (steal?) nutrients that you’d hoped your veggies would get. What to do? Well, what you do is yell, “WEEEEEDS!!!”—and you go to snuffing them out.

I’m not suggesting that a gardener not snuff out the weeds. I’m just saying that those plants were not created by God, or the mysterious creator, or the magic of the universe, or whatever, as weeds.

You are only designating them as weeds for your own convenience.

And if you can get yourself to accept that fact, well, I think that everything that comes after (whether you ultimately pull up the “weeds” or don’t) is bound to be better—for you and for all.

Yeah, when you get into the habit of watching your thinking carefully like this, you’re much more likely to see things from the points-of-view of the “weeds,” you’re much more likely to feel connected to the oneness, and indeed as Mr. Brooks suggests, this is a feeling to embrace.

It feels so nice in good part because you are being honest about the reality of things.

So here’s a song. It’s got a bit of humor, and hopefully, it will provide something of value musically. And just maybe it will put you in a bit of a contemplative mood, one that somehow proves productive.

I’m Just a Weed

If it suits you fine,

If you really don’t mind,

Please let me be.

I’m just a weed.

Yeah, I’m just a weed.

Uh-huh, I’m just a weed.

Not taking much ground.

Not making much sound.

My throat’s getting dry.

I hope I don’t die.

Oh man, don’t you feel so sorry for weeds

Chased by religion, violence, and poverty

Blown by winds and driven by rain

Sometimes you see one hopping a train.

A seed tip manages to nestle in soil

For a couple of weeks he’s feeling blue royal

But then the man with the weedwhacker comes,

Whacks off his head like he’s one of the bums.

I once knew a girl named Harujion,

I loved her pink color, loved that skin tone,

Her heart and smile like a brilliant sun,

Her shiny silk hair in the breeze such fun.

But then she broke my heart when she said

That soon at the latest all her friends would be dead,

Some pulled up and stuffed into the trash,

Some coldheartedly smothered with gas,

Some shipped into space to fill black holes,

Some blown away in a swirling dust bowl.

She said I know I’m as sweet as any flower,

Got the bees and the June bugs in my power

‘I’m a daisy,’ I lied, ‘just my hair a bit thinner.

‘If you leave me alone I’ll be gone by winter.’

But that man didn’t mind if I thought him a sinner,

He said by tomorrow I’d be burnt to a cinder.

My great grandfather was a dandy fellow,

At peace with all, extremely mellow.

He loved the mountains and rivers and sea

And all the rest that loved to be free.

But then the fescue lawns crowded in

And his dandelion folks began to grow thin.

A single blade of grass got up in his face

Said to be honest I don’t care for your race—

So unless you’ve got affidavits and deeds

A team of lawyers, an irrefutable creed,

Or you get together a big stack of wampum,

The fescue cavalry will come in and stomp you.

’Cause this land you’re on is a fat loose tuna

And it’s up to us to finally harpoon her.

My great grandfather didn’t have much loot

So he strapped all still living into white parachutes.

So now that’s what we do all the time,

We ride air currents and we climb and climb.

We look for a bit of space that can be our castle,

Where we can have quiet, and not any hassle.

And let me tell you what makes me so mad—

It’s the basic fact that we ain’t so bad.

We dandelions are an ethical breed,

So there’s really no need to call us a weed

Potassium, calcium, Vitamins A, B, and C,

That’s the kind of stuff that fills up me.

I make the soil around me soft and clean,

So nobody needs to treat me so mean.

But it’s a beautiful day in early May

And I see the root remover coming our way.

He’s going to rip us out and leave us dry.

And all I can ask is “Why, oh, why?”

I can feel his metal squeezing my ears

And now I’m knowing the worst of my fears

Oh, god, why did you have to do this to me?

Why, oh, why, couldn’t you just let me be?!

(from Persimmon Dreams: When you’ve got a spare moment, check out our music/nature videos on our “Persimmon Dreams” YouTube channel, or Steve’s books, When a Sissy Climbs a Mountain in May and Along the Same Street, available on Amazon, or directly from us. And if you enjoyed this post, consider sharing with others. Thank you!)

Not far from my house, beside the lotus pond, kawazu cherry trees grow along a walking path. There are more than sixty trees on each side of the path, so it’s a nice little stroll—and a nice stroll. The other day, the trees were in full bloom. The bees were mad with bliss, and the mejiro, too, were caught up in the heavenly harvest. The mejiro—green bodies, white rings around their eyes, smaller than our local sparrows—flit from branch to branch, hopped from blossom to blossom, contorting their bodies in whatever way necessary to position their beaks for a straight jab down into the cherry nectar.

Suddenly I smiled. I remembered something I’d overheard a while back. Two women were discussing cooking, in particular how to deal with a recipe that called for “a whole chicken.” One of the women said that she only bought pre-cut breast meat—and was “grossed out” if she had to slice it up. I assume that she meant “before she cooked it.” The other responded by saying, “My mama could cut up a chicken.”

I wasn’t listening all that carefully, so I might have missed an important segment of the conversation, and just maybe I misinterpreted the second woman’s intonation. It’s possible that she meant, “My mama was better than anyone I’ve ever seen when it came to cutting up a chicken.”

But what I actually heard was this: “My mama could cut up a chicken. I don’t know how, but she could. I wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to go about it.”

And I thought that if we have come to think that cutting up a chicken is some miraculous ability that we as fully developed and elite animals are no longer capable of (have gratefully outgrown, some might say), we are in serious trouble. If we have come to believe that unquestionably doable things are in fact undoable, then we truly are lost.

And that’s why it’s important (even if you choose to purchase pre-sliced, skinless chicken breast) to know that you can cut up a whole chicken.

You may not have the instinct a mejiro does, but your fingers are not made in such a way that they cannot learn to use a knife, and with a bit of practice, a bit of trial and error, you can indeed become a chicken cutter-upper par excellence. After a while, if you do choose to become a cutter-upper, it might feel like something you have an instinct for—at least something you can do easily and well and with clear purpose.

Regardless, it’s nice to learn how to do things you’ve always thought you couldn’t. To develop an instinctual feel for a particular task. To surprise yourself with what you, a single individual, are capable of.

In this age of specialization, we are much less likely to be doing something completely by ourselves than folks were hundreds of years ago. We are more likely to be a part of a system, a system whose processes and purposes we cannot always control.

Nope, I’m not against teamwork, not against pooling talents. But there can be a negative side to joining a team you can’t quit, a negative side to relinquishing control over what you want your efforts to achieve.

So, for what it’s worth, here’s how to cut up a whole chicken:

Get a good knife. Place the chicken, breast up, on a good cutting surface. Slice into the skin between the legs and the body. Feel for the joint. Pull on the leg, pop the leg bone out of the joint, then cut the leg off completely. Following the fat line, cut the thigh from the drumstick. Feel for the middle of the joint, as necessary. Repeat with the other leg. Slice the skin between the wing and breasts, feel for the joint, and cut on through. Repeat. Identify the fat lines running between the backbone and the breast. Cut. Keep cutting through the ribs. Some people like to use scissors for this part. Put the backbone and attached meat in your soup pot. Place the remaining double-breast skin-side down. Cut into the little bone in the middle of the double-breast. Flip the breast. With the palm of your hand break the breastbone. Cut the breast in half.

Finished.

In Walden, Thoreau wrote, “[M]an’s capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little has been tried.”

That’s so true. So little has been tried.

When I was small, people used to say, “Can’t never could do anything.” I no longer live in an English-speaking country. I don’t know if they still say that or not. But I hope they do.

Surely they do. And we should listen. Because we are capable of so many things.

(from Persimmon Dreams: When you’ve got a spare moment, check out our music/nature videos on our “Persimmon Dreams” YouTube channel, or Steve’s books, When a Sissy Climbs a Mountain in May and Along the Same Street, available on Amazon, or directly from us. And if you enjoyed this post, consider sharing with others. Thank you!)

February 11th. Fujieda. Shizuoka, Japan. Along the Seto River.

The doors are open. Admission is free. Soft grassy seats are plentiful.

The theater of the mejiro has begun. You never catch the beginning, nor the ending, but it doesn’t really matter.

The stage has been set. The orchard—four or five trees in width, fifteen or twenty trees in length—is in bloom.

The mejiro love the blossoms. For them, dipping their beaks into the center of flower after flower during this noontime will be a graceful, flowing hour of effortless action.

Effortless action: doing what seems natural—that is, to the one doing it.

Not being lazy. Doing. But doing what you were meant to do. Doing what feels right to you. Doing something that requires a rhythm that is your rhythm, actions that are your actions.

In Hollywood, the Oscars have been given out. Nominated actors have struck their poses on the Red Carpet. The mejiro have no time for such nonsense. They’re all about the action. All about the thing they do. Unlike the Oscar winners, they are never out of character.

It’s absurd to ask if they are staying “in character.” Absurd to ask if they’re doing a good job.

From blossom to blossom, from branch to branch, from tree to tree, they flit, first upstream, and then, when they reach the end of the orchard, back downstream.

This day, there are thirty or forty birds. They seem to be polite by nature. If a single flit would put them too close to a friend, they fly over. Thus, their progress is a rippling wave. The little bits of green, lifting into the sky ever so slightly, comprise a magic carpet, a magic carpet riding the most subtle of slow and easy breezes.

There’s your blossom. Can you get into character? Can you see the red and yellow center as the mejiro do?

Legs straight, legs bent, it matters not. They have balance extraordinaire.

Standing upside down. No problem.

A twist about. No problem.

Clear-eyed. Ears alert. The slightest human sound or movement—and they’re gone.

Easy awareness of where next to go.

And . . . just doing it.

Being in the zone. Being. And being so beautiful.

A Hollywood movie can be nice, every once in a while, but—and maybe this is just me— the Theater of the Mejiro seems so, so much better.

(from Persimmon Dreams: When you’ve got a spare moment, check out our music/nature videos on our “Persimmon Dreams” YouTube channel, or Steve’s books, When a Sissy Climbs a Mountain in May and Along the Same Street, available on Amazon, or directly from us. And if you enjoyed this post, consider sharing with others. Thank you! Or follow Steve on Facebook or Instagram.)

Christmas Day, 2020. Heading for Mt. Yambushi. Suddenly, looking up at the ridge, realizing that there might be snow on the ground–that there is likely snow on the ground, a lot of snow near the top.

Months ago, Typhoon # 19 reeked havoc in the area, and the trail up the mountain has been “closed” ever since. Word of mouth was that both the road going in was impassable (and it’s always been a bumpy, rain-rutted road), and the trail itself had been damaged and scrambling up the mountain was no longer “safe” or “allowed.”

But through social media, we knew that some people were climbing again, and I decided it was about time for me to get back to Yambushi.

In a nutshell, it was six hours of solitude and beauty. The first of those hours, I was trying to remember things I’d felt on this mountain in climbs past. Because it had been a while since I’d been on the mountain.

Up and down, I passed only one other hiker.

There are things from the past we never knew and probably never will. Things we see traces of—like the above remains of a water field for wasabi. We can only imagine the farmer in that field, only wonder what sort of life the work provided him, only wonder whether the field made him happy or was a source of misery.

But there are also things from the past that we knew—or suspected we knew—but cannot see clearly now, can only feel vague traces of.

And things we’ve forgotten completely. Things that we’ve let drop from our “stories.” We may not feel anything about them at all—or only feel them in feeling something lacking in our “stories.”

Sometimes we think that we’d like to have all miraculously revealed to us, that we need it to be revealed, so that we can understand the reality of how we got to wherever we are—so that we can know where we are.

Some of what’s lost dates from a time when we at least had the capacity to remember. Some, perhaps, dates from an even earlier time.

If we could only find the trail. If only there were some bridge.

Ah, Yambushi. That’s where we are.

The road to the trailhead is fine. The first stretch of the trail is fine, too.

But then we come to the first bridge and half of it is missing. We have a moment of anxiety, we’re thrown out of our rhythm—but then we realize there isn’t much water in the river at this particular point, and we can easily step across the rocks and continue on our way.

The second bridge, too, is only half there. Again, it’s possible to step across the rocks, but it takes a little maneuvering this time, and we can’t help but feel suspicious of the trail to come.

The third bridge has vanished. But since we’re not used to it not being there, we can’t quite remember where it was. Suddenly it’s hard to say whether we’ve passed it and missed our crossover, or we’ve yet to come to it.

A little farther along, the trail seems to dive into the river, and because we’ve forgotten exactly where the third bridge was and because we can see no signs of a broken bridge (yeah, yeah, I know, really it was only ME), it’s easy to look at the loose dirt on the left bank and imagine there’s been a landslide, albeit it a fairly minor one, and the trail’s been buried.

Then all we can do is walk up the river, in the river, over the rocks.

But then we see that the banks are getting steep on both sides and a trail is coming into sight nowhere. And then we don’t know which bank we should try to scramble back up in search of the trail.

We’ve done this hike thirteen, fourteen, fifteen times before.

Twenty minutes later (scrambling up the wrong bank, sliding back down the wrong bank, scrambling up the right bank), we find ourselves back on the familiar trail.

Thankful . . . but our minds still thrown a bit out of kilter.

We hear birds somewhere, and look up into the scrambled brown branches, into the patches of grey and green, and do not discover the chickadees we’ve seen among those branches in previous winters.

We feel great relief coming to “The Big Rock,” seeing that the sticks that keep the rock from tumbling down into the river are as we remember them.

Sticks left by hikers capable of great faith—for more than a hundred years.

We’re comforted to see the shrines are standing here and there, though we can’t say with any certainty whether they’re the ones we’ve seen before.

And then the walking is smooth. We enjoy the lovely view from just below the Yomogi Pass.

And then we’ve turned up from the pass, we’re approaching 1700 meters in altitude. And we see the snow up ahead. It’s a switchback trail, so the trail itself is not so steep, but the slope is. With the slippery snow painting the trail, it seems more narrow than it does in summertime.

Footprints. You’re grateful for them. You probably won’t get lost. And it’s easy to walk, stepping upon them. At the same time, when you do, your mind drifts from the trail up ahead. On a snowy day, you should be confirming the lay of the land that is before you, as the trail itself, right in front of your feet, is hard to identify. I try to do both, walk in someone else’s shoes and make sure that I see where I’m heading.

Ah, a clear memory. The “usual” trail passes under the leaning tree on the left. The footprints circle around to the right.

And then something good happens. The sky is blue. The white of the snow and the blue are lovely together. It’s a lovely day. And suddenly you’ve forgotten that you’re trying to remember something. Because you’re in the moment. A beautiful moment.

Then you’re near the top, in the moment.

And nearer the top, in the moment.

And nearer.

And then you are at the top. Still in the moment.

Someone has shuffled off into the woods, hardly hurrying. Unmindful of you. How long ago it’s hard to say.

That’s okay. You’re in the moment. And it really is beautiful.

(from Persimmon Dreams: When you’ve got a spare moment, check out our music/nature videos on our “Persimmon Dreams” YouTube channel, or Steve’s books, When a Sissy Climbs a Mountain in May and Along the Same Street, available on Amazon, or directly from us. And if you enjoyed this post, consider sharing with others. Thank you!)

Nothing to see here, folks. Just ducks.

A city park, a little pond . . . and ducks. Just ducks.

Holden Caulfield nowhere in sight.

A duck swimming to the right.

A duck swimming to the left.

1.5 ducks.

Two ducks.

One of them, a two-headed duck.

Just another duck.

And another.

A duck who’s gotten herself on the golden path. But just another duck. And that’s all I have to say about that.

(from Persimmon Dreams: When you’ve got a spare moment, check out our music/nature videos on our “Persimmon Dreams” YouTube channel, or Steve’s books, When a Sissy Climbs a Mountain in May and Along the Same Street, available on Amazon, or directly from us. And if you enjoyed this post, consider sharing with others. Thank you!)

It’s November. Three lovely ladies invite you to go along on a weekend trip to Izu. The fall colors are bound to be beautiful. What do you do?

You go.

Thank you, ladies!

(from Persimmon Dreams: When you’ve got a spare moment, check out our music/nature videos on our “Persimmon Dreams” YouTube channel, or Steve’s books, When a Sissy Climbs a Mountain in May and Along the Same Street, available on Amazon, or directly from us. And if you enjoyed this post, consider sharing with others. Thank you!)

November 4.

We drove up through Utogi, enjoying some persimmon dreams, and headed for the Aozasa trailhead. Typhoon # 19 had broken up the road a bit in a few stretches, but we proceeded slowly and had no major problems getting through. For the next couple of weeks, though, expect that there may be some construction work in progress up on the road.

One of our team members was overcoming a bit of an illness, so we planned to take it easy, and not necessarily go all the way to the top of Aozasa.

If you start from below the Jizo Pass, as we did, it usually takes about two hours to reach the top of Aozasa, but we ended up going only about halfway.

In that hour, though, we came across lots of beautiful color.

When the colors are bright and the sky is sunshiny blue, you feel you are being radiated with all the energy of the universe. You just throw your arms back and bathe in it.

So you hope for a blue sky, especially in autumn. At least we usually do.

But when the blue weakens—or vanishes, you don’t feel disappointed. At least, we don’t.

When the light becomes subdued, your eyes “reach” a little more—and the effort makes up for the diminished shine.

And you have a tendency to see small things very close to you that you probably wouldn’t have seen under an azure sky.

But we do like the blue.

And if we can’t get three primary colors, we’ll be satisfied with two.

And we’ll be grateful driving back the mountain for the opportunity to have more persimmon dreams.

To feel again, the love coming through the blue, and the warm glow of the orange.