We drop back into the lodge for an after-lunch coffee with our host, Yamaki-san. A local man – there’s a village of that name on the way to Nirasaki – he and his wife have been running Mizugaki Sansō for forty-four years, taking over after the early death of his elder brother. In those days, there was no road down to Masutomi, but he could still run down the path to the hot spring village in three quarters of an hour. As for the mountain, he might still climb it one last time before retiring ….
On the wall of the café hangs a photo showing a Yosemite-like pillar of smooth granite – look closely at it, and you see a climber rounding a massive overhang, his companion belaying him from close by. I’d forgotten that Mizugaki has long been a forcing-ground for extreme rock-climbing talent, as you can read in this thoughtful article from Alpinist magazine.
“Yes, that’s one of the granite towers on the left of the Mizugaki ridge,” explains Yamaki-san – the climbers were friends of his. It wasn’t the rock-climbers, though, who first discovered that buttress, he adds – at its base, there used to be an inscription in Sanskrit, but this has weathered away so that only a single character remains to be seen.
Fukada Kyūya’s chapter on Mizugaki-yama has this to say about Mizugaki's Urgeschichte: “…evidence that the mountain was known in ancient times is found in a story that Kōbō Daishi’s name and other old writings are carved into a cliff in the upper reaches of Amadori-sawa. Although I have not myself laid eyes on these inscriptions, the story shows that this mountain has a past.”
Naruhodo, I say to myself, as we set out on our walk down to Masutomi, a real Meizan always has hidden depths. Neither of us suspects, though, that we'll soon learn that this insight is as true literally as it is metaphorically ...
No comments:
Post a Comment