A meizanologist's diary (110)

29 December: as the Sensei says to bring gaiters, I go back into the house to retrieve them – privately doubting whether we’ll need them on a mountain less than 620 metres high.

As I guessed, there’s no snow on the ground when we park underneath Ochi-san. But the sunbeams fanning through the woods make for a suitably numinous ambience as we start up the trail named for Taichō, the eighth-century monk who pioneered first Ochi and then, in the first year of Yōrō (717), Hakusan.

At the second station, this being a fully featured Meizan, we’re overtaken by a young man shod in wellies and carrying a trail-running pack. Snow covers the ground from the fifth station. When it reaches my ankles, I stop to put on my gaiters; the Sensei is already wearing hers.

Further on, a line of new stone jizo figurines start to flank the path. The footprints of the young man ahead show that he turned aside at each of them to pay his respects. The Sensei is impressed with his piety.

Finding the Ochi-san shrine deserted, we go on up to the mountain’s highest point. On the way, we inspect a small pavilion that we’ve previously overlooked. 

A sign hand-painted by the shrine’s late guardian, Otani-sensei, says that it once contained a statue of the Kannon – and that it was this goddess who inspired Taichō to climb Hakusan.

At the summit sanctuary, Otani-sensei’s hand-painted exhortation to virtue has blown away since our last visit. Or rather, I hope, somebody has taken it into safe-keeping. 

We look out eastwards to Hakusan, its summit ridge crowned with an orographic cloud. This, tradition says, is where Monk Taichō first thought of tracing his single thin line to the summit of our local White Mountain.