Home
October 22, 1997
|
|
x |
x |
x |
Mt. DairokuThe bamboo grass rustles in the wind making a sound almost like rushing water. Looking up the trail I see a clear sky now. It was snowing most of the time I was climbing, but every once in awhile the sun would burst from the clouds for a few seconds illuminating everything in a stark white glow - and then just as quickly disappear and return us to grayness. The snow made the trail very slippery. I turned back about 2/3 of the way up when I realized I would be too tired to climb down. At the moment, I am sitting in the jeep with the specimens that have already been carried down. Hiro asked me to stay with the jeep while he went back up to carry more stuff. Since I have been sitting here, Steve, Carol, Minako, Istvan and Joe have come down. Now Ollie comes down the trail and asks where Istvan is. I point him down the road as Istvan and the others have already started toward the bus. My fingers are cold; the windows of the jeep are fogging from my breath. Steve is in the jeep now too. His nose is running. The wind really howls. We are in a protected area of the Tokyo University Forest on Mt. Dairoku. We drove up to the trail head on a severely rutted unmarked road. When the bus could go no further we walked. Hiro drove Zsolt in the jeep and picked me up along the way. We all ate our box lunches at the end of the road before heading up the trail to the summit. It is hard to use chopsticks when your fingers are frozen. I was glad for the hot tea in the thermos as much for warming my hands as for drinking. It felt good to be climbing in such a beautiful forest of spruce and birch, very much like New England except for the ever present bamboo grass. This species of bamboo grass is different from the one we encountered at lower elevations. The underside of the leaf is smooth whereas the the kind lower down the mountain has a rough underside and doesn't seem to grow as tall. At one point the sun lit up a stand of larch in the distance - a bright yellow pool in a sea of green. You can really see the variability of the forest up here. Even though I didn't make it to the top, I feel like I at least contributed something when I found two cones of Picea glenhi, which Zsolt really wanted. I presented them to him like an offering at a shrine. He and Earl and Robin got a good laugh over it. But it really did make me feel like I had some reason for making this climb other than to get in people's way and take up space in the jeep. late for dinnerIt got really cold in the jeep and on the bus and elsewhere. By the time we got back to Rokugo we were late for dinner. The kitchen ladies were worried. Today is Edith and George's 42nd wedding anniversary so Istvan opened a bottle of Hungarian Tokai wine to drink to their health. Everyone is exhausted from the hike in the cold. I've never worn this much clothing on a hike ever: long sleeve t-shirt, sweatshirt, Polartec pullover, and winter jacket. I saw two woodpeckers along the trail, the only animals besides the fox that Ollie filmed near where we had lunch. |
|
x |
x |