5 Nov 2012
I was late. The train would arrive in ten minutes. It would take about 12 minutes to get from putting on my shoes by the front door to hustling through the neighborhood streets to the train station, crossing the bridge, and getting down to the platform. So I would miss the train. I cursed while(…)
10 Oct 2011
Jump back to 1976, Japan, the summer when I was 16, and picture the gangly teenager with shoulder-length hair, who loved wearing bell bottoms jeans, lace up lumberjack boots, and a broad-brimmed black felt hat adorned with a Navajo bead band and bright blue, jay feather. And picture this youth ambling along shouldering a huge(…)
3 Jan 2011
The wind blows off Okutama reservoir, whistling through the bare lattices of the roadside trellis and bites at my cheeks. It is cold enough to bring tears to my eyes and I swing off my pack to pull out the fingerless bunting gloves from the back pocket. Sunlight, falling from high in the mid-day sky,(…)
30 Aug 2006
Two cabbage butterflies mating on a leaf beside the Noh River, August 07, 2006 In the heart of a big city like Tokyo the cliche says that nature exists as but an afterthought. For such hulking carbon-units as us humans that may well seem like the case, but all it takes is a slowing of(…)
4 May 2004
I can’t say why wild places draw me. The call originates somewhere out there where four walls end and the horizon catches the last light of the sun. It is something old and frightening, sets my heart drumming, and comes upon me when I am least guarded. I seek it again and again, as if expecting an answer to a question that was asked before I was born.
13 May 2003
Too much time sitting in front of the computer. It’s Spring out there and I’m missing it! And there I had been telling myself that I would work hard to strengthen myself and get ready for the mountains this summer. I’ve got to start to get back in shape today. The mountains are calling and(…)
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