A World of One Color
Winter strips Takao down to its essentials. On a weekday, I took the trail up this sacred mountain. It was a cold day. There were no school groups, no snack stands, no crowds, just snow and lots of it. The climb demanded focus. While the ascent is not too steep, the snow blurred the path just enough to make each step a choice. Roots, stones, slick wooden stairs. Not as boring as one would hope.
A trail near Biwa Falls follows along the water, just off the main approach to Mount Takao. Monks still come here to train, standing beneath the cold stream in meditation, and on that winter day their absence lingered. The path would sometimes becomes slippery and narrow, shaded by tall cedars, with the steady rush of the falls acting as a kind of background hum. By my focus would keep return to my sliding feet, as the uneven ground beneath would switched intermittently between soft earth and iced-over rock.
Halfway up, the temple Yakuō-in rests under frost. I moved slower there, perhaps because of the silence. No, not quite silent. Just the crunch of snow, and the steady huff of exertion. My own sounds. The near silence has an amplifying effect, making one tuned to small things: the way sunlight amplifies the texture of bark, the mysterious profile of an entwife, the scent of cedar in cold air.
Near the summit, the sky appears to be a patch of white on white. But desaturated tones tempers expectations of a view, which appears as a grayish ink landscape. Lovely and aloof. The reward is the stillness, the uprightness of being there alone. You reach the top, lean on a railing, and just stand.
