The Easy Life in Kamusari by Miura Shion

Author:Miura, Shion
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amazon Crossing
Published: 2021-11-01T16:00:00+00:00

4

THE MOUNTAIN ABLAZE

“This is the greatest view ever!”

Yoki was yelling from atop a camphor tree that must have been a hundred feet tall. I was sitting on a branch below him, enjoying the vastness of the sky and the wind in the trees.

We were on the peak of West Mountain, taking a break from pruning cypresses.

Sometimes, depending on the sunlight and the condition of the soil, cedars and cypresses are planted on the same mountain. Cedars do better where the soil is lean and there’s less sun, so generally they’re planted below the top, from the eighth station down. (The distance up any mountain is measured in ten stations, with the first at the bottom, the fifth midway up, and the tenth on top.) Cypresses, on the other hand, are planted toward the top of a mountain. They like well-drained soil and plenty of sunshine, and they’re more resistant to cold and snow than cedars.

But planting near the top of a mountain means that caring for and harvesting the trees is more work. Just getting to the spot demands a long climb up the face of the mountain. If someone gets injured, you can’t get them back quickly to civilization. Deep in the mountains with no one around but each other, Team Nakamura worked cautiously, filled with tension.

There was one inevitable exception—Yoki. The higher the altitude and the greater the risk, the more fired up he got. He especially liked pruning cypresses near the mountaintop. He was so happy, he wouldn’t even come down out of the tree at lunchtime. “I’m only going to come back up and prune some more after lunch, so what’s the point?” He would tie himself to the tree with a rope and swing like a bagworm, munching his onigiri.

“Best leave him be,” said Old Man Saburo. “He’s a hyoitoko, after all.” Hyoitoko is a Kamusari word that means “airling”—a creature of the air, someone whose feet scarcely touch the ground.

Noko looked up at Yoki swaying in the tree overhead, then turned to Seiichi and wagged his tail—a sign he wanted water. Seiichi gave him some in a dish woven from bamboo leaves, and he lapped it up. Noko has better table manners than his owner.

Climbing trees is way scarier on a slope than on flat ground. In the beginning, I pruned branches trembling with fear. Cedars and cypresses don’t have branches to use as footholds, which is only to be expected since getting rid of them is the whole point of pruning. We also rarely use adjunct ropes to brace ourselves. Attaching and detaching a bunch of ropes all the time would really slow down the work.

Eventually I got used to pruning. The mountain is big, the cypresses innumerable. You have to keep going and just prune. When you lose yourself in the work, there’s no room for fear.

After I got acclimated, one day Yoki invited me to climb that camphor tree on our lunch break. The mountains around Kamusari village are planted only

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