Over the Snow.
When Yejiro pushed the shoji and the amado (night shutters) apart in
the morning, he disclosed a bank of snow four feet deep; not a
snowfall over night, but the relic of the winter. I found myself in
a snow grotto beyond which nothing was visible. He then imparted to
me the cheerful news that the watchman had changed his mind, and now
refused to set out with us. It was too late in the day to start, the
man said, which, in view of his having informed us only the night
before that the snow would not be fit to travel on till this very
hour, was scarcely logical. The trouble lay not in the way, but in
the will. The man had repented him of his promise. Things look
differently as certainties in the morning from what they do as
possibilities overnight. Fortunately he proved amenable to
importunity, and finally consented to go. His fellow was much
worried, and followed him distressfully to the outer threshold;
whence in perturbation of spirit he watched us depart, calling out
pathetically to his mate to be very careful of himself. His almost
motherly solicitude seemed to me more comical at the time than it
came to seem later.
The sky was without a fleck of cloud, and, as we struck out across
the snow, I feared at first for my eyes, so great was the glare.
For I had neither goggles nor veil. In fact, we were as unprepared a
troop as ever started on such an expedition. We had not a pair of
foot spikes nor a spiked pole to the lot of us.
The jagged peaks of the valley's wall notched the sky in vivid
relief, their sharp teeth biting the blue. We below were blinking.
Luckily before very long we had crossed the level and were attacking
the wall, and once on it the glare lessened, for we were facing the
south, and the slant of the slope took off from the directness of the
sun's rays. The higher we rose, the greater the tilt became. The
face of the slope was completely buried in snow except where the
aretes stuck through, for the face was well wrinkled. The angle soon
grew unpleasant to visage, and certainly looked to have exceeded the
limit of stable equilibrium. In mid-ascent, as we were winding
cautiously up, a porter slipped. He stopped himself, however, and
was helped on to his feet again by his fellow behind. The bad bit
was preface to a worse effect round the corner, for on turning the
arete, we came upon a snow slope like a gigantic house-roof. It was
as steep as you please, and disappeared a few hundred feet below over
the edge into the abyss. Across and up this the guide, after looking
about him, struck out, and I followed. The snow was in a plastic
state, and at each step I kicked my toes well in, so wedging my
footing. The view down was very unnerving. It soon grew so bad I
fixed my thought solely on making each step secure, and went slowly,
which was much against my inclination. In this manner we tacked
gradually upward in zigzags, some forty feet apart, each of us
improving the footprints of his predecessor.
After a short eternity, we came out at the top. I threw myself upon
the snow, and when I had sufficiently recovered my breath asked the
guide, with what I meant for sarcasm, whether that was his idea of
"a good road." He owned that it was the worst bit on the way, but he
somewhat grudgingly conceded it a "gake." I sat corrected, but in the
interest of any future wanderer I submit the following definition of
a "gake," which, if not strictly accurate, at least leans to the
right side. If the cliff overhang, it is a "gake;" but if a plumb
line from the top fall anywhere within the base, it is no longer a
"gake," but "a good road."
On the other side the slope was more hospitable. Even trees wintered
just below the crest, their great gaunt trunks thrust deep into the
snow. We glissaded down the first few hundred feet, till we brought
up standing at the head of an incipient gorge, likewise smothered in
snow. Round the boles of the trees the snow had begun to thaw, which
gave me a chance to measure its depth, by leaning over the rim of the
cup and thrusting my pole down as far as I could reach. The point of
it must have been over seven feet from the surface, and it touched no
bottom. My investigations took time enough to put a bend of the
hollow between me and the others, and when at last I looked up they
were nowhere to be seen. As I trudged after them alone I felt like
that coming historical character, the last man on our then frozen
earth.
For some minutes past a strange, far-away musical note, like the
murmur of running water, had struck my ear, and yet all about
everything looked dead. Of animate or even inanimate pulsation there
was no sign. One unbroken sheet of snow stretched as far as I could
see, in which stood the great trees like mummies. Still the sound
continued, seeming to come from under my feet. I stopped, and,
kneeling down, put my ear to the crust, and there, as distinct as
possible, I heard the wimpling of a baby brook, crooning to itself
under its thick white blanket. Here then was the cradle of one of
those streams that later would become such an ugly customer to meet.
It was babily innocent now, and the one living thing beside myself on
this May day in the great snow-sheeted solitude.
Perhaps it was the brook that had undermined the snow. At all events,
soon after I overtook the others, the guide, fearing to trust to it
farther, suddenly struck up again to the left. We all followed,
remonstrating. We had no sooner got up than we went down again the
other side, and this picket-fence style of progress continued till we
emerged upon the top of a certain spur, which commanded a fine view
of gorges. Unfortunately we ourselves were on top of some of them.
The guide reconnoitered both sides for a descent, pushing his way
through a thick growth of dwarf bamboo, and brought up each time on
the edge of an impassable fall to the stream below. At last he took
to the arete. It was masked by trees for some distance, and then
came out as a bare knife edge of rock and earth. Down it we
scrambled, till the slope to the side became passable. This was now
much less steep, although still steep enough for the guide to make me
halt behind a tree, for fear of the stones dislodged by those behind.
These came down past us like cannon-balls, ricochetting by big
bounds.
At the bottom we reached the stream, and beside it we halted for
lunch. Just below our resting place another stream joined our own,
both coming down forbidding-looking valleys, shut in by savage peaks.
On the delta, between the waters, we made out a band of hunters,
three of them, tarrying after an unsuccessful chase. This last was a
general inference, rather than an observed fact.
The spot was ideal for picturesque purposes,--the water clear as
crystal, and the sunshine sparkling. But otherwise matters went ill
with us. Our extempore guide had promised us, over his own fire the
evening before, a single day of it to Arimine. On the road his
estimate of the time needed had increased alarmingly. From direct
questioning it now appeared that he intended to camp out on the
mountain opposite, whose snowy slopes were painfully prophetic of
what that night would be. Besides, this meant another day of it to
Arimine; and even when we reached Arimine, we were nowhere, and I was
scant of time. We had already lost three days; if we kept on, I
foresaw the loss of more. It was very disheartening to turn back,
but it had to be done.
Our object now was to strike the Ashikura trail and follow it down.
The guide, however, was not sure of the path, so we hailed the
hunters. One of them came across the delta to the edge of the stream
within shouting distance, and from him we obtained knowledge of the
way.
At first the path was unadventurous enough, though distressingly
rough. In truth, it was no path at all; it was an abstract
direction. It led straight on, regardless of footing, and we
followed, now wading through swamps, now stumbling over roots, now
ducking from whip-like twigs that cut us across the face, until at
last we emerged above the stream, and upon a scene as grandly
desolate as the most morbid misanthrope might wish. A mass of
boulders of all sizes, from a barn to a cobblestone, completely
filled a chasm at the base of a semicircular wall of castellated clay
cliffs. Into the pit we descended. The pinnacles above were
impressively high, and between them were couloirs of debris that
looked to us to be as perpendicular as the cliffs. Up one of these
breakneck slides the guide pointed for our path. Porters and all,
we demurred. Path, of course, there was none; there was not even an
apology for a suspicion that any one had ever been up or down the
place. We felt sure there must be some other way out. The more we
searched, however, the less we found. The stream, which was an
impassable torrent, barred exit below on our side by running straight
into the wall of rock. The slide was an ugly climb to contemplate,
yet we looked at it some time before we accepted the inevitable.
When in desperation we finally made up our minds, we began picking
our dubious way up among a mass of rocks that threatened to become a
stone avalanche at any moment. None of us liked it, but none of us
knew how little the others liked it till that evening. In the
expansion of success we admitted our past feelings. One poor porter
said he thought his last hour had come, and most of us believed a
near future without us not improbable. It shows how danger unlocks
the heart that just because, halfway up, I had relieved this man of
his stick, which from a help had become a hindrance, he felt toward
me an exaggerated gratitude. It was nothing for me to do, for I was
free, while he had his load, but had I really saved his life he could
not have been more beholden. Indeed, it was a time to intensify
emotion.
As we scrambled upward on all fours, the ascent, from familiarity,
grew less formidable. At least the stones decreased in size,
although their tilt remained the same, but the angle looked less
steep from above than from below.
At last, one after the other, we reached a place to the side of the
neck of the couloir, and scrambling round the coping of turf at the
top emerged, to our surprise, upon a path, or rather upon the ghost
of one. For we found ourselves upon a narrow ridge of soil between
two chasms, ending in a pinnacle of clay, and along this ribbon of
land ran a path, perfectly preserved for perhaps a score of paces
out, when it broke off bodily in mid-air. The untoward look of the
way we had come stood explained. Here clearly had been a cataclysm
within itinerary times. Some gigantic landslide must have sliced the
mountain off into the gorge below, and instead of a path we had been
following its still unlaid phantom. The new-born character of the
chasm explained its shocking nakedness. But it was an uncomfortable
sight to see a path in all its entirety vanish suddenly into the
void.
The uncut end of the former trail led back to a little tableland
supporting a patch of tilling and tenanted by an uninhabited hut.
The Willow Moor they called it, though it seemed hardly big enough to
bear a name. On reconnoitring for the descent, we found the farther
side fallen away like the first; so that the plateau was now cut off
from all decent approach. One of us, at last, struck the butt end of
a path; but we had not gone far down it before it broke off, and
delivered us to the gullies. This side, however, was much better
than the other, and it took none of us very long to slip down the
slope, repair the bridge, and join the Ashikura trail.
We were now once more on the path we had come up, with the certainty
of bad places instead of their uncertainty ahead of us, a doubtful
betterment. The Oni ga Jo lay in wait round the corner, and the rest
of the familiar devils would all appear in due course of time.
Tied over my boots were the straw sandals of the country. They were
not made to be worn thus, and showed great uneasiness in their new
position, do what we might with the thongs. Everybody tried his hand
at it, first and last; but the fidgety things always ended by coming
off at the toe or the heel, or sluing round to the side till they
were worse than useless. They were supposed to prevent one from
slipping, which no doubt they would have done had they not begun by
slipping off themselves. They wore themselves out by their nervousness,
and had to be renewed every little while from the stock the porters
carried. In honor of the Oni ga Jo I had a fresh pair put on beside
the brook sacred to the memory of my pocket-handkerchief. We then
rose to the Devil Place, and threaded it in single file. Whether it
were the companionship, or familiarity, or simply that my right side
instead of my left next the cliff gave greater seeming security, I
got over it a shade more comfortably this time, though it was still
far from my ideal of an afternoon's walk. The road to the next world
branched off too disturbingly to the left.
At last the path descended to the river bottom for good. I sat down
on a stone, pulled out my tobacco pouch, and lit a pipe. The porters
passed on out of sight. Then I trudged along myself. The tension of
the last two days had suddenly ceased, and in the expansion of spirit
that ensued I was conscious of a void. I wanted some one with me then,
perhaps, more than I ever craved companionship before. The great
gorge about me lay filled to the brim with purple shadow. I drank in
the cool shade-scented air at every breath. The forest-covered
mountain sides, patched higher up with snow in the gullies, shut out
the world. Only a gilded bit here and there on some lofty spur
lingered to hint a sun beyond. The strip of pale blue sky far
overhead bowed to meet the vista of the valley behind, a vista of
peaks more and more snow-clad, till the view was blocked at last by
a white, nun-veiled summit, flushed now, in the late afternoon light,
to a tender rose. Past strain had left the spirit, as past fatigue
leaves the body, exquisitely conscious; and my fancy came and walked
with me there in that lonely valley, as it gave itself silently into
the arms of night.
Probably none I know will ever tread where I was treading then, nor I
ever be again in that strange wild cleft, so far out of the world;
and yet, if years hence I should chance to wander there alone once
more, I know the ghost of that romance will rise to meet me as I pass.