Azuma Mountain

Yesterday (Tuesday, October 17) I climbed Mount Azuma. Today I can't walk. Ok, ok, I can hobble. Anyway, I went with my roommate, Donna, and a friend of hers who acted as tour guide and translator. It was pretty amazing. The trees in the mountains were already turning, showcasing the beautiful shades of hibernation. I have to admit, as beautiful as the changing leaves are, at first, all I could think about when I looked at them was death. I was really depressed when I realized that the reason the leaves were such beautiful colors was because they were dying. They die, fall off, and then the trees stand there, frozen, all winter. And even more morbid was that people seemed to celebrate this mass cessation of life. They were all so excited to see the pretty Autumn colors that they dismissed the funeral bells echoing under the crunching leaves beneath their feet. How undeniably sad. BUT, then I realized, or rather forced myself to realize so that I too could enjoy the beautiful Autumn scenery, that these vivacious little children of the Earth don't die, they simply go to sleep. After all, when the snow thaws and the ground warms there will be little green buds on every tree branch. All the plants will wake up again and provide shade and oxygen for all the Earth's creatures. So now, instead of being depressed, I am happy that the trees get to shed their summer coats and take a rest, hence "the beautiful shades of hibernation."

Enough of that, back to mountain climbing. It was really cold. Really cold. We were on Mount Azuma for about three hours, one of which was spent near a lake sort of in a valley. We ate lunch there and admired the contrasting blues of the sky and the water. Unfortunately, my camera failed to capture the incredibly colored sky but I'm working on it in iphoto. I'll post pictures on flickr soon, so make sure you check them out. Once we were through tramping around the mountain, Donna and I climbed Azuma"Fuji," as the natives like to call it. Azumafuji is an inactive volcano that last erupted about one hundred years ago (not so long if you ask me). If you ask me, we were dare devilishly risking our lives. Ok, so maybe we weren't in danger of molten lava but, I do whole heartedly believe, that if I had jumped as high as I could, the wind would of blown me into the crater. It was so windy on the top of the volcano that I literally slid down part of the outer rim. (Don't tell my mom.) This is me trying not to look like I was freezing and about to fall in.



Like I said, more pictures to come on flickr. After all this excitement, Donna and I went home and I cooked a huge pan of stir fry, yum. And that was it. After the wind and cold I felt on the mountain, I'm a little worried about what winter has in store. Actually, I'm petrified. So, if anyone has any good advise, please send it my way. And for all of you who are going to say, "stay warm," I'm sending you a precursory rolling of the eyes.