Station over all

Welcome to the sixth issue of iftiki–walk, stories behind the images. April 2016, Nagano, Japan

In the night, a family of foraging deer had crossed our path. Their eyes hung in a gaze that switched between mammalian trust and bolting wild. Sharp bursts of fog shot from their wet mouths.

Sleepwalking bears had begun to wander through simple pine mazes.

At the break of dawn we searched for a way into the mountains. We discovered roads filled with the dust rising off quarries. The Earth had been hollowed out. It reminded me of a region on the Tibetan border. Feeding macaques splayed themselves between branches. Thin cascades rushed from cathedrals of sculptured Sagrada icefalls.

Mist snuck over the summit and hid the peaks of Komagatake. Skeletal trees poked out of deep drifts carved by blistering winds. The slopes fell in great white waves which rolled into green hills and across a daffodil plain that glowed in the sunlight.

A black speck moved across the white.

A solitary figure made his way up a ridge. Metal on his feet, metal in his hands. Chipping away at the mountain. Walking blind.

It wasn’t that it was one of the world’s highest summits but the fact that he had chosen ice over laughter and the pink warmth of sitting under falling blossoms.

His joy was that sure trudge upwards into worlds unknown.