Snow Country

The blizzard has started. 

It’s not a blizzard quite yet; that comes later.  Right now, the snow is light, muffling the cars passing on the street below me.  My desk faces a window, you see, so I can take in the world, which as I write is dark and quiet.  

Quite the contrast to my first overseas trip since May 2019 which plans I just finished today, down to details like which bus or train to take to which hostel or trailhead.  I am going to Israel, ‘kenahora’ and ‘inshallah’ of course.  There I shall walk through the Galilee and the Ella Valley, explore Ein Gedi and Masada and even see Petra.  That, though, is a month away.

Right now, it is winter in West Michigan

Only the second official day of the season, though we have already had more than 20 inches of snow since November.  Mind, it was mostly melted.  I was chipping away at the remaining ice in the morning, even as I knew we would be socked in for three days with 18 or more inches of snow by Christmas Day.  No question of a White Christmas here.

What I saw outside took me back to college days, a journey in time as it were, to my first course, which was Introduction to Asian Studies.  On the syllabus were novels by Yasunari Kawabata, including his breakout hit from 1948, “Snow Country,” 雪国, Yukiguni.   This past year I reread it and his other major works.  This sentence was what I half remembered and had to look up: 

“The train came out of the long border tunnel — and there was the snow country. The night had turned white.“

My longing to go on pilgrimage probably began around that time, thanks to him and another Japanese writer, Matsuo Basho, whose journeys are the frame for many of his haiku.  Their works conjured a world I did not know existed, and awakened a desire to touch it.  

Reminded by the weather, I found myself searching Basho’s thoughts on winter.   None of his famous travelogs took place in winter, though there was a passage in his account of visiting Sarashina shrine that had a touch of winter in its mood.  As he traversed a step mountain path, noting how a servant on horseback seemed to nod off despite the peril, he writes, “it ocurrred to me that every one of us was like this servant, wading through ever-changing reefs of this world in stormy weather, totally blind to the hidden dangers.”  

I did, though, find some actual haiku about winter.  Here are some of what I found online:

市人よ　此笠うらふ　雪の傘
Ichi-bito yo/ Kono kasa urou/ Uilo no kasa

Hey townspeople,
I’ll sell you my woven hat,
The snow umbrella.

いざ行かむ　雪見にころぶ　所まで
Iza yukan/ Yukimi ni korobu/ Tokoro made

Let’s go out
To see the snow view
Where we slip and fall.

こがらしや　頬腫痛む　人の顔
Kogarashi ya/ Hoobare itamu/ Hito no kao

The cold wintry wind.
The throbbing pains of the swelling cheek.
People’s faces.

In 2016, having visited Japan and walked the Kumano Kodo, I resolved to imitate Basho and compose haiku on a daily basis.  I looked back and found these:

14 Dec  

Candles are too small
To compensate for the sun –
But neither are stars

15 Dec 

Ice under the snow
moans with every slow footstep –
Should I apologize?

16 Dec  

Sometimes I can see
moon or sun behind the clouds
while it is snowing

18 Dec  

Like an old cat who
still wants to play a little –
the sun through the clouds

20 Dec  

Strong winds defeated
my warm parka this morning –
But then the cold itself

22 Dec  

Winter – that time when
nature paints with fewer hues,
but finer lines

These please me, but it pales before Kawabata’s ending in “Snow Country” with a sentence that feels like a haiku.  Tell me it doesn’t feel like taking a winter breath.   

“As he caught his footing, his head fell back, and the Milky Way flowed down inside him with a roar.“

(You can purchase the whole collection and my travelog of the Kumano Kodo at Amazon)