In the Pines

The blog One Hundred Mountains recently contained a post Weighing up Walter Weston , that explores the validity of Weston's title as "the father of the Japanese Alps". Weston's place in Japanese history has a lot to do with what was happening in Japan at the time as the Meiji government was creating a political space that required a reconfiguring of the entire landscape. Berkeley geographer Karen Wigen takes up this topic and argues that the mountains of central Japan were "discovered" as the alps (アルプス) and reconfigured to meet the political and social needs of the Meiji regime. Here is the full reference Wigen K. 2005. Discovering the Japanese Alps: Meiji Mountaineering and the Quest for Geographical Enlightenment. Journal of Japanese Studies 31 If anyone wants the article, but can't find it online, I can email a PDF.

I'll be leaving Otaki in March of next year, and I'm not sure if I'll have a chance to climb Ontake-san on the other side of winter. I've wanted to see san-no-ike (三ノ池), Ontake's third pond, since I arrived here in Otaki. So, though it was late in the season, on Halloween day I decided to give it a go. This is the Ontake-san that had peaked out at me the morning of the previous day. . .irresistable. I had been busy until about 10:00 that morning, but should have gone--the weather was perfect. Instead I kept my eyes on the weather forecasts and decided that the next day would be best for an ascent; I could get an early start. I was climbing the road to Ta-no-hara 田の原 by about 5:30 the next morning. When I reached the clearings of Ontake 2240's ski hills I could gaze clearly at the first stirrings of the morning swelling up behind the Kiso Range. At Ta-no-hara I climbed from my car and took in my first breaths of the cool air there. I looked up at Ontake-s...

An article in Northern Woodlands Magazine entitled, A Forest for Every Town , talks about the Vermont Town Forest Program , which aims to ensure common forestlands for municipalities in Vermont. The program's idea has grown, in part, out of movements, such as the slow food movement, that strive to use local products. It sounds like the program is quite successful so far. From the article: Hinesburg’s forests exemplify town forest potential. They have recreation: world-class mountain biking trails, along with skiing, hiking, and horseback riding. They also serve as outdoor classrooms, both for local teachers and for the University of Vermont, whose students have conducted dozens of projects there. And the older forest also has active forest management: one recent harvest took out white ash, which was then milled and kiln-dried locally and installed to replace the floor of the Hinesburg Town Hall, which had been sanded so many times that the tongue of each tongue-and-groove boa...

The following is a link to a paper providing a brief overview of my research that I will be presenting during a panel discussion entitled, "Graduate Student Collaborations and Engagements in Environmental Change Research", at the American Anthropological Association (AAA) meetings in San Francisco this month. Take a look if it's of any interest. Socio-natual resilience: Anthropological engagements with environmental change research

*I've received comments from observant readers informing me that 赤カブ akakabu are not in fact "red beets", but rather are a member of the brassica genus, and therefore a variety of turnip. To order Otaki "aka-kabura-zuke" or "sunki-zuke" please write to otakimura@gmail.com . My good friend TS-san invited Chizuko and I to come watch her and two other women from a cooperative called "Himawari-market" (ひまわりマーケット) prepare tsukemono . "Tsukemono" refers to a huge variety of pickled vegetables that are ubiquitous in the Japanese diet. In Otaki, there are two main types of tsukemono. The first is "aka-kabu" (赤かぶ), which means red beets in English. The second is a type of tsukemono that is unique to this region, called "sunki" (すんき). This tsukemono is made using the leafy tops of red beets and is peculiar in that the process requires no salt. We arrived at sunki-n0-sato (すんきの里)--meaning "house of sunki"-...