![\"\"](\"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/12\/080103_hakkai_fuji-400x268.jpg\")
What follows is a true story about understanding one\u2019s place in the world. As we enter 2021, coming out of the strangest year of our lives, my hope is that this anecdote serves as an antidote for anyone feeling a little lost right now. <\/i><\/span><\/p>\nHiking Mt. Fuji is not a great accomplishment. When you do it, old Japanese ladies\u2014who do it once a week for leisure\u2014pass you by, giggling. You hike Mt. Fuji the way you tour the Colosseum in Rome. Anyone can do it, but not everyone has been. So you do it to say you\u2019ve been.<\/p>\n
I have proof that I\u2019ve been. It\u2019s a lava rock from the very top of Fuji-san. A quarter-pound chunk of volcano vomit that I learned, after I had brought it home, was bad luck. <\/span><\/p>\n I was telling this story to my friend Jen, a beautiful young woman totally devoted to the healing arts and making the world a better place. Jen is not a liberal. Jen is not a progressive. Jen is a utopian.<\/p>\n \u201cApologize to the mountain and let it know the rock is in good hands. You\u2019ve been proud to have it. You\u2019ve been taking good care of it. And you want permission to keep it. Maybe even one day you\u2019ll return it,\u201d Jen said. \u201cBut you have to go back to that moment when you took it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Our group of 10 expatriates began the Fuji climb at 11 p.m. It\u2019s the recommended way to climb Fuji-san. Because leaving the base station at 11 p.m. allows you to get to the top of Fuji right at sunrise. It also makes the hike up one of the most aesthetic nighttime experiences imaginable.<\/p>\n Far outside the Tokyo-Yokohama skyline, nearly 13,000 feet in the air, Fuji is the Hubble Telescope of earth-bound stargazing. Never before had I seen so many stars so crystalline. But what drew my attention for most of the hike upward was not the amazing sky. It was the clouds underneath.<\/p>\n About two hours into the hike, we were well above cloudline. And our group noticed a strange triangular dark spot on the clouds below. Some loose references were made to it along the way, but none of us knew what it was we were seeing. After all, it was much easier to focus upward into the mystery of the galaxy than ponder some bizarre cloud formation down below.<\/p>\n A few more hours into the hike, oxygen began to thin. While there were no treacherous moments, taking seven steps, then five steps, then three steps in a row became a challenge. A break was needed.<\/p>\n My buddy Mike, a sweet-natured Texan, stood about 6-foot-3 and needed the break the most. He pulled off his backpack, he sat down next to his fianc\u00e9e Kara, and he looked up at the sky.<\/p>\n \u201cOh. It\u2019s a full moon tonight. That\u2019s why we\u2019re seeing the shape,\u201d Mike said.<\/p>\n No one said a word, but everyone looked around, as this silent haiku hit the collective unconscious:<\/p>\n TRIANGULAR SHAPE.<\/p>\n FULL MOON, ON A VOLCANO.<\/p>\n SEE THE CLOUDS BELOW.<\/p>\n \u201cHoly crap, Mike!\u201d I said.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, that triangle we\u2019ve been looking at is Fuji\u2019s shadow,\u201d Mike said coolly.<\/p>\n \u201cHoly crap, Mike!\u201d I said.<\/p>\n I think that when we die, for a second we\u2019re still alive. And during that second, I believe our mind pulls above our body\u2014knowing exactly where we are, knowing exactly where we\u2019re going, knowing exactly content.<\/p>\n That\u2019s how we felt on Fuji-san at that moment. Our bodies and minds, at rest. The subtle cues of ambivalent nature revealing themselves in the silence of the world, where freedom lies and creativity is born.<\/p>\n And for the first time in our 20-something years of life, we knew exactly where we were.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Eric Valentine What follows is a true story about understanding one\u2019s place in the world. As we enter 2021, coming out of the strangest year of our lives, my hope is that this anecdote serves as an antidote for anyone feeling a little lost right now. Hiking Mt. Fuji is not a great accomplishment. 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