Reaching Into the Grab Bag

-- Susan, every other Sunday

I'm currently in the process of transforming countless pages worth of hiking notes into a coherent manuscript about the past year and the 100 Summits climbs.

In the process, I've been consulting the thousands of photographs (actually, tens of thousands) I took along the way, which gave me the idea for this post.

The photos are organized by groups of ten (mountains 1-10, 11-20, etc), and I wondered what would happen if I closed my eyes, spun the dial on the mouse, and picked a random photograph from each of those ten sets of climbing images. What kind of a year would those random images portray?

An interesting idea - and here's the result.

A year in Japan . . . at random:

May, 2018: Roadside Jizō en route to Mt. Daibosatsu

June 2018: the Kirigamine Plateau, as seen from the chairlift up Mt. Kurumayama

August 2018: I don't know what they hoped to trap in this enormous thing, but I didn't want to be there when it arrived.

 

September 2018: Oobie clearly had trouble adjusting to her new home...

November 2018: Autumn leaves in Hakone. Winter is coming.

January 2019: quarried stones on Nokogiriyama, source of the stone that built the foundations of Edo Castle.

The Narita Express (N'Ex) arriving at Shinjuku Station - one of many, many trains I rode this year.

February 2019: The "view" from the summit of Ishiwariyama. On a clear day, you'd be looking at Mt. Fuji.

March 2019: Ume (plum blossoms) in bloom in Ashikaga City, north of Tokyo.

April 2019: Kasuga Shrine, in Nara, on the morning of my final climb.

April 10, 2019: on top of Summit #100 - Wakakusayama, in Nara City.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, this post has already run too long - so since I'm on a deadline, I'll simply promise to offer more words, and more photos, in a couple of weeks.

Until then, follow your dreams - and if you have, or are, a mother, Happy Mother's Day from Japan!