Asama-yama, 2

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You have hiked uphill for three hours when you begin to come across patches of snow. The first is easily skirted, the next one less so, and so on, until you are no longer walking over ground with snow-patches, but snow with patches of bare ground, until at last the trail disappears beneath it.

 

            Why did he stop here –

                        whoever left those footprints

                                    for me to follow

 

The going is not pleasant, steep and slippery. By the time the tr