Courchevel News

Time flies. It is already the fourth year for the summer seminar in the French Alps. Many are attending this year, or I should say there are a lot more attendants than in previous years. There is also more variety in nationality such as Japanese, Belgian, French, English, Irish and Singaporean. There are faces I am familiar with, and some new to me. I try to track what each student has tried to accomplish up to this point. What can I do in ten days? It is not merely giving lessons. I find out new things through occasional conversations with the students. They might also obtain something useful from their experience here for their future.

We enjoy card games at night and mountain climbing as usual．The weather has been exceptionally good、maybe because we have been behaving well. On Sunday, making it a lesson-free day, we started up the mountain in the morning, changing gondolas on the way.

There was not a cloud in the sky. What a luxury to trek across with Mont Blanc clearly visible at our backs!

As usual, the students were quick to go along with an impulsive idea of mine. There was a blue lake on the mountain.... A young, energetic French boy told me, "I climbed to the top the other day, and it only took 2-3 hours. It would only take 1 hour from the gondola station." I was so naive to take his story at face value. We ended up walking in such tough conditions as the air was getting thinner and thinner at an altitude of 2,500 meters, the sunshine was beating down from the cloudless sky at 2 p.m., and the mountain road was fairly steep. The path seemed endless and I was getting out of breath. Only Michiko, my daughter, climbed with ease because she practices triathlon. She told me、"Hurry up, Mama. You are almost there!"

The water of the brook I drew on the way was so sweet. At last we arrived at the lake. It was smaller than I had imagined, but I felt refreshed when I put my feet into the cold water. Two students swam and children threw rocks into the water, both of which are universal ways of playing. At our back there was Mont Blanc. I dozed off for a moment.

On the way back we walked slowly step by step on stony roads, then I started half-running as I felt stepping carefully was too boring. When I was a child, my parents often took my sister and me to hiking. The feeling came back to me. We ran away, came back and ran away again. My parents told us to walk slowly, but we ran without taking time to admire the roadside flowers. My children run straight down the mountain, in spite of the winding roads. They must have inherited their character from me.

I heard cows mooing nearby and the sound of cowbells.
I remember an occasion when I decided not to ascend further from the relay point of a mountain railway at Kleine Scheidegg in Switzerland because I was worried about possible bad effects on Michikoﾕs ears as she was only four months old. I held Michiko while I waited for the other people to come back, and we were surrounded by cows. Once there was a time like this. She has grown so big.

There are moments when our souls touch each other beyond generation and race differences. We talk about how small the existence of human beings is, surrounded by gigantic mountains, and think about how rich our feelings are flowing among us.

Resetting to zero. This summer has become something we shared common.