by Mary Morris
Soon three or four rows of straw lie behind us. Takara-san motions me to follow her to the head of the field.
“Well, that’s not bad. But two people cutting are enough. Follow behind us now and tie the bundles,” she says.
I nod and follow. Already my arms ache from the constant swinging. Taking up a thick armful of scratchy straw, she binds it with three or four strands from the sides. She works quickly, placing a bundle between her knees and twisting the straw deftly despite her thick cotton work gloves.
As a child I loved to braid onion tops, bending and plaiting the rough stems until the whole pile of freshly pulled bulbs hung like a clump of ghostly grapes. This should be easy. I hold up my first effort to have a look: strands of straw stick out from the sides, the whole bundle threatens to collapse. Hung on a pole to dry, this clump would soon be blown across the village. I untie the loose ends, now limp and tangled as wet hair, and start again.
“Pretty bad, huh.”
“Watch again,” she says, and shows me how to tie the bundle tight, without knocking off grain or breaking the straw.
Imitating her quick movements, I hold the rough rice straw tightly between my own knees and reach around the outside for the straw binders. Tied together, they form a compact sheaf.
“I guess that will do. You’re not bad—better than my daughter,” jokes Takara-san, pushing back her bonnet. “She’s hopeless—won’t even come out here!”
“Why not?”
“Her job is studying!” answers Takara-san proudly. Like most children and young people in Miyama, Takara-san’s teenage daughter doesn’t help in the rice fields or even much at home. Overweight and suffering from acne, she looks as if a day in the sun would go her good. Like Western teenagers, she has a penchant for junk food, especially Coca-Cola and chocolate. The only time I have seen her outside is when she heads off in her blue knee-length uniform to the local high school in Ijuin. For the past month Takara-san has been working an extra night job in order to buy her a red motor scooter so that she won’t have to ride the bus to school.
Around where we work many of the tambo lie fallow; the owners are too busy at jobs in Kagoshima City or nearby towns, or like American wheat farmers, they receive government subsidies not to plant. After one or two weeks of good weather, when the husks and straw are thoroughly dried, Nagata-san will send the rice to a thresher in the next town. Last week I’d seen Suzuki-san sit down in his formal garden before a manual wooden thresher. All morning clouds of dust and a loud clatter came over the hedge. By noon, when Nagayoshi-san and I went to have a look, straw was piled up in the yard next to a heap of ivory rice. Suzuki-san’s khaki clothes were white with rice chaff and dust.
Rice straw has been used in Miyama for generations to thatch roofs, insulate walls, fill futons, make tatami and rope, and provide ash for pottery glaze. Inside the roaring kiln the ash melts, fusing with the clay and leaving a shiny silicate surface on the pottery. The first Korean potters in Miyama in the early seventeenth century knew to mix small amounts of wood ash with water and crushed iron-rich rock containing traces of feldspar to make the black glaze for kuromon. Later, potters began mixing wood ash, water and finely ground white clay from Kaseda to make a clear glaze for shiromon. Still later, the potters began to use rice straw ash, which opacifies the glaze and creates a distinct bluish-white finish.
Every fall Nagayoshi-san waits like a farmer for the rice to mature. When the rice is shorn, he returns to his mother’s fields and burns great bonfires of straw. The fire rises up orange against the sky, reaching for oxygen to consume the piles of dry stalks. When all that is left is a cool black mound, he gathers it up in bags for the year’s supply of glaze.
ISABELLA BIRD
(1831-1904)
For a travel writer the road forever beckons. But journeys end. We break chronology here in order to close with a departure. When Isabella Bird said goodbye to the Rockies in A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains, she did so on such a bitterly cold day that moisture in the air turned into “feathers and fern-leaves, the loveliest of creations.” As Bird takes one last look at her guide, Mountain Jim, and the peaks beyond, we feel her profound sense of loss. Yet it’s the pull of the road ahead, and the promise of other endings like this, that feels stronger still.
From A LADY’S LIFE IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS
Cheyenne, Wyoming, December 12
The last evening came. I did not wish to realise it, as I looked at the snow-peaks glistening in the moonlight. No woman will be seen in the Park till next May. Young Lyman talked in a “hifalutin” style, but with some truth in it, of the influence of a woman’s presence, how “low, mean, vulgar talk” had died out on my return, how they had “all pulled themselves up,” and how Mr. Kavan and Mr. Buchan had said they would like always to be as quiet and gentlemanly as when a lady was with them. “By May,” he said, “we shall be little better than brutes, in our manners at least.” I have seen a great deal of the roughest class of men both on sea and land during the last two years, and the more important I think the “mission” of every quiet, refined, self-respecting woman—the more mistaken I think those who would forfeit it by noisy self-assertion, masculinity, or fastness. In all this wild West the influence of woman is second only in its benefits to the influence of religion, and where the last unhappily does not exist the first continually exerts its restraining power. The last morning came. I cleaned up my room and sat at the window watching the red and gold of one of the most glorious of winter sunrises, and the slow lighting-up of one peak after another. I have written that this scenery is not lovable, but I love it.
I left on Birdie at 11 o’clock, Evans riding with me as far as Mr. Nugent’s. He was telling me so many things, that at the top of the hill I forgot to turn round and take a last look at my colossal, resplendent, lonely, sunlit den, but it was needless, for I carry it away with me. I should not have been able to leave if Mr. Nugent had not offered his services. His chivalry to women is so well known, that Evans said I could be safer and better cared for with no one. He added, “His heart is good and kind, as kind a heart as ever beat. He’s a great enemy of his own, but he’s been living pretty quietly for the last four years.” At the door of his den I took leave of Birdie, who had been my faithful companion for more than 700 miles of travelling, and of Evans, who had been uniformly kind to me and just in all his dealings, even to paying to me at that moment the very last dollar he owes me. May God bless him and his! He was obliged to return before I could get off, and as he commended me to Mr. Nugent’s care, the two men shook hands kindly.*
Rich spoils of beavers’ skins were lying on the cabin floor, and the trapper took the finest, a mouse-coloured kitten beaver’s skin, and presented it to me. I hired his beautiful Arab mare, whose springy step and long easy stride was a relief after Birdie’s short sturdy gait. We had a very pleasant ride, and I seldom had to walk. We took neither of the trails, but cut right through the forest to a place where, through an opening in the foothills, the plains stretched to the horizon covered with snow, the surface of which, having melted and frozen, reflected as water would the pure blue of the sky, presenting a complete optical illusion. It required my knowledge of fact to assure me that I was not looking at the ocean. “Jim” shortened the way by repeating a great deal of poetry, and by earnest, reasonable conversation, so that I was quite surprised when it grew dark. He told me that he never lay down to sleep without prayer—prayer chiefly that God would give him a happy death. He had previously promised that he would not hurry or scold, but “fyking” had not been included in the arrangement, and when in the early darkness we reached the steep hill, at whose foot the rapid deep St. Vrain flows, he “fyked” unreasonably about me, the mare, and the crossing generally, and seemed to think I could not get through, for the ice had been cut with an axe, and we could not see whether “glaze” had formed since or no. I was to have slept at the house of a woman farther down the canyon, who never ceases talking, but Miller, the young man whose
attractive house and admirable habits I have mentioned before, came out and said his house was “now fixed for ladies,” so we stayed there, and I was “made as comfortable” as could be. His house is a model. He cleans everything as soon as it is used, so nothing is ever dirty, and his stove and cooking gear in their bright parts look like polished silver. It was amusing to hear the two men talk like two women about various ways of making bread and biscuits, one even writing out a recipe for the other. It was almost grievous that a solitary man should have the power of making a house so comfortable! They heated a stone for my feet, warmed a blanket for me to sleep in, and put logs enough on the fire to burn all night, for the mercury was eleven below zero. The stars were intensely bright, and a well-defined auroral arch, throwing off fantastic coruscations, lighted the whole northern sky. Yet I was only in the foothills, and Long’s glorious Peak was not to be seen. Miller had all his things “washed up” and his “pots and pans” cleaned in ten minutes after supper, and then had the whole evening in which to smoke and enjoy himself—a poor woman would probably have been “fussing round” till 10 o’clock about the same work. Besides Ring there was another gigantic dog craving for notice, and two large cats, which, the whole evening, were on their master’s knee. Cold as the night was, the house was chinked, and the rooms felt quite warm. I even missed the free currents of air which I had been used to! This was my last evening in what may be called a mountainous region.
The next morning, as soon as the sun was well risen, we left for our journey of 30 miles, which had to be done nearly at a foot’s pace, owing to one horse being encumbered with my luggage. I did not wish to realise that it was my last ride, and my last association with any of the men of the mountains whom I had learned to trust, and in some respects to admire. No more hunters’ tales told while the pine knots crack and blaze; no more thrilling narratives of adventures with Indians and bears; and never again shall I hear that strange talk of Nature and her doings which is the speech of those who live with her and her alone. Already the dismalness of a level land comes over me. The canyon of the St. Vrain was in all its glory of colour, but we had a remarkably ugly crossing of that brilliant river, which was frozen all over, except an unpleasant gap of about two feet in the middle. Mr. Nugent had to drive the frightened horses through, while I, having crossed on some logs lower down, had to catch them on the other side as they plunged to shore trembling with fear. Then we emerged on the vast expanse of the glittering plains, and a sudden sweep of wind made the cold so intolerable that I had to go into a house to get warm. This was the last house we saw till we reached our destination that night. I never saw the mountain range look so beautiful—uplifted in every shade of transparent blue, till the sublimity of Long’s Peak, and the lofty crest of Storm Peak, bore only unsullied snow against the sky. Peaks gleamed in living light; canyons lay in depths of purple shade; 100 miles away Pike’s Peak rose a lump of blue, and over all, through that glorious afternoon, a veil of blue spiritualised without dimming the outlines of that most glorious range, making it look like the dreamed-of mountains of “the land which is very far off,” till at sunset it stood out sharp in glories of violet and opal, and the whole horizon up to a great height was suffused with the deep rose and pure orange of the afterglow. It seemed all dream-like as we passed through the sunlit solitude, on the right and the prairie waves lessening towards the far horizon, while on the left they broke in great snowy surges against the Rocky Mountains. All that day we neither saw man, beast, nor bird. “Jim” was silent mostly. Like all true children of the mountains, he pined even when temporarily absent from them.
At sunset we reached a cluster of houses called Namaqua, where, to my dismay, I heard that there was to be a dance at the one little inn to which we were going at St. Louis. I pictured to myself no privacy, no peace, no sleep, drinking, low sounds, and worse than all, “Jim” getting into a quarrel and using his pistols. He was uncomfortable about it for another reason. He said he had dreamt the night before that there was to be a dance, and that he had to shoot a man for making “an unpleasant remark!” For the last three miles which we accomplished after sunset the cold was most severe, but nothing could exceed the beauty of the afterglow, and the strange look of the rolling plains of snow beneath it. When we got to the queer little place where they “keep strangers” at St. Louis, they were very civil, and said that after supper we could have the kitchen to ourselves. I found a large, prononcée, competent, bustling widow, hugely stout, able to manage all men and everything else, and a very florid sister like herself, top-heavy with hair. There were besides two naughty children in the kitchen, who cried incessantly, and kept opening and shutting the door. There was no place to sit down but a wooden chair by the side of the kitchen stove, at which supper was being cooked for ten men. The bustle and clatter were indescribable, and the landlady asked innumerable questions, and seemed to fill the whole room. The only expedient for me for the night was to sleep on a shakedown in a very small room occupied by the two women and the children, and even this was not available till midnight, when the dance terminated; and there was no place in which to wash except a bowl in the kitchen. I sat by the stove till supper, wearying of the noise and bustle after the quiet of Estes Park. The landlady asked, with great eagerness, who the gentleman was who was with me, and said that the men outside were saying that they were sure that it was “Rocky Mountain Jim,” but she was sure it was not. When I told her that the men were right, she exclaimed, “Do tell! I want to know! that quiet, kind gentleman!” and she said she used to frighten her children when they were naughty by telling them that “he would get them, for he came down from the mountains every week, and took back a child with him to eat!” She was as proud of having him in her house as if he had been the President, and I gained a reflected importance! All the men in the settlement assembled in the front room, hoping he would go and smoke there, and when he remained in the kitchen they came round the window and into the doorway to look at him. The children got on his knee, and, to my great relief, he kept them good and quiet, and let them play with his curls, to the great delight of the two women, who never took their eyes off him. At last the bad-smelling supper was served, and ten silent men came in and gobbled it up, staring steadily at “Jim” as they gobbled. Afterwards, there seemed no hope of quiet, so we went to the post-office, and while waiting for stamps were shown into the prettiest and most ladylike-looking room I have seen in the West, created by a pretty and refined-looking woman. She made an opportunity for asking me if it were true that the gentleman with me was “Mountain Jim,” and added that so very gentlemanly a person could not be guilty of the misdeeds attributed to him. When we returned, the kitchen was much quieter. It was cleared by eight, as the landlady promised; we had it to ourselves till twelve, and could scarcely hear the music. It was a most respectable dance, a fortnightly gathering got up by the neighbouring settlers, most of them young married people, and there was no drinking at all. I wrote to you for some time, while Mr. Nugent copied for himself the poems “In the Glen” and the latter half of “The River without a Bridge,” which he recited with deep feeling. It was altogether very quiet and peaceful. He repeated to me several poems of great merit which he had composed, and told me much more about his life. I knew that no one else could or would speak to him as I could, and for the last time I urged upon him the necessity of a reformation in his life, beginning with the giving up of whisky, going so far as to tell him that I despised a man of his intellect for being a slave to such a vice. “Too late! too late!” he always answered, “for such a change.” Ay, too late. He shed tears quietly. “It might have been once,” he said. Ay, might have been. He has excellent sense for every one but himself, and, as I have seen him with a single exception, a gentleness, propriety, and considerateness of manner surprising in any man, but especially so in a man associating only with the rough men of the West. As I looked at him, I felt a pity such as I never before felt for a human being. My thought at the moment was, Will not our
Father in heaven, “who spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all,” be far more pitiful? For the time a desire for self-respect, better aspirations, and even hope itself, entered his dark life; and he said, suddenly, that he had made up his mind to give up whisky and his reputation as a desperado. But it is “too late.” A little before twelve the dance was over, and I got to the crowded little bedroom, which only allowed of one person standing in it at a time, to sleep soundly and dream of “ninety-and-nine just persons who need no repentance.” The landlady was quite taken up with her “distinguished guest.” “That kind, quiet gentleman, Mountain Jim! Well, I never! he must be a very good man!”
Yesterday morning the mercury was 20° below zero. I think I never saw such a brilliant atmosphere. That curious phenomena called frost-fall was occurring, in which, whatever moisture may exist in the air, somehow aggregates into feathers and fern-leaves, the loveliest of creations, only seen in rarefied air and intense cold. One breath and they vanish. The air was filled with diamond sparks quite intangible. They seemed just glitter and no more. It was still and cloudless, and the shapes of violet mountains were softened by a veil of the tenderest blue. When the Greeley stage-waggon came up, Mr. Fodder, whom I met at Lower Canyon, was on it. He had expressed a great wish to go to Estes Park, and to hunt with “Mountain Jim,” if it would be safe to do the latter. He was now dressed in the extreme of English dandyism, and when I introduced them,* he put out a small hand cased in a perfectly-fitting lemon-coloured kid glove. As the trapper stood there in his grotesque rags and odds and ends of apparel, his gentlemanliness of deportment brought into relief the innate vulgarity of a rich parvenu. Mr. Fodder rattled so amusingly as we drove away that I never realised that my Rocky Mountain life was at an end, not even when I saw “Mountain Jim,” with his golden hair yellow in the sunshine, slowly leading the beautiful mare over the snowy plains back to Estes Park, equipped with the saddle on which I had ridden 800 miles!
