The local bus I got on was crowded. While I barely found a seat to sit on, my partner was standing with heavy bags on his shoulders and hands. A woman behind him got up and said to him, “Would you like to sit here?” and he declined saying, “No thank you, I’m fine.” He told me later that he was shocked when he was treated as an elderly by being offered someone’s seat for the first time in his life. He may have looked older than his age since his hair was grey and wearing sunglasses and a mask.
I have taken this local bus before and it is usually near empty. But early November causes a sudden change every year. The section deep into my rural town is a popular tourist destination for skiing and autumn leaves. Many tourists from the metropolitan area visit to see the colorful landscape in autumn. The skiing slopes operate ski lifts for a midair trip by gondolas that run above trees and between valleys of colorful autumn leaves, which has been a major attraction of my town in recent years.
On the local bus, I heard a woman who was sitting next to me and traveling as a group exclaiming to her friends, “Look, look, how beautiful the colors are! Look at the gorgeous view! How wonderful!” The route of this bus was on a narrow winding road that threaded into mountains. It climbed steep slopes with numerous curves and through long tunnels. After each tunnel, the leaves along the road grew more colorful and the mountainous view got more and more breathtaking with trees that changed their clothes into red and yellow. Although this view was an autumn norm for me and what I had gotten used to seeing, it must have been worth taking hours to come to see as a weekend trip for people from the city.
The reason why both my partner and I were carrying so much baggage was because we were in the middle of moving. We had decided to move from an apartment in a remote town to a different one further deep in the mountain inside the same town. Since we’ve got too much stuff, we have spent several months packing and have sent our furniture and packed boxes in parts repeatedly by a small moving company because we don’t have a driver’s license. Before moving into this town for the first time, we used to live in the urban area. Once we settled in the rural small town surrounded by mountains, we found that living in nature suited our liking. Our fondness for nature had grown in the course of our country life, which led to our decision of moving much deeper into mountains. No human lives beyond our new apartment. Only nature and wild animals reside there.
Since I left an urban life, I have less and less compared myself to others and have hardly cared what people make a fuss about. A sense of happiness has increased as I have been able to concentrate on my work. I chose to move into more isolated mountains probably because I would like to be freed even more from a secular society.
By the time the local bus arrived at the bus stop close to our new apartment, all the tourists had gotten off near the ski lift and my partner and I were the only passengers. When I entered our apartment, heaps of cardboard boxes holding our stuff welcomed me. Out of the window was a range of colorful mountains filled with red, yellow and green trees. As words in a song say, we can get truly wonderful things without money, such as love and appreciating beautiful nature. It seems to make no sense to use up a lifetime by spending a large sum of money for worthless things and working like stink to afford them. Observing my parents’ life in which they unwillingly married without love for money and the family name and lost everything in the end, I have nurtured that kind of thought.
While we were eating dinner, the sun set, and a sky full of stars began to shine out of the new window.
