The photo below was made in the early morning at Gassan Shizu Hot Springs at  Nishikawa in the Yamagata Prefecture.   We had just spent the last week or so on a Basho walking tour in  the Tohoku region in  Honshu, Japan.  The tour had  started in Sendai and Gassan Shizu was  the last morning of the  fascinating l Basho walk 

 Mt. Gassan, one of the three  sacred mountains of Dewa Sanzan is in the background. The other two sacred mountains are Mt Yudono and Mt Haguro, which had visited  prior to our overnight  stay at Gassan Shizu.

Shortly after I'd made the  above photo the tour  was taken by the hotel  bus to Yamagata Station where we went our separate ways.   We  travelled by  Shinkansen to Tokyo then on to Osaka  to begin walking  the Kumano Kodo pilgrim trail, self-guided. 

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I don't recall the exact occasion when I made this b+w abstraction of the trunk of a humble and ordinary tree in remnant bushland.  I remember  the location though.  I was walking in the local Waitpinga bushland on a poodlewalk with Kayla and it was an intuitive rather than a planned photo. 

I also remember that it  was  made after  I'd started  reading  Matsuo Bashō, the great haiku  poet  (1644–1694), whose self-image  of a recluse/wayfarer  and eccentric was the basis for  the  poetic possibilities in his Oku no hosomichi (The narrow road to the deep north, 1689). I was  reading him in preperation for going on a Basho walking tour  in 2023.     

The time  of the photo would have been sometime during  2023 and so  probably  after  this  post, which was  when  I was  wondering  whether it was worthwhile  to re-start photographing  with 35mm b+w film. 

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