Spring has sprung on Shiraishi Island. The cherry blossoms have bloomed and gone, their fallen pink petals pushed back into the good earth by passersby. We have attended the Kobo Daishi Spring Festival at the temple to be purified. The fishermen have changed from going out in their boats in the warmth of the daytime to going out in the cool of the nighttime. Neighborhoods have banded together and cleared the Shiraishi Pilgrimage path for another season of holy hiking.

Azaleas bloom everywhere. Freshborn stray kittens look out on a new world from between the bushes, while still fat mama cats escape to give birth in abandoned fishing boats still in dry dock. Minshuku owners are shuffling back home from vacations with relatives on the mainland. As the proprietors get ready for the coming tourist season, futons are hung out on balconies and the humming of vacuum cleaners streams out of the open windows. On the port, some boats are started up for the first time. Their motors strain, they clunk, and then start — reluctantly — spewing black exhaust as if they had been collecting it all winter-long.

Despite the warm spring weather, those of us living in houses at the bottom of the mountain still huddle around the heater in the early mornings, waiting for the sun to rise high enough to bless our houses with its warmth. Only then do we set out for the day: to our gardens, to our boats, to a day of outside work.