The eighth we climbed Mount Gassan. It entailed wrapping of scarves about our bodies, putting on headdresses of bound cotton strips, calling on all our strength to guide us as we climbed up the almost twenty miles. We walked in snow and ice in a cold mountain atmosphere among the clouds and mists, as if in the high heavens beside the paths of the sun and the moon. It was an agony to breathe, and our bodies seemed to mutter against us. But at last we reached the summit, finding that the sun had set and the moon was risen. Arranging for a place to sleep, we spread out bamboo grass, with fine bamboos for a pillow. It was on such beds that we waited out the night. When the sun rose and melted away the clouds, we descended to Yudono.

Here Gassan the swordsmith chose the waters of the area for their miraculous tempering power. Purifying himself in them, his mind and body made right, he would hammer out a sword. When he put "Gassan" to a masterwork, it was something the world would treasure. In China they used to temper swords in the waters of Lung-chuan Spring, and the waters chosen here by Gassan are of that order of excellence. He was a person who admired such figures as Kan Chiang and his wife Mo-yeh of the Wu dynasty, they who made the famous swords to which they gave their own names, and he well understood how little common was the dedication necessary to make outstanding things.

While sitting down on a stone to rest, I noticed a cherry tree only three feet high and about half blossomed out. Although it is buried by the snow that piles up so deeply here, this late blossomer does not forget the spring, and I found its spirit touching. It is as though the plum blossoms in dead summer that one reads of in Chinese verse were giving off their fragrance here, or as if the touching cherry tree that Bishop Gyoson wrote of had blossomed again, and such recollections make this tree seem yet more precious.

The customary discipline of pilgrims does not allow me to give a detailed description of the area around Mount Yudono, and more than that, we are not even to write of it. Returning from Gassan to our lodging at Minamidani, at the urging of Egaku we wrote out on poem cards\ some of the verses we had composed in our walking tour of the three mountains of Dewa.

How cool it is --
The crescent moon seen faintly
On Mount Haguro.

The peak of clouds
Forms and crumbles, forms and crumbles --
But Gassan in moonlight!

No one may relate
The mysteries of Mount Yudono
Yet tears wet my sleeves.

My tears fall on the path
As I tread the unregarded offerings
Of Mount Yudono temples.