Woke up, looked outside.  Snow.  Decided to take a walk in the snow.  Decided roughly that I wanted to make it to the top of the Art Walk, no set route.  Above is my route, the black circle is a beginning and an end.  The red circles mark photograph positions.  Walking clockwise, the photographs are in order.

It was a clear morning; 5.36am on New Years Eve.  The moon had a kind of 5 o’clock shadow.  I was wearing an insulated long-sleeved T-Shirt, a white shirt, two grey cardigans, a wool overcoat, a pair of black nylon gloves with fake-leather palm and Hi-Vis strip on the knuckles, a woollen hat, a houndstooth patterned scarf fashioned from excess material left over from a pair of home-made curtains, a Swedish gas mask bag, black underwear, baggy jeans, grey overalls, two pairs of socks and a pair of wellies.  I was dressed for a walk around in the snow, and that’s what I did.

Eri was working at the onsen from 5am so she’d left the house just before me.  I followed her miniature footprints in the snow.  The only other tracks in the snow were animals.

The Oawa Jinjya prepared for New Years Day celebrations.

The path to the top of the hill.

Fake snowy wood set designed for the film ‘Lead Woode’, directed by David Lynch.

The stone circle at the top of the hill.  I heard a spooky noise here and at the site of the old Shrine a sudden blast of wind shattered the snow lying on the tree above and swirled it around me.  It was atmospheric…

A great slab of virgin snow.