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Friday, March 23, 2012

Help restore beautiful Mt. Ogura in Arashiyama, Kyoto - Sunday, March 25, 2012


Via Deep Kyoto:
Poetry lovers and would-be conservationists! This Sunday (March 25th) People Together for Mount Ogura (PTO) needs your help to clean up Mount Ogura - the Poet's Mountain!

Read more here: English Page of 小倉山百人一集の会2012 (PEOPLE TOGETHER FOR MT. OGURA (PTO)):
PTO is a new citizens’ environmental and cultural action NPO, founded in Kyoto, March 2008.

Ogurayama is the beautiful dome-shaped mountain rising on the northern side of the Hozu Gorge as viewed from Arashiyama; a mountain quite unique in its literary associations – from the courtier poets and poetesses of Heian through Priest Saigyo (who had his first hermitage there), Fujiwara Teika (who compiled the karuta collection of 100 Poems by 100 Poets there) right down to Basho (who wrote his Saga Diary there), Kyorai and later haiku poets.

To Mount Ogura
another morning has come
of early winter showers;
when, only yesterday,
all four directions dimly glowed
with red and yellow leaves.


         - Fujiwara Teika

Today, Ogurayama is a ‘forgotten mountain’. On the one hand, it has become a storehouse of wildlife – kingfishers, little cuckoos, deer, wild rabbits, monkeys and so forth – for its varied forests comprise both broadleaf deciduous and broadleaf evergreen, with coniferous sections, too.

On the other, its environmental problems have become severe.

PTO and its volunteers are engaged in tackling the rampant pine disease, in replanting, in maintenance of the bamboo groves on Ogura’s lower slopes, and in collection of rubbish tipped illegally and its future prevention.

We work so that Mt. Ogura will once again become a true inspiration for people who seek enjoyment of natural beauty, and will find its rightful place again in the living local culture of Sagano.

Rendezvous: JR Saga-Arashiyama Station ticket barrier at 9:40. Depart: 9:45

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