Shirayamahime Jinja

Shirayamahime Jinja.

In the western mountains of Japan rises Mount Hakusan — the White Mountain — one of the country's three sacred peaks, alongside Mount Fuji and Mount Tateyama. Its summit holds snow even in summer. From a great distance, the mountain appears as a long white line on the horizon.

This shrine, hidden in cedar forest at the foot of the mountain, has been the gathering place for Hakusan worship for over thirteen hundred years.

Pilgrims used to walk for days through the mountains to reach the summit, considering the climb itself a kind of purification. They drank from glacial streams. They slept on stone. They emerged days later, changed in ways they could not explain.

The forest around the shrine still holds that older quality. Cedars rise straight up, hundreds of years old. The path winds gently. There is no hurry built into the architecture here. The shrine asks you to slow down by simply being slow itself.

A small stream runs through the grounds, the water still cold from the snow above. You can scoop it with your hand. You can taste the mountain.

Mount Hakusan, far away, holds the snow. The snow becomes water. The water comes down through the rock for decades, sometimes centuries, before reaching the spring at your hand.

What you are tasting is winter from a long, long time ago.