This is a story about my own mountain companion.
He was staying at a mountain lodge deep in the mountains, in Kanagawa Prefecture.
There were two other men in the lodge besides him. It was unusually small for summer.
In a mountain lodge where the only sounds were the wind and the rustle of trees, these three men stayed up late into the night, lighting lanterns and talking about alpine flora.
They talked about alpine flora and the mountains they had climbed.
It must have been around 1:00 a.m. when one of them said, “I heard voices outside.
They stopped talking and listened.
“Ugh, help me… help me…”
A voice is heard from outside.
They ran outside, wondering why at this time of night.
There was an elderly man clutching his chest and thrashing around.
He ran up to him anyway and asked, “Are you all right?”
He tried to send an SOS message on a cell phone radio belonging to one of the other two men, but for some reason he couldn’t connect.
He had no choice but to bring a simple first-aid kit.
The elderly man continued to suffer.
Then he stopped moving.
He touched his arm to check his pulse.
But as soon as he touched it, he immediately withdrew his hand.
He withdrew his hand as soon as he touched it, because it was neither warm nor cold.
It was as if he had touched something material.
Suddenly, the hand of the elderly man stretched out.
As if he was grasping the hand he had just withdrawn, the man released a look of pain and words.
“I was in pain. I was in pain, I was in pain, and I came all the way here.
But there was no one there.
I came to the front of the hut, but there was no one there. ・・・・”
Tears streamed from the old man’s eyes.
Without releasing his hand for a moment, the man looked around at the three stunned climbers.
Then he sank to the ground as if melting.
The three men stood there for a while in silence.
One of them said, “It’s late, let’s go to bed ・・・・.”
The three went into the hut and fell asleep without saying a word. ・・・・
That morning.
After leaving the hut, the three of them went to the front of the hut where they had woken up in the middle of the night.
They prayed for that first man to return from this place…and started their way home.
