"It Will Be My Parting Gift."

To some people, it might be a menial job. To others, it might be trivial, so trivial that they might not like it mentioned in others' tongues. He himself did not like to be interviewed, stepping back, refusing to face the television camera, and murmuring just like to himself, "That's nothing!"


It was not a menial job, nor trivial, nor a meaningless labor at all. To me, it was very touching. It looked to be a lofty humanitarian work, the beneficiaries of which will be deeply appreciative of the priceless gift they have inherited.


I have had no memory of the protagonist's surname. Let's call him Trail Builder. He said he was 78 years old. He looked to be about 180cm tall. He was building a mountain trail, rebuilding the trail, to be exact.


"I used to watch young hikers and climbers trip and fall and have injuries. It was an excruciating experience. I was determined to repair the trail then and there," he talked about the motive humanitarian as well as personal. A sick person himself, who had been pronounced by a university hospital doctor a terminal case of stomach cancer, has launched into the reparation of the mountain trail strewn with potholes and rough-hewn rocks, fighting the disease.

"It will be my last parting gift," he said. He hesitatingly took off his outer garment. Arms with bruises and blood stains showed. His wife at the house of the village a little distant from her husband's workplace said, "he rises in the dawning hours and spends a whole day in the mountain."


He fills cracks, holes and craters with earth and rocks, flattening them. He builds "bridges" at some places to make easier connections between two spots. His workline already spans 2.2kilometers. And to me, his lifeline has seemed to lengthen further and further.