Once a month a bunch of people from town get together and work on the mountain where the artworks are. The woods here are all cedars, all about 30 years old, and left to its own devices it is very dense. They have been systematically thinning the forest, and then they also take this time to cut brush and rake around the paths and the artworks. Incidentally, tomorrow is a national holiday to celebrate the fall equinox so this was a good weekend for a work party. I had some clearing to do for my installation so I used a weed-whacker on a scale I had never used before- it was really more of a circular saw on a long pole. Then I helped (not very effectively) to scrape the bark off some trees they had cut. At lunch, the whole party moved to the lunch spot in the woods, where a group of women cooked tempura and served it with rice balls and cold mugi-cha. It was very hot and humid, and mosquito filled, but all these guys in their full outfits plus the mosquito incense burners strapped to their belts seemed quite comfortable. There were also some high school students there wearing their special outdoor work uniforms.
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