知床の森

Photo : toha

Sep 2021

雨予報の日の朝5時。我々は雨が降る前に森へと入った。
早朝の森は意外なほど静まり返って鳥の声も聞こえてこない。
クマ避けのため、声を出しながら恐る恐る奥へ進んでいく。

Five o’clock in the morning. The weather forecast was for rain.
We went into the forest before it started to rain.
The forest was surprisingly quiet in the early morning and we could not hear any birds.
In order to avoid bears, we shouted and moved deeper into the forest with trepidation.

この森は一見手付かずの大自然のようだが、1980年代に人間によって大量に規則的に植えられたアカエゾマツの森だった。
その異様に整って植えられた木々の間から一頭の鹿が静かにこちらを見ていた。
カメラを構える僅かな音に、左右の耳だけがピクリと動く。

This forest looked like an untouched wilderness, but it was a forest of red spruce trees that had been massively and methodically planted by humans in the 1980s.
I saw a deer quietly looking at me from between these unusually well planted trees.
At the slight sound of her camera, only her ears on either side twitched.

森の中で動物に出会う。
人間が作った道路沿いに出てくる彼らを車の中からサファリパークの様に眺めるのとはわけが違う、彼らの生活の場に部外者として侵入している自分の無力さに恐怖を感じる一方で、対等になれた気がする心地良さがあった。

I encounter animals in the forest.
It was different from watching them on the road like in a safari park from inside a car. I was terrified of my helplessness as an outsider intruding into their lives, but at the same time, I felt a sense of comfort as if I were equal to them.