Memoirizing Mototi: An Encounter with the Setting
Chisiya Hill in Mototi. This was my view as I grew up. Our home was on the foot of Chisiya, and when the sun rose in the eastern mountain ranges, its light first greeted these rocks. Going to school meant walking along a path that followed the base of the hill, which often would be overgrown with dew-dampened grass. We watched early-morning fist fights along this path as we walked to school; the hill was a convenient barrier from parents and guardians, but sometimes our cries of excitement would easily carry as echoes that could sell us out to the adults. It was nice seeing Chisiya again, but I didn't have the kind of excitment I had in my youth, or the kind I had imagined when I thought of Chisiya from a distance. Even as I took the photo, I was driven by a sense of duty, not so much by the magic I once associated with the hill. I was in too much of a hurry to even try the symbolic climb I had planned. I was in a hurry to go to Runder River, another place which I associated wi