Tsurui, Hokkaido → Kushiro Shitsugen National Park → Kushiro, Hokkaido

There would be no more mountains, and no more fog. The clouds broke up as the day wore on, and we walked across the wintering grounds of the red-crowned cranes, empty now, the birds off to the far north. Wetlands reached to the ocean in an endless, quiet expanse, a botanist’s dream of sedges and wildflowers, deer ambling in the tall grass. It was the America of our childhoods, and the cool night enveloped us under the northern sky.