Noticing lxiv - counting

Today I spent the day with five other Ventana Wilderness Rangers at a place on Big Sur's Pine Ridge Trail called Bad Gulch. A huge oak tree had fallen in the trail, making it virtually impossible to navigate without a steep and dirty detour. Our mission was to "swamp" it—which basically means sawing and lopping off all the smaller branches, to reveal the skeleton of the "large bones": the trunks and the main branches. At which point crosscut sawing and removal could commence.

We did a pretty good job, though it's not complete; another day will be needed. But the trail is passable now, and . . . it looks pretty darn good! Unfortunately, it's impossible to convey in pictures just how gnarly this tree was (did I mention it was huge?), all cattywampus along a fifty-foot stretch of trail. But here are a few anyway, because I took 'em.

As we started working: there were a lot of dead smaller
branches to swamp out

Nearing the end of the day: no brush left,
just big stuff

Same tree, viewed from downhill side

There was some discussion at lunch about just how to count this tree, for bookkeeping purposes back at the office. It was just one tree, but it took us all day! It involved dozens of saw cuts, many with handsaws, some with a couple of more industrial-strength saws (including a Japanese "Katana Boy," Steve's Christmas present early), and the coups de grâce were accomplished with a five-plus-foot crosscut saw.

Do we count it as one tree? as seven to nine big branches that blocked the trail? by number of saw cuts? (which nobody was counting, so that was out from the git-go). I suggested counting "obstacles": anything that you'd have to step over, climb under, or that otherwise impeded your path.

It's not an exact science. Well, it's not a science at all. And in the end, today's leader will guesstimate something, and that'll be the count.

All this got me to thinking on the three-mile walk back to the car about counting—in particular, about Japanese counting. They have so many numbers! For starters, they have two basic cardinal number systems: one starts out hitotsu, futatsu, mittsu, yottsu, itsutsu, and goes only as far as ten (tō), the other starts ichi, ni, san, shi/yon, go, and goes forever. Not even remotely similar!

To make things more complicated, the ichi, ni, san system partners up with "counter" suffixes, which describe certain objects or shapes or sizes of things. For example, you can say "four apples" either as ringo yottsu or as ringo yonko, where yon means 4 and ko designates "an unspecified or generic object." (This according to Wikipedia, which I'm not convinced is authoritative. The wording below, yottsu no ringo, sounds more correct to me. But what do I know? I learned Japanese 55 years ago! I have forgotten a bit!)

Many, many things, however, are "specified objects"—even if only generally by shape. For example, flat objects (mai), like sheets of paper, photographs, or plates: so jugomai no shashin means 15 photographs; or long, slender objects (hon), which can refer to anything from bottles and pencils to railroad tracks and rivers to ties and guitars: so 15 pencils are jugohon no enpitsu. And very importantly, human beings get their own counter: nin—though of course, there's a catch, in that one person is referred to as hitori, two persons as futari, and only then do we get into the counting pattern: sannin, yonnin, gonin, etc. So 15 men, by this logic, would be jugonin no otoko, but Google translate tells me it's jugori no otoko. Is it -nin or -ri—or both? Oy!

Oni

And that's not all: there's an enormous list on Wikipedia of all the counters, including some items that get their own words (i.e., not based on shape or size), such as books (satsu), stories of a building (kai), swords (furi), courses of a meal (hin), votes (hyō), pieces of nigiri sushi (kan—though kan also denotes warships, only the kanji is different), shots of a drink (ko). You get the picture. Here's a counter I like: hatsu, which counts gunshots, bullets, aerial fireworks, orgasms, and sex acts. And in case you're wondering, ogres (oni) are counted in the same category as small animals, insects, amphibians, reptiles, and fish: hiki/piki. 

I'm actually surprised that apples are just generic things: why isn't there a counter for pieces of fruit? or round things? 

Of course, all this doesn't really mean anything, especially as related to the counting trees conundrum. But it was fun for me to think about. I hope it was fun for you too.

And by the way: the end count for our trees today? Seven. And there it rests.