Back in my student days, my friends and I used to talk quite naively about "expanding one's world." It started with the realization that traveling abroad allows you to see Japan more objectively; just as climbing to a high place or traveling to a distant one gives you a broader perspective, possessing knowledge and experience allows you to understand things more deeply. In short, "expanding your world" meant stepping out of the common sense, habits, and daily routines that you take for granted, and developing the eyes to see things from multiple perspectives. (The antonym to this is playing it safe by making the same choices as everyone else without thinking too deeply.)
One of the participants this time, Saito-kun, says he started hiking because, while riding his bike on forest roads, he found himself wanting to go further ahead.
Get off the bike and walk.
For those who ride bikes, putting a foot on the ground might feel like a kind of defeat, but if you shift your perspective a little, a new world opens up beyond that point. Likewise, for those who hike, approaching by bike might make you feel that a fascinating world, linked to your daily life, lies just beneath the paths where you usually start walking.
"If you shift your perspective..." is easier said than done. To shake up common sense, sometimes a bit of recklessness or a strong shock might be necessary, but that is precisely what it means to look at the world through multiple eyes. And this mountain trip, involving both bikes and hiking, became exactly that kind of intense experience.
Speaking of Yatsugatake, I think of Nobeyama CX. I never thought the day would come when I would gain the perspective of looking down at Takizawa Farm from the summit of the mountain that had always sat so majestically in the distance.