Skyward Canopy

I spent the day wandering the Hakone Open-Air Museum, following paths that curved between sculptures and lawns. Around me, people paused at each artwork, their attention held at eye level. I moved with them, admiring the craft and imagination that shaped the space.

Yet my gaze kept lifting away from the statues. Above the museum, clouds stretched and folded across a clear autumn sky. Threads of white drifted like brushstrokes, soft and deliberate. The trees, too, drew my attention upward, their leaves shifting from deep green to ember-like red.

At one point, the path opened and the crowd flowed quietly past. I stepped aside and looked straight up. The scene reduced itself to a handful of elements. A green tree rising from below. An autumn canopy reaching in from the opposite corner. Blue sky in between, swept with fine, feathered cloud.

The more I studied it, the more the composition settled. Simple forms, simple colours. Green, red, blue, white. Held in balance, with nothing extra. The busy movement at ground level faded as the view above found its own calm.

In a place devoted to human-made art, this moment reminded me how often nature remains the greater sculptor. The sky and trees needed no explanation, only space and attention. There was yutori here, a quiet spaciousness that allowed the eye to breathe.

Seen through Vertique, this upward view draws earth and sky into one frame. The composition follows the line from tree to cloud, like a hanging scroll unfolded in the open air. It finds harmony through reduction, and stillness within motion. A reminder that beauty can live in the simplest meeting of colour, form, and space.