The story came from a dream I had in December 2006 about a big Hokkaido snow monkey. I woke up wondering where the monkey came from and what he was doing in my dream. I’d never paid Hokkaido’s monkeys much attention before & had only seen them one time, and that was at the Minnesota Zoo back in the late 1970s. But there he was, and when I woke up, he wouldn’t leave me alone. Being typically monkey-like, he pestered me until I asked him what he wanted. I went online, found a photo that fit what I thought he looked like, sat down, and said “Okay, monkey, what do you have to tell me?” The story evolved from there. Genjiro, the old man appeared as I wrote, as did the village and the other characters. I my experience, stories pretty much tell themselves.

The theme — friendship between two different kinds of “people” — is something I have always believed in. I must have been thinking about it, because that’s right where the old monkey, Yukitaro, led me.

The result is one of my favorite stories.