I've been drying my boots on heated trains, reading my
guide books, and studying my Japanese maps as
well-dressed youngsters around me enter text messages
into their mobile phones. School children mob me...I'm
some kind of circus act. They practice their English
on me, asking me my age and which country I'm from
fingering the ice axe and the trekking pole attached to my
pack and laughing at my phrasebook-inspired Japanese
(spoken, no doubt, with what to them must be a most
peculiar accent). I've been travelling in the Japan Alps
for about a week now. Getting from place to place on
the trains or by hitching yes, in Japan hitchhiking
is still a relatively effective means of getting
around, especially out here in the country.
It's mid-December. Only the locals and the foolish are
about. What gaijin would travel the Alps in the
winter?! This is certainly a question I've pondered
several times since I started my little jaunt.
I awake after a relatively restful night. My tent is
pitched in a pine and fir forest on the slopes above
Yudanaka (most famous for the monkeys which spend
their days contemplatively bathing in the hot springs
which bubble from subterranean depths in a picturesque
valley near here). The forest is icy, but under the
shelter of the trees, and in this niche the air is not
intolerable. I seem to have pitched my tent beside a
fungus farm! Around me countless rows of forearm-sized logs have been laid out in neat rows in the
moss. Springing from the sides are an incredible
diversity of mushrooms, toadstools and other fungii I
don't recognize. Actually, in truth, even the fungus I
think I recognize is probably not at all what I know!
Breakfast consists of dried noodles and dehydrated
vegetables cooked in my billy on my trusty MSR, which
has proven invaluable in this cold (No, they didn't
pay me to say that!) I scrape the ice from my tent and
pack all my gear away with frozen fingers. It seems
odd that only six months ago I was hiking through
Arizona in mid-summer. I couldn't imagine a greater
contrast!
As I descend from my hide-away the sun reveals itself
more fully and exposes a magnificent vista mountains
stretching their white peaks upward. Enormous spirits,
their pallid faces lifted to the heat-giving globe
suspended above them in a hazy blue canopy.
I re-enter the forest and head along the muddy track
towards the famed "monki park" (sic). I can tell I'm
approaching it as the piles of rubbish are
accumulating. The Japanese seem to have beauty
down pat at the microscopic level. Every tree is
gorgeous, every stone is carefully placed. But if you
look a level above that, the beautiful arrangements,
both natural and artificial, are destroyed by piles of
human debris; old building materials, tin cans,
plastic wrappers, concrete blocks, water piping...a
sad state of affairs!
Out of the woods a monkey dashes at me darn it! I'm
holding a plastic bag with my maps and a guidebook in
it...not something I care to lose. The monkey thinks
otherwise though. He is a medium-sized male...scary! He
grabs my bag. As I try to wrestle it from him,
shouting, "No!" at the top of my voice, he sinks his
teeth into my book...distasteful it must have been
as he immediately releases his grip and sits back,
looking at me as if he's sorry. That doesn't convince
him to leave me alone though. He follows me carefully
as I head for the safety of the admission window...yes, even natural wonders are ticketed in this land!
The monkeys are sitting about in the hot pools just as
I anticipated. Such is the wonder of technology that I
knew what to expect, having seen this scene in
"Baraka" several times. Nevertheless, there is still
something quite disarming about the faces of these
creatures. I'd swear they knew more about life than
any human who has ever lived. They examine their
fingernails, check each other for parasites, squabble
occasionally and paddle tranquilly as the steam and
snow drifts about the air above the onsen.
Donning my pack once more, I trudge back the way I had
come (keeping firm hold of my plastic bag) and then
along the road further into the hills. I stick my
thumb out and a young man pulls up in response. He
goes out of his way to drop me at the trail head I was
aiming for... saving me many hours of painful bitumen
travel. The clear weather has been hidden at this
altitude. Beneath me at the trail head are countless
ski slopes, above me are yet more mountains and
ominous clouds.
This trail I have selected because I reckon you could
push a wheelchair up it in the summer and I don't
want to do a solo hike mid-winter along a track which
might see me stuck alone for days waiting for a break
in the weather to allow my return. The trail is
officially closed, but I pull out my gators and
trekking pole and head past the closure sign (which I
pretend to myself not to be able to read) and into the
snow.
The woods about me are heavy with white paste. The
snow lies thickly on the firs and bamboo grass. I am
wading through it up to my knees. The going is slow,
but as I leave the road and climb into the hills I
feel quite rested. It is as if the weight of
civilization were being left at the trail head. Here
in Japan, civilization can indeed be an oppressive
burden to bear.
I suck on a cough drop or three (I bought this brand
so I could fill the tin with snow seal). The clouds
continue to build, they most certainly hold snow, but
for some reason that doesn't seem important. The lake
along the trail is my intended night's resting place.
It is a mere 4km away but I know that in this snow
and with the climbing that might take me hours.
About me the afternoon sun is waning. The trees form a
white and dark green patchwork about me...a magical
wonderland I have never experienced in my home
country, nor anywhere else for that matter. The snow
of the track is smooth and clean, it's like wading
through a field of ice cream. In places where the
steep mountain slopes give way to small re-entrants,
tracks of Japanese deer, monkeys and bear (I
thought they'd all be asleep by now!) dot across the
path and vanish into the milky trees.
This is not serious avalanche territory. It is well
forested for the most part. Snowballs have tumbled
onto the track from the forest. They roll themselves
up like Danish pastries into little snail shells and
make dainty lines across my way.
The afternoon light turns to dusk as I plod on into
the night. For the last few days I've been hiking in
the moonlight. Tonight is special. The full moon
lights my way through the white sheet of cloud. It's as
if frosted glass had been placed between me and a
night light. The forest is clearly visible but in a
diffuse glow. There are no shadows, everything is soft
and flat. Perhaps I am looking through a lens coated
with vaseline. This is such a weird feeling I can't
help but laugh out loud. The silent forest swallows my
intrusion like the deserts of Arizona did six months
earlier. The link between the two extremes of climate
strikes a chord immediately. "Life is full of
coincidences," my mother loves to say.
Mountain sides across the valley are softly textured
with the branches of deciduous trees. They make
delicate brush strokes against the near-vertical
mountain sides which I will have to try to capture on
film should I come back this way.
The sun has well and truly retired. I drop my pack by
an ancient marker stone which towers some nine or so feet
above me and have a look around. The lake is gorgeous
in the diffuse moonlight. It is a white sheet filling
the spaces between mountains, as if somebody had laid
a mat out for a giant cat to curl up on.
I pitch my tent in a cleared area. It is exposed to
the sky but away from the snow-laden trees whose
branches crack under the weight with which they have
been loaded. Dinner (which is remarkably similar to
breakfast) is welcomed.
I take one last glance out of my tent door before I
retire for the night...lazy snow flakes are
meandering their way towards the earth. I am in for an
eventful night!
Alan Dorin, Living the Life with MountainZone.com