The Sun in the Hollow

January 21, 2012 | Japan Earthquake 2011, Ruminations | 4 Comments 

I wrote this near the end of 2011, right in the midst of fac­ing my own pos­si­ble per­sonal tsunami, when my doc­tor in­formed me that I might have necro­sis, or rot­ting of the bones, a com­pli­ca­tion due to high blood sug­ars from badly con­trolled blood sug­ars as a Type 1 di­a­betic. For three weeks my land­scape shook and trem­bled, and every fiber within my­self pre­pared for in­un­da­tion and dev­as­ta­tion. The wave swept over me and then sub­sided, with the re­as­sur­ance that I’d be spared the hor­ror of necro­sis, but was in­stead left with os­teo arthri­tis. No plea­sure in the di­ag­no­sis, but cer­tainly bet­ter than am­pu­ta­tion or even, and a painful one at that, death. Fol­low­ing the meet­ing with the doc­tor and this news, the wind seems to have been knocked out of my sails, and like that sense of in­hala­tion fol­low­ing a punch, I’ve been sit­ting still a lot, look­ing around, mar­veling at the vis­ceral im­me­di­acy of the pos­si­ble, won­der­ing how, once again, I es­caped more or less un­scathed. So my thoughts on the Year 2011…

A year that I will never for­get draws to an end and per­haps more than any time be­fore in my life I ask my­self what ex­actly it is that I got out of it. In many ways the March dis­as­ter seems like some­thing a world and era away; the tremors have for the most part stopped and the most dire as­pects of the tsunami clean up have more or less been ad­dressed. Life seems to have re­turned to nor­mal, at least on the surface.

Some­times you’d think that noth­ing had hap­pened, that ei­ther the peo­ple here are so re­silient that they shake off the thoughts of fear and grief and move on with their lives with the full and dis­cern­ing un­der­stand­ing that this is what life is all about, or else they’ve buried all the mess and pre­tend that out­side of di­rect im­mer­sion in the ac­tual events it re­ally has noth­ing to do with their lives. Time and time again Japan­ese I’ve spo­ken to who were not there in To­hoku, or who have no fam­ily there, tell me sim­ply, “You are alive, you made it through, what you feel now and ex­pe­ri­enced have no last­ing con­se­quences.” In a way this seems elo­quently wise, a re­ac­tion that dis­penses with the un­nec­es­sary and fo­cuses only on the facts. But look around at all the posters and tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials cheer­ing the pop­u­lace on with slo­gans like, “Gam­bare Nip­pon!” (Do Your Best, Japan!) or “Makeruna, Nip­pon!” (Don’t Give Up, Japan!), it is sorely ob­vi­ous that there is much more go­ing on un­der the sur­face than the Japan­ese are will­ing to openly face.

Only two peo­ple I’ve spo­ken to owned up to hav­ing been ter­ri­fied, one who went through the whole earth­quake ex­pe­ri­ence es­sen­tially alone, and the other who had gone up to the tsunami and nu­clear dis­as­ter zones to see for real what had hap­pened there, and there­fore de­nies him­self the com­fort of de­nial. Nearly every­one else rel­e­gates the whole thing to the “in­con­ve­nient” heap, so that even speak­ing about it comes across as an as­sault on their pri­vate sen­si­tiv­i­ties, rather than as a com­mu­nal con­cern that every­one ought to be con­tribut­ing to. And quite a num­ber of peo­ple pop back the crit­i­cism, “That’s re­ally self­ish, to be ques­tion­ing what the gov­ern­ment does and to talk of leav­ing be­cause of the pos­si­bil­ity of ra­di­a­tion dan­ger.” “Life goes on” might be the credo of a sur­vivor, but as the fear-​​based out­rage by Os­aka res­i­dents over the Os­aka City government’s plans to ac­cept de­bris from To­hoku (the vast ma­jor­ity of which is com­pletely out­side the reaches of the ra­dioac­tive claws) re­veals, more re­volves around watch­ing out for one’s own neck than in work­ing to­gether and find­ing so­lu­tions as a sin­gle so­ci­ety. The lack of will­ing­ness to talk about any of this is not just an at­tempt to re­tain dig­nity, but a rather a gi­ant brushing-​​under-​​the-​​carpet.

Even in To­hoku it­self, where the de­struc­tion and hor­ror af­fected nearly everyone’s lives, you’d ex­pect that the un­ques­tioned so­ci­etal mores that usu­ally run the hi­er­ar­chies, would have been shaken up a bit and the needs of the many out­weighed the needs of the few. Ten months later, with uni­ver­sal agree­ment that the low-​​lying towns needed to be moved to higher ground, most of the un­homed pop­u­lace con­tin­ues to wait in tem­po­rary hous­ing be­cause landown­ers of the sur­round­ing moun­tains refuse to sell their land or work with town rep­re­sen­ta­tives in cre­at­ing places where the town might move. So al­most no progress has been made. Frus­trated, peo­ple, es­pe­cially the el­derly, are flout­ing the re­stric­tions over build­ing upon tsunami dev­as­tated land, (or in the case of Fukushima Pre­fec­ture, the scourge of ra­di­a­tion) and re­turn­ing to build new homes right over the old. Such is the spell of own­er­ship and pos­ses­sions; tens of thou­sands hav­ing lost every­thing doesn’t seem to count in con­vinc­ing those who still have every­thing to give back so that every­one might re-​​establish their lives.

Nev­er­the­less, most of the ru­inous de­bris and dam­age from the tsunami have long been cleaned up in To­hoku, so when you go there now, you see wide swaths of empti­ness, with punc­tu­a­tions of re­minders, like lone stand­ing houses or trees that some­how sur­vived the on­slaught, or in­con­gru­ous, silent mon­sters, like the big fish­ing boats that have not yet been re­moved, or gouges in the silent rail­roads like gi­ant bite marks. The hor­ror of the hu­man cost seems to have seeped into the earth, more out of sight. The To­hoku peo­ple them­selves have by-​​and-​​large weath­ered the storm with grace and courage. In­stead of com­plain­ing about the prob­lems, they sim­ply get on with things, clean­ing what needs clean­ing, build­ing what needs build­ing, im­prov­ing what needs im­prov­ing. They even put out a YouTube video to voice their grati­ti­tude to the world.

Per­son­ally the year scoured me. I’ve emerged much more tran­quil and self-​​confident about be­ing my­self than I’ve ever felt be­fore, but at the same time wary of every­thing, in­clud­ing peo­ple. The months fol­low­ing the big quake, when con­stant af­ter­shocks rocked the city night and day and got me so tense that even the slight­est quiver of my bed or blink of the light on a sub­way would set my heart rac­ing and get me tensed up to jump to safety. Noth­ing felt trust­wor­thy. Walls and ceil­ings could sud­denly fall, sub­way tun­nels could crush me, el­e­va­tors could get stuck high up be­tween floors, the In­ter­net could wink out and con­nec­tion to loved ones wiped clean, friends could turn away and break down, the sun could fail to rise. And worst of all, as hap­pened to me when Au­gust rolled around, our very bod­ies could fail to keep hold­ing onto the edge of the ledge and plum­met into un­cer­tainty and ill­ness. It didn’t mat­ter what I did, I fun­da­men­tally came to un­der­stand that at­tempt­ing to stay the jug­ger­naut would ul­ti­mately knock me aside. Who was I, but this in­fin­tes­i­mal spark, just barely flick­er­ing at the edge of the candle?

But my eyes were also opened to the grasp of oth­ers’ con­cern and gen­eros­ity, to the faith our com­mu­ni­ties and friend­ships draw out of us when the worst oc­curs, to that re­silience and fierce de­ter­mi­na­tion to live and con­tinue that we and all liv­ing be­ings in­her­ently carry within us. Dur­ing all the shak­ing, dur­ing the meet­ing with peo­ple who had lost every­thing and had reached the nedir of their lives, dur­ing the height of the pain of my dis­ease, peo­ple were there, to help, to lis­ten, to voice en­cour­age­ment, to sim­ply of­fer com­pan­ion­ship. The kind­nesses some­times touched such an un­de­ni­able sim­plic­ity and right­ness that on the spot I’d of­ten break down weep­ing, I think be­cause in our so­ci­eties it hap­pens so in­fre­quently and was there­fore such a sur­prise. By go­ing through such a com­pletely ap­pro­pri­ate test of na­ture it made me think that our lives in civic so­ci­ety are too in­su­lated, that only re­minders of our mor­tal­ity can keep up a healthy re­spect and aware­ness of one an­other and our place in the world. When life draws up to its full height and al­lows no es­cape, it si­mul­ta­ne­ously rips out the best in us. I re­al­ize now that we are ca­pa­ble of much more than we tell our­selves. I’ve also come to de­spise cyn­i­cism; it now seems like a cop out, a lazy way of con­demn­ing the harsh­ness of re­al­ity and liv­ing, while mak­ing no at­tempt to be­come stronger and more adaptable.

I’ve learned to say, “No.” to things that I feel are wrong or un­fair. I’ve learned to say no to any­thing that smacks of wast­ing what lit­tle pre­cious time we have to live, or to any­thing pre­ten­tious or seek­ing to sub­ject oth­ers to its will. Per­haps more than any­thing, 2011 was the year that re­minded me of the trea­sure that life is. That I want to live, as best I can. And that I want oth­ers to live, too, and I will do all I can to be part of help­ing to en­sure they can can make it. See­ing all those pos­ses­sions oblit­er­ated and swept away by that enor­mous force that cares noth­ing for hu­man van­ity or hope, and how lit­tle of those pos­ses­sions fig­ured in what sur­vivors yearned for, the fu­til­ity of find­ing com­ple­tion in what you own made itelf starkly clear. This might not be ob­vi­ous when the nights are still and stop­ping by Seven-​​Eleven for a case of beer and packet of fried chicken is as easy as open­ing your wal­let, but when it is no longer there and you are hun­gry and around you there is no one to plea to for help, the con­nec­tions with oth­ers be­comes more acute and all of the ex­tras, like TV’s, com­puter games, five pairs of shoes, make up, that sub­scrip­tion to Na­tional Ge­o­graphic, the Star­bucks Café Latte, 794 friends on Face­book, first class flight to Mex­ico, or even the use­less re­quired lan­guage course at uni­ver­sity, more and more come across as un­nec­es­sary and dis­tract­ing, while at the same time their very lux­ury can help soothe the fear and frame the crazi­ness with the familiar.

What are the an­swers, or the “guide­lines”, then? Per­haps that there are none. Life goes on and you make do while valu­ing life it­self. That life is the rea­son for liv­ing. That life other than your own is just as pre­cious, just as per­ti­nent, just as fiercely scratched for. And per­haps that you won’t find a car­ing de­ity hid­ing in the midst of the de­struc­tion, but rather, per­haps, the de­struc­tion is the de­ity unto it­self, raw and un­fil­tered, in­hu­man, such that you must reach for your hu­man­ity and fill in your own cap­tions. Em­pa­thy, com­pas­sion, and ac­tion are the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of a hu­man be­ing, not some­thing that con­cerns the gods.

The Lost Peak of ’76

October 10, 2011 | Hiking, Japan, Laughing Knees, Mountains | 20 Comments 

Jump back to 1976, Japan, the sum­mer when I was 16, and pic­ture the gan­gly teenager with shoulder-​​length hair, who loved wear­ing bell bot­toms jeans, lace up lum­ber­jack boots, and a broad-​​brimmed black felt hat adorned with a Navajo bead band and bright blue, jay feather. And pic­ture this youth am­bling along shoul­der­ing a huge yel­low Mt. Whit­ney ex­ter­nal frame back­pack, com­plete with gi­ant syn­thetic fill sleep­ing bag strapped to the bot­tom and a gui­tar slung across one shoul­der. Be­side him trudged his best friend, dressed more con­ser­v­a­tively in straight leg jeans and sneak­ers, but none the less bur­dened by a big ex­ter­nal frame pack, too… or­ange, hip-​​belt too low, sleep­ing bag strapped on hap­haz­ardly with cot­ton cord. Two typ­i­cal back­pack­ers of the 1970’s.

Here we were just out­side Kiso-​​Fukushima sta­tion, walk­ing the road un­der a swel­ter­ing sum­mer sun, seek­ing the way up to the peak of Kiso-​​Komagatake, the high­est peak in the Cen­tral Alps. We’d both camped quite a lot, but had never been so high in the moun­tains, and knew noth­ing about what to ex­pect or whether or not we were even pre­pared for such a ven­ture. All we knew was that the pic­tures in the Japan­ese guide­books looked ad­ven­ture­some with their green crags and im­pres­sive, sweep­ing abysses and patches of sum­mer snow.

The problem was that neither of us could read Japanese well and therefore we had little information to go on. For one, we had landed at the wrong train station and though we could see the peaks from where we had started, they were still too far way from where we needed to be. We spent the better part of the afternoon seeking a path up the mountains, wandering through little farming villages, eliciting shocked exclamations from the locals, many of whom had never seen foreigner before, especially not one wearing a big black hat and toting a guitar. Odd indeed.

Eventually we found our way back to the train station and realized our error and took the next train to Komagome, which was the proper starting point for climbing Kiso-Komagatake. Unfortunately it was getting late by then, so we looked up the local youth hostel and booked a night there. A number of mountain climbing groups were also holed up there for the night, and at dinner we sat with all of them, chatting. Two high school mountain climbing clubs, one university climbing club, and even a troop of acolyte Buddhist monks, with shaved heads and loose blue robes and who would be climbing the mountain as a kind of spiritual training, all sat together at a long table, eating dinner. It was obvious that we were the odd men out; our clothes certainly gave us away.

Photos of the mountains we hoped to climb hung all along the walls and the scenes of the crags and windswept slopes soon had us doubting our own plans, making us think we had taken on more than we could handle. The way the club people spoke, with all the talk of wind and rain and cold nights, struck fear in our unprepared hearts.

Discussing our options, we decided that attempting the summit of Kiso-Komagatake was perhaps foolhardy, so we decided to camp along river down here in the valley and try the peaks another time, when we were ready.

Now jump ahead 35 years. High school graduation, moving to the States, university, grad school, work, many mountains and long bicycle journeys later, I was back. I’d recently recovered from a month long bout of sickness and wasn’t sure I was strong enough to even climb a flight of stairs, let alone a mountain slope, so after taking the gondola up to 2,600 meters, I stood there in front of the gondola station gazing up at the peaks that I had dreamed of at 16, and felt a mix of trepidation and joy. There they were, the green, wild rocks that the guidebooks had tempted me with, the same light grey stone, the same lush vegetation, the same deep blue sky. But alive and real this time. As if no time had passed at all since I was still a boy. I watched clouds rise, sail, and fan across the sky, moving as fast as the swifts that darted across them. The gondola had carried boatloads of tourists up, but a hush had befallen all of them, so that even the noisy ones tended to speak in awed tones. One university girl in high heels, obviously seeing such magnificence for the first time, couldn’t stop exclaiming how beautiful and overwhelming it was. She snatched the camera from one of the boys and exclaimed, “I can’t believe it! I can’t believe it! It’s not real, is it?” She attempted a few shots, but soon gave up. “I can’t take a picture of it,” she said. She tossed the camera back to the boy and stood gazing up with her hands on her hips, a stern grimace on her face, as if the mountains had somehow outsmarted her and she had quite figured out if she should forgive them or not.

I started climbing and immediately it was obvious that both the altitude and the exertion were going to take their toll on me. I took it really slow, stopping every hundred meters to regain my breath and clear my woozy head. People passed me every time I stopped, and at first it bothered me that I was so weak, when in the past I would have strode up such a slope, breezing by everyone, but the simple feel of the wind and the familiar act of putting one foot in front of the other on the rough randomness of a trail soon took my mind off such silly concerns, and all that mattered was losing myself in the landscape. This was a trial run after all, to see what I was capable of after so long being housebound. After the shaking up of my confidence in the aftermath of the Tohoku quake, nothing was whole anymore, it seemed. I jumped at every shiver of the earth. Elevators made my heart race. Big, thick-kneed buildings inevitably brought out a moment of hesitation before entering. And as if there were strings attached, my body followed suit, seemingly welling up with hormonal and systemic aftershocks, with inexplicable rashes, internal aches, stomach fluxes, and wild blood sugar swings that had nothing to do with what I was eating. In the middle of the summer, just before I was supposed to head out for a month-length traverse of the Japan Alps, something imploded inside, sending my brain into a tailspin every time I tried to stand up, robbing my toes of sensation, retracting my breathing so that I felt as if I was suffocating as I slept, and punching out lumps and blood spots in my eyes… The doctors had no idea what it was, just vaguely guessing that perhaps it was “a virus”. “There’s nothing wrong with you,” they said. But I knew better. My body was typing out Braille messages, with the warnings, “You are NOT exempt from the consequences.”

The aftershocks lessened after a month of lying in bed. And I emerged feeling much the same as I did coming out of the big March quake: shaky, but oddly windblown, with an aimless, compass-less sense of selflessness.

I stopped often along the first climb, trying to regain my breath. But I made progress, slowly gaining each step of the rock masses, ascending higher and higher, until the gondola station had shrunk to a tiny blip in the circle of mountains. My nose touched the underbelly of the clouds as they ripped and shredded amidst the crags, passed in front of the sun, cast galloping shadows upon the slopes. Tiny, multicolored beads of people crawled infinitesimally along the scratches of trail, all aiming for the top.

Lungs burning, it almost seemed to be happening to someone else when I gained the ridge and came face-to-face with the sweeping panorama of the col. A troupe of macaques scribbled down through a grove of white birches, plaintive ululations echoing throughout the valley, at once playful like children, but something also immensely lonely, as if they were lost and couldn’t find their way home. The wind buffeted me, giving me a shake, letting me go, then racing away laughing. I laughed, too, giddy with joy. Here I was, I really was, above tree line, alive, looking down at the whole world, up where I feel connected to grace. Because it was still raw and new, the photographs I tried to take fell flat each time. I was trying to look in too many directions at the same time. So I stashed the camera away for later when the wind felt more like it was blowing through me, rather than against me.

It’s always funny how the place that you end up standing in seems to have no relationship to the imaginary collage you had pored over for days on the map. The peaks and valleys came out in relief right where you expected them to, but there is a presence they all exude that immediately tells you that they are alive, in spite of the seeming indifference and silence. They come across as being bigger or smaller, darker or brighter than at first imagined. And when you step out on them, to trust your feet to their care, you realize that rocks are harder, the branches sharper, the drops far steeper, and the wind so big that that sense of mastery that a map can trick you into quickly gets whisked into fantasy.

Thick clouds had crowned the ridges, and so it was hard to see beyond the first hundred meters ahead. Visible was a flat saddle between two shadowy peaks lost in the shrouds of mist. The lines of people who had climbed up to this point broke off in different directions, most of them heading for the mountain hut neaby where they could sit down to take a breather and get a nice hot lunch of curry rice or egg-chicken rice bowl. Those wearing proper climbing gear or carrying the extra loads of camping equipment, and a few less mindful, or knowledgeable, of their safety, set off for the peaks. A few tourists in high heels and loafers stood at the edge of the cliffs, taking photographs of one another and laughing loudly. In the thinner air and huge, racing clouds, their voices were swept away.

The thin air made it hard for me to breathe and without stopping to rest and consult my map, I followed the crowd and veered off toward the charismatic spearhead of a peak off to my left that was Hokendake, but that I thought at the time was the peak I was aiming for, Kiso-Komagatake. Immediately the trail left the flat saddle behind and shot up into the air, in no time turning into a hand over hand scramble up a steep, tortured stone path, complete with chains and ladders. I thought it vaguely strange that the map hadn’t said anything about this, until a small group descending slowly from above stopped to talk with me and told me I was on the wrong peak. Embarrassed, I sat down on a narrow ledge and consulted my map, and sure enough, there I was heading south instead of north, right along the ferrata path that crossed the dizzying razorback col between Hokendake and Senjiyojiki. I sighed with relief and turned about, making my way gingerly back to the saddle ridge and crossed north, in my intended direction. I met the group again further down the descent and we took photographs and exchanged email addresses.

The walk north was completely different, more of a level ridge stroll, with gradual rises and, as the clouds began to clear, views of the valleys and the distant ranges like the South Alps, Mt. Ontake, and the winding path toward the northern half of this range. My breath still came with big gulps of air and I had to stop frequently, but a spring came into my step and I almost bounced along, heady with the joy of walking on an alpine ridge again. My camera came whipping out at every new rock formation or flower or cloud, one wonder following another, though the sense of immersion still eluded me… the weakness of my body continued to stay in the foreground, punctuated by all the stops and dizzy need to get my heart to slow down. People kept passing me by and I nodded to them, trying my best to smile.

When I reached the top of Nakadake, a minor peak providing a sheltered place among boulders to take a break and view the way back down, I lowered my pack and surveyed the path ahead. I had intended to walk all the way to the top of Kiso-Komagatake and then backtrack to the campsite directly below, but knew that, in this condition, there was no way I’d be able to enjoy the walk, so I decided to just concentrate on making it down to the campsite and call it quits for the day. Arriving at the campsite in the early afternoon would allow me to grab a good camping spot among the rocks that littered the campsite, before all the other campers had returned from their climb to the top of Kiso-Komagatake.

Getting down to the campsite took a lot less time than I anticipated, and before I knew it I was picking my way among the campsite rocks, looking for a level and dry site. Already a lot of campers had set up their tents, and the bright orange and red bubbles of their canopies stood out like limpets amidst the dry grass and stones. I found a spot at the bottom of the campground, right at the edge where a rope warned people off pitching in the protected swale below. Beyond that the mountain dropped away to an unseen precipice, and beyond that was nothing but open air, wild clouds, and hazy, distant peaks.

The ground was hard as rock and getting the stakes in for the simple, open tarp I was using proved quite a challenge. Two of the stakes bent at the head and immediately became useless, while the other stakes required several tentative probes to push past the hidden rocks beneath to get a proper purchase of the ground. Even then the pitch of the tarp, though tight, kept a few wrinkles and off-center veerings that would later in the night prove to make it hard to sleep in the wind. Nonetheless, the campsite made a comfortable little space where I could relax, all my belongings set out on the groundsheet under the tarp, and the sleeping quilt laid out beside the tarp, snug in its bivy. A neat sanctuary. I lay down on the quilt and closed my eyes for a while, feeling the waning rays of the sun warm my face and hands.

Other campers steadily arrived and set up camp, until there were few places left. Latecomers had to make do with rocky sites or their tents pushed up against bushes or along the verges of the campsite where water pooled during rains. One couple traveling with a third person produced two tents that they proceeded to pitch around an old tree stump, and all three went about setting everything out with much laughter and photograph taking. Another couple had arrived earlier than I had and now sat lounging in inflatable seats, gazing at the sky while sipping coffee. Still another group, two fathers and five children around 12 years old, hollered and shrieked from the center of the campsite as if they were lounging about the privacy of their homes, but strangely the noise was comforting and familiar, and the delighted discoveries the children were making at being inside a tent or watching a stove burst into flame reached across the hush of the mountain and made me smile.

The sun dropped below the edge of the peaks, drawing for a while, a brilliant orange heat from the waiting rocks and boulders, and in its fire the moon slipped unannounced, still pale with daylight, but impatient, seemingly, to take the stage and give an equally brilliant performance across this stark landscape. For a full ten minutes the two stared in defiance at one another, until the sun backed down and sank beneath the horizon. The sky blushed indigo, and the crags darkened until their outlines raked a crenulated midnight out of the base of the skyline. Clouds swam like dim, silent whales through the dark, overhead ocean, rising, cresting, diving into the abyss.

I made dinner as all these celestial events played above me, a simple bag of curry rice with a side of cream of asparagus soup and a cup of instant cafe latte. The fuel tab stove took quite a time to heat up the water, so I waited with my arms wrapped around my knees, shivering a little in the chilling air, and looking up, looking around, looking down at the ever-so-slightly crackling stove. Goups of people huddled over their stoves here and there in the field of stones, their headlights light-sabering through the darkness, and the subdued hiss of their cannister stoves issuing soft threats like snakes. People were telling stories and laughing and sitting together pointing up at the sky, and as I watched it hit me that this was a scene our kind have played over and over again for most of our time on earth, and that it was as human and indicative of who we are as anything that we have ever done.

To the northeast an enormous anvilhead thundercloud rose up and flashed with lightning. Here and there the flash echoed itself, in lesser thunderclouds, all silent, all distant, all safe from where we sat. One flash sent out a spiderweb of lightning so bright all the tents exhibited their colors for a moment, and the faces of the tribe lit up like spectators at a fireworks event.

As I ate, one of the men from a neighboring campsite made his way over and asked if that was a tarp I was sleeping under. He’d seen them in the magazines, but had never seen one in person, and hadn’t expected to see one way up here at 2,600 meters. We talked. His nickname was Chilli and he was here with his wife Junka and their close friend, Yuri, the couple and the third person I had noticed earlier. We got to talking about ultralight backpacking and how to use gear to do double duty and get your pack weight down. He’d already started learning about it, even mentioning some of the relevent stores in Tokyo where UL enthusiasts could buy a lot of the specialized gear and exchange ideas. It was still quite a new movement here.

Chilli invited me over to their tent to talk and get out of the cold. We sat hunched up in the small space, sleeping bags draped over our legs, and getting to know one another and telling jokes and stories of past mountain adventures and mishaps. I loved their cheer and the enthusiastic embrace of being outdoors, in spite of the inconveniences and hardships that sometimes characterized getting out here. As I listened to them I was once again reminded about what I take to mean loving life and feeling alive. It had nothing to do with sitting at home watching endless TV reruns or spending the weekend going shopping at the mall.

I drifted off to sleep and dreamed of wan­der­ing aim­less trails. My sleep pulled me down into the earth, fur­ther and fur­ther from the thin film of my tarp and into the well of my deep­est shores. I felt safe, enough to dream. Then the wind hit. I shot awake. A hard, se­ries of punches that snapped at my tarp and set off the tell­tale crackle that I had been warned about con­cern­ing spin­naker cloth shel­ters. Since I hadn’t been able to get a drum-​​tight pitch the tarp shook in­ces­santly, whip­ping all about my ears, and snap­ping me awake with every gust of wind. I tried a num­ber of so­lu­tions… adding more stakes to the side, tight­en­ing the guy­lines, truss­ing the trekking poles-​​cum-​​tent-​​poles up a lit­tle higher, but to no avail. Fi­nally, at about 1 in morn­ing I gave up and I sat out on a rock, gaz­ing at the sea of clouds to the east.

At about that time one of the men in the tent next to mine set off on a snor­ing cam­paign from hell, so loud and dis­tinct that I couldn’t be­lieve no one else didn’t wake up. But the camp­site re­mained still, most likely in­di­vid­u­als here and there ly­ing awake in the dark, wait­ing for morning.

I did man­age to fi­nally get back into my quilt, stuff ear plugs in my ears, and get about two hours of sleep. The sun had al­ready poked un­der my tarp by the time I woke.

And what a morn­ing! A storm-​​tossed blue ocean of clouds be­low us, a fan of sun beams il­lu­mi­nat­ing the heav­ens, and a chip­per ac­cen­tor call­ing from up the slope, telling us to make break­fast and start the day.

While chat­ting with the three friends from the night be­fore, I heated up some muesli with egg soup and chai, and packed up. The short­ness of breath of the day be­fore seemed to have dis­ap­peared, and though I had hardly slept and felt sleepy, I felt as bright as the sun. I left my full pack by the moun­tain hut, took my wind­breaker, some snacks, and my cam­era, and headed up to the peak of Kiso-​​Komagatake, about a half hour scram­ble. The wind blew so strong that when my feet bal­anced on sharp rocks or I swung around on a switch­back it some­times knocked me off balance.

I reached the sum­mit of Kiso-​​Komagatake 35 years af­ter I had started out. When I saw the weath­ered wooden sign, creak­ing in the wind, I let out a whoop of pure joy and found my­self watch­ing that boy of 16 run the last 10 me­ters up the slope to reach out and touch the sign. And I heard my­self shout out, “You fi­nally did it, Miguel! You fi­nally made it here! I knew you’d make it here one day! Good job!”

It wasn’t the tallest moun­tain I’d ever climbed, and cer­tainly not the hard­est. But there was some­thing about dredg­ing up that past and plac­ing it in front of me again, ty­ing up old loose ends, that felt more sat­is­fy­ing than a lot of other sum­mits I’d reached. Maybe I won’t ful­fill all the dreams I’ve ever had, but it sure does feel good to put my arm around that shy 16-​​year old, and slowly head back down the moun­tain, this time together.

Aftermath

September 21, 2011 | Japan, Japan Earthquake 2011, Laughing Knees, Tohoku | 23 Comments 

Six months have passed since the Great To­hoku Dis­as­ter. Dur­ing these bright, sunny, late sum­mer days, when the build­ings hold still and the nights pass un­per­turbed by mo­ments of ter­ror when even the small­est move­ment of the bed shoots me awake from rest­less sleep, it is some­times hard to re­mem­ber that just a few months ago the whole world was shak­ing off its hinges and seemed to be tot­ter­ing at the edge of ending.

I can’t quan­tify what the whole ex­pe­ri­ence did to me. All I know is that I haven’t been able to write in the blog all this time; all ven­tures within sight of the events would leave my thoughts blank. Words al­most seemed to lose their lift be­fore any­thing co­her­ent even be­gan to form. And not just writ­ten words, but any­thing ut­tered, too. When I wasn’t clack­ing along in rush hour trains, lurch­ing and sway­ing with every­one else, try­ing to think of noth­ing but work, it was time­less cata­to­nia, sit­ting by the bed­room win­dow, just watch­ing clouds scud by. The world seemed to be mov­ing else­where. For months noth­ing seemed to be hap­pen­ing at all around me, not even while be­ing tum­bled and kicked in the con­fu­sion of uni­ver­sity work.

And it’s not as if ev­i­dence of the quake dis­ap­peared when the shak­ing be­gan to let off. On the trains and sub­ways, in su­per­mar­kets and shop­ping cen­ters, in of­fice build­ings and sports cen­ters, lights and un­needed elec­tric de­vices re­mained switched off, and you stepped down into stair­wells and lob­bies and glided through a hushed gloom. Per­haps be­cause so many peo­ple have vol­un­teered to turn down or turn off their air con­di­tion­ers, the whole city felt dis­tinctly cooler than most of the sum­mers of the last twenty years. Daily the news poured out sta­tis­tics of the in­vis­i­ble threat from that gap­ing maw spew­ing nu­clear ichor across the land, just north of us, from the re­gion that was beloved for its green lush­ness and veg­eta­bles, now, just the name “Fukushima” con­jures up ghosts and os­tracism, hu­man ug­li­ness and un­speak­able sorrow.

Fur­ther north lurks the “Place That Can’t Be Men­tioned”, that vast, vast swath of wreck­age and era­sure that can­not be taken in by one mind, reach­ing far be­yond the abil­ity of the eye to reg­is­ter any­thing fa­mil­iar, and har­bor­ing such a teem­ing cho­rus of lost voices that you can­not en­counter the scenes with­out break­ing down.

Two weeks af­ter the big quake and tsunami, I de­cided to head up to To­hoku to see for my­self what this hor­ror was that had vis­ited us, and to of­fer what­ever I could to help, how­ever small my con­tri­bu­tion. It was bet­ter than sit­ting help­less in Tokyo, ag­o­niz­ing over the pho­tos and videos I kept see­ing on the Internet.

I had no plan upon first look­ing for a way up there. News was bro­ken, much of it hearsay, with ru­mors go­ing around of long lines of cars run­ning out of gaso­line long be­fore mak­ing it up to the zone of de­struc­tion. Tele­phone lines were out and any food avail­able up there was meant for the sur­vivors, many of whom were starv­ing in re­mote, in­ac­ces­si­ble towns. And so it was like head­ing north into the Heart of Dark­ness, my trep­i­da­tion very real, my in­ex­pe­ri­ence and ig­no­rance warn­ing me that I was be­ing a fool, that the dis­as­ter could eas­ily eat me alive, too.

I found a vol­un­teer or­ga­ni­za­tion down­town that re­ferred me to an­other lone vol­un­teer head­ing up north in two days. She had a con­nec­tion up there in Minami-​​Sanrikucho, the hard­est hit town in all of the tsunami zone. I went into a frenzy get­ting my­self pre­pared, gath­er­ing all my camp­ing gear, buy­ing all the food for a week, scour­ing the city for wa­ter jugs, al­most all of which had been bought up by the pan­ick­ing peo­ple in Tokyo, where food was run­ning out in the su­per­mar­kets and cars had to wait for hours to buy gaso­line. I man­aged to get it all to­gether be­fore my travel part­ner was due to ar­rive to pick me up. I sat on the couch in the liv­ing room, my heart pound­ing, not at all sure of what I was get­ting my­self into.

The drive up north was sur­pris­ingly nor­mal, with al­most no stops, smooth sail­ing along an un­bro­ken high­way that seemed not to have seen one of the biggest earth­quakes in his­tory. My travel com­pan­ion and I ban­tered about our back­grounds, our in­ter­ests, even lis­ten­ing to her col­lec­tion of iTunes songs and singing along. It was sur­real. We kept glanc­ing out of the car win­dows, seek­ing signs of de­struc­tion and mis­ery, but see­ing noth­ing but the usual Japan­ese rural land­scape. No dam­age seemed to have been done.

The ride took much longer than we had an­tic­i­pated, so it was al­ready dark by the time we reached the out­skirts of Minami-​​Sanrikucho. All the street lights were out, so we drove in dark­ness, along de­serted roads that passed through town af­ter town with not a soul vis­i­ble in any of the houses or walk­ing the streets. As if a har­bin­ger for what we were about to en­counter, a gi­gan­tic dog-​​like crea­ture ap­peared sud­denly in the head­lights on the verge of the road and we swept past with­out be­ing able to iden­tify what it was. The road ran out of pave­ment and we started bump­ing along a dirt track, when sud­denly, like an ex­hibit in a ghost house, an up­turned house loomed out of the dark­ness, right in the mid­dle of the road. My com­pan­ion shrieked and slammed on the breaks. We sat there, hearts pound­ing in our mouths, star­ing as the head­lights shone into an empty win­dow. When we peered around the car into the dark­ness, we be­came aware of the moun­tains of wreck­age, wooden beams piled like match­sticks, houses and cars mashed to­gether in im­pos­si­ble heaps, huge steel I-​​beams wrapped like spaghetti around build­ing cor­ners. It was piled so high we couldn’t see over it, all around us. The air was thick with dust, and when I rolled down the win­dow it stank of brine and dead fish, mud and rot­ting veg­e­ta­tion. And we re­al­ized that it wasn’t an earth­quake that we had come to, but the hor­ror of the tsunami.

We drove gin­gerly through the de­tri­tus, pick­ing the way care­fully over the de­bris, un­til we found the evac­u­a­tion cen­ter, where my companion’s con­tact waited.

The rest of the week in the town was un­like any­thing I’d ever ex­pe­ri­enced and I was to­tally un­pre­pared for it. I had imag­ined camp­ing amidst the wreck­age, and work­ing with vol­un­teers to help clear this up, but in re­al­ity it was much too dan­ger­ous to spend much time in the wreck­age, due to the dan­ger of in­fec­tion and pro­lif­er­at­ing bac­te­ria, and to the for­est of ra­zor sharp edges every­where, even un­der­foot. In­stead, we stayed at the town’s sports center/​ evac­u­a­tion cen­ter, pro­tected and or­ga­nized by the lo­cal gov­ern­ment and the Self De­fense Forces. The whole pop­u­la­tion of the sur­round­ing town was housed in the gym, thou­sands of peo­ple crammed to­gether on every square inch of the floors. On the floor of the gym it­self was a scene straight out of the end­ing of Raiders of the Lost Ark… a gi­gan­tic ware­house of stacks and aisles of boxes of food­stuffs, ba­sic sur­vival goods, clothes, and blan­kets. Every­where out­side gi­ant trucks and heavy ma­chin­ery rum­bled in the park­ing spaces, with lines of sol­diers, teams of doc­tors and res­cue work­ers, and an army of vol­un­teer work­ers do­ing all the me­nial work like hand­ing out food, clean­ing toi­lets, car­ry­ing boxes, and an­swer­ing the ques­tions of the scared evacuees.

Dur­ing the week I met quite a few of them, lis­tened to their sto­ries, ate with them, helped them with ba­sic chores. Nearly all of them re­vealed hav­ing lost some­one, and the sto­ries were har­row­ing and painful to lis­ten to. And yet, every­one at­tempted to laugh and bear all this with dig­nity and grace. Walk­ing around the evac­u­a­tion cen­ter for the first part of the week a sense of mu­tual re­spect and calm­ness per­vaded every­thing. That is un­til the sec­ond to the last day, when, af­ter nearly three weeks be­ing crammed to­gether with hun­dreds of other fam­i­lies, eat­ing the same in­stant food, bore­dom set­tling in, and anx­i­ety over hav­ing lost their homes and liveli­hoods fi­nally kick­ing in, sev­eral brawls erupted in the park­ing lots. Some of the lo­cals be­gan to grow sus­pi­cious of peo­ple like me who had come from Tokyo, where none of this de­struc­tion ex­isted at this level. One man, catch­ing sight of the only for­eigner be­sides the Is­raeli res­cue unit to have come to the town (nearby Ishi­no­maki was be­ing called the “Hara­juku of the Dis­as­ter Zone” be­cause of all the young and non-​​Japanese vol­un­teers), shouted at me in the worst tough-​​guy gut­tural Japan­ese, that I should stop butting into pri­vate people’s lives and that they didn’t need out­side help. I later man­aged to get him to sit down and tell me about his ex­pe­ri­ence: he had lost every­one, in­clud­ing his 7 year old daugh­ter, his 10 year old son, his wife, his fa­ther, and brother. Only his ag­ing and sick mother had sur­vived, but, af­ter dri­ving out of the small coastal town up the coast, he had been wait­ing for six days to get his mother into a med­ical fa­cil­ity and he was wor­ried she wouldn’t make it. He broke down sob­bing in the midst of this story, and he was so ashamed that he got into his car, and locked the door. To see this proud and de­ter­mined man get re­duced to sob­bing be­cause he felt so help­less made me ask my­self if com­ing here was not just be­ing self­ish and nov­elty seek­ing. What dif­fer­ence could I make here? I spoke to quite a few vic­tims, and each time the sto­ries were sim­i­lar. One old man re­lated how he had been stand­ing on a hill over­look­ing his house when the tsunami hit, and he could only stand there help­lessly as he watched his wife and 20 year old son get swept away in the house. He never found their bod­ies. An­other man, while I was do­ing vol­un­teer work in the vicin­ity of his de­mol­ished house, ap­proached me to ask what I was do­ing. When he learned who I was work­ing with and what we were do­ing, he be­gan to tear­fully tell me about be­ing in the apart­ment build­ing just be­hind us, with his wife and 3 year old daugh­ter. When they saw the mud wave rolling in from the fields be­low, he shouted to his wife to get out of the house. He grabbed his daugh­ter and started run­ning up the val­ley, away from the on­com­ing mud wave. His wife, how­ever, de­cided that she needed to gather a few valu­ables be­fore es­cap­ing and while still in the apart­ment, the mud wave en­gulfed the house and crushed it. The fa­ther had man­aged to run far enough up the val­ley to reach the point where the mud wave let off. Weep­ing, he re­peated over and over that his daugh­ter kept ask­ing when they could go home to see mother.

My vol­un­teer group’s re­spon­si­bil­ity was to search for fam­ily pho­tographs amidst the ru­ins. It seems like an easy job, but climb­ing amidst all that de­bris, in the heat and rain, and even snow, while wear­ing lay­ers of pro­tec­tive cloth­ing, hel­met, boots, gloves, face mask, and over layer of red uni­form so that we would be iden­ti­fi­able to both lo­cals and the pos­si­bil­ity of in­jury or death, was hot and ex­haust­ing work. We lifted thou­sands of beams and met­als sheets, dug through silt-​​clogged old bags, broke open or­phaned cab­i­nets, and once even stum­bled through a wooded area with a fish­ing boat sus­pended above in the tree canopy as it creaked and groaned in the wind, just out­side our cir­cle of safety. The worst mo­ment for me was one freez­ing, rainy morn­ing, while I was dig­ging, with a pho­tog­ra­pher from the Asahi Shim­bun news­pa­per pho­tograph­ing me, through the foun­da­tions of a house that had been washed away. I came upon the re­mains of a teenage girl’s bed­room, her col­or­ful pho­tographs of her and her friends, her col­lec­tion of stuffed dolls, her lit­tle pa­per boxes of plas­tic jew­elry and trin­kets, her wads of sop­ping wet clothes, even her cell phone,adorned with glit­tery, stick-​​on glass beads, all strewn about the grey, muddy ground, rain soak­ing every­thing, me and the pho­tog­ra­pher soaked to the bone and cold. It all hit me at once, I was hold­ing a pho­to­graph of the girl smil­ing into the cam­era with her chi­huahua, and I started sob­bing. I couldn’t stop. The pho­tog­ra­pher him­self slumped onto a mud-​​covered log, and just sat there, in shock, not car­ing that his cam­era and cloth­ing were get­ting soaked. The leader of our vol­un­teer group had to come over and coax us to stand up and get back to work. “You didn’t come here to feel sorry for your­selves, right?” he asked us. “You came here to be strong for the peo­ple who re­ally lost some­thing here, right? You can cry later. Right now we re­ally need to do this.” He wasn’t be­ing cold or heart­less; he’d seen a lot of new­com­ers like us break down like that.

As I gained con­fi­dence and ex­pe­ri­ence, a real sense of ca­ma­raderie de­vel­oped with both the sur­vivors and with the vol­un­teer work­ers. We could even say we were en­joy­ing work­ing to­gether and giv­ing each other courage. The week went by more quickly. Vol­un­teers came and went. Those of us who had stayed longer took on the lead­ing roles and watched those who were deal­ing with the shock of the enor­mity of the dis­as­ter. We gath­ered thou­sands of photographs,cleaned them of sand and salt and mud, hung them up to dry. News re­porters and cam­era crews from all over Japan came to in­ter­view us and film us, and our group be­came known as the “Mem­ory Seek­ers”. One mem­ber, a 72 year old su­per­hero who had dri­ven all the way up from south­ern Japan, be­came a na­tional celebrity and even had a doc­u­men­tary made of him. Towns­folk came up to us to tear­fully thank us for help­ing them find and pre­serve their pre­cious memories.

It was both hard and easy to leave all this. Hard, be­cause I had made some good friends and felt I had done some­thing of some value. Easy be­cause I was ex­hausted and sad and filled with more than I could han­dle. I wanted to get home, feel safe again, wake up to a quiet morn­ing with­out the gun­ning gen­er­a­tors and cranes and bull­doz­ers chug­ging through the air. The daily earth­quakes, one of them a mag­ni­tude 7.2 that shud­dered through the evac­u­a­tion cen­ter like a de­railed train and ac­tu­ally did more dam­age than the big earth­quake in March, were rat­tling my nerves. And I just wanted to for­get about all the de­struc­tion and death. It was enough.

Dri­ving back to Tokyo was a quiet, al­most rev­er­en­tial time. We hardly spoke. We passed through Sendai, whose dam­age was on a scale so hugely wide that we drove through ut­terly speech­less. It went on for kilo­me­ter af­ter kilo­me­ter af­ter kilo­me­ter, all the way to the hori­zon, an end­less brown blan­ket of mud and de­bris where once rice fields painted the en­tire coast­line bright green.

Earth­quakes were still daily rock­ing Tokyo when we got back. There would con­tinue to be earth­quakes for months still. But To­hoku al­ways lies in the back of my mind. So much of what goes on in Tokyo now, what so many peo­ple con­sider vi­tal to every­day life seems friv­o­lous and petty. And I won­der how it would have been had the earth­quake been much worse here in Tokyo? Who would have come to help us? Could we even have sur­vived? And what of Fukushima? A hole in the heart of Japan. I will prob­a­bly be think­ing about how I’ve changed for many years to come. Will I ever be the same?

Trembling

March 18, 2011 | Japan, Japan Earthquake 2011, Ruminations, The Land, Tokyo | 13 Comments 

When­ever some­one writes about the be­gin­nings of an earth­quake the story in­evitably starts off with that lull be­fore the event. Usu­ally the story takes a hu­mor­ous twist, be­cause the ex­pe­ri­ence only lasts a mo­ment and then fades into a mem­ory, and when the adren­a­line drains away and the heart stops thump­ing, you’re left with this void that laugh­ter does a good job of fill­ing.¹

The Great Sendai Earth­quake of March 11, 2011, at 2:46 p.m., in north­east­ern Japan, started the same way. Seven days ago I sat at the liv­ing room ta­ble, work­ing away at my blog de­sign, atyp­i­cally out­side of my stu­dio, loung­ing back against the sofa, sip­ping Prince of Wales tea from a mug. My part­ner lay fast asleep on the floor in her room, still ex­hausted from a hard day work­ing at the hos­pi­tal the day be­fore. The sun shone through the win­dow from a cloud­less blue sky, gray star­lings twit­tered and chor­tled in the branches of a young gingko tree, and the street stood quiet, the el­e­men­tary school chil­dren still not out, a day like any other.

When the first tremor came it felt al­most gen­tle, a soft bump­ing against the floor that made the hang­ing po­tus plant sway in the win­dow sill. It was fol­lowed by an im­pa­tient shud­der that rat­tled the win­dow glass and spoons in the sink. Then all of a sud­den this ti­tanic shrug shoved against the floor and walls and knocked my mug off the ta­ble. For a mo­ment it sub­sided, a breath­less mo­ment, then it rammed into the build­ing again and bucked, shak­ing, the way a dog shakes a mouse in it’s teeth. The move­ment gen­er­ated an al­most in­audi­ble, far­away rum­ble, the same sound you hear when you press your fist flat against your ear and clench your fist hard, grow­ing steadily louder and more indistinct.

I was al­ready up, first un­con­sciously grab­bing my in­sulin kit, then dash­ing to my partner’s room, shak­ing her awake. But she was a deep sleeper and just moaned, throw­ing her arm over her eyes. “Get up! Get up! Get up!” I in­sisted, still not quite scared yet, still hav­ing no idea. I pulled her by her arm and she re­luc­tantly woke, mum­bling, “It’s only an earth­quake. Stop get­ting so ex­cited.” But the earth kept heav­ing and the walls creaked and groaned and the win­dow glass of her room skit­tered against the frame. “It’s big!” I said, louder. “Come on, get up!” She moaned again. A huge fist slammed into the floor, forc­ing it to buckle un­der me and I al­most top­pled over, caught my­self. She was still slow, so, shout­ing now, I wrenched her to her feet and pulled her through the liv­ing room into the cor­ri­dor. My part­ner walked to the bath­room door while I threw open the front door, and stopped it with the old, chewed up plas­tic door wedge. I glanced out at the sunny day out­side, every­thing telling me to get out and fly the coop and get away from this pile of rock, but I stopped my­self. To the bath­room. The bath­room. The bath­room. Where had I heard that it was safe there? Right. The bath­room. We stood in the door­frame as the walls see­sawed back and forth on ei­ther side of us, dust spilling from small fis­sures that split along the cor­ners of the wall, and my thoughts seemed to flut­ter in the dark­ness, with­out di­rec­tion, fran­tic flashes of old lessons re­peated over and over like a litany… don’t go out­side… falling ma­sonry… bath­room tight frame safe… why didn’t I buy those hel­mets?… I should have fin­ished putting that emer­gency back­pack to­gether… oh no! My cam­eras!… but noth­ing co­her­ent that could think my way out of what­ever this huge thing was.

Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God…

A siren punc­tu­ated the air, howl­ing over the city. Down the hall­way an­other alarm, an in­sis­tent elec­tric beep­ing, echoed down the hallways.

I kept glanc­ing at the ceil­ing, won­der­ing when it would crash­ing down on us and crush our skulls. Out­side I heard the sharp crack and then heavy thud of a con­crete wall falling down. A woman in a neigh­bor­ing apart­ment kept bawl­ing over and over, “Yadaa! Yadaa! Yadaa! Yadaa! Yadaa!” (No! No! No! No! No!) in a high-​​pitched, keen­ing voice. A baby’s thin wail started up in the apart­ment above us.

In Japan­ese mythol­ogy a gi­gan­tic cat­fish is said to re­side be­neath the is­lands. When­ever it rolls or turns it takes the is­land with it, a mus­cu­lar shift­ing of bones. The cat­fish had started wildly awake, shud­dered un­der the in­hab­i­tants, and bro­ken the old sleep with vi­o­lent fits. Only af­ter the mud had clouded the depths and cloaked the cat­fish in dark­ness, did the cat­fish be­gin to set­tle down. The sway­ing be­gan to die down, but not com­pletely, just enough to get our wits to­gether and think what to do. My part­ner got her coat and bag and some food ready, while I gath­ered, as quickly as I could, two packs with light­weight back­pack­ing equipment.

“One look into the liv­ing room con­vinced me that I wouldn’t be able to look for any­thing pre­cious, even if I wanted to. All the dishes in the kitchen cab­i­nets had slide out and crashed to the floor. The wine bot­tles lay smashed and bleed­ing amidst the dishes. The kitchen counter that I had built had shifted two me­ters to­ward the cen­ter of the liv­ing room. In my stu­dio, the en­tire book­shelf sys­tem had col­lapsed into a huge mess, books scat­tered over every­thing, the shelves buried un­der boxes, the gui­tar bro­ken in half, and no way to get in. I’d have to stick only to what we ab­solutely needed, if I could find it.

For the first time since I took a pas­sion­ate in­ter­est in learn­ing how to go back­pack­ing and moun­tain climb­ing with an ex­cep­tion­ally low weight pack, I felt grate­ful for the hours and hours, over the years, por­ing over gear lists and putting to­gether and us­ing in the moun­tains, com­bi­na­tions of gear nec­es­sary for sur­viv­ing out­doors in all kinds of con­di­tions. WIth­out even re­ally think­ing con­sciously, I stuffed two packs with what we needed, in­clud­ing a shel­ter, wa­ter fil­ter, wood burn­ing stove, spe­cial clothes, sleep­ing bags, head­lamps, gloves, etc. I knew we’d be okay out­side, even in the snow or heavy rain. My part­ner im­pa­tiently stood by the door, keep­ing back her thoughts that I was wast­ing time and looked ridicu­lous with my geeky ob­ses­sion. Within five min­utes I was ready and fol­lowed my part­ner out the front door, into the afternoon.

Trees still reg­is­tered the on­go­ing shak­ing, like metronomes tick­ing down the heartbeats.

To be continued…

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