Pouring Rain

March 28, 2008 | Laughing Knees | 14 Comments 

I stood at the en­trance to the train sta­tion star­ing out at the weather. The town dropped down into the grey swirl of low clouds and seemed to hold tight against the wash of cold rain. Streams ran along the street and what few peo­ple had left the warmth of their homes hunched their jack­ets against the chill, trot­ting along the side­walks to reach the sta­tion and get out of the wet­ness. The freez­ing wind howled at the open­ing to the sta­tion and buf­feted me, urg­ing me back in­side. None of the moun­tains in the dis­tance al­lowed them­selves to be seen and I was sorely tempted to just turn around and head right back into the heated com­part­ment of the train. The prospect of even one night holed up in a drafty tarptent, alone in the dark of the night time win­ter woods while the rain pounded away all around me just wasn’t my idea of a good time. I kept re­mem­ber­ing wak­ing up in the puffy com­fort of my bed be­fore dawn and ly­ing there shak­ing my head at the strange things that I do for kicks. Who in their right mind wakes up dur­ing the hours of the dead to go walk­ing on some wind­blown ridge?

My pack was light, the light­est I’ve ever got­ten it for a several-​​day win­ter hike with camp­ing, lighter even than the pack I used in the sum­mer Alps last year. I wor­ried that maybe it was too light, that I might spend the night shiv­er­ing while snow came drift­ing down to laugh at me. But I’d checked and re-​​checked every­thing to make sure I had got­ten it right and, in my head at least, I knew that I should be fine. But as these things al­ways go, it’s one thing to the­o­rize about some­thing, quite an­other to ac­tu­ally get out there and raise your glass to the el­e­ments and make a toast. Weather has an up­set­ting habit of not re­spect­ing the­o­ries. Or toasts, for that matter.

I spied the blond-​​haired ad­ven­turer deep in con­sul­ta­tion with the lo­cal tourist in­for­ma­tion cen­ter lady. I knew he was an ad­ven­turer be­cause he wore noth­ing but run­ning shoes, a pair of navy blue train­ing pants, a navy blue wind shirt and on his back a tiny back­pack. Only ad­ven­tur­ers chal­lenge such win­ter weather with noth­ing by a thin film of ny­lon. He leaned over the tourist in­for­ma­tion cen­ter counter for an in­or­di­nately long time, so long I be­gan to won­der if he was able to speak Japan­ese. The lady be­hind the counter seemed a bit piqued as she at­tempted to make head or tails of what he was say­ing. When they both looked stumped I stepped up and asked if they needed any help.

“Yes, that would re­ally save me!” ex­claimed the ad­ven­turer in a heavy French ac­cent. “Hi my name is Eric!”

“Miguel.”

“I’m from Canada and this is my third day here. Three times I’ve tried to climb Mt. Fuji, but no luck.”

“Climb Mt. Fuji?” I stared at his out­fit, from head to toe. “In winter?”

“Yes. It rained the first two days and I had to turn back. Yes­ter­day I made it to 3,130 me­ters, but the snow got up to my chest and I couldn’t go any fur­ther. A Nor­we­gian guy ahead of me was able to con­tinue on. I only have a week left in Japan and I’m de­ter­mined to climb Mt. Fuji be­fore I leave.”

“Not to doubt your de­ter­mi­na­tion, Eric, but are you sure you are pre­pared for Mt. Fuji? It’s a very dan­ger­ous moun­tain in win­ter if you don’t know what you are do­ing or have the right equip­ment. Every year peo­ple die on it in the win­ter. It’s ex­tremely cold up there, plus some peo­ple have to worry about al­ti­tude sick­ness at that elevation.”

Eric hugged his chest and shiv­ered in the wind as rain­drops dripped off his chin. “It’s re­ally okay! I’m from Que­bec, I’m used to the cold!”

Con­cerned, I in­di­cated his clothes. “Are you climb­ing in those clothes?”

“Yes! I work for UPS! You like the pants?” He laughed. “I need to buy some boots be­fore I try Fuji again. You know where I can buy some cheap boots?”

We spoke a while about prospects for a sports shop in this area. I used to live near here and knew of noth­ing that might get him bet­ter geared up. Eric’s shiv­er­ing got worse, so I showed him into the heated wait­ing room in­side the sta­tion. I al­ways won­der what to do in a sit­u­a­tion when I meet some­one about to head into a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion, but who doesn’t re­ally un­der­stand what they are get­ting them­selves into. I don’t want to push my wor­ries on them, but also don’t want them to do some­thing they will re­gret. While we spoke a lo­cal el­derly man came up to us and asked me where we were go­ing. I pointed out into the rain, at where the West Tan­zawa range was sup­posed to be loom­ing. Eric hit his chest with a big smile, “Mt. Fuji!”

The man glanced out in the di­rec­tion of the moun­tains where I was plan­ning to go and shook his head. “All those moun­tains look the same af­ter a while. Pretty bor­ing, don’t you think?” He turned to Eric and grinned. “Fuji! Re­ally! I used to take care of one of the moun­tain huts at the ninth sta­tion. Mt. Fuji, eh? In win­ter! You have to be careful!”

Eric hit his chest again. “Don’t worry! I’m fine! I’m from Quebec!”

“What did he say?” asked the old man.

I missed my bus while talk­ing to the two Fuji afi­ciona­dos. While they at­tempted to com­mu­ni­cate with one an­other about Fuji con­di­tions I went to check on the weather again. A light­ness had made its way into the grey bil­lows of the clouds and it looked as if at least the rain might let up a lit­tle. Eric had de­cided to head back 400 kilo­me­ters west to Os­aka for the night and would at­tempt Mt. Fuji again the next day if the weather im­proved. Since he was tak­ing the bus over the pass where I hoped to start my walk I de­cided to join him and talk a bit more. It was good to have com­pany be­fore head­ing out into the cold. At the very least I hoped to spark at least a bit of cu­rios­ity in Eric over my own ad­ven­ture. Noth­ing do­ing; Fuji was im­printed in his Québé­cois mind.

Eric had never in his life climbed a moun­tain be­fore. “You said you’ve been to Mon­tréal, yes?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“What is the high­est land form you saw there?”

“Er, Mount Royal?”

“That’s right! No moun­tains! I never even saw a moun­tain be­fore I came to Japan!” He laughed con­tent­edly to him­self, as if that was suf­fi­cient ex­pla­na­tion for his at­tempt­ing Mt. Fuji.

“We Québé­cois are re­ally tough! Much tougher than those slouches from Mon­tréal! When we were fight­ing against the British it was the Mon­treal­ers who sur­ren­dered, but not us! We stuck it out to the end!” He grinned at me and snorted. “So you see, that’s why I came to Japan, the land of the samu­rai!” He folded his arms and laughed effortlessly.

We parted at the junc­tion be­tween Lake Ya­manaka and Kagosaka Pass. The rain had stopped and al­ready signs of the sun had bro­ken through the clouds. The west foothills of the Tan­zawa range rose to the east, head­ing up into the still wa­tery grey clouds.

“You’re a good luck charm, Eric,” I told him. “I wish you good luck on Mt. Fuji. Please do be care­ful and don’t take the moun­tain lightly.”

He waved from the bus, still smil­ing. “Don’t worry about me. I’m…”

“I know. You’re from Quebec!”

“That’s right! Don’t for­get it!”

The bus pulled away and I was alone again with the weather. I started walk­ing. With each step the clouds opened a bit more and by the early af­ter­noon I had taken off my rain jacket and was sweat­ing in spring sun­shine. Lake Ya­manaka dropped away be­hind me and the sky stepped back to wel­come me into the folds of the ridges.

Branches

March 17, 2008 | Laughing Knees | 9 Comments 

It’s like a path out of the moun­tains that you just fin­ished. You look back and the rain clouds have ob­scured all signs of where you came from. But if you trace your route back you can find the places where one path sep­a­rated, or joined, or veered off.

I got a let­ter from a cousin the other day de­tail­ing my fam­ily his­tory back ten gen­er­a­tions, some­thing I didn’t even know was pos­si­ble be­cause my pa­ter­nal African-​​American and Fil­ipino sides had been so ru­ined by my an­ces­tors hav­ing been slaves and a pop­u­lace taken over in a colony. No records had been kept of fam­ily lines here. But my great-​​great grand­fa­ther in South Car­olina, where my African-​​American fam­ily is Gul­lah, from Hilton Head Is­land, was a white Jew named Driesen. I go­ing over the records my cousin was able to step back ten gen­er­a­tions, 1621, to a cou­ple in County Cork, Ire­land, Teige and Eliz­a­beth Cantey.

You can imag­ine my re­ac­tion… “I’m part Irish???”

I won­der what traces fil­ter back down through the genes as one gen­er­a­tion flows into the next. Is there such thing as ge­netic mem­ory? Or do ghosts of a person’s ex­pe­ri­ence and sights burn into the film of the next generation’s life plate? Does it mean any­thing that some­where in the mists of time two Irish peo­ple nudged my ex­is­tence with their chil­dren and then made the fright­en­ing cross­ing over to North America?

But there is some­thing deeply com­fort­ing in catch­ing a glimpse of the trail that led me here. All these years it has been a blur. I feel more con­nected to the earth now, as if my cells now lead fur­ther back and I am not just an afterthought.

Absolutely In Love

March 8, 2008 | Laughing Knees | 4 Comments 

When I came across Andy’s ref­er­ence to the new Swiss in­stru­ment called the “Hang” (pro­nounced like “hung”, mean­ing “hand” from the Bernese Swiss dailect) or “Hang Drum”, I was im­me­di­ately en­thralled. So much so that I think I might even save up to buy one. Now I have three in­stru­ments (be­sides the gui­tar that I’ve been play­ing for about 33 years and have a reach a plateau that I want to grow be­yond, per­haps next learn­ing clas­si­cal gui­tar or fla­menco) that I re­ally want to learn: the hang, the duduk, and the quena. I am not the most co­or­di­nated fin­ger artist around, though, so I don’t know how well I can learn to play the hang, but I would re­ally love to learn. The only prob­lem with ac­quir­ing one, though, is that un­til this year you had to con­tact the only builders of the hang in the world, Fe­lix Rohner and Sabina Schärer, di­rectly by snail­mail and then go to Bern, Switzer­land, to hand­pick one. It seems this year they may be start­ing up ship­ping them again, with the third gen­er­a­tion of the de­sign, the in­te­gral hang, which doesn’t re­quire each in­di­vid­ual in­stru­ment to be picked for its unique tun­ing. From the things I’ve read on the in­ter­net so far the pop­u­lar­ity of the in­stru­ment is go­ing through the roof! There re­ally still is magic in the world.

Thanks so much Andy.

More in­for­ma­tion here, here, and here.

Some of my fa­vorite YouTube recordings:

And this site (in Japan­ese), by Hay­ato, has an im­pres­sive list of YouTube recordings.

I won­der if it’s pos­si­ble to hear the in­stru­ment live here in Japan somewhere?