A Winter Hike Among the Shrines of Togakushi

Solitude & Freezing Cold Feet

I’m on an early morning train, stealing glances at the young woman sitting diagonally across from me. Purple sneakers with thick white soles; jeans, artificially faded (you can just tell); a black down coat to match her hair, tickling her shoulders in time with the movement of our car. Her face is buried in a lavender scarf; I can only see her eyes, at the same time bright and lost in thought.

I find it interesting, looking at strangers. You never know in any meaningful sense where they are coming from or where they’re going. We can guess, but we’ll never know how right or wrong we are.

As if aware of my thoughts the girl lifts her eyes to mine. Her face remains hidden in her scarf, her body as unmoving as her glance is deep. In the window behind her the mountains and the valley drift by in the muted blues and grays of dawn.

Togakushi is still two hours and one bus ride away. The weather during the six or seven hours I’ll be hiking is impossible to predict. Nature can be fickle four thousand feet up.

As if suddenly bored with the view our train leans into the hills and slips into a tunnel. For a minute the world is black. When the light returns I can see nothing out my window but pines dusted white and the contoured hints of a snowed-over river. Save for our train and the tracks disappearing into the powder ahead the world of man has ceased to exist.

I glance over again. The girl’s eyes have turned away.

Nasu-dake: Navigating Through Snow and Fatherhood

We visit my wife’s parents at their peach farm in Fukushima once or twice a year, and every time I bring three things: my hiking boots, my guide to Japan’s 100 Most Famous Mountains, and a hollow optimism that this time I’ll get out and do some hiking.

Then we get there and my wife and kids want to do a million things that don’t involve hiking and my boots end up sitting by the front door all week while I spend all my time playing daddy.

It’s just like being at home, except I don’t have to do the dishes.

I did make it out a few years ago, on a day that any normal person would have stayed home. “I think I’m gonna go climb Adatara tomorrow,” I told my wife as the weatherwoman on TV talked politely about the typhoon on the way. My wife was planning on everyone going shopping in the morning, then to lunch at the same ramen shop we always go to (not for nothing, their portions are massive). Her plan, I’m sure, included me. “I’ll take that orange bicycle out there. You going to be okay with the kids?”

“Yes, of course,” she replied, sounding less than excited about the perfect storm brewing. “You don’t want to eat lunch with us at Kuntaro?”

I did. But I didn’t.

Everyone was still sleeping when I slipped out the door and pedaled off into the gray, misty morning, heading for #21 of those Hundred Famous Mountains.