It was a less than auspicious start. I made the rookie maneuver of not checking my return train times until on the outbound ride, and was horrified at how early this line shut down. I'd have to race all day to catch the last one at just before 5 o'clock, leaving me just under six hours to do an eight to nine hour walk. Hitching would be crucial, and it was in my favor that it was a national holiday, meaning more people on the road, many devoid of any solid plan. Picking up a foreign hitchhiker made for a pleasant diversion.
Unfortunately the road itself conspired against me. The long stretch running south from Ōmi-Shiotsu station was lined with a guardrail, offering no place to pull over, thus no chance of a pickup. For the first half and hour, my thoughts were as dark as the fog that enshrouded me, made even worse in noting that there were no busses along here after about 8 a.m. But I kept the faith, spinning frequently with thumb out. And in doing so summoned up a miracle ride somehow, the driver stopping just in front of the village police box, prompting me to jokingly ask if this was legal. A woman who I'd been keeping pace with during the last ten minutes was standing nearby, and laughed.
The ride was a short one, along a quiet road that traced the shoreline before terminating at the tiny fishing village of Tsukide. I dutifully followed a directional sign pointing up toward the hills, pleased with both my good luck and with a gorgeous thatched roof house whose surroundings were decorated with items of a long ago age. Within a minute the smile left my face, as the trail halted below a massive dam. I scanned for any trace of trail, but all was overgrown. I was further puzzled that my online map showed the route to be on the complete opposite side of the village. I retreated back to to the sign I'd seen earlier.
Besides being a national holiday, it also appeared to be a day when the entire hamlet was out for their village cleaning. A man and woman were busy pulling debris out of the rocks at the water's edge. I asked them if they knew about the Umi no Be, and in broken English, the man beckoned me to follow.
I followed him into the house that I'd be admiring minutes before. Both he and I were unmasked (mine in my pocket), but he seemed little concerned as he sat just beside me, and spread a paper map across our laps. Local knowledge once again trumped technology, but he talked incredibly slowly, in what seemed to my deadline-obsessed mind to be like one syllable every three seconds. Finally armed with the right directions, I moved quickly up some steep switchbacks, finding myself out of breath on the ridge a mere hour after leaving the train. There was a decrepit little park there, so I stopped to de-layer before moving on.
This was the time that I most feared the risk of bears, and I was walking a trail pockmarked with spiky horse chestnuts, most of them already cracked open. The trail led over a little rickety bridge, offering me a Sorcerer moment in every step. The opposite side had recently been torn apart by wild boar, probably the night before. From here the path was carpeted with magnolia leaves, under any of which could be a viper a-coil. I wanted to believe that they were already in hibernation, as the cool fog chilled the sweat of my earlier climb.
The paved parkway road below twisted and turned with the contours of the ridge. But I followed a roller coaster that rose and fell, in keeping with the actual ridge line. I was still hoping for the fog to burn off, not only for the views that weren't too far in front of me, but also so I wouldn't surprise any bears that might also be. I probably had nothing to fear from animals, giving fair warning with my huffing and puffing, this being my first real hike in almost three months. And the moment I thought this, from the forest below me I heard a strange kind of yelp which wasn't a deer or any other bird I'd ever heard before. It repeated a few times, followed then by a low roar. Shit!, a mother and her cub. Their cries repeated a couple of times: the yelp, the roar. The squeal. The roar. It took the mind a second to parse out the motorcyclist on the road just below, firing up his bike with a squeaky kickstarter.
My route wasn't on either of my trusty go-to hiking apps, so I was flying blind, putting my trust in the signage. It had been pretty good so far, but of the worn, 1990s vintage. Inevitably three decades of storms coming off the lake will have brought rot to the base of the post of one, and an arrow that I might eventually need to rely on will be lying in the overgrowth of weeds a half step off-trail. Fingers crossed, I came over the peak that served as the ridge's high point, and continued my undulations south.
And the fog lingered on, past the lunch hour. Every time I came to a view point, I could do nothing but smile. When I solo hike I'm generally pretty good with the weather, and I could have easily chosen the following day, though the forecast for the current day had looked better. I could write an entire post on how poor the meteorological system has become in Japan over the last decade. Not surprising, right on the heels of their investing massive amounts of money in new technology.
I stopped for a moment to confirm my course from my digital map, which did at least include the southern half of my course. And as I did, a venomous yamakagashi drifted across the trail two meters in front of me. Some steps led down to the road proper, and then lo and behold I saw through the trees the lake opening up below me. With the lifting of the fog, thus did my spirits.
The trail began to drop steadily toward the fishing village of Sugaura. I played peek a boo with views, the structures getting bigger each time. The final descent to a lower section of trail was hazardous even with trekking poles, but it was through a gentle pitch of cedar forest that I returned to the water's edge. I had flown over my hike today, and found that I had ample time to make my train. It would be a two hour road walk to the station, but the course was flat, the skies now blue, and the lake's surface shimmered in the warm sunshine.
There were no signs here to speak of, but I knew that I was supposed to hug the lake's edge. I detoured to follw a now closed trail that led directly along a long beach, before returning to the road again. A quick glimpse of the map brought me to a halt, as it was possible that the trail might have returned to the hills above. I backtracked on the road proper, looking for signs or any indications that it actually did, arriving yet again back where I'd popped out of the forest. I scanned what little online info I could get on the trail, and finally came to the conclusion that I'd been correct all along.
I thought I'd hitch to make up for my backtracking. There were only a couple of features between here and the next town, so I walked to the first, a small cluster of Buddhist statues, before throwing out my thumb. There very very few cars, but the second one did stop, driven by a middle aged woman on her way to work. We were only together for five minutes or so before I hopped out again at a campsite, to walk the rest of the way to the station. The town began to slowly build up not far along from here, past sorghum fields, run-down shacks, and the odd fishing business whose small stature betrayed a fleet of high powered boats. One beautiful and stately home looked recently abandoned, now overrun by a troupe of playful monkeys.
Nagahara had the look of a feudal town, its narrow main street lined with houses mainly of wood. I detoured to a shrine or two, then arrived early at the train station, to sit and read and sip from an iced coffee. I watched some schoolkids play in a park just down the hill from my platform perch, and thought how we had all gotten the day right, had capitalized on the holiday and the weather, and the spirit of play that should be a mainstay of all of us, yet is too regularly obscured by the grey gloom of fog that rolls in from time to time, often of our own making.
On the turntable: Grateful Dead, "Community War Memorial Auditorium, 09-02-1980"
1 comment:
Good to hear that, in the event, you didn't meet a mother bear with cubs - definitely the worst possible case. I'm interested, though, in your observation that weather forecasts have become worse in Japan over the last decade. In Switzerland and the UK, generally forecasts have become somewhat better in the last decade, thanks to higher-resolution models. But island weather is always harder to predict, especially when the island in question is further offshore. Would be intrigued to see that post on the case in Japan ....
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