In completely the Kumano Kodo back in 2009, I realized that there were a few spur routes left to walk, not to mention the entire Ise-ji. Over the subsequent decade, a number of routes have been opened up, with each new guidebook fattened by a dozen new pages. One section, the Shiomi-toge, paralleled the road route I'd taken back in 2004. I had hoped to walk it while I was in Kumano last autumn, but a typhoon had closed to the trail for repairs. Finally, having a free morning before a week-long tour leading a school group, I race out of my campsite at dawn to catch a bus, scaring a tribe of deer whose snowy white bottoms bobbed as they vault across the hillside.
The day nearly takes a tragic turn due to the driver of the mini-bus I hop onto an hour later in Tanabe proper. As I board, he immediately tells me that this is the wrong bus, innocent enough, but he next tells me to get down, a rudeness I find shocking. I am stepping out when I spot the kanji for my destination written on a chart behind his seat. I fume through the 20-minute ride, finding fault once again in a tourist industry run rampant, compounded by the driver's bluntness. My mind turns through the script of polite expressions I might use to tell the driver that it is best not to assume that every foreigner he meets has an identical agenda. The majority of tourists may indeed be heading to the same place (Takajiri), but he nearly made me miss the ride, and therefore would have prevented me from doing my walk altogether, timewise. In the end, I just decide to let it ride, figuring that if the guy has issues with foreigners, my plea to him will just add to whatever it is he is carrying.
The road leads through the dwindling suburbs, where the white of plum blossoms are beginning to assert themselves. I climb steadily, finally entering forest an hour later. The trail steepens into ishitatami cobblestone, and rock openings reveal old statuary rarely seen on a section of the Kōdō nearly forgotten. One small Buddha is camouflaged in a small groove in the cliff face, and as I climb for a better look I'm wary about snakes that might be sleeping beneath the remaining leaves of autumn, under the curled hands of maple, or the spear heads of bamboo.
The trail is fickle and I return again to tarmac too soon. This road climbs through small villages whose economy was once the orchards that hug the ever steepening mountain face. Shades of the old ways linger. An ancient man steps of out a ramshackle old house which sprawls and decades in need of repair. From the unkept look of things, I sense the wife has died long ago, and the old timer is simultaneously withering away at the same time as his kingdom.
In fact the only people I meet are over eighty, a fact that hardly surprises anymore. A number of them are preparing their trees for the coming of spring and the cessation of morning frost. One spry woman keeps pace with me on a steep climb, concerned about my hiking alone, warning me of wild boar. I lose her at the remains of the old barrier gate, when the angle of the pitch climbs sharply.
Midway up is the Hirune-oji, a rest spot that offers coffee, a tree swing, and ocean views. A sign tells me that travelers often rested here, but the jovial name is of course more recent. The waters far off broaden as I climb. A logging road weaves me along for a while, before I arrive at the massive Nejiki-no-sugi, a cedar whose twisting, multi-pronged trunk points at the pass not too far away.
The forest just below the pass has been horribly clear-cut, whose scale has been compounded by a recent storm that fell a few dozen other trees just below. They've all snapped in half like pencils, and I wonder what that sounded like.
The pass is a flat clearing offering some of the best views on the entire Kumano Kōdō, the peninsula's entire southern coast spread at my feet, and the higher jagged peaks of the Ōmine mountains behind me. I have a quick lunch at begin to descend in the latter's direction. This proves to be the worst part of the walk, a full hour down a steep, paved logging road made slippery from last night's rain. As this route is technically part of the popular Nakahechi, the signage is good, but it is a small hand-written sign that points down a narrow trail to Takajiri. I stick to my original route toward my campsite at Kōdō-ga-ōka, but I muse that the Takajiri trail would make for a nice extension to the usual route. My own isn't much fun, and by the time I've passed the ruined hulks marking an old farm village, my feet make me wish I'd listened to the bus driver this morning, and gone home early...
On the turntable: Joe Strummer and The Mescaleros, "Global a Go Go"
On the nighttable: Ernest Hemingway, "In our Time"
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