KJ BLOGOLOGY

IN PURSUIT OF MOUNTAINS
(From KJ #65)

Of late, the blogosphere seems more noticeably urbanized – an increasingly caffeinated, jargonesque, and virtually windowless sector of the 24/7 Web. So it’s particularly refreshing to encounter blogs by people who clearly cherish paths less easily accessed – the twisting trails up to the rock-solid primeval world of elevated perspectives celebrated by such precursors as Han Shan, Dogen Zenji, and Gary Snyder.

Ted Taylor (a valued KJ volunteer, by the way) recently moved down to Kyoto from back-country Tottori. His “Notes from the ‘Nog” records a richly alternative side of life in Japan:

JUNE 1, 2006
I ride a local train deep into the Alps, hitting all the stops. Amongst Canadian-looking homes built strong for winter, and over high bridges spanning their fast rivers. Deeper still, the air noticeably cooler and smelling of pine. Pheasants duck into the safety of the brush as the train clears a tunnel, cutting beneath mysterious peaks where myths are born. After an hour or so, I lose my phone signal, and after another hour I’m the only person left on this train. The gorges’ scars heal and the levels of the rivers come up beside the tracks. Fog rises off the rapidly cooling water, obscuring the sun which is nearly done for the day anyway. But I ride on, toward a place I didn’t know existed, written on a part of the map I'd never looked at before.

(See also Ted’s Oct. 06 posting on the “marathon monks” of Mt Hiei).

“Laughing Knees” is a Japanese expression for that feeling you get descending a long rugged trail. It’s also the name of a Chiba-based blog by German/ Filipino/ African-American ‘Butuki’ (Miguel Arboleda), who shares his passion for the mountains with an extended family of readers, complementing thoughtful writing with superb photos:

OCTOBER 3rd, 2006
Mist rising from the valley beneath Sugoroku Peak. The mountains are like the sea; they hold water and wind in the same undulating way. There are tides and waves and storms and driftwood. You can hear the breakers, too, slower and softer and more prolonged, but they have the same insistent result, grinding the rock to granules, over aeons and aeons.

So far the talk back at the camp of a typhoon surging in hadn’t materialized into winds, so, cheerful in the rain that sprayed the flower meadows along this lonely side trail, I meandered along with my camera, stopping every few feet to kneel down among the fronds and flower heads, legs and hands and face wet with dew, every separate tiny life a wonder… Everything caught my eye, everything photogenic and new. Such moments bring out fierce joy in me, a real sense of what makes me happy and knowing who I am. I often imagine what I would have been like as a prehistoric hunter. The pleasure of immersing myself in my surroundings and learning to see would have felt complete, I think, and as much of what a human being can hope to make out of life as any modern aspiration for a career.

Tim Patterson, currently pursuing peaks in Bhutan (see his excellent on-line travel advice), has blogged extensively about Hokkaido in “Sleeping in the Mountains.” He travels light, and far, with a big-picture perspective:

APRIL 04, 2006: Hokkaido Mountain Huts
One of the most spectacular hikes in Hokkaido is a traverse of volcanic 2,000-meter peaks along the spine of Daisetsuzan, a trek that can take a week to complete. Apart from a remote 25 km section of trail between Hisago Marsh and Mt. Biei-Fuji, shelters are available at most camping spots along the traverse, a welcome sight to backpackers eager to duck out of the wind and get a good nights sleep. Brewing tea from melted snow-water at daybreak on the porch of one of these cabins, watching steam boiling out of the river valleys far below, makes for mornings beautiful enough to break your heart – and heal it back again with each mist-cloud breath.

APRIL 19, 2006
It’s often a struggle for me to avoid politics in my writing, but I want to keep Sleeping in the Mountains from slipping into the great blogosphere muck-heap of fetid, bubbling rants and “this-world-is-going-straight-to-hell” cynicism. Part of the reason I love running along ridgelines, sleeping in cabins and cooking on a camp-stove is that the world shrinks down in the backcountry as hard reality squeezes out the shades of spin that define the political game. Experience and emotion are boiled down to their essential core and a single cloud can become the most important thing in the world. The same thing happens when traveling, especially in out-of-the-way places, where something as simple as a tree or a bowl of noodles can overwhelm one's senses simply because it’s something different and new. It’ll be a sad day when a quote from Rush Limbaugh or Al Franken shows up here. As Jack Johnson sings, “I wanna be where the talk of the town is about last night when the sun went down.”

Of course, there are places where travel is simply not feasible, but these are actually few and far between. I’m looking forward to seeing Kashmir and Nepal (where war has climbed into the highest Himalayas.) Iran is another destination I’ve been eagerly waiting to visit since taking a class in contemporary Iranian society back in college. Beautiful mountains, hospitable people and few travelers with whom to share the trails — what’s not to like? It’s a terribly sad thing when people make the mistake of confusing a nation with its government ? and that goes for Persians and Americans alike.

Setsunai, an expat Irishman “On Gaien Higashi Dori” (“Tokyo’s Raglan Road”), combines glorious photos and descriptions of epic hikes. In June 2005, he and Butuki both chronicled the Oku-Shirane peak climb, as virtual döppelgangers, on the same day:

MAY 9, 2006: New Shirts
For two years I walked in and out of mountains. Seeking high ground and distance from who I had become. Listening in silent forests to my own sounds. Offering old shame to mountain gods. Deserting every weekend. Trying to cast off an old story.

For two years an ancient ritual of abandonment and return. Slow dancing with mountains. A healing dance. A dance as right and natural as the sound of beauty. A dance as effortless, uncontrollable and gradual as the movement of the sun. A dance where time and role and outcome are ordained.

Then suddenly in the lights of January and New Year came the call to stay and walk on weekends in the godless streets of Ikebukuro, shopping for new shirts.

These high points on the Web are well worth visiting. While you’re in the vicinity, check out Bob Brady’s “Pure Land Mountain” and Thoreau’s Blog, too.

Just keep in mind the parable of the finger pointing to the moon.

PS: JULY 16, 2006: The Magic Flute
Read today that the universe vibrates in the key of B-flat. Same pitch as my shakuhachi, I do believe.
– Notes from the ‘Nog”

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