Ise Does It - Day 9
13.11.24
21.52Km
Belly full of Mos Burger (and fries and ginger ale) and a kissa fruit parfait, I’m feeling fat and happy. Between 21.52km and 1190m gain in elevation across 6 passes, I managed to burn 3559 calories, so — excuse me for a moment — I fucking earned it. As I lie here thinking about what to say, it’s not unimaginable that I might later slip out to a Family Mart to find more food.
I’ve started each of the past three days thinking it wont be as intense as the last, and then the walk totally kicks me in the arse. As a consequence, although I’ve been sleeping well each night, my battery is slowly depleting. At least our run in to Shingu tomorrow looks to be flat — if not particularly inspiring — almost the entire way.
Thoughts of home are starting to creep in, the obligations and constraints slipping past my self-imposed exile from almost all contact and social media. I alluded to it the other day, but I’ve learned that how you exit these experiences is just as important as how you enter them. Give the exit no thought at all and you’ll have a harsh awakening when you run up against life outside the bubble. Try to hold too tightly to what you’ve felt and how you might have changed and the clenching will clear choke the life out of it. It’s a delicate balancing act that seems to respond best to surrender and gut wisdom for guidance.
I wish I could remember more of today’s walk, but much of it a blank, a strong determination being the only thing that carried me through the pain and exhaustion in many places. That said, a few things stood out.
After waking in a room I’ve christened the Jock Rot Suite on account of the smell of the bed linen that had clearly been left too long in the machine, I watched the fishing fleet head out to sea under a blushing sky. It feels good to see a village come to life, to have some purpose to hold on to, some place to claim as its own as so much around it crumbles.
Then we come across another two non-Japanese folk, the third and fourth in nine days. I watch a German woman look in english for plain yoghurt in the Japanese supermarket. And we leapfrog a mid-50s Spanish man who started the Ise-ji 6 days ago. He came straight from completing the Nakahechi, another Kumano Kodo pilgrimage trail, and I’m wondering how he’s still standing. At our final tōge of the day, the hill we crested to enter Kumano City, a young French man would be walking down with his 70-something mother. After being confined to English in a place where it’s been next to useless, to wish them both a bonne continuation brought joy to my heart and some surprise to their faces.
After securing provisions in Atashika — fried chicken, pork slices, an ornamentally-sized apple, ice creams and the last remaining trays of green vegetables: FIBRE! — we walked along the sea wall to find a spot to sit. From below, a tall Japanese man with long hair and browned-butter skin cried out to us in English: “Where are you from!?” “Australia!” I shout back. “I lived in Sydney! Manly Beach! I love surfing!”, smile beaming from his face as he speaks. Turns out he runs a small guesthouse and juice bar with his wife. She bakes sourdough. What I would give for sourdough… It’s the first sign of any kind of youthful resurgence we’ve seen on the whole walk and it’s my profound wish that he succeeds. I hope that more people discover this beautiful corner of his country.
And then the most batshit climb of the entire walk. Following Craig Mod’s maps, just outside the hamlet of Hadasu we headed uphill. What began as an ancient path — a loose, linear assemblage of stones marked as the Kumano Kodo on Gaia GPS — at some point just petered out in to fallen cedar logs and ferns. Kalia and I fairly bashed our way to the top of the hill, grateful to have reached a well-trodden path again but completely unwilling to stop for even a moment. Everything below the waist was starting to ache and I marvelled at the abuse my feet and ankles had sustained, but I was beginning to run very low indeed.
Having walked the Camino de Santiago for 21 days, I came to the Ise-ji, if not totally physically prepared, then mentally so, or so I thought. How tough could ten days walking in Japan really be? The throbbing of my feet and the aches in my legs — even though I’ve been off them for an hour and a half now — emphatically answer that question. And yet I wouldn’t trade that intensity for anything. We’ve still got a day to go, and I’ve still got another thousand words to write (at least), but the exertion, exhaustion and conversation have taken Kalia and I to places entirely unexpected.
We’ve been planning this evening, wondering how best to structure tomorrow to bring this whole thing to a close in the “right” way. We’ll start early, breakfast en route, take lunch from a convenience store and probably eat it on a sea wall. We want to give ourselves time in Shingu. I want to leave for Tokyo on a 6:20 train the next morning. The window for wrapping things up after such an experience feels impossibly tight. At the start of this walk, I set myself a few rules, one of which was:
5.Feel in to each decision that comes up. Allow my response to be an empowered “yes”, or and empowered “no.
Although I’ll quibble with the framing now — a lot of decisions required more than a yes/no answer — that reminder to feel in to my gut and to listen for its wisdom has seen me right. And I can now trust that it’ll see me right tomorrow, and the next day, and the next…
With love from just behind the sea wall.