Hello, friends!

A few years ago, Craig Mod wrote an essay for Wired about taking a long walk across Japan.

I’ve taken many walks in Japan, but this was a walk of a different scale. I left my house in a small town south of Tokyo shouldering a giant pack, walking poles, and wearing hiking boots. I wound my way up through Yokohama to the capital, and, from there, followed an old historic highway, snaking into valleys lush with spring blossoms and full-bloom cherry trees, abutted by the Central Japanese Alps of Nagano and Gifu prefectures, ending in Kyoto. In the end I walked a long way.

I’ve read several things that Mod has written over the years, but I particularly loved this piece, because he emphasizes the longness of the walk as key to its importance, then stretches that to cover any thing a person might do: