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Naei-zan (那英山)
This past weekend I went out to Naei-zan (那英山, 819 m), a short mountain on the west side of the Furano Basin near Kamifurano, with Sam and a couple of Japanese friends. We’d seen the mountain on the blog of a group of Japanese hikers (Naei-zan in particular here) and had gotten a little excited about the purported views from the mountainside–looking across the basin and farmland towards the characteristically sweeping faces of the Tokachi Mountains. It also didn’t seem to be a particularly long trip to the summit, which appealed to me after we didn’t make it to the summit of Fujigata-yama (富士形山, 638 m) last weekend, due to a super-long approach. Pff.
Unfortunately the morning of the climb was a snowy one; visibility couldn’t have been more than 150 meters or so. Dang. At any rate, we made our way from Asahikawa down to Kamifurano through the snow. The mountain isn’t particularly popular, so there’s no parking (or even a trailhead, really), but there’s a bit of a pulloff at the intersection of Prefectural Routes 581 and 759 where we shoveled out a space for two cars. In a pinch you could probably park three cars on this pulloff, but that’d be pushing it a bit.
We got our gear ready, crossed the street, clambered up besides some windbreaks, and headed off across a typically Furano-esque rolling field. On the far side of the field was a second-growth forest beyond which the mountain rose up into the snow. We headed for a little break in the forest along what would have been a dirt path in the summertime, maybe navigable by tractor. We skirted the margin between a stand of younger trees and a tall, orderly forest of second-growth softwoods, wandering for a little while into the young trees when I lost the dirt path. The path opened up at the back of the stand of younger trees and climbed up into the forest.
The first climb wound through more of that second-growth softwood forest. Many of the trees here were tagged with numbered pink tape, and there was a pretty clear switchbacky route upwards; when the slope slackened out we just climbed straight up. Eventually we reached a bit of a plateau and passed into first-growth forest, lots of white birch, which is called shirakaba in Japanese. From here on out we followed pink tags tied to the trees; every now and again we saw a red tin plaque nailed to a tree noting that we were on the boundary between the towns of Nakafurano and Biei. The way forward was pretty evident–it was clear to us that we were following some kind of trail.
We eventually came to another climb, switching back a little bit when we came to what looked suspiciously like a road. At the top of the climb was another flattish section before we climbed a short rise up to a wide ridgeline. The southern face of the ridgeline was pretty bare; a few young trees stuck up through the snow. We traveled along the north side of this open area before coming to the bottom of the last climb up to the summit, where we dug a hole in the snow and performed a compression test to check the snow for avalanches. The slope above was similarly bare and reasonably steep and I didn’t want to get into any trouble.
Snowpack was a little more than 2 meters deep, with maybe 15 cm of powder on top and a pretty well-consolidated 1.5 m layer of firm snow underneath. The bottom 30 cm or so was made up of bigger ice crystals, probably snow that melted early in the season and refroze at night. I was a little worried about it but it took some serious pounding on my shovel to get a column of snow to fail at the boundary between the 1.5-meter layer and the ice crystals beneath. When I got above the snow and jumped on it with my skis I couldn’t get it to break, so I figured we were safe.
We trudged on up the steep slope, making big switchbacks, until we reached the end of the open slope and headed into the forest again. We cut back along the south face of the ridge above us, losing the trail of the pink tape and ducking through a pretty tight forest. Soon the trees thinned, though, and we came back out onto the top of the ridgeline heading towards the summit. From here it was a pretty easy walk up the top of the ridge. The season’s prevailing winds must have been coming from the west because there was a huge cornice on our side, maybe 2.5 or 3 meters tall. Below the cornice the slope was pretty even so we left our gear to the side and took turns jumping off the cornice into the powder below, which was a ton of fun.
I took off my skins and skied back down, getting some decent speed at points. The big field above the avalanche test was pristine and the powder was deep and I got a taste of what they try to make you feel in ski films shot at Niseko, but the slope wasn’t particularly long and the fun was over pretty fast. Past here there were a good number of flats, and I wound up pushing myself along, which wasn’t fun. In a few places the trail climbed short rises and I had to take my skis off and trudge up the snowshoe path in ski boots, which was miserable. The second-growth forest had some fun tree skiing but the snow was crusty and thin and lumpy from where it had fallen off the trees. at the bottom of the second-growth slope, I decided to put the skins back on–they were a little wet and the glue wasn’t cooperating, but they got me where I was going–and skinned out.
If I were to do it again I’d probably take off the skins for the ski down to the bottom of the steep slope below the summit (that is, that big open ridge), then put the skins back on and skin out from there. The few places where the slope was steep enough for good skiing past there didn’t have great snow, and having to plod along on skis was tiresome and tough.
Back at the car I pulled off all my sweat-soaked stuff, changed into dry clothes, and headed back into Asahikawa for a well-earned soup curry dinner. It was awesome.
intersection of 581 & 759: 8:10 -> first climb: 8:40 -> avalanche test area: 10:42-11:07 -> summit: 11:44-12:02 -> avalanche test area: 12:09 -> bottom of the climb (put skins back on): 13:03 -> intersection of 581 & 759: 13:23
climbing time: 3 hours, 34 minutes / descending time: 1 hour, 21 minutes
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Okirika-yama (冲里河山)
A couple of weeks ago I had to drop Sam off at an English camp in Fukagawa, so I decided to take the afternoon to climb a nearby mountain called Okirika-yama (沖里河山, 802 m). It’s one I’ve driven past any number of times on the way to Sapporo, but I’ve never bothered to check it out. I had just gotten my skis and skins a couple weeks earlier so I was eager to try them out.
Okirika-yama is one peak of a three-peaked massif south of National Route 12 in Fukagawa–the other two peaks are Otoe-yama (音江山, 795 m) and Irumukeppu-yama (イルムケップ山, 864 m). Like Kitoushi-yama, I’m pretty sure that Okirika-yama’s slopes were, or are, the site of a ski hill called Fukagawa Ski Field (深川スキー場)–although with nearby Kamui Ski Links I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d gone out of business. I didn’t see any evidence of chairlifts or lift towers, but it was evident from signs along the snowy slope and newly-planted trees that in the summertime this area gets some traffic. I think there’s a road that climbs the ski hill called Irumukeppu Skyline (イルムケップスカイライン).
Anyway, in the winter there’s nowhere to leave your car, but Prefectural Route 79 (the road closest to the ski hill and the one that the summertime Irumukeppu Skyline branches off of) is a fairly deserted road in the wintertime, so I pulled my car as close up to the snowbanks as possible and left it there. If I went back, I would probably excavate a little ways down the Irumukeppu Skyline road and leave the car there. Leaving my car on the road was a mistake.
There was a pretty length approach to the hill itself; what was more surprising was that there were big snowcat tracks along the road. Hmm. The tracks were a little crusty, so I imagined that they had probably been made a day or two earlier.
The snowcat tracks actually continued all the way up the ski hill-road (what I imagine is the Irumukeppu Skyline), crisscrossing in switchbacks as they climbed. When I got the opportunity I left the Skyline and started climbing through the powdery fields. I ran into some old snowshoe tracks, probably from a week previous or so, as well as that snowshoer’s ski tracks back down; a little higher up I also came across a ton of snowmobile tracks, a lot fresher. Now and again I could actually hear the snowmobiles, but they were on one of the neighboring peaks and I never actually saw the snowmobilers themselves.
As I climbed the ski hill I found myself mounting a big ridge; the climb was long but it was never really difficult. Near the top of the ridge it shallowed out pretty substantially and I had to start pushing myself. It was evidently the top of the ski hill, so I followed the snowmobile tracks into the forest closer to the summit.
The ridge narrows considerably near the summit and I found myself back on the road, and back in the tracks of the snowcat. Which was pretty remarkable, because the ridge’s flat top could barely have been wider than the snowcat itself. Soon I came to the end of the road, where there were a few signs covered in blue tarp. Snowmobile tracks and footprints headed into the woods at the end of the road, so I followed those. It wasn’t 50 meters before I came to the steep cone of the summit. One of the snowmobilers ahead of me had climbed up, postholing up to his groin, so I elected to leave the skis on and switchback my way up. The cone itself was maybe 10 meters tall so it was pretty short work.
In the summer, the top of the mountain is capped by a little outlook platform, but in the winter it’s just a big cornice with the summit marker, a couple signs, and mounted binoculars sticking out of it. It was mostly clear and I got an amazing view over the huge Sorachi Plains below and back out towards Kamui Ski Links and Kamuikotan. On a clear day you’d probably be able to see down to the suburbs of Sapporo, looking south. I stopped for a little while and ate a Snickers, but it was pretty windy so I didn’t spend much time. I descended a bit, packed up my skins, and headed out.
The upper slopes of the mountain were pretty flat so I wound up pushing myself along for quite a bit, but when I got back to the open terrain of the ski hill it was great going. The snow wasn’t particularly deep but a lack of tracks–especially lower down, where the snowmobilers hadn’t been–made up for it. It wasn’t fast skiing by any means but it was good fun. I found myself back at the bottom of the ski hill before I knew it.
It was a bit of a pain skiing out along the snowcat’s tracks, especially since they climbed a couple of short hills and I didn’t have skins on anymore. It wasn’t so troublesome that I would have put the skins back on, but I was getting a pretty blister (new boots) and I just wanted to be back at the car.
I had been a little worried that my car had been towed or ticketed or something–I had, after all, left it on the side of the road–but after the little climb from the trailhead back up to the road, I found it still there, safe and sound.trailhead: 12:49 -> bottom of ski field: 13:07 -> summit: 14:23 -> bottom of ski field: 14:35 -> trailhead: 14:42
climbing time: 1 hour, 33 minutes / descending time: 18 minutes
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Kitoushi-yama (鬼斗牛山)
Sitting around on a Saturday afternoon with little to do, Sam and I decided to head out to Kitoushi-yama (鬼斗牛山, 379 m), a little mountain just north of Asahikawa that we had climbed earlier in the winter. I wanted to see if it was climbable in deeper snow, and I had my new skis and skins with me, so we decided to head over and check it out.
I had thought that Kitoushi-yama was a popular mountain for summer hiking and had considered that it might be locally popular in the winter, but what I didn’t know was that it was/is actually the site of a small ski hill called Higashi-Takasu Ski Field (東鷹栖スキー場). The ski hill sits in a big clear-cut triangular space on the western flanks of the mountain, but there doesn’t appear to be any lifts or lodge or, uh, the trappings of a regular ski hill. I think there might have been something there at some point, but now it’s just a big empty field.
Anyway, we got about halfway to the mountain before we realized that Sam had left her snowshoes behind, but she insisted that I go ahead. The road up to where we left the car last time hadn’t been plowed, so we drove up as close as we could–a little farm-looking place, with a curious pup leashed outside–and Sam dropped me off.
There are three main trails up the mountain, the most popular of which seems to be the “Steep Climb” trail (急登コース)–the same that Sam and I had climbed earlier in the winter. There’s another trail up the southern ridge of the mountain, and a third that climbs up the old ski hill and traverses up the northern ridge. There’s a fourth trail that starts at the same place as the first two and meets the ski hill trail at an overlook called Miharashi-dai (見晴台).
I returned to this trail and found it well worn-in. It looked like people had been climbing here earlier today–and without snowshoes! I couldn’t see any other ski marks, though. Which makes sense, now that I know that one of the trails climbs the ski hill. Whoops.
But so I started to make my way up the steep trail, skinning up alongside the worn-in footprints. The forest was quiet and the shadows were long and trees kept dumping their snow on me any time I brushed up against one. It was pretty tight between the trees but entirely manageable. As I got higher, the slope started to steepen, and it got harder and harder to get good grip with the skis, so I decided to make a bit of a traverse to the trail that climbs the southern ridge–a shallower, longer trail that makes a big loop to the south.
Turns out I was higher up than I thought–halfway across the traverse I looked up and I could see the summit marker maybe 15-20 meters above me. On snowshoes it would have been a pretty straightforward trek straight up with tons of toe crampon action but I decided to keep traversing and climbing. When I made it to the ridge it was just a short climb up a bit of a windblown hump to the summit.
Looks like I had been the first person up the southern ridge trail for a little while, but there was a wealth of footprints coming from the steep trail, the one I’d left. I spent a little time at the summit, took some pictures, and decided to head down.
Heading back down via the steep trail was probably not a super-advisable idea (on skis, anyway), because, true to form, it was pretty steep near the summit and real tight, lots of smaller growth sticking through the snow and getting in the way. After maybe 50 meters or so, it shallowed out and there was a bit of skiing to be done, although I kept having to stop and plan lines so I didn’t wind up wrapped around a tree. Lower down I was finally able to get up some speed as I rejoined the road, and then I was out and phoning Sam to come pick me up.
Trailhead: 15:06 -> summit: 15:41 -> back at trailhead: 15:52
climbing time: 35 minutes / descending time: 11 minutes
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Abandoned bus in a field
Hokkaido is full of mysteries. This fact itself isn’t a mystery–I don’t think there’s a soul alive who could catalogue the shuttered businesses, collapsed farmhouses, concrete shells, railless train stations, or empty fields littering the island. And maybe we don’t want anyone to–this, after all, is part of the allure of where we live. That feeling of being the last person awake at the end of the night, present where so many before you have left. Sure, that’s maybe over-poeticizing the thing. Whatever. When was the last time something was over-poeticized in your life?
But let me make a quick argument for you here: more mysterious than any shutter that never rolls up or roof that has fallen down is Hokkaido’s elusive (but ever-present) Abandoned Bus in a Field.Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed them. Watching you, silent forms in fields, some half-sunk in soft dirt, some aged beyond identification, missing windows, paint. Some with the destinations still displayed in the space above the windscreen, some with the bus company’s name or logo painted on the side. Some so old that the name is hand-painted. Some missing doors, some whose doors are rusted shut.
If you haven’t noticed them, then after reading this article, you will start noticing them. They’re everywhere. Unless you live in Sapporo. Then you’re shit outta luck, as they say.
I collect Abandoned Buses in Fields. I’ve found 37 so far, but I haven’t really been looking that hard. Just hard enough.
There are two main types of Abandoned Buses in Fields. The first is… less mysterious. They sit alongside farmhouses, or out in recently tilled fields, and the windows are stacked with tarps and deadwood and old furniture and car doors and bags of debris and stacks of whiteboards and used tires and rope, kilometers upon kilometers of rope, and glass buoys kilometers upon kilometers from the sea and all manner of garbage for which the cleverest DIYer couldn’t find a use. These are more aptly called “Repurposed Storage Units in a Field”. See, it doesn’t make sense to keep all your stuff in a barn when you own 100 acres and you can only fit so much, uh, farm stuff in the back of your Iseki tractor. So when the local bus company is updating their fleet, you buy their used bus, you drive it out into your field, you dispose of the seats (don’t ask me how), and you store farm equipment in it. It’s pretty smart, if you think about it: buses are watertight, tough, and huge on the inside. They make terrific shelters for stuff you need to want to keep out of the rain and wind. Once you’ve seen a few, you start to develop a bit of a sixth sense for them. You can tell when one is going to be nearby: the quality of farmhouse, the degree of countryside, even the weather plays a part. You slow the car, you start to take your eyes off the road, scan the fields. You know what to look for: the row of black rectangles in a white frame, maybe a red or a gold line marking the side, the windows and roof sticking up above the lip of a rice paddy.
The second kind of Abandoned Bus in a Field, however, begs questions. This is the Mysterious Abandoned Bus in a Field. It sits in ditches tens of kilometers from any structure. It sits in a tangle of bushes on an abandoned road, a Department of Transportation project that never got finished. It sits on a patch of concrete above National Route 273. It can’t be seen without leaving the road. It sits under the arms of a big tree in full bloom. I heard that there’s one near where I live, perched at the top of a narrow dirt road, over a cliff. The guy who found it has no idea how it got there–the road looked too narrow for the bus to navigate. Maybe the driver got stuck and had to leave the bus there. It’s still there today.
Here is one of the questions that the Mysterious Abandoned Bus in a Field asks: is this a Mysterious Abandoned Bus in a Field, or is this a Repurposed Storage Unit in a Field? Maybe there’s a tarp nearby, weighted down by a pile of broken cinderblocks. Maybe there’s a mountain of bald tires. Are the two connected? Does this belong to someone? Here is how you can tell. This is a trick I have learned so that I can tell Mysterious Abandoned Buses in Fields from Repurposes Storage Units in Fields: the Mysterious Abandoned Bus in a Field is always empty.
You can force the doors on Abandoned Buses in Fields. Unless they’re really badly rusted over, most of them will give with a little elbow grease. There’s usually no point in entering Repurposed Storage Units in Fields–these are someone’s property, even if it appears to be abandoned property. Don’t bother. The Mysterious Abandoned Bus in a Field’s doors will give with a jolt, then they’ll come gently. They made good rails and hinges in the 1970s and 80s, I guess. The inside will smell like moss and life. The ground will be soft but won’t give that much. Maybe the driver’s seat will be there. The seats in the back will be gone. The windows will be remarkably clear. The chrome will be remarkably shiny. There might be an aluminum luggage rack. You can stand up inside to your full height. The trees, the bushes, the tall grass will all seem closer from the inside than it looked from the outside. But the road will look a lot further away. If there were any noises outside–the trees swaying, a far-off car–you will not hear it. You might walk all the way to the back of the bus and look forward. Mysterious Abandoned Buses in Fields are always longer when you’re standing at the back, shorter when you’re standing at the front. You might feel like the bus in front of you, the big empty space, is actually full of air, which it is. Walking back to the front might feel like swimming. When you exit the bus, you might want answers–where this bus went, who put it here. I guess the thing about the Mysterious Abandoned Bus in a Field is that it doesn’t yield answers. It’s just empty.
Of course this maps very well onto Hokkaido as a whole–standing on the inside of this once-useful, now-empty thing; feeling that it’s full, but of what, you can’t tell. I don’t know that there’s any hallowed wisdom or poignant insight you can scrape off the insides of these buses, but if there is, I’d be happy to hear what you think. You can find all my Abandoned Buses in Fields if you search for the hashtag #abandonedbusinafield on Instagram.
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Abandoned home
Author's note, 14/09/23: This didn't actually happen to me. Or anyone, probably. I cobbled it together as part of an abortive write-what-you-know Nanowrimo from different bits I'd picked up around Hokkaido.
Previously: Beach to townSoon the fields give way to a tall stand of trees off to the right side of the road. Long, tall, old-looking things. Their trunks are slim and gray and give the appearance almost of stone, rather than wood. At this time of year, they’re almost totally leafless; a few bronze tatters dip and shimmer in the breeze. The rest of the leaves wetly paper the road and sidewalk. A car drives by and throws a few up in the air. The car is a Suzuki That’s. I’ve seen a few of these before and their name always makes me chuckle. I chuckle again here.
Within the stand of trees is a small hill on which stands an old, old house. The house looks askew and hunched, like an old human. The roof is metal, long narrow aluminum shingles overlaying each other. The shingles are painted that traditionally Japanese blue that skews towards teal, which I was told is called hanada. I look up at the roof and wonder if the color comes from some sort of treatment on the aluminum, or if it’s just a decorative thing. The roof has a very noticeable slump in the middle, like a saddle. Tall grass jostles up against the siding of the building, which looks like plaster framed with a dark, dark wood. Off to one side is a typical entrance, which the Japanese call genkan: a little gabled extension with wooden sliding doors into a little ground-level, unfloored room. The wooden doors have a couple of glass windows, as I make my way through the grass towards the front door, I can’t help but feel like the sliding doors’ glass is somehow more brittle, more dried out than regular glass. It’s caked with a thick layer of dust or dirt, which comes off crustily when I drag a finger across it. I try to peer in but it’s dark inside.
I look back towards the road—through the trees I’m not particularly visible, but I imagine my blue backpack sticks out somewhat. I shoulder it off and rest it in the grass. The grass is soft and a little wet. The trees above crackle against each other. Overhead the sky is slowly turning a bright, electric blue.
It’s unlikely, but I try to slide open the front door. It gives a centimeter or two but jams against the slouching doorframe. It’s easy to see that the wood has been warped and deformed, the runners on which the door slides all bent out of shape. The glass groans in its frames when I try to close the door again, return it the couple of centimeters it traveled. It finally yields and slams back closed with a huge noise, and I freeze and look behind me. There’s no one. A crow in one of the trees above me caws, and it sounds like, “Awa, awa, awa.”
I sidle along around the side of the genkan, past a power meter that has long since been disconnected. Its wires jut out from under the body of the thing. The plastic has some kind of mold growing on it, which honestly I hadn’t thought possible. Stuff growing on plastic. Ahead of me there’s a big sliding glass door in an aluminum frame, which has sort of popped out of the hole cut in the building, which is no longer a rectangle but a parallelogram. The aluminum sliding doors are sort of hanging off the front of the hole, and it looks pretty easy to swing them aside and gain entrance to the building. The aluminum feels plasticky and easily manipulable. It doesn’t ping like metal but clacks like brittle plastic. I peer inside but the darkness is thick. The grass is tall enough here that it’s unlikely that I could be seen from the road. My backpack is still resting in the grass. It almost looks like a small animal waiting for me.
I duck down and pull the sliding door and shimmy underneath and I find myself in what appears to be a living room. The floor is framed and wooden but you can tell at one point that there were tatami mats on it, by the way that the siding is raised and beveled. There’s a good amount of debris on the floor, mostly what looks like crumbled plaster. In one corner of the room there’s a big metal contraption, like a big beige cube. Rust is slowly eating it from one corner. There are knobs along one edge, but the labels have long been worn away. It looks like it could be an old washing machine, or maybe a really large microwave? Ovens aren’t particularly popular in this country. Near the machine, I see a fox skull, white and dried out and missing not a few teeth. Scattered around it are a number of tiny bones.
Not much is left of the ceiling; all of the wooden structure of the house is visible. I can actually see up to the underside of the roof. Long fingers of light are making their ways in between the cracks.
The smell is heavy and musty, the smell of your grandfather’s house. It’s what I imagine the 1970s smelled like. The smell of the insides of old books. The smells seems like a part of the air rather than just a quality of it. As if whatever is causing the smell is floating in the air, visible in the beams of light above as weighty little motes of dust or decay or mold or whatever it is. I’ll likely be sneezing for the rest of the day.
One side of the living room is lined in Japanese-style doors, a lattice of wood that probably used to be papered over. I can see through the lattice into another room, much brighter. The wall between the living room and this other room is also at a pretty serious angle, so I have to find another way around; through what once might have been a doorway (but I can’t be too sure), I find the dividing wall’s end. On the other side is that bright room, carpeted with a natty pinkish carpet. There’s a tremendous amount of detritus on the carpet, an amount you’d see only on vacuum commercials to demonstrate the might of a particular brand’s suction. One wall has these sort of recessed windows, like bay windows, with a high ledge for books or plants or decorative somethings. A couple of the windows are broken and the others are very dirty; they look out over the brushy tops of the long grass outside.
A room adjoining this one is still in a fair state. The tatami mats are actually still in place, alongside a number of other tatami mats stacked in a corner—the ones from the living room, I imagine. Against the rear wall there’s a metal desk. The drawers are empty. There’s a deep closet on the opposite wall; the sliding doors open with relative ease. Inside are a number of huge glass jars filled with… vegetables, maybe, in liquid? It looks like a huge pickling operation. The liquid in a lot of the jars is a deep red, like grenadine, which for some reason sort of weirds me out. There are also a good number of cardboard boxes filled with blank lined paper.
The next room was evidently the kitchen. There’s a row of low cupboards and a crusty metal sink with a couple of cracked dishes in the bottom. Also a considerable amount of animal shit on the floor, which I do my best not to step in. On the floor by a doorway there’s an overturned gas stove absolutely covered in rust. The doorway leads to a narrow stairway that appears to go up into the attic. I take a first couple of steps on the creaking stairs, then drop down to my hands and feet to try and spread out my weight. My nose comes level with the landing above and I see a stack of floor pillows but not much else. I sort of crawl backwards down the stairs and back into the kitchen.
Off the kitchen is a narrow hallway and a tiny annex with a recessed concrete floor, which I can only imagine was the bathroom at one point. There’s a bath cover, which is this plastic mat that can be rolled out to cover the bathtub so that the water stays warm; but there’s no sign of a bathtub anywhere. I duck back out and find myself back in the living room.
I hear a car drive by outside. It slows to a stop and I freeze, as if the driver won’t notice me if I’m not moving. I can’t see the car from where I am anyway, which means he can’t see me. The car accelerates and drives away.
It doesn’t occur to me once that this house could collapse and crush me. I don’t know why.
To be honest, I’m not even sure why I’m here, in this old house. I’m not looking for anything. In fact, I’m probably been in twenty houses like this before, all up and down the coasts—half smashed, with the roofs caving in, hug concrete things that looked like they were demolished on purpose, creaking barns still home to long dysfunctional farm equipment. I don’t take stuff—I’m an adherent to the idea of like, ‘take only photos, leave only footprints’, as hokey as that sounds. But that’s usually applied to nature and the ‘leave no trace’ movement, and here I am in someone’s 20-years-erstwhile home. There are cigarette butts on the floor. There’s a poster from 1989 with a figure skater in a garish pink costume. There’s an empty plastic bottle, like the ones from the beach, lying on the floor of the living room. Its cap is missing. This isn’t nature. So why do I feel like I have to leave this like I left it?
I make my way back to the living room and out, under the aluminum sliding doorframe. It sort of shudders and clacks when I release it, and for a moment I’m seized by this dread that it will come off its jammed hinges and fall into the grass. And almost certainly, after I’m gone, this winter or the next, it will. And the wood will rot, and the roof will collapse, and the plaster will crumble, and the whole house will return to the earth, until all that’s left are some plastic bottles and aluminum panels in the dirt, and then what’s the difference between this sliding door attached to the house and this sliding door sitting in the grass?
I peer around the side of the house. There’s a huge bush there that I don’t have the spirit to fight through. At the foot of the bush, I see a metal panel, though, and I tangle with the grass to get over to it. It’s a car, maybe from the 1960s or 70s. A tiny one. It says Subaru under the side-view mirror housing; there’s no mirror anymore. There’s still glass in the door—and you can tell by the way it reflects the light that it’s real glass, not this shatterproof stuff they have in cars nowadays. There’s no doorhandle anymore, though: just a rusty couple of holes where the handle was mounted. I lean in on the glass, testing my weight, and peer inside. There are no seats, just a bare floor filled with orange pine needles. I stand and try to haul up the hood. It’s tangled with grass. When I finally manage to lever it up, it turns out there’s no engine anymore. There’s a small bush growing there instead.
This intersection of humanity and nature—this, I think, is a part of my feeling. Watching nature take back from us, especially at a time when we’re taking so much from nature. I feel like I can’t articulate how I feel about it. It feels like seeing something you’re not meant to see. It feels like listening in on your rival’s phone calls. Watching your enemy succeed. Nature isn’t my enemy, I know that—but I’m a human, and we’re definitely not on the same side.
When I haul up my pack again, it feels heavier, somehow. I stand before the house, this artifact from the past, this totally ignored thing, everything that people thought was not valuable enough to take with them. I pull all the air that I can into my lungs, and the straps of the pack shift on my shoulders, and the hip belt bends with the pressure; and then I sigh out prodigiously, and the pack sort of clings and sags on me, so I pull everything a little bit tighter, and head back down the little slope to the road.
Archive
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2015
November 2015
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Beach to town
18Walking from the beach into town. Nanowrimo 2015.
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A rural Japanese elementary graduation
5A grade 6 graduation at Kaisei Elementary School.
2014
August 2014
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Week 104
14A visit to Tsuru-no-yu at Nyuto Onsen in Akita Prefecture. I sit in a very hot bath far longer than is considered normal.
July 2014
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Week 101
24Climbing Tomuraushi with Tony over two days and running out of water on what was maybe the best walk I've ever done.
2013
December 2013
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Week 66
20My first real trip out to Shiretoko, touring of the Five Lakes district in the late fall.
November 2013
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Week 65
20Climbing Yotei for the first time, alone in the early winter, and being absolutely floored by the beauty.
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Week 64
6Twenty-fourth tour round the sun and I'm still enamoured of the autumn.
October 2013
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Week 62
30Climbing Kogane-yama out west with Jordan, padding out the post with a bunch of rubbish about steep dropoffs
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Week 61
7Running 10 kilometres in Okoppe.
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Week 60
7Random stuff I overheard on The Bus in Honolulu.
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Week 59
7Driving over Ukishima-toge on the way back from Asahikawa to Takinoue
September 2013
August 2013
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Week 55
26Camping down south, at one of the welcome parties I think, coinciding with the Jigoku-matsuri in Noboribetsu.
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Week 54
19Driving home from Tony's house in the rain.
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