Chocolate Almonds and Yellow Sand
From Higashi Hakisaki to Une along the Kinki Nature Trail
A perfect early spring day, and as I left the station and turned left, ahead of me was a perfect cone of rock. If you were to make a cardboard model of a mountain, this is what it would look like. Left again, across the river, water rippling over a weir, then left again, to follow the river south towards where the path over the mountains westward lay.
Cherry blossom was faintly flowering on the hillsides. On the far side of the valley, eagles soared, spiralling up on the warming air. The first swallows were back from Indonesia, flitting and chirruping overhead, while underfoot on the riverbank road, tiny centipedes wriggled across the tarmac. The first heat haze of the year shimmered over the embankment.
I found the mountain path behind a shrine/temple combination and began the long climb through the pine-resin-scented forest. A group of elderly hikers coming the other way gossiped about my “slippers” (actually hiking sandals) as they left me behind. At the top, views over a distant Himeji, cones of mountains in the flatlands and a distant steelworks, all just about visible despite the “yellow sand” blowing in from the Gobi Desert.
The first butterflies were sunning themselves on pink-grey rocks, opening and closing their wings slowly. Time to fly — time to live. I nearly went the wrong way from the summit, on the map, the turn appeared to be a right angle, but in reality, it almost doubled back on itself. I was saved by a fellow hiker, relaxing in the sun at the top.
The path followed the mountain ridge in a long arc, first north, then west, before descending past a series of ponds, built to hold the mountain water back, and feed it regularly to the valley below. Pond skaters in their hundreeds skimmed across the warming lake surface.
I was already hungry. I hadn’t managed to get any food before leaving home, and there was no convenience store at the rural station, but there had been a vending machine. I had a bottle of water, but only the emergency chocolate almonds I had brought with me. These would probably have to last me all day, so I rationed myself to four.
Between two of the ponds, the path seemed to disappear, becoming merely a river course overgrown with ferns that I had to hack my way through with a trusty walking stick I had picked up earlier. It was the right path though, the pink ribbons dangling from trees here and there showed that. Remember the scene from Jurassic Park where the fat computer programmer guy tries to escape with the dinosaur embryos and gets attacked by the frilly-necked spitting dinosaur? Well, it was like climbing up that river, except there was no storm and rather then getting covered in dinosaur spit, I was covered in flakes of old leaf and fern.
Two more chocolate almonds.
Anyway, I made it to the next lake, to discover a diversionary path had been created, but somehow hadn’t been signposted from the other direction. No wonder it didn’t seem like anyone had been up that path for a while!
Past the ponds, I loped down a long grey track, lined with moss and littered with the black seed pods of the empress/foxglove tree. These seed pods were used by Chinese porcelain producers as packaging material to protect their wares from breakage during transportation. They’re soft and light, an organic version of polystyrene balls.
Two more chocolate almonds.
A bear! No, too small. A bear cub?! No, a Japanese badger, too late to take a photo, its brown bottom wiggled off into the undergrowth.
As I neared the valley floor, a chunk of skull lay like a warning next to a broken bridge. There was no way I was going to attempt the bridge, despite the convenient tree shoot that had shot across it. I stepped gingerly over the river on stones instead.
Two more chocolate almonds, not many left!
I was out in the valley, following the Yano River, past old houses with their irimoya roofs, some clearly abandoned. Clear of the forest trails, I could speed up, following the river as the valley broadened and collected other rivers.
My last three chocolate almonds, and the last of my water.
In the widening valley I could see the familiar blue-badge-like-sign of a Lawson’s convenience store. The chocolate almonds had done a great job, I didn’t feel too hungry, but two rounds of bread, one with a croquette inside, one with sweet mayonnaise, and I felt like a new man. I noticed that the cafe-style seating had been removed, only the desks remained, with a load of boxes shoved underneath them for storage. Possibly because people had been buying food, then eating in, but only paying the 8 percent sales tax rather than the 10 percent sales tax.
Near the station, Route Two (the old main road that runs along the Inland Sea coast all the way to Shimonoseki at the southern tip of Honshu) was being rebuilt, but it seemed like the budget had run out for this year, there was hardly any construction equipment and the road was clearly nowhere near finished. Around the station, there was a whole grid of half-finished roads, concrete drainage channel sides, but no tarmac, weeds growing everywhere.
Beautiful photos. That's a walk I'd like to try myself.
“They’re hiking slippers, I’ll have you know. Sheesh.”