Badaud Dispatch 2: Come on pilgrim!

I haven't had a lot of spiritual experiences in my life. I love beautiful things and adventures, but I can count the times I've been actually overcome by an experience on one hand. For example, several years ago I and my gentleman-friend went to see the synchronous fireflies in Tennessee.  Standing in the dark and watching waves of light sweep over the hillside I was quite speechless, and while not a religious experience it was an awe inspiring and unforgettable one.

Yesterday I went up Mt Fuji and it was like that. 

 JUST like that! 

We left Hiyoshi at some ungodly hour and sat on a subway and dashed for a bus and sat on that in gridlock for ages. I brought a cubic foot of food and a lot of sweaters packed into a (small, civilian) messenger bag. I was also wearing brand new running shoes and got really lucky- ill-fitting shoes have always been my downfall, but these were fine (I wear two sizes larger in Japan than I do in vanity-sized America). Later, hikers and mountain staff looked at me with concern. 

Driving up through the foothills was extraordinary. The landscape folds and ripples and the beautifully designed roads flow through and over the hills without a perceptible change of elevation until suddenly you're looking down at the clouds. 

Bad bus photo, but you get the idea. 

Once at the foot of the trail (halfway up the mountain?) we ate butter smothered potatoes and took off. The nice lady in the Foreign Climbers Office told me that we had to set off RIGHT THEN or we wouldn't reach the hut we reserved for the night. So I ran off with three other impatient colleagues through the thick white mist (everyone made it eventually).

You could see about 30 feet ahead

The trail was quite crowded, mostly with tour groups shouting and ringing bells to keep in touch in the clouds. 

A well worn, heavily traveled path

And then we were suddenly above the clouds, looking down at them, in the almost unbearably clear air. 

Eagle View

This too

Walking up to meet the setting sun in a long trail of people of all ages and nationalities was amazing. I wasn't particularly tired and my bag felt weightless. The trail is so heavily traveled that the few places you need to scramble have deeply worn grooves in the rock from tens of thousands of boots. 

Meeting the sun halfway

And it's gone

As the air thinned I became first lightheaded, then giddy, then a little delirious. I heard voices of people I love who certainly weren't there. It wasn't scary (I have been in thin air before) but seemed almost necessary for the journey. And I was so astonished by the beauty all around that I couldn't concentrate on my own weakness. Also, two of my companions had gone a bit ahead and the hut reservation was in my name so I hurried for the last kilometer so they wouldn't have to wait too long in the increasingly frigid wind. 

We stayed in a mountain hut, which is a fairly primitive windowless box built into the hillside (the bathroom was modern and immaculate though). We wolfed the horrible (but hot) food and packed into a little curtained cubicle with half an inch of mattress and a foot of blankets. There were a bunch of angry cursing Europeans who objected to being cold and we stifled laughter and managed to sleep for a bit until they started cursing and hollering again at 2 in the morning and it was time to go. 

One thing I noticed was that the mountain staff gives out distance estimates of about twice the time it takes to actually do things. So we gave ourselves two hours to reach the summit in time for sunrise and it barely took one. I wish I'd had a decent camera with me to take pictures in the dark, because it was absolutely dreamlike. A long line of lights winding up the trail, most white, some red. Those who had enough breath sang. It was like something from a mythology book, a torchlit procession climbing to greet the sun. I was weak from the altitude and trying desperately not to overheat so I wouldn't freeze later (I was down to my t-shirt and still overheated and subsequently still froze). They had sold oxygen at the hut, but I thought 'dammit this is a damn pilgrimage and I'm not making it artificially easier dammit' so didn't get any. It was quite hard, but like with the previous night's hallucinations the difficulty seemed necessary. Then we passed the two stone lions and the white gateway and were at the top. And it was about 20 degrees (Fahrenheit) and there was no sign of a sun. So we huddled together like penguins and waited. 

Sun?

And waited...

 Penguins

Until suddenly....

Oh.

My fingers were too cold to take a lot of pictures so I just stood there and gaped. I staggered up to the crater rim and it was dyed the brightest blood red:

I would have thought this was enhanced if I hadn't taken it

And then we'd had just about enough freezing and ran down the wide path into the morning. 

Still dark to the north

As we got lower and warmer my strength came back I was filled with an extraordinary sense of well being. A bunch of (drunk?) European dudes skipped by waving their walking sticks and laughing and I found myself doing the same. It was nice to be able to breath again as we slid and scrambled down the loose red track. 

And the view was extraordinary

Still, as we neared the bottom I started to get really tired. Three hours of sleep and thin air followed by relentless (albeit beautiful) gravel did me in. 

Relentless gravel!

But we did make it down and I was glad to see trees and even gladder for coffee and food and chairs. 

Green, how I love you green!

We ate sweet doughy 'Fuji cakes' and dozed in the visitor's centre until the bus came to bring us back to (30 degrees warmer) Tokyo. Then I lay in the bathtub and ate green tea ice cream. 

I kept thinking about the (apocryphal?) Japanese proverb 'A wise man climbs Fujisan once. Only a fool climbs Fujisan twice.' and that's absolutely right. I won't do it again. But to walk up the track in the company of hundreds and to stand on the mountain's rim and watch the sun blasting the clouds into the brightest red, that was worth it. I won't forget it. 

And now I have to start classes? That's gonna cut into my adventure time! Waaaaaa.

--Isis