So much for “I won’t need repellent this early in the year.”
Three itchy, sweat-soaked hours later, I emerged from the forest and followed the trail across a highland meadow filled with brilliant pink azaleas. There, I caught my first glimpse of the forested summit rising high above me.
Far too high, given how far I thought I’d come.
I collapsed on a nearby log and checked the map. I was 45 minutes behind the “standard hiking time” from the trailhead to the meadow and still several kilometers from the mountaintop. At that pace, I couldn’t reach the summit and descend in time to catch the 4 p.m. bus back to the train, but since I’d planned to be off the mountain by four o’clock, I hadn’t noticed whether or not there was a later bus that day.
I stared at the summit as I weighed my options.
I’d planned to hike the mountain in a loop, returning to the bus by a different trail, and I didn’t know how long that trail would take. The Daibosatsu trailhead was almost a 90-minute drive from the city of Enzan, where I had to catch the train. I had a mobile phone, but didn’t think my Japanese was good enough to explain my situation to a taxi company if I missed the final bus—assuming a taxi would even come to the mountain to pick me up.
If you give up and go back now, you’ll make the bus.
The Enormous Winged Biting Things whined around my head. The sound they made reminded me of Mount Misen.
I had not sold my house, closed my business, and moved to Japan to make another downhill walk of shame through a gauntlet of Enormous Winged Biting Things.
I stood up and followed the trail toward the summit.
An hour later, I was higher on the mountain but still hiking through an endless forest, besieged by Biting Things, and even more convinced that I would miss the final bus and end up stranded overnight. My legs hurt. I felt stabbing pains in my chest along my surgical scars. Every time I tried to stop and rest, the Biting Things zoomed in.
I hadn’t seen another hiker on the trail, and worried about what would happen if I didn’t have the strength to reach the summit. I had long since given up on the four o’clock bus; I simply hoped I could reach the top in the next 40 minutes—if not, I would have to give up and turn around to ensure I returned to the trailhead by dark.
Thirty minutes later—almost five hours to the minute after I began the climb—I stopped at the bottom of yet another rocky slope and thought I heard voices through the trees. I hurried upward, hoping against hope that I had reached the top.
As I crested the rise, I saw the summit marker and hikers picnicking among the trees. Overwhelming joy rose in my chest. I made an Enormous-Winged-Biting-Thing-line (trust me, they fly much straighter than bees) to the marker, where I encountered a trio of men in their 60s who had just arrived from the opposite direction. They seemed surprised to see a foreigner on the summit and were delighted to hear I was climbing the hyakumeizan.
They asked how many I had climbed so far.
“Two.”
They found this answer hilarious—as did I—and yet I felt a genuine sense of achievement too. Seven weeks after finishing chemotherapy, I had climbed two mountains—more than I had climbed in the 46 years I’d lived before.
I’d planned to stop for lunch on the summit, but when I tried, the Biting Things declared all-out war, so I started down the far side of the mountain with a sandwich in my hand.
The trail, though steep, was far less rocky than the one I used on the ascent. The sky grew overcast, the temperature dropped to a comfortable level, and I increased my pace. I began to suspect I might even catch the four o’clock bus.
Halfway down the mountain, a two-lane asphalt road bisected the trail. On the far side of the road, a pair of trails diverged; each one led down the mountain, but in different directions.
I couldn’t decide which one to take, and I had no time to double back if I chose poorly.
I swatted Biting Things with one hand as I used the other to open the GPS app on my mobile phone. It didn’t help me choose a trail but did reveal that the curving asphalt road continued all the way down to the base of the mountain. Walking on the road would add an extra four kilometers (about two miles) to my hike but guaranteed I’d eventually reach the bus stop.
I decided to take the road.
Five minutes later, it began to rain.
I stopped to stretch a yellow plastic rain cover over Blue, feeling proud that I’d remembered to bring it with me. I had no jacket, but it wasn’t cold and the rain felt good on my sweaty skin.
A half hour later, it was clear I wouldn’t make the bus at 4 p.m. My back and hips were throbbing. Every impact of my boots felt like a hammer on the soles of my aching feet. I was drenched in a foul combination of sweat and rain, and besieged by Enormous Winged Biting Things that followed me like bloodhounds on the trail of a wanted criminal. I killed them by the dozens, but their numbers only seemed to grow.
They even tried to crawl inside my ears.
I wanted to cry, but crying wouldn’t help. Instead, I pushed myself as hard as my pain tolerance allowed. An hour later, I reached the trailhead bus stop—just four minutes before the final bus of the day pulled in.
I had made it, and I felt proud of myself for persevering, although I wished I hadn’t wasted so much of the afternoon worrying. In my distress, I had even forgotten to look for Mount Fuji at the summit.
By the time I fell into bed that night, I had walked 24 kilometers—a personal record. I felt no closer to overcoming fear, but believed I would make true progress when I undertook my next big challenge: back-to-back hikes in the Tōhōku region, north of Tokyo.
Chapter 6
Hope for the Best,
GORE-TEX for the Worst
May 31 to June 1, 2018
On the morning of May 31, I finally met with the immigration lawyer and signed the paperwork for my second attempt at a visa—this time, in the “cultural activities” category. That afternoon, I boarded a shinkansen for the three-hour and 20-minute, 577-kilometer ride to Aomori City on the northern tip of Honshu (Japan’s largest major island, which is also home to Tokyo and Kyoto).
I could barely contain my excitement over my first trip to the Tōhōku region. I couldn’t wait to see the mountains, taste the regional specialties, and add more summit pins to my collection (which currently numbered two).
The morning after I arrived, I went to the visitor center at Aomori Station to buy a round-trip “Skyline bus” ticket to Mount Iwaki (岩木山), a 1,625-meter stratovolcano whose yawning summit crater measures two kilometers in diameter (making the mountain broader than it is tall).
The woman behind the counter greeted my request with concern. “Iwaki-san? But it might rain!”
I, too, had seen the low, gray clouds, but my plans did not allow for rain delays. I had adopted a philosophy of “hope for the best and Gore-Tex for the worst.” Besides, Mount Iwaki had a “sightseeing lift” (a repurposed skiing chairlift) that carried visitors almost to the top.
What harm could a little rain do?
After my desire to visit the mountain persisted through three choruses of “it might rain,” the clerk sold me the bus pass—but she looked at me like a doctor watching a critical patient leave the hospital against medical advice.
When the Skyline bus left Aomori, I was the only person on it. I tried to persuade myself that this was not cause for concern. For once, my inner critic did not disagree—but only because it was too busy calling me out for