Do I want to go hiking bright and early on a Sunday morning? Umm, I’d rather sleep in and have a leisurely morning... but when do I ever get asked for a hike you know? The plan was to have a nice mellow climb up Mt. Kompira a few hours, break for a picnic lunch, and end up in the charming rural village of Ohara where we would check out an omatsuri (festival) happening. So we had visions of pita sandwiches and made some hummus from scratch the night before.
Our plans were a rough sketch to begin with. There was a lot of guesstimation goin on. I think this is the bridge where we park? At the bottom of the mountain, busted out the Xeroxed map. It somehow got wet in the backpack and was a tye-dyed tattered mess. The hiking route printed on the paper was basically a triangle with squiggly lines threading through it. But...onward on the trail. I think this is the trail? It’s kind of a trail? Oh well, Onward! And this is how it went. But the path got less and less obvious through the trees, the terrain got crumblier, slipperier, steeper. Onward! We’ll get there somehow… some of us said. We looked at the triangle with the squiggle, and assumed some things that led us to assume other things. We kept on until walking became more like tiptoeing and then rock-climbing. And how funny, how the situation was playing out like a movie. Here we are, many personalities with many opinions in the woods, map slowly disintegrating, no cellphone reception.
In the end, we turned back and decended down. We were hungry, and sat in a grassy clearing, and munched up some wholesome food. We took the main road to Ohara. The festival was cancelled due to fear of the pig flu.
If our goal was to stay according to plan: climb the mountain and watch a festival, we failed miserably. But actually our goal was to hang out with one another, share some food, get some exercise, and be outside in nature, and so: Mission Accomplished.
