{Shikoku Hachijūhachikasho Meguri}
HENRA (not a typo)
The last quarter of the road I teamed up with a young guy from Tokyo, I'll call him Kanji. He and I hit it off immediately when we met in a rest house near Matsuyama. We separated and then re-connected a week later and walked together for a week until temple 75. Right off the bat he told me himself that he was a latter day 'beat' and walked in the footsteps of Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg. I smiled at his naivete, but understood exactly what he meant. He said for him, the Henro was the last great Hobo trail. And I certainly understood his feeling. He and I were both in good shape and could sometimes walk 45 kms a day. While we both chanted sutras and had great respect for buddhism, and the Daishi himself, and both of us usually made a gesture towards temples or jizo we passed in the woods or on the road, that is a quick 'Arigatou Gozaimasu' with hands together and head-bowed, neither of us would call ourselves buddhists.

Kanji said we were 'Henra'. A word he devised to describe the kind of pilgrims he thought we were: Those seeking adventure, to meet people, to be on the road, sleeping outside, eyes open, and hungry for experience. HENRA don't put on the robes, and the conical hats, or in Kanji's case even carry a stick or get his book stamped, but are no less pure than the robed masses congregating around the temples. It didn't hurt that every night Kanji pulled out his home grown and indulged us both as we listened to cicadas, watched the stars, talked, giggled, laughed, scribbled in our respective journals, joked and formed a great camaraderie with each other over a short period of time.

I am not sure if I understand completely his concept of HENRA, or if I admit that I am HENRA, but I understand his conception of himself. For me the greatest joy was waking each day free and alive on the road. Feeling the wind. Drinking mountain water when I could. I lived outside, climbed mountains, swam in rivers, soaked in hot springs, surfed at OKIHAMA, watched sea turtle babies drag themselves en masse into the sea (all but 1 percent sure to perish in a year), met kind and honest people, opened myself to everything I encountered, and never for a moment took for granted that here I was in 2005, a 34 year old American, walking around in nature, over roads, on highways, and visiting temples in Japan, while on the other side of the earth there was turmoil, killing, war, and inhumanity.

It was at peaceful moments at 4:30 am, the sun rising, and cicadas still singing, in a mountain temple lodge, not a soul in sight, and there I was with a cup of tea, ecstatic at the day before me, wide open, unknown, and me free to indulge in it, safely and with no distractions. At those moments I felt great, indescribable peace. Call me sentimental or naive, but I felt it was a minor miracle that I was experiencing what I was in this proverbial day and age. A time when I don't even recognise anymore the country I left more than 8 years ago. When up is down, and unthinking, unfeeling, unintelligent oligarchs are solving the world's problems with bombs and guns, I never took for granted the joy and beauty I had the great honour of feeling while on the Henro Michi.

Which brings me to my next and maybe final point...
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