It took us five days to complete the Shikoku no Michi. From Marugame we traipsed through the suburbs of Sakaide to Temples 78 to 79, before turning into the mountains. From Kokubunji to Ichinomiyaji, Temples 80 to 83, the henro trail climbed through mountains and then descended to a coastal plain and the city of Takamatsu. It was a good walk. Jun was, as always, late to get moving in the mornings, but he was on his best behaviour The weather was sunny and warm. The ryokans we found each night were clean and cheerful. I slept well. And I ate well, consuming sashimi.

And when I wasn't eating or sleeping, I walked, just walked, disappearing into the rhythm of footfalls and the steady tapping of my walking stick. My body walked while my mind wandered. I was as close as I have ever come to what James Carse, an American scholar of religion, calls "the mysticism of ordinary experience." There was no transcendent insight, no breath-taking ecstasy. Those final days on the pilgrim road provided the mysticism of the mundane.

After a night in a hotel on the outskirts of Takamatsu, Tanaka-san and I hiked to Yashimaji, Temple 84, leaving Shuji and Jun to follow. It's a lovely temple, sprawling across a mountaintop plateau overlooking the Seto-Nai-Kai, the Inland Sea. On a clear day you can see the main Japanese island of Honshu. But my favourite object was Kasho's cherry tree, near the temple gate. It was one of seven cherry trees planted by Kasho Hanzaemon Matsudaria, a Takamatsu nobleman, in 1665 as consolation in his old age. Six of the trees eventually died. But one gnarled, moss-covered specimen remains. Just before he died, Kasho wrote a poem:

When the cherry trees are in full bloom

And someone passes and asks their name,

Tell them they are Kasho's cherry trees.

Not a bad memorial, I thought, hoping Kasho's spirit would be pleased I'd paused to remember him.

Tanaka-san didn't want to strain his ankle more than necessary that day, especially since the following day -- our last on the pilgrimage trail -- was going to be hard. He decided to take the cable car, or ropeway, as the Japanese call it, down the mountain and catch a taxi to Temple 85 and then a train to Sanuki, where we had rooms booked. After Tanaka-san was gone I waited awhile for Shuji and Jun, but when they didn't show up I walked to Yakuriji, Temple 85, on my own.

It took three hours to hike the eight kilometers to the temple. I would have done it faster but I kept needing to find shelter from the rains that came down in short, hard bursts. One time I sheltered under the eaves of a stone mason's shop, surrounded by dozens of statues of Buddha, Jizo and Kannon. The statues were lined up in such a way that they seemed to be staring at me. I had the oddest feeling that I was being invited to stand still until I turned into a statue, too. I left when the rain stopped, of course, but not before placing an orange at the feet of a Jizo figurine. I wasn't sure if I was saying thanks or sending my regrets at having to decline the invitation.

The sky cleared by the time I reached Temple 85. Afterward I hiked south along Highway 145 toward Shidoji, Temple 86, in sunshine and cool breezes. The pavement steamed in the sun. The wind shook the trees, sprinkling me with the rain I had earlier avoided. I had a pleasant bento lunch at a reservoir just before the intersection of Highway 11, sitting on a log watching five turtles sunbathing on another log a few feet from shore. I caught myself laughing at the pleasure of turtles as luncheon companions.

I reached Shidoji shortly after 4. The grounds were pocked with shallow puddles. The wooden walls of the hondo and daishido were dark with age, their roofs showing the gaps of missing tiles. Weeds grew in the eaves. I was reminded of a country store cast aside by patrons in favour of a new strip mall. Yet I liked the place, particularly the rock-and-sand garden that dates to the 15th century. After I got my nokyo-cho stamped, I sat on a bench beneath a copse of maples, watching two children chasing pigeons.

A line from Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, popped into my head: "It is the accidental and insignificant things in life which are significant." Buddhism makes a similar claim: The most profound spiritual experience is to fully grasp the immensity of the everyday. Authentic spiritual insight perceives the extraordinary in the ordinary. This notion is captured in a Zen Buddhist saying: "When you sweep the floor, just sweep; when you eat, just eat; when you walk, just walk." Watching children pursue pigeons they could never catch, it occurred to me that I understood the Zen exhortation for the first time.

Oddly, each of us ended up walking alone on our last day on the Shikoku no Michi. We left the Ryokan Ishiya in Shido together just after 7 a.m. It was cool and overcast, perfect walking weather. But we were soon strung out along the road as we settled into our particular rhythm of walking.

The hike to Nagaoji, Temple 87, was boring. The path paralleled Highway 3 for the first five kilometres and there wasn't much to see except passing cars and trucks. The longer hike -- 18 kilometres -- to Okuboji, Temple 88, was much better. Five kilometres beyond the town of Nagao, just before Maeyama Dam, the pilgrim route turned off the road and ran along the edge of a reservoir below the dam until it entered the forests of Mount Nyotai. I strolled through the cedar forest. Sunlight splashed through gaps in the trees, falling like paint splotches on the leaf-padded paths. The damp earth was pungent. A rush of water gurgled alongside the trail. Here and there it wound through copses of bamboo. I was careful to duck under the rain-jeweled cobwebs that spanned the narrower portions of the trail. Butterflies looped around my head.

I stopped for lunch at a trailside shrine surrounded by sakura, or cherry trees. I ate at a wobbly picnic table patchy with moss and speckled with pink petals. I even had luncheon companions. A line of ants trooped across the tabletop. I shredded pieces of onigiri and laid out kernels of rice for them. A lizard, black with silver stripes, poked its head over the edge of the tabletop. I watched silently as he snatched a larger piece of the rice ball and disappeared.

A wind blew through the trees. Petals from the cherry trees rained down. Plucking blossoms from my hair, the lines of a haiku popped into my head. I pulled my notebook from my bag and wrote my first poem in more than 30 years, following the five-seven-five syllable pattern of hokku no hakai:

Wind plucks the blossoms

from Nyotai's cherry trees.

Spring snow on henro.

Haiku, I remembered from my long ago classes, attempts to capture moments of intense awareness of the world. My poem certainly wasn't up there with Santoka's verse, much less Basho's, but the juxtaposition of "spring" and "snow" was a reasonable metaphor for the moment's mood. I thought I would show Shuji my attempt at haiku later. Maybe it would persuade him to show me what he'd written.

I put away the notebook, cleared the table and shouldered my pack. I left my last onigiri at the foot of the shrine's Jizo statue, thanking him for the poem. If the god didn't want the rice ball, maybe the lizard would.

Three hours later, after a hard climb up a steep rock face, I made a knee-jarring descent to Okuboji, the Temple of Completion. Rounding the last curve on the path, the grey-slate rooftops of the prayer halls appeared through the trees and I heard the gong of a temple bell. I stopped to listen, flooded by the memory of myself ringing the shoro bell after that first hard climb to Shosanji, Temple 12. It seemed a long time ago. A few minutes later, at 3:07 p.m. -- 54 days after beginning my pilgrimage -- I emerged from the forest to follow a flagstone walkway past a line of Kobo Daishi statues and into the temple courtyard.

Okuboji, founded in 717, sits in a green hollow on Mount Nyotai. The temple halls are set in a line against the mountainside, their swooping grey roofs giving them the appearance of being an extension of the mountain. The trees around the courtyard are thick with o-mikuji, the knotted pieces of paper containing wishes for good fortune that pilgrims tie to branches. The trees looked like they were covered with snow. And everywhere there are statues of Jizo. I spotted Tanaka-san sitting on a bench next to a statue. He wasn't wearing his conical pilgrim's hat and it struck me that he looked like Jizo with glasses. He had reached the temple an hour earlier.

I did my last pilgrim rituals with extra diligence. I scrubbed my hands at the cistern. I rang the bell in the shoro to announce my presence to the gods. I lit candles and incense at the hondo and daishido. I chanted the Hannya Shingyo, the Heart Sutra. I dropped extra large donations in the offertory bins. And then I went to the temple office to get the final stamp in my nokyo-cho. Outside again, I flipped through the brocade-covered book, skimming the calligraphic symbols for the 88 temples of Shikoku, oddly surprised I'd collected all of them.

According to tradition, pilgrims leave their walking sticks -- the symbol of Kobo Daishi -- at the temple to be burned in a special ceremony. But I was attached to my scarred stick. It was shorter by a couple of inches since I acquired it, but the pine shaft had become part of me, an extension of my arm, a brace for my legs, a prod for snakes, a companion. I decided Kobo Daishi might like a visit to Canada. Maybe, someday, I would bring him back to Japan.

Shuji and Jun arrived a half-hour later. When they finished their rituals we posed for pictures with each other and then walked down the road to Yasokubo Minshuku, where we had rooms. I think we all felt a sense of anti-climax -- Is that all there is? -- but we still celebrated the completion of our journey with a marvellous meal: melt-in-your mouth sashimi, skewers of chicken yakatori and himono, or grilled mackerel, so tender that the flesh lifted off the bone with a tug of the chopsticks.

It was a cheerful meal. Jun was laughing and chatty, wanting to know the English names for North American mammals. Tanaka-san told stories about working in China. Shuji was mostly quiet, but he looked pleased -- and relieved. It struck me that I'd been extraordinarily blessed in having them as companions on my pilgrimage, even Jun.

It seems the feeling was reciprocated. Shuji said he had phoned his wife to tell her they had finished the pilgrimage. "My wife is most grateful for you being a good friend to Jun."

I acknowledged the compliment although I didn't think I deserved it, considering how many times I had been angry at Jun.

But then Shuji sprung a surprise. "My wife asks that you honour our family by staying at our home when you come to Tokyo. This is Tanaka-san's wish, too," he said.

Foreigners are rarely invited to the home of a Japanese, or so I understood, unless they are good friends. This reluctance is not because the Japanese feel superior. Rather, they do not want to be humiliated should you find their homes substandard. So, to be invited to a Japanese home is both an honour and an indication of their regard.

"I would be most happy to visit your homes," I said, bowing to both men. I was never sure I was responding with the proper politeness, but the Japanese will forgive slip-ups in etiquette on the part of a foreigner if they feel the effort is sincere. Since Shuji and Tanaka-san were grinning -- and Jun was filling my glass -- I assumed I had acquitted myself properly.

Later, climbing the stairs to our rooms, I asked Shuji how he felt. He nodded solemnly. "I am most happy."

I was happy for him.

The pilgrim habit of rising early was well embedded. I was up and dressed by 6 a.m. But then I didn't know what to do. Breakfast wasn't for another hour. I felt disoriented at not having to walk. I decided to go to the temple. The morning was crisp. My breath hovered in the air. I found a vending machine and bought a can of coffee and took it into the temple courtyard.

Priests in their blue work clothes swept the courtyard, their twig brooms leaving swooping scratch-patterns in the damp ground. I sat on a bench, the sun warm on my face and legs. Birdsong drifted from the forested cliffs above the temples. Water dripped from the cistern, loud in the stillness of the morning. I sipped my coffee slowly, savouring the sweet, creamy taste.

I lingered after the coffee was finished. As long as I stayed at the temple I was inside the magic circle of pilgrimage. I knew that when I left the enchantment would begin to fade. My mind flipped through images of the last eight weeks: trails through bamboo forests, mountain vistas, quiet temples, bibbed statues. I remembered the waterfall at Koonji Temple and knew I would often return in memory to the place where I had disappeared. I thought of other pilgrims, corporeal or otherwise: Harumi Nakatsuji, the nurse who'd given me a salve for my blistered feet, the nun, Miko Kamino, who gave me a ride in a rainstorm and taught me the Hannya Shingyo, Tamotsu Hasegawa, the engineer with whom I had shared a goma fire ceremony honouring our dead fathers, Basho, who had been a ghostly companion. And what about Jizo? Had the god not been a faithful guide? I would no longer be looking for his red-capped figure around the next bend, no longer sharing my lunch with turtles and lizards. All too soon I would be back in the quotidian world where wonder and enchantment have long been sacrificed to efficiency and mechanization.

A henro staggered down the walkway into the courtyard. He stopped to lean on his walking stick -- just as I had the previous day -- and survey the temple grounds. He noticed me and bowed. I returned the bow, and watched as he performed the rituals. When he went into the temple office I offered a final prayer at the daishido, thanking Kobo Daishi for his gifts, and then walked back to the hotel.

We caught the 9:15 bus to Nagao. In 30 minutes we covered a distance that had taken me seven hours the day before. In Nagao, we caught a commuter train to Takamatsu, where we made our goodbyes in the cavernous lobby of the main railway station. Tanaka-san was taking the Shinkansen train to Tokyo, while Shuji and Jun were returning to Imabari to spend at few days with Jun's grandmother. I caught the 12:47 train to Tokushima City, where I checked into a western-style room at the Clement Hotel. It was strange to sleep in a bed again.

The next morning, I took a commuter train to the village of Bando, on the outskirts of Tokushima, and walked the two kilometres from the train station to Ryozanji, Temple 1. I had registered at the temple office as a walking henro at the beginning of my pilgrimage. According to tradition, my pilgrimage was not complete until I reported back to Temple 1 and showed the priests the 88 temple stamps in my nokyo-cho.

I found my name in the register where I had written it nearly two months earlier. I tried to remember what I felt like then. I scrawled my name again. Maybe it was my imagination, but even though it was the same name, the two signatures looked different.

Then I caught a train back to Tokushima. My Shikoku pilgrimage was done.

Only it wasn't. And considering what happened later, it never will be.

I spent my last week in Japan trying to pretend I was still a pilgrim. I followed tradition and visited Mount Koya, where Kobo Daishi founded the Shingon Buddhist sect in 816 AD and where the esoteric sect still has its headquarters. I can endorse the judgment of one guidebook author, Ed Readicker-Henderson, who says that if you have only one day to spend in Japan, spend it at Koyasan. Set in the rolling eastern mountains south of Osaka, it is beautiful. Too beautiful. The temples and monasteries, dozens of them, are immaculate. The okunoin, a necropolis with more than 200,000 graves that surrounds Kobo Daishi's mausoleum, was, well, impressive. The Buddhist saint, who died in 835 AD, is considered to be in a state of perpetual meditation, waiting for the end of time some five billion years hence (according to Buddhist calculations) when all those who have not attained enlightenment will do so. Standing in front of the saint's crypt I could not help but think that if his spirit was anywhere, it was hoofing it up some mountainside on Shikoku.

It was the same in Hiroshima and Kyoto. The temples were splendid, but when I tried to recite the Hannya Shingyo at Ryoanji, the famous Zen Buddhist temple in Kyoto, the endlessly repeated announcements on the loudspeakers destroyed any pretense of the temple as a place of spiritual repose. In Hiroshima, I devoted an afternoon to touring the atomic bomb horrors in the Peace Memorial Museum before fleeing to Shukkeien Garden with its twisting trails, miniature mountains, tiny rice fields and carp-filled ponds where I could at least imagine I was still on the pilgrim road.

Tokyo was an assault on the senses, like landing on an alien planet dedicated to making noise. I found a quiet hotel near Ueno Park, where I spent a day walking. Two days before I was due to fly home, I visited Shuji and his wife, Ikuko, and then, the next day, Tanaka-san and his wife, Kazuko, bringing small gifts as Japanese custom requires.

I was treated with great hospitality and generosity in both homes. At Shuji's, I went for a walk with him, Jun and his youngest son, Makoto, an autistic young man who insisted on holding my hand. Ikuko-san prepared a lovely salmon dinner. Afterward, Shuji and I sat on the tatamis in the living room with a bottle of shochu. I noticed he had already placed pictures of our pilgrim family in the household shrine on the mantle. Jun and Makoto were in their rooms, presumably playing the CDs I bought them. Shuji kept glancing at Ikuko as she bustled around the kitchen. She kept smiling at us.

"I am thanking you, Sibley-san," Shuji said, after we'd pretty much drained the bottle. He had tears in his eyes. "Ikuko-san, she tells me Makoto was smiling today for the first time in a month. I am thanking you for this."

Tanaka-san told me the next day, while I was staying with him and his wife, that things had been tense in Shuji's household after Ikuko learned that Jun had attacked his father. She attributed Jun's willingness to complete the pilgrimage to my presence. My willingness to visit their home despite the family's situation was regarded as a good omen. And now, it seems, my presence had had a positive affect on Makoto. It all baffled me since I knew I was being accorded qualities I most often failed to live up to.

I spent my last day in Japan with Tanaka-san and his wife, Kazuko-san. It was a fun day. They took me to Hakone National Park where we rode the Tozan Railway up Mount Sounzan to see the steaming volcanic vents and admire Mount Fuji in the distance. In the evening, after another meal of everything I had come to enjoy in Japanese cuisine, Tanaka-san and I spent the evening talking over the bottle of Scotch I had given him. Mostly about Shuji and Jun, of course.

I reminded him that when we first met he told he was walking the Shikoku no Michi to fill "an emptiness in his heart." "Is your heart filled now?"

Tanaka-san looked at me in his Jizo-like way, thinking for a moment. His eyes dropped to the half-filled glass in his hand. He looked at me, extending the glass. I knew my Japanese etiquette. I picked up the bottle and topped up the glass. Then we laughed.

In the morning, Tanaka-san took me to the local station where I caught a train to Narita Airport. To my surprise, Shuji and Jun showed up to say goodbye. It got rather emotional. Shuji seemed sorry to see me go. I said something about wanting to walk the Shikoku no Michi again. Shuji said: "You must remain henro in your heart."

It is common at the end of pilgrimage, when you lose the daily rhythms of walking as you make the transition back to your normal life, to feel a sense of letdown. After having grown used to walking eight hours a day the sudden cessation of movement is a shock to the body. This shift in physiological circumstances produces psychological consequences: depression and restlessness. Which is why I was grateful to hear from Shuji and Tanaka-san. Judging from our

e-mail exchanges, they too had post-pilgrimage blues.

In August, three months after I got home, a letter and a package of pictures arrived from Shuji. "Thank you for your kindness and encouragement in Shikoku. Now I am on another 'henro' with my family." Another came in September: Shuji said he was ill, but not too bad. "I miss our time as henro. I hope to go to Shikoku again."

I also heard from Tanaka-san. He was taking English lessons: "I have started to refresh my English conversation because I felt insufficient through our talks during the Shikoku walk. I hope to be improved when I meet you next time." He and his wife were planning a trip to Europe.

Then, in late November, I got another package from Shuji. It was a set of 33 haiku he had written during the pilgrimage. There was also a letter. After I had the poems translated, I was surprised at the emotional similarity in our respective pilgrimages and mine, how we responded to the same objects -- birds, trees, Jizo -- at least judging by the imagery in the letter and haiku.

"In March we left Tokushima while the cherry blossoms were in bloom and embarked on the Shikoku pilgrimage. In May, when the fresh leaves began to appear on the cherry blossom trees, we finished the pilgrimage at last, thanks to the encouragement of the bush warblers, the stone Jizo statues and the kindness of our companions."

I had a few favourite poems:

Passing by

a bowing Jizo in the field

on the pilgrim's way.

Or this one:

A bush warbler

welcomes us

at the mountain pass.

Shuji had been paying attention, deep in the moment. His last poem, written after we reached Temple 88, made me laugh. I visualized the dining room where we had our final pilgrimage meal:

The beer tastes good

after completing the hike

to Okuboji Temple.

I wasn't smiling when I received the next letter in December. It came from a niece of Shuji's who spoke English. "I am not sure where to begin," she wrote. "My mother told me that we got a phone call from one of our relatives to notify us that Uncle Shuji had killed Jun and then taken his own life."

Somehow, and I don't know why, I wasn't shocked. Sorrowful, yes. Sickened, yes. Butthe tragedy seemed to bring Shuji's pilgrimage into focus. It was as if I was finally seeing what had been there all the time but I'd been too blind, too lost to my own pilgrimage, to recognize, or admit. In Buddhist tradition, a pilgrimage can be a task you undertake as an act of expiation before death, an attempt to cleanse yourself in hopes of being reborn without all the bad karma of previous lives. And, it is not uncommon to hear of Japanese parents killing their children in what is known as muri-shinju. You can usually find in Japan's local and national press "at least one or two cases of muri-shinji reported each day," says one scholar who has studied the phenomenon.

I wrote back to the niece, expressing my sorrow at what had happened, asking her to extend my condolences to Ikuko-san. And I asked for more details. The niece responded: It seems that a few months after the pilgrimage, Jun became increasingly violent, attacking both Makoto and his mother. Shuji had to use sleeping pills at night to get Jun to sleep. One night, while Ikuko-san was away from the house, Shuji drugged Jun into a stupor and then smothered him. Then he hanged himself, leaving a message for Ikuko-san: "I don't regret having married such a great woman. I cherish every moment ... I am sorry for being such a bad father."

I tried to imagine what Shuji might have felt, the sense of being caught in an ever tightening vise with no prospect of release, the fear that he could not leave his wife and youngest son alone with his eldest son. He must have felt that he was being squeezed into madness, choking on his own powerlessness. Was there no way out, no relatives available, no institutions where he could find help?

In January, Tanaka-san, wrote: "Shuji-san is gone. I cannot believe that." And I got a final letter from the niece. Ikuko-san had placed Makoto in some institution while she went to stay with her mother on Shikoku. "Ikuko-san wanted me to tell you that she and her family are so grateful to have the chance to meet you. She said that Jun respected you a lot and his behaviour changed somewhat after he came back from the henro. Ikuko-san spoke of how Jun always thought of you and the things you taught him. He would think about you whenever he felt like lashing out in order to stop himself."

Obviously, I told myself, I didn't try hard enough, or teach him well enough. I kept wondering if there was something I could have done, some extra effort I could have made to reach Jun, some magical mantra that might have prevented the horror.

I took a few days off work in January and flew to Victoria. It was as close as I could get to Japan. It was also where I could visit my younger self. I haunt the University of Victoria campus, checking out addresses where I'd once lived, stalking my ghostly self through once-familiar streets. I used one day to walk myself into exhaustion, hiking from my downtown hotel to Cadboro Bay. It took me several hours. I acquired a few blisters.

On my last day in Victoria, I drove out to Point-No-Point near Sooke and sat on the cliffs overlooking Juan de Fuca Strait, thinking about Shikoku. I remembered the beach in Japan where I had remembered an earlier visit to Point-No-Point. It seemed a strange thing to have reached an age where I had memories of my own remembrances. I remembered Shuji's last words to me -- "You must keep your henro heart."

Looking down on the breaking waves, I tried to imagine what the pilgrimage had meant to Shuji. Was he preparing himself for death all along, trying to cut the karmic cord? Buddhists believe that until we attain enlightenment we are stuck on a cycle of transmigration, revolving through various worlds and spiritual realms. Our fate in the next life, whether we are reborn as human or animal or dwell in hell, depends on our behaviour in this life. When we die our souls exist for a time in a state between death and the new life to come. This suspended state lasts for seven weeks, during which the gods judge the soul to determine the realm where it will be reborn. Family and friends are supposed to hold memorial services during this period, beseeching the Jusan-butsu, the saviour gods who help the dead, to intervene on behalf of the deceased. Shuji and Jun died in mid-December; it was now the end of January, almost 49 days later. Time to be reborn.

I walked down to the shoreline intending to recite the Heart Sutra for Shuji and Jun. Only I couldn't remember the words. So I took Shuji's haiku from my jacket pocket and, facing west toward Japan, recited my friend's poems to the pounding waves.

Maybe the gods heard me over the din and gave Shuji and Jun a better fate in the next life.

Robert Sibley, a senior writer for the Citizen, can be reached at rsibley@thecitizen.canwest.com.

THE WAY OF SHIKOKU

Five years ago, Citizen writer Robert Sibley walked the 800-kilometre Camino de Santiago, one of the oldest pilgrimages in Christianity. Last spring, he set out on Japan's ancient Buddhist pilgrimage -- the 1,400-km Shikoku no Michi.

This is the concluding episode in the series.