by Don George
When I pass her some coins to pay for my canned ice coffee, she waves them away. “I’m honored to have a foreign guest,” she says. “Thank you for visiting Shikoku. Have a safe journey!”
Threading my way through fish-pungent villages, I eventually reach the tip of Cape Ashizuri and stand on the lookout point where Kuniko, Nobuhisa, and I stood thirty-two years before. I gaze at the gleaming white lighthouse, the craggy coast, the cedar-covered mountains sliding into the sea. This is a picture I carried in my head and heart all those years—pristine, peaceful, offering a wideness of sight and soul that you never find in urban Japan. I call Kuniko and describe the scene.
“Yes,” she says, as if she’s known this all the time, “that’s why I was able to marry you. Shikoku opens up your mind and your heart like no other place in Japan can.”
That night I stay in a nearby inn with a sweeping view of rice fields, mountains, and one of the longest white-sand beaches in Japan—and an owner whose own mind and heart seem as expansive as the view.
“Welcome to Kaiyu Inn!” Mitsu Ohkada booms in English when I walk into the open-to-the-breezes lobby. He started the inn after years working at an international hotel chain in Bali, he tells me. “I love the slow pace and the tranquility here—and of course the nature. Do you know aoi kuni Shikoku?”
I do.
The next day, I’m white-knuckling along one-lane roads through the green, steeply sloping mountains of the Iya Valley. Villages are carved into occasional clearings on the mountainsides, and I pass farmers hoeing and digging, with occasional bushels of barley standing on hardscrabble plots. It’s late afternoon when I reach Chiiori, the renovated farmhouse-cum-inn where Kuniko’s younger brother, Fumiyaki, had urged me to stay.
Chiiori is a vision straight out of a Japanese storybook: a long, low wooden farmhouse crowned by a shaggy roof of two-foot-thick thatch.
“Irasshaimase! Welcome!” calls Paul Cato, the American resident manager, as he slides open the inn’s wooden doors. The interior of the house is exquisitely empty, one open room about forty feet long by twenty feet wide, all gleaming wooden floorboards, thick exposed wooden beams, rice paper lanterns, and rice paper screens. Stepping over the threshold is like stepping back in time.
“That’s actually true,” Cato says when I mention this feeling. “Chiiori is an actual 300-year-old farmhouse. Author Alex Kerr had fallen in love with traditional Japanese architecture and aesthetics, and his dream was to restore this place so that it resembled as closely as possible a typical Iya farmhouse of three centuries ago.
“It’s not just about the architecture; it’s the way of life, too. Look up,” Cato says. Instead of a ceiling, I can see all the way to the roof’s blackened rafters. “In the old days,” he explains, “tobacco was a primary crop. Because of the wet climate, the farmers would hang the leaves from the rafters to dry inside, over the smoking hearths. That’s why there’s no ceiling. They were ingenious in other ways, too.” He lifts a broad wooden floorboard to reveal a pile of stored potatoes. “Alex loved the farming customs and old-fashioned peace he found in Iya, and he wanted to preserve them. Volunteers have come from throughout Japan and around the world to live here, work the crops, and maintain the farmhouse, and local farmers teach the traditional techniques. So this truly is a piece of old Japan.”
One modern feature of Chiiori is excellent Wi-Fi, and I get an email from Kuniko. “We’re following your route,” she writes. “How is Iya and Chiiori? Fumiyaki says it’s the most peaceful place on Shikoku.”
As dusk shrouds the mountains, Cato and I slice and dice radishes, onions, cucumbers, carrots, potatoes, and pumpkins from Chiiori’s garden for a rich stew that we eat around the charcoal-fired hearth. Then I snuggle into thick futons under 300-year-old wooden beams and 25-year-old thatch. I tap out a sleepy email: “Please thank Fumiyaki for his great advice: Staying here is an immersion course in the relation between nature and man.”
The following afternoon, I arrive at Okuiya Niju Kazurabashi, or “double vine bridge.” Except for a lone ticket taker, the site is absolutely deserted. I descend a hundred steps into a primeval scene of thick foliage and floating clumps of mist. Two “wedded” bridges appear spectrally—each a set of intertwining vines stretched across a rushing river. The higher and longer bridge is traditionally known as the male; the lower, shorter one the female. Fog rises from the river and obscures the surrounding hills.
Of all the sights in Iya Valley—the mountains and temples and hot springs—this is the one other place Fumiyaki told me I had to go. “The bridge was said to be built by the Heike clan in the 12th century, when they fled from Kyoto after losing a civil war with the Genji clan,” he told me. “The Heike settled deep in the mountains of Iya, and they built these vine bridges for protection, because they could easily destroy them if the Genji ever approached. Only two vine bridge sites remain. The other one is touristy, but you can get a sense of old Shikoku at this one.”
A sudden wind sways the vine bridge, slick with the day’s rain. Tentatively I set a sandaled foot on the first vine-entwined wooden plank, wishing I’d brought better footwear. I shift my weight, take a deep breath, and set my other foot on the second plank. Swoop!
My sandal slips, and suddenly I’m sprawled on my rump and my foot is wedged between wooden planks. I try to wiggle it out, and the vines claw and cling, lodging it deeper. The woods, the mist, the ghosts of the Heike warriors, all close in on me.
“The people of Iya still believe that gods live in the mountains,” Fumiyaki had said, and now I understand why. I can hear them laughing in the trees.
Finally I find a way to detach my foot from my sandal, scratch and scrape my foot through the planks, and extricate my sandal from the bridge. But I can’t leave—how could I face Kuniko’s family? With the vines dancing and the wind creaking the boughs, I carefully place my re-sandaled foot and clutch the vine-looped handrails with both hands. Focus, focus. Slowly I step from plank to plank, the bridge bouncing and creaking. After a heart-pounding ten minutes, I jump triumphantly onto the other side. I think of Fumiyaki and raise a silent prayer to the mountain gods.
In the main hall at the Zentsuji temple complex, incense spirals into the air and monks intone a solemn chant while a half dozen elderly visitors bow and pray; outside, another young monk assiduously sweeps the dirt ground with a broom made of twigs. At one end of the complex, Japanese tourists led by a flag-wielding guide admire a soaring five-story pagoda; nearby, a quartet of meticulously coiffed women ooh and aah before a stupendous camphor tree that looks to be older than the temple itself.
Zentsuji is the birthplace of the beloved Buddhist scholar and high priest Kobo Daishi, who built the temple in the early 9th century. This is the place Kuniko’s father, Ojiichan, had said I should see. “To understand Shikoku,” Ojiichan said, “you have to understand the pilgrimage, which follows in the footsteps of Kobo Daishi. There are eighty-eight temples all around Shikoku in the circuit, and pilgrims—o-henro-san—walk from temple to temple to gain wisdom and purity. I remember when I was a little boy the pilgrims would approach our door—you could hear the ting-ting of the bells they carried—and my mother would tell me to bring them rice and oranges. That’s why we welcome strangers on Shikoku.”
A shop displaying books, beads, walking sticks, and other pilgrimage accoutrements entices me, and I lose all sense of time perusing a children’s picture book showing the life and legends of Kobo Daishi. When I emerge, pilgrims are everywhere, clad in identical conical bamboo hats and loose, immaculate white jackets and pants, all carrying straight, sturdy staffs. I approach one couple who look to be a father and daughter. Youthful energy radiates from the father’s time-lined face. When I ask them about the pilgrimage, the daughter reaches into a shoulder pouch and carefully lifts out a book with a cover of gold and red silk. “At every temple, the priest writes the name of the temple on a page and then stamps it with the temple’s stamp,” the father says. They turn t
he pages for me. “Every time I make the pilgrimage, my steps become lighter and my vision becomes clearer. I feel like I can do anything after I’ve finished the journey,” he says.
“Of course,” the daughter says, “this is only our 4th circuit. That o-henro-san there”—and she points to a wizened man draped in colorful sashes and dressed all in black—“is doing the route for the 333rd time!”
As I watch the pilgrims pray and pose for pictures, I realize that they are a benedictory presence on Shikoku. In their fervent, plodding path, they remind us to slow down and keep a higher spiritual purpose in mind. And I realize too the deep truth of Ojiichan’s words, that the tradition of hospitality, kindness, and openness on the island must trace its roots to the pilgrim’s own openhearted quest.
I tour the island for two more days, stopping to feel the texture of old straw-and-clay farmhouses, idling in serene fishing villages, bowing to pilgrims I pass. At a hot spring spa, a half dozen middle-aged women befriend me and insist on paying for my dinner. When I’m lost at a coastal intersection, a truck driver goes a half hour out of his way to deliver me to the right highway. At a roadside snack stand, the proprietress asks me if I’m doing the pilgrimage and when I tell her no, that I’m looking for the heart of Shikoku, she exclaims, “Then you’re a pilgrim, too!” and presents me with a strawberry shaved ice.
On the fifth day, I arrive back at Johen just as dusk is falling. The family is waiting for me with a feast of fresh-from-the-harbor katsuo sashimi and grilled aji, and fresh-from-the-garden mushrooms, tomatoes, and cucumbers.
As we sit on tatami mats around a low table, Obaachan fastens me with her bright eyes. “Well,” she says, “did you find the heart of Shikoku?”
“I did,” I say, and they all look at me expectantly. “But it’s not one particular place. I found it in farmers’ fields and fishermen’s villages, and in the pilgrims who give a sense of the sacred to daily life. And I found it over and over in everyday people who greeted me with a wide spirit and heartfelt hospitality.”
For a second I’m not sure if anyone has understood my mangled Japanese. Then they all nod and smile.
Ojiichan ceremoniously pours beer for everyone and raises his glass. “Don-san, it’s good to have you home. Kanpai!”
We all drain our glasses, then Obaachan raises hers again. “And I’m glad you missed the ditch this time!”
Home for the Holidays:
A Thanksgiving Pilgrimage to Connecticut
I have been going to my childhood home in Connecticut to spend Thanksgiving with my parents since the mid-2000s, when travel across country became too difficult for them. Before then, my family had visited Connecticut for a number of summer and Christmas vacations, and I had written numerous essays about these trips and the meaning of Connecticut for me. But this particular essay was especially poignant: I wrote it for a series on AOL Travel that was focused on the theme of going home for the holidays, and so it propelled me to assess and celebrate the meaning of my Connecticut pilgrimages within the larger context of home. Where was home for me now? What did “home” mean? Writing often helps me make sense of life, and sometimes it produces something even greater. In the process of writing this piece, I embraced family and friends, present and past, near and far, landscape, emotion, and memory, in a new and deeper way, and the interweaving threads of Connecticut, Thanksgiving, and home took on a completing clarity.
IN MY FAMILY, AS IN MANY FAMILIES around the U.S., Thanksgiving has always been a day to gather with loved ones and celebrate family and home. So when I moved from Connecticut and began to raise a family in California three decades ago, my parents would often cross the country to celebrate the holiday with us. Eight years ago, when this trip became too difficult for them, I reversed the route to celebrate with them in Connecticut.
My dad passed away two weeks before Thanksgiving in 2007, and since then, this journey has become an even more precious rite. One trip in particular, in 2011, crystallized the meaning of this pilgrimage for me.
That Thanksgiving was special for a couple of reasons. My daughter, Jenny, had been studying in graduate school on Long Island and had been able to join my mom and me for the previous two holidays. But she would be graduating in June and moving back to California, so this would be her last East Coast Thanksgiving, at least for a while. In addition, my best friend from childhood, Philip Porter, had invited us all to join his family’s celebration.
Jenny picked me up at the airport in New York the day before Thanksgiving, and as we drove into the rolling hills of west-central Connecticut, I felt like a puzzle piece clicking naturally into place. I marveled at how deeply the landscape—forests and ponds and round town greens, high-steepled churches and white clapboard houses with manicured lawns and sheltering trees—had become a part of me.
I had grown up in just such a setting in Middlebury, and when we moved my mom and dad to an assisted-living facility in 2007, we found a similarly situated place in neighboring Southbury. That afternoon, as Mom and Jenny admired the woods and pond outside her new home, I discovered a passage I’d written in my journal twenty Thanksgivings before:
This is not the tourist’s New England of blazing fall foliage. It’s the native’s New England of stark brown branches tinged with the barest tips of red against a pewter sky. A cold, dry wind slices through the trees. The grass emanates a shaggy, melancholy gray-green. The sun casts a threadbare shawl over the bony branches in the last light of day, and the sky streaks at sunset with icy rose and purple tatters like some wind-torn medieval banner. Darkness falls at 4:00 p.m.
And yet somehow it exhilarates me. Mom and Dad and I take long walks through these winter-tinged afternoons, and the longer we look, the more we find a profoundly moving beauty in that stark bareness, an amazing range of colors in those grays and browns.
Jenny and my mom began to relive summer visits to Middlebury. Jenny remembered how Grandma and Grandpa would toss Frisbees around our basketball court-sized backyard for her and her brother, Jeremy, to run after. Mom recalled the picnics they’d impetuously concoct on the weathered picnic table under the massive oak tree—plopping fresh-shucked corn into boiling water as Jenny and Jeremy raced down to the bee-buzzing raspberry bushes, returning breathless with overflowing baskets just as the tuna salad sandwiches, corn, and lemonade appeared. I remembered how Dad would pretend to chase his giggling grandkids and how his eyes would glitter as he watched them fly.
Mom laughingly reminded me of how, when I was young, we were all supposed to help with Thanksgiving dinner, but somehow she always ended up creating and choreographing the cranberry sauce and stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, peas, gravy, crisp-skinned turkey, and pumpkin pie while my brother and I joined the throng of neighborhood kids playing football at the Porters’ house up the street.
The Porters didn’t live up the street anymore, but when we arrived at Phil’s house the next day, we found that his mom and dad were there, as were his brother and sister and their clans. It was a time-travel tableau and a boisterous, bustling, laugh-filled family feast just as Thanksgivings should be, with many a childhood misadventure related.
“Remember,” Phil’s dad guffawed at one point, “the time the boys fell through the ice into the swimming pool and thought they were going to drown?”
“Oh, yes!” my mom exclaimed, her voice skipping with delight. “When they came dripping back to our house, they dumped half your pool into our kitchen, right in the middle of our holiday party!”
Later that night, as we drove Mom home, her face was glowing. “What a perfect Thanksgiving!” she said. “I haven’t laughed that much in years,”
The following day, Jenny drove us to Middlebury. Our former neighbors had recently moved and their house was for sale, so we parked in their driveway and gazed at our old house. After a while, Mom urged Jenny and me to wander into the woods while she waited in the car.
I hadn’t been back there in a decade, and I wondered what tricks m
emory might have played. But soon we came upon the mysterious rectangular stone foundations that had seemed like ancient ruins to a child’s mind. Then the rotting boards and wire mesh of a chicken coop appeared, and I told Jenny how the battered door with the fading skull and crossbones—“Look, it’s still here!”—had convinced me pirates once lived there. We stepped over streams and toppled trunks, and I talked about how I used to love to watch the yellow-green buds unfolding like secret messages in spring and how I’d thrash through the crackling leaf-carpets of fall. I told her about bounding rabbits and spindly-legged deer, about the beavers we were convinced were there but never saw and about the dreams that took root in that seemingly endless expanse of rock and tree.
When we got back and told Mom about our journey, her eyes glistened. “When you were little, we used to go for walks in those woods,” she said. “You’d call them adventures and you’d say, ‘Can we go on an adventure now?’ Sometimes we’d see foxes or deer and sometimes we’d just listen to the wind in the trees. I loved that.”
We sat in stillness in the deepening dusk.
In a sense, nothing extraordinary happened that Thanksgiving. But in another sense, something deep and abiding was revealed to me. I understood the fuller meaning of home. Home is a physical structure. It is the people who lived and live in that structure. And it is the memories that were born there and that we carry with us, wherever we go. Home is the house and the woods and the touch football games, the Porters and the picnics and the treacherous pool. Home is my wife and kids and my mom and dad and all the celebrations we shared—and share still.
And I realized that this is what I’m honoring each Thanksgiving when I make my Connecticut pilgrimage: I’m giving thanks for the home that I carry in my head and in my heart, that roots me when I teeter, lifts me when I tire, connects me to all my earthly adventures past and present and to come, the home that embraces me—and the whole world I cherish—in the bare boughs of love.