Yours truly meets a friend to the end.
I saw him coming down the trail as I was heading up to #60 Yokomineji, one of the highest of the many mountain temples of Shikoku. A tall white dude with dark hair and a massive backpack, he seemed to be an experienced trekker, and the fact that he was heading down the mountain as I was heading up means that he spent the night on the top of the mountain. Like many foreigners he greeted me with the customary Konnichiwa, but I surprised him by answering with a thoroughly American "Wassup!" That started a conversation that, after the normal getting to know you crap, eventually led to a discussion of how Thor serving breakfast to a bunch of normal human beings was a sign that he had learned the true meaning of being a king, and was now worthy to wield the mighty hammer Mjolnir. Clearly, we spoke the same language. However, as we were moving in opposite directions, I doubted that I would catch up to him, so we said our farewells and made a vague plan to meet up later.
That happened about an hour and a half later. I had left my backpack down at the inn and was moving up and down the trail with the dexterity and quickness of a billy goat, and I caught up to the guy about 2/3 of the way down the mountain. We continued our conversation, and over the course of the next 4 temples I explained the life story of Kobo Daishi, the quirks of Shingon Buddhism, and a crash course on Japanese history. I was a little surprised that someone with the commitment to walk 1200km in rural Japan didn't know some of this stuff; I mean, doesn't everyone know the 13 patron buddhas and boddhisatvas of some bizarre Buddhist splinter sect? In any case, Barnaby, as he called himself, was basically using me as a living Wikipedia, and I was happy to dump my stores of knowledge unto his waiting ears. Even I was surprised at how much I remembered. At the end of the day we parted ways again, again with a vague plan to meet up around temple #67 on Sunday evening.
It wouldn't be until temple #71 on the rainy afternoon of June 8th that we would meet for the third and final time. There wouldn't be another opportunity to split up, because at this point I made the informal decision to adopt the guy as my permanent travel partner. This isn't as significant as it sounds, because at this point I was only about 5 days away from being done with the pilgrimage, but it was still a big deal for me. For much of my life I have struggled with social anxiety and a phenomenon that I would like to scientifically dub "Deer in the Headlights Conversation Syndrome" where I have no idea what the hell to say to people. I made a conscious decision to let my guard down a bit, risk the awkwardness of not quite knowing what to say sometimes, and make Barnaby a huge part of the final leg of my pilgrimage story. It turned out to be the best decision of the trip.
But it didn't seem that way at first! I prefer to get moving before the sun rises, while Barnaby sleeps in past 7 most days. Most mornings I would do this passive aggressive thing of like marching around his tent shaking the jingle bell on my staff and making subtle hints to get moving. "Sun's gettin' higher! They said it would be hot today." Crap like that. He would eventually get the message and we would get moving. Eventually I turned the tables on him and started asking Him the tough questions. What is the rivalry like between Australia and New Zealand? What the hell is Vegemite? When are you guys gonna make that one Men At Work song the national anthem? He took my weird questions in stride, and I learned some funny stuff. They call a pharmacist a chemist! Rugby is popular in Northern Australia but not the South! They call cigarettes a word that is now totally unacceptable in the Bay Area! It was all quite illuminating.
But far from just being an amusing travel partner, Barnaby egged me on and helped me out on some of the most difficult days of the entire pilgrimage. Whether it was a strained ligament or a heavy heart, he was there with encouraging words or some weird Australian muscle cream that made the burden a little lighter. But it wouldn't be until the final day of the pilgrimage, the day we made it to temple #88, that Barnaby became not a reason, but THE reason that I was able to finish the quest standing strong, despite enduring both emotional and physical wounds that threatened my ability not only to complete the pilgrimage, but to believe in it as a source of healing and peace.
That story will begin soon in a series of articles called. . .The Final Days.
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