Fuji Revisited

Well, hey kids. What's new with you.

So, yeah. A little over a month ago I kind of climbed a mountain. It was kind of a big deal. It was kind of beautiful. I'm happy I did it.

BUT! And in the words of my dear friend Anne, "However. [Begin new paragraph.] However, however, however."

It was hell. I was most definitely not prepared. By the time we made our stop for the night, I was soaked through with rain and had just feet from the station had an asthma attack. Seriously, children. Who waits until they're done with five hours of climbing to have their asthma attack?

I chalk it up to lack of atmosphere. Maybe it was altitude sickness. Maybe the cold, damp, rocky mountainess of it all got to me and my frustration threw my mental game enough to make my breathing irregular. Maybe. Or maybe asthma just sucks. Could be. I'll always wonder and kick myself. Anyway.

The thirty-some of us climbed onto and under the big wooden platform in our station and into futons for the night. Four people between each pillar. (Read: snug. But not uncomfy. Not among friends anyway.) And I, like everyone else, woke (not that I ever really slept) an hour and a half later to quickly eat and run back out the door, clothes still wet. But I only made it a hundred feet up slope before realizing my breathing just wasn't happening. I was still freaked out from the incident a few hours before, and I turned back for Stop 8.

Major regrets here.

Days before they weren't letting climbers past Stop 8, the snow was too thick on the ground. So as far as I'm concerned I climbed the mountain. But I missed the sunrise. This sunrise:




Can you imagine? Hence regrets. No other reason.

The kids started filtering back down the mountain at around 6. It was the chosen meeting place before making serious descent. Not everyone had made it when we were kicked out at 7. I think it became rather obvious that we weren't there to give them business.

Going up was a mental battle. It was hard. Going down was painful and boring. We took an alternate route, an access road. Switch backs and red pebbly volcanic soil the whole way down. It only took Anne and I 2 hours to do, but two hours of unstable feet and sliding gets old. I could still feel the ground coming out from beneath me almost 12 hours later in Kyoto.

I don't know that I can actually describe what Fuji felt like. There's a sense of exposure. No security. The mountain could eat you. And what's more your cell phone doesn't work, so it's not like you could do anything about it. There's no fast way down. Just bodily fatigue and trudging. I would never climb that thing again. No one on my trip said they would. But there's something addictive about that feeling. I'd never been impacted by the danger of nature before. It's very cliche (almost to the point of not mentioning) but somewhere on the periphery I could sense my own mortality. In sum, was very much nature's bitch.

Just a couple hours after we all got down and on the bus we were in a restaurant eating udon and waiting our turn in the sento. They had like four different baths. Unfortunately, the cuffs of my pants carried Fuji with them, and I made a mess in the changing room. It was nice to get the mountain out of our hair, anyway. Even if we did have to do it in front of 40+ people who hadn't climbed the tallest mountain in Japan earlier that day.