Posted by Lu Barnham on March 12, 2010 03:21 p.m.
Although Ehime’s first temples were in the countryside, I knew the 44th and 45th were in the mountains, and secretly dreaded the day I would have to reach them. Cheekily, when the time came, the heavens opened and I was soaking and pruned by the time I reached the traditional Japanese inn in remote Kuma Kogen. It was a miracle the owner accepted me as a guest, as I stood in the lobby drenched with foaming shoes. I had been covering my sore feet in liberal amounts of antiseptic for days, and the effect of the rain on my footwear was like a bubble bath. She took one look at me - the eccentric foreigner - and took pity, ushering me in and running a hot bath.
Although I met lots of pilgrims, and the people of Shikoku were friendly to me, there were many hours when I was alone. I’ve always been happy with my own company, but to walk for entire days meeting only snakes and fat, singing cicadas that flew out of the bushes and ricocheted off my henro-hat, became a little lonely. A real and unexpected comfort was the spiritual company I kept. It is said that the saint Kobo Daishi travels alongside the pilgrim, embodied in the wooden staff, so the pilgrim is never alone. When the paths were steep, or overgrown, I thought about him and about the thousands of others who had walked on this same path.
At the temples, too, the statues and figures that had once seemed so unrecognizable became familiar. There were the Bodhisattvas, such as Jizo, protector of children and travellers, and Kannon, the Goddess of mercy. I came to recognize the various different manifestations of the Buddha, and the fierce Nio guardians in the temple gateways became a reassuring sight rather than an intimidating one. I was more comfortable than ever in the temple environment, paying my respects and asking the priests to inscribe my nokyo-cho (stamp book) with the temple calligraphy in thick, black ink, the smell of which, combined with incense, will stay with me forever.
Perhaps it was this sense of serenity that led to my desire to sleep out at one of the temples. Temple 66, Unpenji, is the highest and arguably the hardest to reach on the 88 temple circuit. It is nicknamed ‘The Temple of Hovering Clouds’, as it sits on top of a mountain, but somehow I did not manage to guess exactly how cold I would be as night fell. I had huffed and puffed up the steep path to the temple, and had obtained permission from the temple officials to sleep out. By nine at night, the compound was deserted but for shrieking night-time animals, and a cold mist crept in among the trees. I was stretched out on a bench close to a collection of terrifying, life sized statues, and in the light from the temple phone booth, I could see a large spider building a web.
I have a fear of spiders and walking in Japan was forcing that fear to soften. In the woods I had seen big fat ones with long legs, thick as licorice straws. In the towns and countryside, chunky ones with yellow stripes and felty bodies were everywhere. As autumn approached, a new type appeared – my least favorite – spindly, with mean eyes and grumpy personalities. They built their webs right across woodland paths and bounced up and down threateningly when I approached, flashing their long, fang-like mandibles and making me shiver.
On this particular evening, I couldn’t care less about the arachnid. I was wearing every item of clothing I was carrying, cursing the day I decided to ditch my sleeping bag. Gone was the summer humidity. I shivered all night, as fresh water crabs scuttled about beneath the bench. Eerily, the temple bells rang, even as late as three in the morning. I have never raced down a mountain so quickly. It was barley light and the mist filled the creepy wooded paths, making them like grey-green tunnels, in which I could see no more than 3 metres ahead and behind me. Half way down, I realized I had entered Kagawa, the final prefecture of the pilgrimage. The sun came up and world was bright and warm again. I glanced down and realized I was wearing 6 t-shirts and 2 pairs of trousers. I wondered if the pilgrimage was making me slightly crazy, or simply highlighting the fact that I had always been so.