The Broken Hearts Honeymoon

by Lucy Dickens

  To distract myself, I look through Thomas Day’s Instagram page, which is dedicated to his travel photography. He must have been to the US recently, to a snow-capped mountain, because he has all these icy-blue close-ups of vistas capped with setting and rising suns.

  Just checked out your recent photos – they’re gorgeous! I tap to him in a private message. Eco Adventure will want to hire you as their photographer in a second!

  He responds quickly. You just made my morning! Or evening. Where are you now?

  At a national park in the Japanese Alps, I’m off hiking tomorrow. What are you doing?

  I am fixing my parents’ garage door. So just as glamorous, thank you very much.

  I smile at that. Where were the snow photos taken?

  Colorado – have you been?

  No, but I want to now.

  As he was typing his reply, I imagined him for a second, standing in the spring sunshine outside his parents’ house, maybe on a cul-de-sac, wearing jeans and a T-shirt with bare arms, a little sweaty from the manual labour. I wonder how accurate that was, and then his reply comes in.

  It’s so amazing there – so quiet. I love snowboarding but nobody I know does, so I sometimes just go on my own and I barely speak to anyone for a week, but it’s great. I mean, you know how it is, you love travelling too.

  I do. I hesitate. I’ve wondered whether to mention the next thing to him, in case it diluted my own chances, but he threw me a bone back at the recruitment event by talking to me when nobody else was, so I can’t not tell him about the job. Did you see that Adv. Aw. are recruiting for a junior travel writer?

  I saw that – you’re going to apply, right? Your videos would be perfect for it.

  That’s nice of him to say. I was thinking about it … are you?

  No, he writes without pausing. I love photography but am pants at videography, and besides, my goal is to become a photographer for Eco Adventure mag, so I don’t want to lose that foot in the door, even if I’ll be living off dried pasta for a year!

  Now that’s out of the way, we talk a little more into the evening, until I remember he is supposed to be fixing his parents’ garage door and let him go. Lying back I close my eyes with a smile on my face. It was nice chatting with someone who shares my love of exploring the world. I guess that’s what my life could be like every day …

  I spread the contents of my day pack out on the grass, checking I’ve got everything I need one last time before handing over my suitcase to storage, giving it a night off from hanging out with me. Snacks, water, my first-aid kit, poncho, a lovely sensible fleece, spare snacks, a whistle I picked up at the camping store, my power bank to charge my phone, spare undies, cash, toothbrush and emergency extra snacks.

  ‘I think I’m good to go,’ I say to myself, and put it all back inside the bag. I look up at the sky, which is overcast but with brightly lit-from-behind clouds and only a faint mist dampening the air. Probably better that it’s like this than sunshine beating down on me …

  Because …

  Today I’m doing six hours of hiking, from the village of Kamikochi to my overnight accommodation in Karasawa Hyutte, which sits in the basin of the Hida Mountains in the Northern Japanese Alps at a little over 2,300m above sea level. I’m staying the night in a mountain hut, which makes me feel very Cheryl Strayed and like a proper hiker, even if I am wearing gym leggings from H&M, thick ankle socks and slightly battered trainers. Then I come back down tomorrow. Like a hero.

  It’s early, but most of the tents near mine have their flaps open and an array of Gore-Tex-clad hikers of all shapes and ages popping in and out of them, getting themselves ready for the day. This village does seem to be quite the hub, be it for families looking for gentle riverside wanders to show their kids a little spring nature, or for the serious multi-dayers, already with a thin layer of mud and sweat covering their belongings, who are up stretching and ready to take on the next peak.

  I say a goodbye to my rented tent, which I’ll see again in a couple of days, roll my shoulders, take a gulp of water and then refill it, do a couple of squats because I see some other people doing them, and then head off down the road through the village to the start of my trail.

  Plod, plod, plod. Feeling pretty amped up with vitality right now.

  I wonder when I should have my first snack, just to keep myself going …

  Soon, I leave the tarmac of the road and crunch off onto a gravel path that takes me beside a shallow river, a sliver of blue topaz that ripples under the watch of the green mountains. A lot of people are snapping photos at this early stage, so I join in, not wanting to be the idiot who didn’t get the money shot during her time in the alps. I also take a little video.

  ‘As you can see,’ I narrate, holding the camera steady in front of me, the view on the river. ‘It’s pretty quiet here today, at this hour at least. Some tourists and trekkers are here on the beginning of the trail with me, but I read that when the autumn leaves are out, or during the summer holidays, it can be completely packed. So springtime feels like a good time to come, as long as the snow has melted enough.’

  I switch the view to myself briefly. ‘Hello, by the way, good morning, ohayo. Slept like a log in my tent last night, if the log was on a white-water rafting trip. But that’s okay because I think the first four hours or so of today is fairly flat and then tonight I’m in my mountain hut where I get dinner cooked for me – yummyyyyy – and I’m sure I’ll be shattered from a day of walking.’

  My face is getting freckly! I thought I’d developed a tint of a tan after Ishigaki and seeing myself on camera just now I noticed for the first time a dusting of walnut-coloured sprinkles across my nose and cheeks. It’s quite nice this being outdoors lark!

  I settle into a pace for the first couple of hours, walking along flat, well-maintained pathways and over wooden bridges, past mossy, reflective ponds, and my mind wanders about as if on its own walk. I think over the past two and a half weeks of my time in Japan and how it hasn’t quite gone according to plan, but what has in my life over the last two months? And I feel happy right now, so perhaps an imperfect plan isn’t the worst thing in the world. If I hadn’t looked in on that forest-bathing talk at my Nagano hotel I would never have been here right now. If I hadn’t left the tour, I may never have found myself solo in a karaoke bar somewhere in late-night Hiroshima, kissing a boy I’ll never see again. If I hadn’t taken the plunge and come on my honeymoon without a honey, I wouldn’t have seen and done everything that’s lead me to hiking beside this river with the sound of birds above my head and the crunch of the gravel below my feet and the taste of the peanut butter granola bar I just ate in my mouth (oops).

  I’m smiling to myself as I follow the pathway and then notice a group of female Japanese hikers stopped up ahead, pointing and laughing. Not at me, I hope. I stride closer until one of them waves her hands at me to stop and then points upwards into one of the trees.

  ‘Monkey!’ I almost shout in surprise, and said monkey flicks his head around to look at me, all pink-faced and hairy. And that’s just me! Haaaa, ba-boom.

  Anyway, the monkey, who is also the pink-faced and ash-blond hairy kind, looks very similar to my friends from the hot springs a couple of days back in Nagano. He stares at me for a second and I shrink my head into my neck and stay very still, mid-stride, so as not to be the stupid, peace-disturbing tourist any more.

  Eventually, monkey looks away and carries on grooming his knees, and I watch him for a bit. I take my phone back out to take a sneaky bit of footage before sliding my way past him and the others and carrying on my way.

  I’m nearing the four-hour mark and just about ready for a change of pace and some bathing in the forest when I see the pathway starts to take me on an ascent upwards. Although my legs are tiring, that’s a good sign, because if I’m already heading up I’ll probably get there soon; I must have been hiking at a good rate.

  There are a lot less people around now. The families haven’t come this f
ar and the more serious hikers left a little earlier than me, but I still pass by someone maybe every twenty minutes or so.

  Ooo, now this is what I’m talking about. I climb up a series of large grey rocks, moss spilling over the top like icing on a Christmas pudding. The trees are getting denser and the air cooler the higher I go and the further we get from the valley and the river. In fact, the direct sunlight and the breeze isn’t making it through the leaves, so there’s a stillness about the place which could be creepy but isn’t.

  I keep climbing upwards, and it’s a big change from the path below. This isn’t just a gentle incline, I’m needing to grip my fingers around the tree bark to pull me up, and my thigh muscles are beginning to ask me what the hell I think I’m doing.

  When I reach a bit of a clearing, where the trees still huddle together and everything around me is green, but I’m no longer confined to a tunnel-like pathway between rocks, I take a moment to breathe.

  I take out my piece of paper from my leggings pocket and unfold it. This seems like as good a spot as any to practise some forest bathing, and if it means stopping for a little while, then fine.

  Now, it sounds like for proper forest bathing you should give yourself a couple of hours, but I’ve still got a way to go, I think, and I’m not sure it’s going to be very relaxing to get stuck on a mountain in the dark. Instead I’ll do the beginner’s version and be mindful as I go, aside from little breaks.

  I remind myself of the guidelines and then tuck the paper away.

  My eyes close, I inhaaale, and then they open again for a quick check that nobody is around, and then they close again and exhaaaaale.

  So. Charlotte. What can you hear? Apart from yourself, talking to yourself.

  I clear my mind and try to focus. I hear my breath, I hear the stones under my feet because I keep shuffling, I hear the trees, their leaves and branches swishing. I hear … birds? And is that a waterfall? And far off in the distance maybe a helicopter or a plane? Wow, you really can notice more when you’re paying attention.

  After listening to the forest for a while longer what I start to hear are my own thoughts again, trying to picture what I might be having for dinner up at the mountain hut, so I open my eyes and carry on walking a little further. As I move, I’m paying a lot of attention to the nature around me, like the guidelines told me to. Rather than just watching my own feet I’m noticing the curves of leaves and the crags of the mountains that I can just make out beyond the trees. Talking of trees, I’m checking out their rough and wrinkled trunks and wondering if they’re checking mine too as I pass.

  At one point, a group of four friends pass me, hiking downwards, their legs propelling them speedily down the slopes and through the forest, and they look like they’ve been on a great big trek and can’t wait to finally make it to the village. I stand out of their way acting like I’m being totally normal and not gawping at tree bark on my own, and they pass me with a smile and a wave.

  When I’m alone again, I find a spot to stand still and close my eyes for a second time. This time I’m concentrating on what I can feel and taste, so I stick my tongue out. Mostly I taste the chocolate I keep gobbling, but I also taste a dampness in the air, on my tongue, which tastes like the type of water you get at a spa, infused with green stuff like herbs and cucumber. I’m quite enjoying this forest bathing. If you’d have told me before I came to Japan that I’d find more zen up a drizzly mountain than in the soaking tub of a luxury hotel, I would have bopped you on the nose. But back at the Park Hyatt in Tokyo I’d been jet-lagged and blue and I was desperately trying to force the zen, whereas now I am letting it come to me.

  The mist settles over my outstretched bare arms and breathes on my forehead and my neck. And then it trickles down my nose – hang on.

  It’s raining, dammit. I put down my rucksack and pull out my poncho, and then begins a ninety-second furore of putting the poncho on with the rucksack over the top, then taking it all off again to put the rucksack on first and then poncho over everything. ‘Oomph,’ I say, going to whip the hood up only for it to cover my face because the poncho is on back to front.

  By this point, the heavens have opened. Considering how tightly packed these trees are, it’s impressive how penetrating the raindrops are, but it’s pouring down on me like someone’s released a whole bag of pinballs above me and they’re clattering their way down past all the leaves as if the forest itself was a giant pinball machine.

  Well, this is fun. I was enjoying forest bathing a lot, and I’ll do it again, but I didn’t want to actually forest bathe, thanks very much. I use my drenched poncho to wipe the rain from my eyes, and you can imagine how much good it did.

  The path gets steep again up ahead; through the blinking I’m faced with another slope of rocks to scramble up, only now there’s a layer of muddy water stroking the top of the stones as the rain has a go at creating an impromptu water feature.

  ‘What do I do?’ I say out loud to nobody. Going up seems like a bad decision, but going down could be just as treacherous, and at least here I’m only maybe an hour or so from the hut, as opposed to five hours from the village.

  What noise am I hearing now? Well it’s the sound of rain thundering all around me and not much else, to be honest.

  I look up and I look down. I have to make a decision and trust it.

  Was it all talk, this wish to do a month-long hike one day? Did I just tell myself I wanted to do that because I never thought I would actually have to, thanks to Matt and my planned out, structured life together? What, am I just going to chicken out because it’s got a little tough?

  If I can do this, and enjoy this, it will prove to me that I’m what I think I am. An adventurer.

  I reach my hand back under my poncho and grip hold of my onomari, my good luck charm that the kimono maker gave me in Kyoto that hangs off my rucksack. I feel it, damp and gritty but still there and I make my decision. I’m going up.

  I face the rocks with determinism and I use my new-found forest bathing skills to make sure I’m really focusing on what they look like and what they feel like under my fingers and how my trainers are wedged in them to help my balance in pulling me up. It’s okay, it wasn’t forecast for rain today so this has got to be a passing shower, there’s no need to give up.

  The rocks are slimy underfoot, the moss squelching under my step and cold on my fingertips. More than once I have to just grip hold of the foliage to haul myself up to the next stone.

  I make it to the top of this mound of rocks and, as expected, there is more uphill to come. I trudge forward and at one point my foot slips in the mud and I grab for a nearby branch that slaps me in the face with its wet leaves. Hmph.

  Another wet and slow ten minutes of walking later and I realise the drum-like pounding of the rain has lessened, like a marching band at a carnival parade turning the corner at the end of the street. I look up, just for a moment.

  ‘Oooohhmygod!’ A tree root, wet and slick, is exposed and my foot slips right off it, my ankle twisting painfully, and I crash to the ground, sliding a little way down the muddy bank, my leg under me and the stones ripping a hole in my leggings.

  I come to a stop and sit up, panting, and tears of shock spring out of my eyes, cutting through the mud on my face and, ‘Fuuuuuucckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk.’ I grip my ankle while unbearable pain pulsates from my toes right up to my knee.

  Chapter 15

  Japanese proverb:

  ‘Fall seven times, stand up eight’

  Nevertheless, ouch.

  I can’t calm my shallow breathing and I sit there in the cold, my knees up to my chest, my hands, though they sting, holding on tight to my poor foot and I feel stupid.

  Stupid stupid me for carrying on going up. Stupid me for not looking where I was going. Stupid me for being out here on my own in nothing but trainers and grandiose ideas of being a mountain goat. Stupid me.

  The shock very slowly subsides, though the pain is still intense.

  ‘Now
what am I going to do?’ I whisper. ‘I guess I could blow my whistle, or I could try and call someone.’ Strangely, talking out loud is helping a small amount. I begin to get my breathing under control and I dare to unclench one of my hands and wipe my face. ‘Oh God, it hurts so much.’ I gingerly untie my laces, which are also dripping wet, and they slide from my trembling grip. Slowly slowly I pull my trainer off my foot and I wonder, if an injured hiker falls in the woods, does anyone hear them?

  My trainer off to the side, I nudge my sock down from my calf and pull it wide over my ankle, trying not to touch it, even the slightest graze stinging me. With my sock off and also flung to the side in a puddle of mud because who cares, my trainers were soaked through anyway, I can see the damage. One big, bulbous, swollen, sprained ankle. I wriggle my toes. Well, at least it isn’t broken, so there’s my silver lining. But it’s still swollen fast, and I can’t imagine walking on it right now.

  I flop about like a beached whale, trying not to move my foot, until I can get my poncho and my rucksack off. At least the rain has now stopped and the brightness in the sky is back.

  ‘Where are you, first-aid kit?’

  Because I’m actually not stupid, despite what I scolded myself on a few minutes ago, I do have a bandage somewhere in here. It’s not ideal, and I’m sure it won’t feel very comfy, but if I wrap it around my ankle tightly then at least it’ll be compressed until someone comes past or I feel ready to walk again.

  ‘Ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch,’ I mutter, wrapping the bandage around my foot and ankle. I wrap tightly, to the point it would be hard to flex my foot at all, but that’s the point.

  ‘So what to do now …’ I ask nobody. ‘I don’t think I need to be rescued. Maybe if I can’t walk in a little while but it seems a bit too dramatic.’ I decide to eat a snack, take some ibuprofen and sit here until the next person comes past, then maybe I can try walking with them, if they don’t mind taking it a little slowly. Then I won’t be on my own any more.