It seems Mark has bred his own artistic protégé.  That doesn’t mean she won’t need some guidance every now and then . . .

I climbed Fuji-san this weekend.  Here’s how it went.

We set out from Station 5 where the mountainscape thinned from lush greenery to barren lava rocks.  The climb began leisurely, Obachans and Ojisans lumbering up the mist shroud path.  Fuji was invisible from the sunny town below when we set out on our journey.  Now the green valley and rumored majestic peak were swallowed up by the greedy gray tide.

I’d heard legend that the mystique of the mountain would wash you of your six demons.  My six demons were all around me as we trudged into the foggy wastescape above the clouds.  The air turned thin and even the few strangled plants that sucked dew from the parched rocks farther down the mountain, disappeared.

We searched the sleepy horizon for the silhouette of the next marking station.  There were ten in all, we knew, and although it was tempting to be swept away by the mountain’s grandeur, our aching eyes couldn’t help but search.

A couple of Navy men hailed us from the path.  Lightless and jacketless, they joined our party.

And here’s where we break.

Would you believe me if I told you that every single person in our group at some point on the trail said the phrase, “Oh man, it really is like Lord of the Rings up here”?  I was bursting with temptation to shout, “No.  It isn’t.  You know why?  Because Merry, Pippin, Frodo, Gandalf, Gimli, Legolas, and Aragorn never compared the picturesque landscape they traveled through to their favorite fantasy novel!”

But I held my breath.  I needed it.

We stopped at station seven to sleep for the night.  Fuji has ten huts sitting on cliff edges scattered along treacherous path.   Not only are these huts a good way to track how much headway you’re making, but also to pay five dollars for a bottle of water, which in your current state, let’s face it, you probably would’ve been willing to go as high as ten.

I could give you a long description of the hut, but I’ll just say this: it resembled a barn to all of the five senses.

In the feed room, we feasted on Beef Jerky, Twizzlers, and a salty assortment of almonds, M&Ms, and jaw-breaking, still-shelled pistachios hidden in the mix, then settled down into our troughs.  We slept shoulder to shoulder under mats of straw, on pillows filled with white pebbles, and yes, to our beaten bodies, it all felt like goose down.

I awoke from the stable in the middle of the night, amongst the snorting of oxygen deprived Japanese men, in dire need to lose some of the two gallons of exorbitant water I drank that day.

I stepped out into the mountain air and discovered that the pinched fingers of some unseen god had pulled away the silky cover, unveiling a twinkling circuit board of shimmering lights, the distant city below.

I took a moment, and felt my demons perish.

At 3 a.m. we rejoined the glittering trail of lamps and headlights.  We had to leave this early to catch the sunset from the peak of Fuji, the entire purpose of our journey, the crux, if you will, of our enjoyment of the event, of not regretting traveling five-hundred miles by ferry, bullet train, local train, and now hours of excruciating climbing to reach this point, of feeling like mice not men, winners not losers, Steve Wiebes not Billy Mitchells, of being able to look into the eyes of our loved ones, or write an overly dramatic, exhaustive blog on the subject and say, “Yes, no . . . hell yes, I climbed Fuji, and I made it in time to see the birthing of our sun on an infinite horizon, and that twinkle in my eye was the sheer liquid joy of feeling all of my demons perish, not just the weakling few that met a strangled death once we reached 8,000 feet, but the really nasty ones.”  . . . or something like that.

And yet, despite our longing for such heights, we were less like humans climbing and more like gasping fish trying to flop our way up the side of the mountain.

At one point the world erupted in light, and my heart broke knowing that the sun had beaten us.  But, in my tired state, I realized my headlamp had flipped and fallen down into my face.

Our newest members, the Navy boys, kept asking for breaks.  If a Navy ship is ever on a wave that exceeds 5,000 feet, we will be in serious trouble.  Not only because our committed sailors will collapse into veritable exhausted jellyfish, but there will also be a 2 mile high wave heading toward us.  Just as we were sitting down, I looked beyond our Navy friends heads and slow horror sank in.  I saw the blood pink belly of the inky night sky.

So I turned around and I left my party to their sunriseless fate.

The world stripped down to its simplest terms.  There was only the mountain, the sky, and me.

And it really was like Lord of the Rings (sorry), a race against the fiery eye rising in the east.

The sky was getting brighter.  Muscles sealed in a vice, I set one foot in front of the other.

Station 8

Liquid legs, lungs of fire, I keep pushing.  I don’t even stop for water.

Station 9

Pain unlike anything I’ve ever imagined, graciously numbed by the clawing wind.  I crawl part of the way.  I see the final hut above and use the last of my energy to push up . . .

Station 9.5.

No joke.  Would be Fuji-hikers, be warned: there is a station 9.5.

There was no Christian now.  Just shuffling legs and gasping lungs.

Someone shouted, “Mi-te!”

And I ran.

-Christian (demonless)

This entry was posted on Monday, September 1st, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under All Comics, Incompletes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.