A VOICE ON THE ROAD

Three ascents These walks are all about stories—the ones we bring in the backpacks of our hearts and the ones we discover on the trail....

The final day of hiking took us the nine-ish miles from Koguchi to Kumano Nachi Taisha , the last of the three grand shrines on this...

Misty mountains make for sweet haiku haiku noun hai·​ku ˈhī-(ˌ)kü  plural haiku or haikus Synonyms of haiku : an unrhymed verse form of...

The view the mile before the snake We ran into several critters on the Kumano Kodo, from bees to toads to birds to lizards to Japanese...

Jizo Bosatsu where mothers place their care of their children, alive or passed From Hongu, we moved on to Koguchi,   a small mountain...

Collage prompt: What does this art from Kumano walk say to you? Go, write. We took a day off from walking when we got to Hongu. In the...

Joe offers a prayer at Hongu Taisha On the fourth day of walking, we arrived at the back door of the grand shrine Kumano Hongu Taisha ,...

Behold the vending machine variety. Hot, cold, milky, straight, or other libations. Who wouldn't jump at a bottle called Pocari Sweat?...

The view from the dining room at Kiri-no-Sato Takahara Lodge I am not going in any order as I write about our Kumano Kodo journey. No,...

Shrine paintings It was a sixish mile trek from Takahara to Chikatsuyu , a village of about 450 people just east of the Gyubadoji...

A hidden cairn easily missed without slowing down, paying attention, making the walk itself the destination The walking on the first day...

A poet walks along the Kumano Kodo For those who make this walk, it soon becomes apparent that along the Kumano Kodo, the sacred road and...

The starting path Earlier this year, I headed to Japan with a group of writers to walk and write on the Kumano Kodo , a pilgrimage that...

The last day of any walk is marked by something akin to awe and anticipation of the joy of arriving, of resting, of having done the hard...

Six days in we had two more days of walking—the last day. A fairly short stroll of about 7 miles— before reaching the Island of...

We made it through the toughest day in terms of walking—about 14 miles by the end of the day, climbing up and over the moors, which while...

The fourth day of walking is often the hardest day of a long-distance walk. Suddenly, the body starts to believe you aren't going to...

On our third day of walking—which moved us to mile 30 on the path according to the All Trails map for our walk —I noticed something...

It's always my favorite part of a long walk—and one of my favorite prompts to give to the people who walk with me. Listening to the path,...

I take long, long walks to gift myself the time and space to give my unproductive overthinking a rest and allow the words of my heart to...