Into the forest

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 forest are one and the same. I think many of us on this walk, at some point, felt a merging of self with the canopy overstory, the understory, the trunks and foliage between the two, the vast underlying root and fungi, which is the communication network of a forest, and the presence of ghosts or the supernatural Jinn spirits of some Japanese belief systems. Perhaps it was a split second of awareness, of feeling part of.

For me, it was the loud whispering in the silence all around me as I walked, and a sense of energetic flow up from earth, through my old boots, circulating my heart, and then returning down and out again.

I didn't feel I could capture that in words, but my friend and fellow writer Stephen Liao certainly did. If someone asked me "What is one thing I could read to really understand the essence of the Kumano Kodo walk?" I would simply send them his breathtaking poem.

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Writing from the road

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In the forest

In the forest, I die.

A sea of mist surrounds me -

cypress trees standing sentinel

stretch out into the distance.

Everything is still.

Drops of mist cover me.

I float along the forest path,

nothing except the wind,

no sound except the crunch of my feet on the ground,

pebbles strewn on a stone staircase,

rough cut,

rough stone

covered in moss,

bamboo shoots,

springing from the sides of the path -

in the forest.

I am at peace and enveloped in mist.

There’s nothing except the forest and I. 

I travel through to the next stage in the forest.

I become one with the Earth -

in the forest.

I become one with reality.

I am the plant.

I am the tree.

I am the root.

I am the stone.

I am the rotting bark -

in the forest.

Birdsong

breaks the silence

but for a moment.

From the stone steps I can view myself floating through death through life through the eternal cycle of death and rebirth and rebirth and death

in the forest.

I am nothing in the forest.

I am everything.

The trees shimmer in the mist -

they stand up striped but waving at the edges.

The needles stretched towards the sky, mixed with white

fading into the distance.

They fade down the slope.

They fade to the top of the mountain

to eternity. 

They fade together, the trees and I -

in the forest.

— Stephen Liao, Kumano Kodo, 2025