Your mountain is waiting...

Whenever you travel outside of your own state, no matter what your destination, there is always the List. The List of places and things you absolutely must see and do while you are there. Even if you set off blissfully unaware of the List, when you come home everyone will interrogate you based on the List.

Did you see the Panama Canal? They will ask. The Eiffel tower. The Sphinx. The big boot in front of L.L. Bean?

If your trip was especially short or if you were traveling on business you might be excused from completing all of The List. But woe to the traveler who spends a month or more in a place and doesn't manage it. Your friends and acquaintances will, however unconsciously, think you a bit more of an idiot than they originally suspected. They will come away from conversations with you thinking, She went to Russia and didn't see those towers with the puffy cakes on top? The girl must be unstable.

With this in mind, I chose to wake up at 5:45 in the morning on Sunday to hike Mt. Fuji. Our tour group, including my friends Amy, Keri, Cathy and Cathy's four-year-old son planned to hike from the 5th station to the 6th station.

First we stopped at the visitors center to buy souvenirs and take pictures in front of the view. The weather was spectacular. It was clear skies, hot sun and bird song all the way to the mountain.

After that the bus dropped us off at the Fifth station, the farthest vehicles were allowed to drive, to begin our trek upmountain.

The place was not a zoo. Zoos tend to be orderly with the animals all in their respective cages. This was more of a Bar Harbor on Fourth of July sort of scene. Large groups, small groups and tour groups mobbed the gift shop and generally hung around with their backpacks sticking out. I fought through the crowd to reach a desk in the corner of the main gift shop. It was the Mt. Fuji post office. I mailed my little brother a post card. Then I bought a walking stick for my father. (I got my mom a present too, but it's a secret) At each station of the hike you could get the stick branded to mark where you had been.

Not long after we began walking I was glad for the stick. It's not that the hike was difficult. But the ground was not what I had expected. In Maine the mountains are giant slabs of granite with trees poking out. By contrast, Mt. Fuji is the husk of three volcanoes that merged into one huge structure. It is covered, perhaps entirely formed, by porous gravel. This made the walking slippery especially on the steeper slopes.

We walked up a wide gravel path, stopping ever few minutes to take pictures and catch our breath, then down a steeper zig-zag path to the place where a pretty young Japanese woman heated a brand over a fire and filled the air with the smell of firewood as she marked our sticks.

By the last third of our journey little T.J. who had done well so far decided he had done quite enough. He begged his mother to pick him up. Cathy, who is seven months pregnant, could not.

I offered to piggy-back him. At first he seemed leery, he didn't know me very well after all, but since it was that or walking he agreed. I handed Amy my backpack.

A dozen steps later T.J. was happier than he had been all day. Now and then he tapped my shoulder and pointed over the edge at the world set out below us. I never could tell what he was pointing at but he was contented just to have me look. I babbled as we walked, talking about ice cream, which we were getting when we returned, and clouds, which cast shadows far below us, and that shiny thing off in the distance, which I never did figure out.

"I like little kids," I told Cathy. "Because they don't mind when I babble at them." She laughed, but I was serious.

I carried him most of the way back to the Fifth Station and then we sat on the ground and ate ice cream. Mine was cranberry flavored.


I leave you today with a quote from my all-time favorite author, Terry Pratchett, "It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called life."