JAPAN
About halfway up the 2,446 stone steps to the shrine atop Mount Haguro, I was closing in on peak grumpiness. It was bad enough, I remember chuntering to myself, that I was essentially hiking in fancy dress; even worse that passers-by kept taking photos of me.
I was in Haguro to experience life as a yamabushi, the ascetic hermits that for in excess of 1,000 years have used the Dewa Sanzan mountains in Japan’s Tohoku region as the focal point of Shugendo, a religion that blends Buddhism, Shintoism, Taoism, and pre-Buddhist mountain worship. I was dressed all in white – in a happi coat, split-legged trousers and tabi shoes – and I was being led by a veteran yamabushi, my sensei for a couple of days.
Our hike was all about disconnecting and being mindful of the now. But for at least 1,000 of those stone steps I was anything but mentally unburdened, just painfully self-conscious, preoccupied by deadlines waiting for me back in Tokyo, and uncomfortable in the lingering late-summer heat.
Then something happened. My sensei brought us to a halt so we could silently take in our surroundings and, after a few deep breaths the inner dialogue had gone, replaced by a sharpened sense of the woods; the rustling of leaves and chirping of a bird; the cooling sensation of a light breeze on the clothing stuck to my back. I’d been tricked into the
