My Solitudes : Chapter Two : Forest in Summer : Excerpts

So here I sit in front of my tent, trying to relax and get my mental bearings after the short bike ride from my home and a ten minute stroll up the gentle hillside through the trees. I had a bit of a laugh when unrolling the tent, to see the dirt and a few dead insects from the previous trip scattered across the nylon floor. There should be quite a collection in there by the time this year-long project is done ...

The weather is mixed. I knew when I left home that it was probably going to rain this evening, but hadn't expected it to come so soon; it started sprinkling as I was unpacking. But as this week has been a very typical summer week for this area - sunny mornings, cloudy afternoons, rainy nights - I think it should be clear when I wake up tomorrow. I say it started sprinkling, but I still haven't felt anything; I can hear the sound of rain on the leaves up in the tree-tops, but nothing is dripping to the ground ... yet. I'm sure it will soon ...

And of course the insect stories start right away ... with an astonishing spider who strolls by. His tiny globular body is suspended high in the air on the longest and thinnest legs one could possibly imagine. When I was six years old, and building things out of 'Tinkertoys', I learned very early on that structures made with long spindly attachments didn't last long at all, and that short and squat shapes would survive well. This guy doesn't seem to have heard about such rules ... but he seems to be doing fine!

Next miniature actor up is some kind of common beetle, scrambling over dead branches and fallen leaves, wandering this way and that, in the general direction of my foot. When he gets close, I move a little, and he realizes that I'm a possible threat to him, shifts into high gear and makes a 'beetle-line' directly away from me, out of sight. I hope that I don't scare away all the wildlife, or I'll have a very lonely time ...

But it is the next little meeting that must stand as a sort of symbol for the whole of this trip; I am able to watch a pair of creatures - a male and a female - going about some very private business ... They are very small, and I didn't at first notice what they were doing, but when they came to rest on my 'picnic sheet' just a few inches in front of me, I could see clearly. The larger one (I think 'she') is on top, somehow joining her abdomen together with that of the smaller one underneath, who is facing her. They remain still for a moment or two in a 'moment of passion', and then separate and go off in different directions. Watching this, I am filled with very conflicting feelings - I couldn't possibly harm two creatures while they are doing this, and yet I also have a real desire to crush them out of existence. Because you see, they are mosquitoes, and the large number of these in the air all around me on this warm, moist and windless hillside testify to just how much of this sort of activity has been going on around here!I say 'symbol of this trip', because as it is turning out, it looks like my stay here really might be spoiled by their presence. I came to this peaceful and quiet place to do nothing, to sit still and do nothing, and the mosquitoes are making this impossible. I mentioned that interesting spider a moment ago; but as I sat watching him walk along, I had to interrupt every few seconds to slap at my arm, leg or sweaty back - wherever I felt the minuscule drills going in. To concentrate on anything is out of the question. I know that I can retreat into the screened protection of my tent, but what good is it to come to these woods and then sit 'indoors' for 24 hours?

There is only one remedy - get in motion, and keep in motion. The hillsides on this side of the valley are covered with a network of footpaths running along every ridge and valley bottom. That plan of mine to 'sit still' will just have to wait. Perhaps later in the day, the numbers of mosquitoes will decrease; right now though, like it or not, it's time to go exploring!

 

The forest is open and airy, without much undergrowth cluttering the ground between the trees. If I turn my head to the side as I move along the path, I see an interesting visual effect caused by the spacing of the trees - those closest to me move back past me quickly, those farther away somewhat more slowly as the distance increases, but the ones on the opposite hillside seem to be moving forward together with me, in the same direction I am walking. The forest is vividly three-dimensional. I get the impression of looking at the scenery in the way that a movie camera would see it, moving along one of those tracks that they use to guide cameras. The impression is heightened by the slight mistiness in the woods, and the occasional call of a cicada from off in the distance. There really is quite the illusion of being 'inside' a movie scene ...

Cicadas usually make a Japanese mountainside in August a very noisy place, and before coming here I had been somewhat afraid that I wouldn't even be able to hear myself think, with so much noise all around me, but in these woods there don't seem to be all that many of them. Is this a particularly quiet year? Or perhaps it's still too early in the season; as I walk along I occasionally see one burst out from among the leaves scattered on the ground and fly up to a nearby tree. This takes me back instantly to a summer I spent in the mountains of the Kii Peninsula with my family. There had been a major typhoon in the area shortly before we arrived, and this had knocked down a great number of branches from the sugi trees, which were not being well taken care of in recent years. The forest floor was completely covered with a matting of these branches, and as we walked along, from all around us we heard the sounds of cicadas struggling to break out from underneath them. My daughters and I lifted up many of the branches to free the desperate insects, but it was a hopeless task, as there were millions of them trapped. I don't know the yearly cycle of that particular type, but I suppose that seven years later, or seventeen years, whatever it was, there would be a very quiet cicada season ...

There seem to be two or three types of them here in these woods. Of course that most familiar miiin miiin one is the commonest, but interspersed with these are others playing a different tune. There seems to be an illusion that they are everywhere in this forest but right where I stand - I can hear the singing in the distance, but nothing from the trees nearby. Do they stop singing as they hear my footsteps move closer? It seems to me that cicadas are not usually so concerned about such things, and I remember standing under trees in other places, listening to the singing coming from apparently right in front of my eyes, trying to spot the location of the insect producing it. But here, I can play no such games. A 'circle of silence' moves along with me ...

 

Stepping outside I see that the rain seems to have stopped; at least I can hear no sound of it falling on the canopy above me, although the gentle and constant dripping is all around. There is not the slightest breath of wind. I move a short way up the path to get out of sight of the tent, sit on a fallen log, and look about me. My eyes can detect no motion at all; if I plug my ears for a moment to block out the sound of the few cicadas who still sing, it seems as though time itself has stopped. The forest is a frozen tableau, and it is like being inside, not a movie this time, but a black and white photograph of a misty forest ... Absolute stillness ...

I find it difficult to know how to describe to you the feeling of what it is actually like to be in this place. I can so easily 'slant' it whichever way I want. Those previous few sentences may sound rather 'dreamy', but if I tell you that as I make these entries in my notebook, I find that the paper is so damp my pencil will not work well, and I have to change to ball-point pen; if I tell you that my glasses are fogged from the moist air, and my clothes feel clammy; if I were to continue to complain about the mosquitoes hovering around my ankles ... then you might think: "That camping stuff is not for me, thank you! I'm quite happy to sit here in my air-conditioned house, watching TV!" But is it really necessary for us to be perfectly comfortable all the time? Is that desirable? Do you think I am any less happy here because my glasses are sliding off my slippery nose?

Talking earlier about these trips with somebody, I got the response "I'd like to go camping too, but only in a 'four-star' tent!" Well of course, I too like hot showers, and the comfortable chair in my book-lined room back home, and I'm not about to give them up and come and live in a tent permanently, but it's not good to be so afraid of a little bit of discomfort that one would miss these experiences ... No, looking around me at this peaceful scene, I'm glad that I'm not that fastidious. The minor physical discomforts that I meet with on these trips are a very small price to pay for the benefits.

And even though there will be no hot shower for me tonight, I certainly have no intention whatsoever about 'roughing it' when it comes to eating! The darkness is moving in rapidly now, and it's time for dinner. Tonight's menu: mushroom risotto and corn soup, with a cup of hot chocolate and an apple for dessert. During the few minutes that it takes to prepare, evening turns to night. I hang a small flashlight from the hook at the apex of my tent, and turn it on with the beam spread 'wide' so that it illuminates the entire interior evenly. When I step outside for a minute, I see that the entire tent glows softly, and would make a wonderful sight for somebody tramping 'home' through the dark woods. It certainly looks good to me! Inside awaits a hot dinner and a soft mattress ... Did somebody say something about 'four-stars'?

 

When I emerge from the tent, the hottest part of the day has passed, and the air feels quite comfortable, with a bit of breeze now perceptible down here on the forest floor. There don't seem to be too many mosquitoes around, and the sun is sending shafts of light at a sharp angle down through the leaves above, illuminating the ground in patches here and there. A large mushroom off down the hill a short way is beautifully lit up by a beam of light, but the effect is very short-lived, and a moment later the sun has moved on, and the spotlight is turned off.

It is very quiet ... a few muted insects, a few birds somewhere ... This is the mood I had hoped to find on this trip! How would this story be different if it had been like this all along? What things would I have seen here on this hillside if I had been able to sit quietly in one spot?

I notice one now, hanging in the sunlight just a couple of metres away from me. It's a bee, I think, and it is doing absolutely nothing, hanging completely motionless in the air. But of course, nobody can hang motionless in the air by doing nothing, and he is working very hard to stay up. He is facing me, and I can see off to each side of him, the blurred spots in the air that mark the area covered by his wings as they 'flap' up and down at incredible speed. If I wasn't seeing this right here in front of me, I would have said that this was impossible - that this little lump of meat could be suspended in defiance of gravity in such a superb way.

How an airplane stays up in the air - I think I can understand that; the variable pressure on different surfaces of the wing, etc. ... A helicopter? I can grasp that too; it's just a matter of rotating airplane wings (Actually, I'm not so sure about that one. Isn't there also a 'fan' effect, the air being pushed downwards?). But this bee has me stumped. I can believe that his wings may push enough air downwards on a single stroke to keep him up for a microsecond, but what happens during the upward stroke? And how on earth can he keep this up for such a long time? Whatever fuel is powering those tiny muscles seems inexhaustible. Those wings must be beating hundreds of times each second, and this show goes on for more than ten minutes, the bee occasionally shifting position from spot to spot, but always staying in the same general area. And why is he doing this? Maybe like me, he ate too much for lunch, and is out here burning off some of that excess nectar ...

It's interesting also, that he can do other things while he hangs there. At one point, a small white package detaches itself from his backside and drops earthward, and a bit later he extends his legs and rubs them together for a while; none of these actions affect the movement of the wings an iota. I walk slowly closer to try and see better, but when I get to within about a metre, he is suddenly gone. Who was watching who, I wonder ...