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GREAT LITTLE HIGHWAY

Back from the equinox trip we found that T-san had in his country generosity brought more bucked kaki wood and many small mountains of fruit tree limb prunings, for which we are most grateful. I have my firewood work cut out for me for the next few days, for which I am also most grateful, itching to get my hands on lots of physical work after a relatively idle winter. On the trip we got in some long walks and hikes in between stretches of driving. We began with a sprint north to Tsuruga on the Japan Sea Coast and the southern tip of snow country (no snow left on the coast, though) then continued north on Route 8, which for a time curves high along the coast affording panoramas of the sea and the distant peninsula across Tsuruga Bay, then glides lower and narrows to Route 305 (a great little highway fronting on the Japan Sea itself), the kind of local barely two-lane coastal road I love, the distance from sheer mountain to shelf-edge perhaps 50 feet in places, all filled up with living and passing through. The road led on through small towns of ancient fishing clans, boatyards, safe harbors, jetties, fish markets, where we stopped and amid sun-drying fish got the lowdown on the high prices for crab: the ones that have gotten more oceanic exercise are much more flavorful and cost more than the similar-looking but in fact couch-potato crabs. Then there were the hot springs, their tiny parking lots filled with cars of tourists come to enjoy the seaside rotenburo (baths in the open air), and on past floats and nets drying in the sun, the fishermen sitting around in groups talking and repairing till time to fish again, the road turning on through tunnels carved through spurs of the mountain that rises behind, now and then jutting across the road, the houses right up to the road's edge, windows right next to the passing cars... And the way of the light with the salt in the air and in the old folks, always ready to talk to a stranger, seems most of the young folks have gone off, the fishermen mostly in their 50s and older now, a sepia nostalgia palpable here of times perhaps gone by forever, though the folks are still building, there is much here besides commercial fishing-- the scenery, the mountains, the ocean and islands, the hot springs and of course the road, the fishing villages strung out along it like salty silver pearls...