It’s late summer, warm even in the early hours of the morning, not a breath stirs the air, and the bugs, mosquitoes and tiny flies are swarming everywhere on the trail from Chantry Flats to Mt Wilson. When a warm-blooded body passes through the shaded alder, pine and oak forest they go on an orgy of buzzing and biting that had me walking head down and mouth shut most of the way to avoid swallowing the annoying buzzers. Seventeenth century Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō has inspired a great many wanderers with his foot travel narratives. He walked all over Japan, recording what he saw and experienced in texts that blend haikus with prose, a form he called linked verse. I love this idea of walking a few miles, jotting down a few impressions, then moving along until inspiration strikes again. Bashō visited temples, gates, old friends, climbed mountains, marveled at cherry blossoms, observed cuckoos, and wrote haiku, often with other poets. I’m not sure if he ever dealt with armies of bloodthirsty insects, but, in my heart, he embodies, in his delicious writings and ramblings, the value of stopping to reflect on what one sees, and then making the effort to share that experience. It means something, it has value.

Walking Project 031_linked verse – Mt Wilson from chris worland on Vimeo.