|
And then, just as the Year of the Tiger threatened to leave us in peace on a haunted speck of rain forest island at the southern tip of the Japanese archipelago - sun-bright days and balmy nights; good medicine island - one lash of its monsoon-furred tail stranded us at the wrong end of a jungle track. Two apparitions, pale and shivering, a night-clad jungle and vertiginous cliffs haunted by ghosts and fossil cats between us and our camp. Would be on that track still if a farmer hadn\'t materialized out of the rain and gloom, armed with a weed whacker and hot, cup-sized bottles of sake to keep the forest spirits at bay, and a field full of cane that needed cutting. But that`s another story...."[1]Stalking the Iriomote Gomi Cat," to be precise. A week earlier we`d left Naha, a half-dissolved city of steakhouses and army surplus stores on Okinawa`s southwest coast, with a ferry load of out-islanders packing new TVs and rice cookers, with low-season tour groups and honeymooners from Honshu far, far to the north. At Ishigaki my companion - let`s call her Alice - and I loaded backpacks full of lentils and brown rice onto a smaller ferry, not much bigger than a school bus, and made the short hop through tea-green seas to Iriomote, Japan`s rain forest wilderness island, and home to the Iriomote yami nekko, a stub-tailed, fossil feline that lives in Iriomote`s forests and lava-bed beaches. And promptly fell between the cracks of Japan\'s well-marked tourist circuit. Crab-chasing hermits shared their beaches with us, and refugees from Osaka`s neon canyonlands passed scotch and ghost stories around rubbish fires at the high-water mark. Alice and I spelunked antediluvian coves and climbed dinosaur ferns. Startled cranes made exclamation points against the green-glowing forest canopy and mossy cliffs. The night tide lapped our sandcastles, and the trees exuded a warm breath that infected our imaginations. Now one heavy downpour washed away all that good medicine. We left the rain forest to the ghosts and fossil cats, and retreated to Okinawa for some civilized wound licking as the Year of the Rabbit chased out the Tiger. But strategic Okinawa is no good medicine island. No beach hermits share their homes with strangers; no whisky flows around the campfire at night. The place bristles with planes and ships and guns, and the sailors, soldiers, and Marines to arm them. Sleek fork-tailed jets and dinosaur helicopters patrol the coasts. Searchlights sweep empty coves. Fences guard secret installations half-buried in the jungle. In the cities, mothers snatch children away from strangers, and teenagers finger bayonets and spent machine gun rounds in surplus shops. Okinawa may not have wildcats, but it does have ghosts. On the rugged south shore, where the sea pounds onto narrow beaches that run up hard against volcanic cliffs hundreds of meters high, epitaphs to the dead roll out in waves where bombs fell and Japanese and Okinawans committed suicide - or had suicide committed for them at the close of World War II. Relics lie half-buried in green decay on jungle-dark paths and wrecked beaches. It was easy, in that sea-pounded gloom, that haunted place, to imagine lone soldiers shut up in caves of solitude, carrying on a war that had ended years before. They watched us leave that sad, troubled place of war memorials and jungle riot, where even the souvenir shopkeepers followed us with mistrust. With our last yen we escaped the melted city and cliff spirits in a yellow-plate mini-car - an Austin on steroids - and followed the coastal highway north, hunting deserted coves. We squeezed our tent between the sea and pineapple plantations, and drank coffee by the pot with local growers. More white sand. More tea-green water. More poisonous snakes and giant spiders. Once again we dreamed of fossil cats stalking through the shrubbery. But the chill rain that caught us off-guard in Iriomote\'s forest that day marked a change in the islands. Tea-green seas turned slate. Beach-fronted groves of palm and bamboo trapped the night`s cold air, and released it slowly through the day. At a picture-perfect cove close by the north shore, a drunken fisherman threatened us obscurely from his shack-front stoop. The sand turned clammy between our toes. Our last day in the islands we skirted Naha\'s mottled concrete in search of a campsite, bouncing from pay beach to tourist resort, until a steep gravel track dropped off the surface world, past a tattered cane field, deep into a sunless grotto sunk in mossy rock overgrown with twisted roots and strangling vines. In one rough-hewn corner water dribbled down rock, across the magnificent belly of a cherubic Buddha. In another, a crack hinted at sunlight, a rabbit hole that breathed tangy salt air. Down the rabbit hole, a long, slippery set of steps led to a wide, shallow bay book-ended by sandstone bluffs as smooth and massive as beached whales. Guesthouses, shut for the season, sloped behind a screen of palms. Even the derelict bus being reclaimed by jungle squatted vacant and without mystery at the edge of the beach. Maybe nearness to the city made us self-conscious again. Or maybe something sinister did lurk in the empty facades of the guesthouses and bus. Or maybe it was simply that the beach was so long and wide and empty, that we were happy to find a hollow large enough for a pair of sleeping bags at the base of the bluff near the steps and rabbit hole. A bonfire stood sentinel at the water\'s edge, and a freshening breeze sent sparks flying down-beach. The jungle and bluffs fell to shadow as moon and sea turned luminescent, and fishing boats threaded back to port. An ebb tide rasped across the sand. South of our bucolic camp the sea still pounded onto those narrow beaches, and jungle-green faces stalked the undergrowth and deserted souvenir shops at the Peace Memorial. But no ghosts could reach us here, even stretched out on this naked beach, as long as that helicopter, so big and loud and so much a part of the waking world, patrolled the next cove over.
Artical Related: 
world
 
1.Amsterdamned
2.Home in the Himalayas 3.Adventure in the Amazon 4.Depressed in Dachau 5.Aliens in America - Area 51 6.Hiking to Heaven 7.Cruising Vanuatu 8.Raising Cash in Java 9.At the Heart of a People's revol.. 10.Log of an Antarctic Cruise 11.A Thousand Questions in Mexico 12.Climbing Kinabalu 13.Baksheesh Boys, Lovely Jubbly an.. 14.Braving Bigfoot 15.First Taste of Delhi
Latest Artical
1.·½Ô²Ö§³Ð
2."Element ’UpdateProgr.. 3.ASP.NET 2.0 Disclaimer Introduct.. 4.Rockets-Mavericks Preview With T.. 5.A Cigars and Insurance 6.The new tax law 7.The thing, The play! 8.The emperor’s new cloth 9.Perfect Trade 10.Understanding organizational cul.. 11.The snow, Heavy snow piles on th.. 12.The Organic Ethnologist of Alger.. 13.The politics of protest 14.Special screenings 15.Weekend channeling |
Food | Hobbies | House | Career | Family | Lifestyle | Travel | Usa Food | Author | Animal | Adsense Tips
| 中文站
