Sacred forest: aren't they all?

The Kasugayama Primeval Forest World Heritage Site, hiking course and Wakakusayama, Nara City

A venerable citizen of Kasaguyama forest

Making a circuit round the back of a 498m hill looking remarkably like any other, it takes nearly as long to say "The Kasugayama Primeval Forest World Heritage Site hiking course," as it does to run it's 12.7km length, an easy blast on unsurfaced forest roads.

It's been said that this 'sacred' forest has been untouched by human hand since 841, when cutting was forbidden. Apart from the big forestry road that has been hacked through it.... Oh, and the metalled toll road and manned booths, the path made down to the waterfall, the Buddhist rock carvings and statues, and the usual signage? Yes, but apart from that. There are few truly primeval forests in the world, a word implying those that have never been felled or significantly affected by human hands. Perhaps a more useful term is 'old growth forest,' which acknowledges the absence of accurate history and concentrates on the state that the ecosystem has reached.


In a way, being told a mountain is 'sacred' or that a forest is 'primeval' sets you up for disappointment if you are approaching it as a jaded visitor looking for something deeper or more beautiful, some meaning absent from shallow modern life. It is sacred in the minds of those who feel that way about it, not in its actual form. A Japanese friend explained too, how because of the crammed narrow streets, the Japanese have evolved a way of looking at small patches of beauty and ignoring all the crowded dross around them. So there was me, running the route and pondering the contradictions, and then there was the solitary man clapping at a small shrine, placing his hands together and staring intently at the large tree above his head. We were seeing a different forest.

It's curious, this layering of meanings in one place, and a good example of how we each change things by looking at them. It can drive you crazy trying to grasp it fully, but it's good to at least know that it is there and very interesting to try and step outside your habitual way of experiencing things and notice others. Meanwhile, I was running.

Wakakusayama looking south: and how are you experiencing it madam?

On Wakakusayama there were families who had driven up on the toll road braving the brisk cold wind and the deer trying to bully them into giving up their food. There is a nice little diversion from the course on steeper tracks down to a small waterfall at the back of the route. The viewing platform was unattended but cluttered with hi-tech gear belonging to a film crew who were at the top of the waterfall discussing the next scene. They had left a pristine laptop and hard-drives on the bench, and a wooden bow. God bless their innocent little socks, only in Japan... and possibly Singapore...and maybe anywhere they chop your hands off for theft, I wouldn't know. To stretch a point, all different people seeing different forests.

And at the end, from the sublime to the cor blimey. I had to chuckle at the masses of pink love hearts with wishes on them at Kasuga Taisha shrine. But they were no more incongruous in that ancient place than a runner gawping around in black tights  - why is it the gear feels fine until you have to walk in it amongst non-runners?

Maps of the course are available from Nara Information Centres - handily the Japanese for hiking course is 'hiking course.' It's impolite to run in temples and shrines.