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By Root 953 0

and mud and smokepots and piles of rubbish and vegetables for sale in dirty clay pans on the ground and suddenly from the mountains a ragged hobo, a little seamed brown unimaginable Chinese hobo, had come down and was just standing at the end of the market, surveying it with an expressionless humor. He was short, wiry, his face leathered hard and dark red by the sun of the desert and the mountains; his clothes were nothing but gathered rags; he had a pack of leather on his back; he was barefooted. I had seen guys like that only seldom, and only in Mexico, maybe coming into Monterrey out of those stark rock mountains, beggars who probably live in caves. But this one was a Chinese twice-as-poor, twice-as-tough and infinitely mysterious tramp and it was Japhy for sure. It was the same broad mouth, merry twinkling eyes, bony face (a face like Dostoevsky’s death mask, with prominent eyebrow bones and square head); and he was short and compact like Japhy. I woke up at dawn, thinking “Wow, is that what’ll happen to Japhy? Maybe he’ll leave that monastery and just disappear and we’ll never see him again, and he’ll be the Han Shan ghost of the Orient mountains and even the Chinese’ll be afraid of him he’ll be so raggedy and beat.”

I told Japhy about it. He was already up stoking the fire and whistling. “Well don’t just lay there in your sleeping bag pullin your puddin, get up and fetch some water. Yodelayhee hoo! Ray, I will bring you incense sticks from the coldwater temple of Kiyomizu and set them one-by-one in a big brass incense bowl and do the proper bows, how’s about that. That was some dream you had. If that’s me, then it’s me. Ever weeping, ever youthful, hoo!” He got out the hand-ax from the rucksack and hammered at boughs and got a crackling fire going. There was still mist in the trees and fog on the ground. “Let’s pack up and take off and dig Laurel Dell camp. Then we’ll hike over the trails down to the sea and swim.”

“Great.” On this trip Japhy had brought along a delicious combination for hiking energy: Ry-Krisp crackers, good sharp Cheddar cheese a wedge of that, and a roll of salami. We had this for breakfast with hot fresh tea and felt great. Two grown men could live two days on that concentrated bread and that salami (concentrated meat) and cheese and the whole thing only weighed about a pound and a half. Japhy was full of great ideas like that. What hope, what human energy, what truly American optimism was packed in that neat little frame of his! There he was clomping along in front of me on the trail and shouting back “Try the meditation of the trail, just walk along looking at the trail at your feet and don’t look about and just fall into a trance as the ground zips by.”

We arrived at Laurel Dell camp at about ten, it was also supplied with stone fireplaces with grates, and picnic tables, but the surroundings were infinitely more beautiful than Potrero Meadows. Here were the real meadows: dreamy beauties with soft grass sloping all around, fringed by heavy deep green timber, the whole scene of waving grass and brooks and nothing in sight.

“By God, I’m gonna come back here and bring nothing but food and gasoline and a primus and cook my suppers smokeless and the Forest Service won’t even know the difference.”

“Yeah, but if they ever catch you cooking away from these stone places they put you out, Smith.”

“But what would I do on weekends, join the merry picnickers? I’d just hide up there beyond that beautiful meadow. I’d stay there forever.”

“And you’d only have two miles of trail down to Stimson Beach and your grocery store down there.” At noon we started for the beach. It was a tremendously grinding trip. We climbed way up high on meadows, where again we could see San Francisco far away, then dipped down into a steep trail that seemed to fall directly down to sea level; you had sometimes to run down the trail or slide on your back, one. A torrent of water fell down at the side of the trail. I went ahead of Japhy and began swinging down the trail so fast, singing happily, I left him behind about a mile