Day 25: (27 km) Shinano - Nagano
(08/23/06)

Strange dreams last night. I forgot one of them immediately, but the other two I managed to commit to paper before they escaped my head. The first was more of a half dream; I was sleeping in the cabin and a Japanese ghost--an old woman with long white hair and a little humanoid demon coming out of her head--was pulling at my head, sucking the energy out of me. It makes me wonder if I wasn't facing north, and if there's some truth to the Japanese superstition that from the North come ghosts. Back in my old Matsuyama apartment, I always had strange dreams when I would sleep with my head to the north. Emily always preferred sleeping that way. It helped her dream I think. I was always happier with a good, hard dreamless sleep.



After that I had a dream about being back at the school I used to teach at. We were supposed to do a presentation about the ride and couldn't pull it together. By itself, it was a pretty innocuous dream, but this was the third bad dream in a row set at my old school. I assume my subconscious is trying to purge itself of a seemingly cushy job that sucked more out of me than I realized.



Fresh air and the short, steep downhill into Nagano helped dispel the oily film of the night's dreams. On the way down, I saw my first ten-percent incline sign before stopping to see Nagano's famous Zenkouji Temple. The rest of the day was spent wandering the city and writing to keep the nasty feeling from this morning at bay.



In the evening, I headed back to meet the others for some urban camping at a park near Zenkouji temple. Though I never discovered the reason, there was a festival on at the temple and in a nearby neighborhood. After lugging around the extra weight for twenty-five days, I finally got to put my tripod to use.