Things Become Other Things

I think I really like walking memoirs.

I often find myself longing for long walks, probably as an escape.

I don't know how I stumbled into Craig Mods webpage, probably a link in the fediverse. I read a couple of the updates on his blog and liked what I read. Short insights from a guy my age living in Japan and very much into long walks. He had recently published a walking memoir and I took note to order it the next time I went to the book shop. An expected I will order it, then read it when I get it a couple of months later-situation. To my surprise they had it already. It is a very good bookshop!

As all good walking memoirs Things become other things isn't only about the walk. It is also a book about the places and the people that the author meets during the walk. Mod does this very well. He is an immigrant to Japan, an outside observer; relaying the particularities of the Kii peninsula of Japan; but also has lived in Japan for almost half his life, speaking the language and being very much familiar with the culture.

The book is based an a three-week walk that Craig Mod did in 2021 on the Kii peninsula; a rural part of Japan, where the population is largely older people as young people has moved away and unemployment and poverty is common. That the walk happened during the covid pandemic is mentioned some places, but isn't very important to the book. The Kii peninsula has been important to both Shinto and Buddhist beliefs, and the peninsula has several shrines, temples and holy places, and also pilgrim routes, along which the walk is largely conducted.

Things become other things is a book that is very much a book about the place where the author grew up. The whole book is written to a childhood friend: stories and memories are retold as things on the walk reminds the author of things from his past. In this way the book becomes a book about more than just walking and the people that he runs into, but also a vehicle for reflection. As the author reflects on his origin, we as readers can also reflect on where we come from.

Reflecting on the title of the book: Things become other things. It is referenced only once in the book when an elderly inn keeper admits that his daughter really isn't his daughter, but a young woman that needed a place to stay and new connections. What was becomes something different. In many ways this is the theme of the book. Mod largely tells about how he has changed during the years since his childhood in the US midwest, the changes that his home town has gone throgh since then and the changes that his surroundings on the walk has experienced (this isn't his first time walking in this area).

I can imagine myself rereading this book in a couple of years, and guess I will see new things then. Also I should really reread Rebecca Solnits Wanderlust.

And get out walking.