Today’s deck is The Little Prince Tarot.
You know, out of all the deck themes, I’ll admit I didn’t expect to find THREE Little Prince decks.
Today’s reading is interesting because it either shows that I’m shooting myself in the foot by trying to balance everything, or that I need to balance things to avoid a certain malaise… and I’m not quite sure which it is, which is interesting by itself.
We’re out on a hike today!
The place is Takedao and the subject is the Takedao Abandoned Railways.
I went out of the house at like… 2PM or so? Idea being that I wouldn’t take the hike with an insane amount of heat.
The route was kinda roundabout. First to Takarazuka and then in Takarazuka I take a different train.
But when I finally arrived I knew I was in for a good time.
I started walking and I saw a tunnel and I was like “hell yeah!” but this tunnel had lighting inside and I distinctly remember reading that the tunnels in this route DIDN’T have lighting, so I checked and I picked the wrong path.
One parking lot of an onsen later and I saw the entrance to the park.
I brought Yuuki with me today, she hasn’t been out since I took her and Yuuna to the river by Minoh, so I guess she’s the hiking girl now.
There was a small tunnel with the other side visible almost like a preview of what’s to come, and I’m already seeing that the path being so full of rocks and wooden rails is gonna be a pain in the feet.
I took some more pics with Yuuna and safe to say this was the point where the hike truly started because the phone signal died and all the commodities like new-ish chairs were gone.
The trail was thankfully shockingly fresh. I mean, aside from the tunnels being cold caves, the whole thing was a valley.
At this point is where the tunnels show their true colors but I also got to the “grin moment” of the trip.
Whenever I do a hike, the best moment is what I call the “grin moment”, so called because you grin ear to ear like an idiot and think “whatever I’ve gone through or will go through was worth it for this moment”.
This bridge was the grin moment.
The rest of the path was fine but honestly it shifted into a different mode.
What I mean is that there’s stretches during a hike where, whether it’s the length of the path, there being nothing especially noteworthy, or needing to pay attention to your footing, it becomes less “oh wow look at that” and more “oh careful there”.
After around 2 hours I finished the last tunnel but there was still a bit of a walk left… it’s also the moment I realized I went what I assume is the “wrong way” just because I started with the gentler and easier bit and ended with the longer tunnels.
The tunnels were quite the experience. They got so long that in some of them (the longest one being legit like a 10 minute walk) you didn’t hear noises nor saw light from outside.
I knew I was safe in there (if nothing else I kept thinking “it’s more important to watch where you walk because it’s slippery”) but I’d lie if I said I didn’t have moments where I held onto the flashlight going “don’tlookbehindyoudon’tlookbehindyoudon’tlookbehindyoudon’tlookbehindyou”
Anyway, after making it to the other side it was an extra 20 minutes to the station.
I was tired but refreshed. I need these sorts of exercise to burn excess energy and relax. I’ve been weirdly on edge for a while and it was probably the fact that last trip I didn’t get to do something like this (I was heat-exhausted instead of just exhausted).
I was also well prepared for this with a water bottle and the flashlight but there’s two things I didn’t account for properly.
First was my shoes, I used my usual city shoes so all the rocks did a number of my feet, next time I use shoes with harder soles.
And the other is pants, I got a nasty irritation from a bit of the fabric rubbing me the wrong way while walking.