Crossing Iriomote

Land of the mountain cat

March 2016, Iriomote island, Okinawa- Japan

On an island in the far south of Japan lives one of the world’s rarest felines. I hoped to glimpse the Iriomote cat on a journey from coast to coast.

Two flights, a sprint for a taxi and tickets bought ten minutes before the last ferry rumbled out over choppy seas.

Iriomote floated behind veils of mist.

Sand swayed and span along the shore.

Drizzle shortened the fading light.

A bat clambered through a tree as night slid over the steel sky. The forest sung in calligraphic glows of green in the warm evening. Fireflies marked a change in the atmospheric pressure.

I lay on a hard bed, breathing a silence unknown to cities. In my dreams someone stood on me and pinned down my arms. I couldn’t throw them off. I was a flipped insect trying to right itself. I tore loose and rolled onto my side, gasping.

Wind shot through mosquito screens and rippled curtains that rang the dull cat bells attached to the ends of the cloth. Thick dust stopped an old spider web from lifting with the breeze. The face of a giant dreamcatcher stared down at me as two hawk feathers twitched.

Torrents of rain lashed the tin roof and washed through my body.

A drip of water fell onto my face and ran into my eye.

Salt and metal.

The sporadic scrape and clack of banana palms broke the night.

Mist drifted through a tunnel of foliage.

Walking into the jungle.

The river reflected the footprints of fireflies and stars before leading back to a beached shore. I had to make it to the other side.

Trudging through the warmth of decomposing leaves.

Light pushed into the sky as a spotted cat bounded away up ahead. It was one of the hundred.

Vanished birds. Triassic ferns tickled the chin of a sauroposeidon.

Grey skies billowed over the hills.

The canopy stole the light from the day.

Leaping creeks, slime-covered rocks and sweating plants soaking clothes.

Torrents had bored great furrows through the jungle. The journey would end if the skies opened. Still, no rain fell as I became a part of the drenched forest.

Miracles of fat and sugar charged through my veins. I took off my shoes for the first major crossing.

A snapped and frayed rope swayed in the current.

An illusory pool of green water seemed to flow in upstream and down. I followed the main artery of the Urauchi river as it cut deeper into the heart of the island.

Tumbling through a dripping world where butterfly wings had long departed.

I tracked the banks of the Urauchi until I reached a shallow rock plaza of rivers. I picked my way along slippery cliffs then forged up the intersecting river. A grand staircased waterfall rose into cliffs stacked like bulging libraries of books covered in swaying ferns. The dusty light at the top of the falls led to a secret world.

Sometimes I had to turn my back on magic.

I headed down to the main river. Grey clouds built behind me but for brief moments sunlight stretched between the leaves. A storm would see me bash for higher ground and stop my crossing.

Typhoons had ravaged the forest. Trees that should have been protected lay torn apart or had ripped great holes in the forest at the breaking of their lives.

The river became a deep, green pool. A roar pushed through the umbrella leaves of araceas and wrapped around the flanged trunks of stranglers trying to grip the jungle floor. A breeze carried the tangy scent of the ocean.

My pace increased. A slip meant a tumble onto rocks or a stabbing attack from branches of stone swords.

The falls thundered under the bright white sky. Past torrents had left glittering stretch marks on the rocks that looked as if it was where the universe had been born.

Footprints in stone.

I forged along a muddy path as a servent to the feline until the earth became an Incan road of paved rocks.

The embrace of mangroves squeezed the river into a slow meander. This was the other side. I only had to make it to a boat that would take me down through the swamp and to the coast.

A metal structure led to a floating jetty; hammered, cemented and blasted into the rocks.

I sat on the creaking wood to wash my feet into a time in the warm sky when blue didn’t exist. Clouds of brown mud spread into the deep green. One, two… three raindrops fell onto my face as the Urauchi shuddered with the thunderous approach of engines.