Know the Points 3: Shiretoko

Next up: our third goal, and possibly the bit of the trip that we're all slavering over the most. The great, untouched, eastern peninsula of...

Distance from Sapporo: 411km

Distance from previous Point (Erimo): 349km

Shiretoko has always been the goal.

Well, for me and Mark at least, but maybe for Lindsay, too. Once I got better acquainted with Heather last year, I soon realized that she had it as well: that thought sitting so immovably in her mind as to almost have become material in the grey matter—just as it had become in ours.

Shiretoko.

The eastern peninsula. The last untouched wilderness of Japan. The spear of mountains and forests and hotsprings and bears, unbroken by civilization beyond the communities of Rausu and Utoro, which sit like anchors at its base.

Shiretoko.

It was the inexplicable destination of our initial mad attempt at this Four Points road trip, back when we hardly knew this island from a hole in the ground. Even then, there was some phantom magnetism pulling us towards it. And, now that we’ve reprised this wild adventure; now when we know where we’re going and how we’re getting there; now when we’ve researched what to see and why it’s important; even now there still seems to be this same, unspoken, ethereal-yet-domineering group telepathy about it.

Shiretoko.

We’re going, and, beyond spouting off about trees and rocks and bears, I don’t know that any of us could really tell you why. It's just a certainty. Like roads and cars and konbinis. If all the fluff of sight-seeing and friend-visiting and draconian circumnavigating in this trip fell away, one thing would still remain:

Shiretoko.

Distance to next Point (Wakkanai): 438km