The Walker Returns

Some of you might not know Craig Mod. That’s quite alright, he’s not the type to shout over the noise. He writes, he walks, he observes. Mostly in Japan. If you’ve ever found joy in the shape of a well-made notebook, the hush of a path through cypress woods, or the dignified stillness of a countryside train station, chances are, you’d find joy in Craig Mod’s world too.

I’ve followed his work for years - in books, in newsletters, in essays that feel less like pronouncements and more like quiet invitations. The Book of Tea and Things Become Other Things still sit nearby, never far from reach. I’ll share a few photos of the latter, not to show off, but to remind myself how beautifully small ideas can grow.

Right now Craig is off walking again. A new solo journey, another slow thread of steps through the Japanese countryside. And yes, he’s writing as he goes. If you haven’t already, I suggest subscribing to his pop-up newsletter, Between Two Mountains (B2M).

If you do decide to follow along, here’s how Craig describes the journey himself, in that characteristically self-deprecating, lightly irreverent tone:

“Thank you for signing up for the (bizarrely, perhaps pretentiously named) Between Two Mountains — a pop-up newsletter chronicling two weeks and 200 kilometres of walking through the Kiso Valley, in Nagano, Japan.

Dispatches are meant to arrive daily (one hopes, one does one’s best). The walk begins on 2 October and winds down on the 15th. Once it’s done, the list — and your email — are deleted. That’s how I prefer to run these things.”

There’s something noble in the act of walking - at least in the way Craig does it; not to get somewhere, but to remember how to be somewhere. He reminds us of that. And on certain days, it’s enough.