The river season is finally open.
Several river trips are already on the calendar ahead, but at the same time, trail hiking plans in eastern Hokkaido are taking shape too. These days my head is full of maps, routes, and the feeling of the season.
Walking itself is a pleasure, of course. The smell of the forest, the texture of the terrain underfoot, the way wind moves through a valley, the way vegetation shifts with altitude. There’s information and sensation that only comes from moving slowly on foot.
But it’s the packrafter’s instinct, I suppose. The thought surfaces almost automatically —
“If there’s a river here…” “If there’s a lake beyond that ridge…”
The mind naturally threads trail and packraft together.
Hike in. Paddle out. Walk again.
That one additional layer of freedom changes everything about how a place looks and feels. It’s neither a pure traverse nor a pure river run — it exists somewhere between the two, a form of travel that belongs to packrafting and nothing else.
Slowly turning that possibility into an actual plan — that process is itself one of the pleasures of the season.
Recent posts on this site have leaned toward gear and product introductions. Going forward, I want to fold in more of this: field plans and reflections, the experience of actually walking and paddling and feeling things firsthand.
Gear talk and field stories. Specs and sensation. The shop perspective and the paddler’s perspective.
Moving between both, letting the tone shift naturally as the season moves — that feels like the right way to start a new paddling year.
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