IT’S A RAINY Saturday, and I decide to go about two hours north of Tokyo into the hills of Okutama. Rain falls softly beyond the roof of the station as I stand on the platform, waiting for the train.

I don’t know what the day will contain, but I have coffee in a paper cup warming my hands, a fire in my heart and an adventure in store. I can see a path forward in my life, and it’s following this feeling. This realization makes me wonderfully content.

Life is confusing these days. We’re struggling to hear the music in a world so full of noise. When I stop and listen to the sound of rain, I hear my song.

It’s the beat, the breath, the pulse of whatever reignites the heart of the child who has perhaps lost their way. I’ll chase that ancient melody to the ends of the earth.

The hours pass quickly. People board and alight from the train until few remain. The air is fresh in the mountains, blowing in through the open door at each stop. Notes of autumn speckle the viridescent hills. Saturated clouds drift across the rugged landscape, through which a steely blue river runs.

I pass a stone statue in a garden sprouting with shamrock green clovers. The roadside flowers are vibrant and rosy, as if drunk with rain. A few rusty chairs wear the pleasant melancholy of timeworn things, aged and decaying. There’s a beauty to the imperfection of it all.

The leaves cling to summer hues before growing red, falling, and changing like we. I’m looking forward to the fiery red maple leaves of autumn, but isn’t green beautiful?

I’m happy to be here. To be alive, lost in this sea of green. With my camera and a rain poncho, I’m here to explore.

How do we hear our song? We listen for what makes us come alive. The world will try to define our truth, yet each step from the noise liberates us.

We can think, we can be, in the forest of our soul, we’re free. And I keep taking steps; every fucking day I learn what it means to be me.

Treading lightly upon earth, I fall deeper into the woods. The rain feels good. The wind roars, singing songs of reverence for who I’m becoming.

There’s the subtle scent of burning wood in the clean, cold air. It’s days like this that make me feel like me. I’m enjoying life and the beauty of the world. And of course I’m writing.

I heard my song truly when writing my first book, Arrows of Youth. I would take these long hikes through California’s Redwood Forest and Yosemite National Park; the coast of Oregon and Washington’s Olympic National Park.

Immersed in nature, I’d take notes — nothing else mattered but diving deep within myself without distractions.

It’s all connected. I can’t see how it’s not.

I’ve dealt with chronic pain for six years. I thought something physical was causing the pain until six months ago. I discovered that the pain is neuroplastic, meaning it’s caused by the brain and derives from a disharmony within.

Understanding the connection between mind and body is guiding me toward my destiny.

When I do what makes me feel alive, I feel a lightness in my spirit and freedom in my body. When I succumb to what I think I’m supposed to do and I listen to the noise, I feel stress in my soul. I’m learning how to make sense of what I feel, to respond to life and not to react.

It all comes back to childhood.

I was an angry kid because I was hurting inside. I was in pain and my nervous system was rife with stress — I couldn’t express myself, nor could I understand it. I was just angry, storing negative energy in my body that, in my twenties, turned into chronic pain.

We were all just doing our best, and I wouldn’t trade my story for any other. But I just wanted peace from the commotion. I had my friends. I had video games and sports. I was surrounded by so much love, but we’re human. I was in pain.

Every star is connected, every chapter of my life. I want peace, and I’m finding it. The pain has led me to writing, and writing has brought me more meaning than anything. It’s all I want to do — experience life, learn, and create.

I’ve been angry about the pain over the years because I had repressed childhood anger. I’ve been frustrated about the pain, which was a proxy for my frustration in life.

I’ve been worried, confused; but I never lost my faith. There had to be an answer. But I was so fucking tired of looking for one physically when nothing I did brought relief.

The answer is within us. I don’t have the roadmap to get to where I hope to go, but I don’t need it. I’m here, now. I want to create beautiful things and share how traveling makes me feel. I want to help people uncover their truest selves through exploration, both through our inner and outer worlds.

I’m not a travel brochure. I am a storyteller, and I’m on earth to tell a story I’ll never fully understand. That’s what makes this adventure so enriching.

The world is changing. We’re lonely. Overstimulated and sick. We crave connection, truth, depth. We’re inundated with this facade of reality, yet the more we seek our own truth in the real world, the more the truth of reality will make itself manifest.

After running into a few wild monkeys on the trail and not wanting to get into a tussle, I climb down to the river and journal on a stone.

It feels so good to breathe the wind in the mountains, listening to the symphony of rain falling through the leaves, water ceaselessly moving across stone. I can listen to this sound for hours. It puts the soul at ease.

The soft auburn leaves falling from the sky contrast the slate gray landscape. I like the world in shadow. The lack of sunlight reveals a depth that a clear day doesn’t.

I feel so small down here, looking up toward everything — life flowing, rain falling, leaves swaying down. I feel so small, and the world seems so big.

I feel it in my body. If I’m doing something out of alignment, I feel pain, anxiety. But I take a step into nature, I take a breath. I question who I am and what I truly need, and the pain loses its grip.

My heart opens. My spirit sings. A fire rages within. I’ve been given the gift of pain to learn how to trust what I feel and to better understand my inner landscape.

Thank you for the chance to breathe the same air as these towering trees. Thank you for a blip in time to know life and death, rain and snow and sun and changing seasons.

What a gift to be a mystery unraveling. It doesn’t matter how the story ends if the journey is true. Not to me or to anybody else — is the song true to you.

If nothing else, I know I’m on the path when I’m having fun, and that, I most definitely had today.