As we sat in the sun, drinking tea made from maple leaves (seasoned with apple and apricot), as we meandered through the 19th Century European park that leads toward the tiny lane on which our favourite tatami tea house is hidden – Don had come here ten months earlier after his Japanese father in law died - I thought how distinctive Don’s relaxed and responsive spirit can be. I’d walked these same streets with other friends for twenty seven years now, many of them celebrated travelers; they’d fired questions at me, shot out theories, spun this notion about Japan and that judgment.Don, by comparison, hung back. He seemed eager to take in as much as he possibly could. He didn’t have agenda or preoccupation, and in that regard appeared to rejoice in the rare traveler’s gift of allowing the day and the place to take him where they wanted him to go.
