newsminer.com

The Japanese adventurer who is trying to pull a trailer to Prudhoe Bay is continuing his slow walk on the Dalton Highway.

Toru Yamaguchi, who started in South America and has been walking for more than five years, was about 16 miles north of Livengood on the Dalton Highway earlier this week.

Scott Houghton, who works at the Toolik Field Station for UAF, was on his way back to town with other crew members when they encountered Yamaguchi Monday.

“We stopped and gave him some fresh oranges, just out the window. He didn’t say much, but the fresh fruit made him smile,” said Houghton. “Well, actually, his eyes lit up. He was bundled up so much that we didn’t really see his face much.”

“His cart camper or cart cabin is quite a big object to be pulling up some of the hills,” Houghton said.

I had the same reaction when I saw Yamaguchi in late November when I encountered him near Fox. Hauling that load, it’s easy to understand why he’s not covering many miles per day.

In December, there was a lot of publicity about Yamaguchi after he was reported missing. It turned out he had been given a ride into Fairbanks just before Christmas and that he planned to keep heading north. He resumed his walk to the North Slope this month and picked up his cart.

A News-Miner reader first reported seeing Yamaguchi on the Top of the World Highway in September.

The only published account I have found about Yamaguchi was in the San Antonio Express-News in Texas more than two years ago.

“It’s my dream, it’s just a dream, I like to walk,” he told a reporter in 2006.

Yamaguchi began walking north in 2002 at the southern tip of South America.

His equipment has changed somewhat in the past two years. In 2006, he was pushing a two-wheel dolly “stacked to his chin with necessities,” the paper said. He had a tent, cooler, clothing and spare provisions.

Now he is pulling a cart and a boxed trailer. He sleeps in the trailer and camps along the road.

When the Texas reporter interviewed Yamaguchi, he spoke mainly in Spanish about his two-year trip through South America and sketched his route on paper. He had previously walked the length of Japan.

“I don’t want help. Only I want to walk every day,” he said.

“I like ‘Forrest Gump.’ Do you know? Forrest Gump is very pure,” he said.

“I only want to arrive to Alaska,” he said in San Antonio in November 2006.

The newspaper talked to Yamaguchi’s mother in Japan who said, “He has very big dream, the dream is walking, walking only, to Alaska.”

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MONKEY NEEDED: This may be the strangest request I have had the opportunity to include in this space.

The Fairbanks Drama Association is looking for a monkey.

“If anyone has a pet monkey, this could be his or her big break in showbiz, says Steve Mitchell, who is directing the upcoming production of “Inherit the Wind.”

The monkey is needed to make a brief appearance with an organ-grinder character in the play, which opens Feb. 6. The play is a fictionalized account of the Scopes “Monkey” Trial in 1925.

If you have a monkey with theatrical ambitions, call Mitchell at 978-0166 or 456-2692.