Matsuo Basho (1644-94) regarded as the father of modern haiku poetry, spent the latter years of his life hiking across Japan and recording his journeys in various travel sketches. The most famous of these travel journals titled "Oku no Hosomichi (The Narrow Road to the Deep North)," is a work of linked prose and verse that symbolizes Basho's vision of eternity in nature and the ephemeral world around him.
Leaving Edo in the spring of 1689, he spent more than two and a half years traveling the largely unexplored regions of northern Japan. Basho's "Narrow Road" presents the mystery and span of a man's lifetime.
In the opening of "The Narrow Road," Basho makes the following assertion: Days and months are travelers of eternity. So are the years that pass by. Those who steer a boat across the sea, or drive a horse over the earth till they succumb to the weight of years, spend every minute of their lives traveling.