There’s a whole genre of travel books that have titles like “Fifty Things to See/Do Before You Die.” I have a list like that in my head. My list is much longer than 50, and some of them have always seemed far more accessible than others. I started checking them off when I was a little girl, starting at age 12 with “See New York City,” and have slowly but surely gone through quite a few.
One of the more exotic items on my list was to “Stand on the Great Wall of China.” I never took this one very seriously, even though it was sincere, because I never dreamed that it would ever happen. It was on the part of the list that contained things like “talk to John Lennon” and “see Earth from space” – not bloody likely.
Which only goes to prove that You Never Know.
The Great Wall of China is the world’s longest human-made structure. Built as a fortification to protect China from Mongol invaders, it is 4000 miles long and was built between 221 BC and the 1600’s. Great controversy existed for many years over the notion that the Great Wall could be seen from space. This idea was pretty much pooh-poohed by science, but in 1994 this false-color radar image was taken by the space shuttle. So I guess it depends on whether your definition of space includes the low orbit of the shuttle, and whether your definition of “see” means “with the naked eye.”
Long a contender for the “Eighth Wonder of the World,” the Wall finally made the list of the Seven Wonders of the World when that list was recently re-created to reflect things that are still present in the modern world (as opposed to the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, only one of which, the Great Pyramid of Giza, is still extant).
The tour guides brought us to one of the restored parts of the Wall, a section known as the Juyong Guan Pass, in an area known as BadaLing.
The first thing to understand about the Great Wall of China is that it’s not a smooth path on top of a giant Wall, like one finds on certain Stone Age fortresses in places like Ireland. It’s actually an endless stairway, with steps set at uneven heights – much easier to defend from above, I imagine. Having had a stonemason Dad, I can’t even imagine the labor involved in carrying the bumpteen hundred zillion rocks that were hauled up the hills to build this thing. (One of the brighter bulbs among the band students declared - cue Bart Simpson accent - “I don’t get it. It’s just a wall.” Here, son – you carry these rocks up and down the hill for a few months, and tell me again that it’s just a wall.)
For those of us with the physique of the Pillsbury Doughboy, that steep, rocky stairway is quite the challenge. If I understood correctly, that section of the wall rises eventually to 800 meters above sea level; but I don’t know where it starts, so I can’t give you an exact estimation of the ascent. All I know is, Coop, having been a serious climber who’s gone to the top of Rainier in Washington and Cotopaxi in Ecuador, jaunted up to the top like a goat, while I damn near needed a heart transplant by the time I got to the top and back down again. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.
In truth, I did a pretty good job of pacing myself, having some idea of what I could and couldn’t do. I was exhausted before I began, and as I mentioned, I was having digestive troubles that day, so I didn’t try to do anything foolish. I rested when I needed to, and tried not to be bothered by all the 20-somethings ripping past me. I also took the time to stop at each one of the lookout posts and survey the landscape, which was mind-boggling: from the high points, you can see into Inner Mongolia and Manchuria, if I understand what I was told. The weather was beautiful; clear and dry, and while it was definitely warm, it was much (much!) cooler than the Yangtze river basin where we had spent the earlier part of the trip. The wind was very strong, and whipping dust occasionally. Some people were whining about that, but 80 dry degrees with the wind whipping dust around is Sunday picnic weather in the Big Flat Place, proving that the perception of all experience depends on the mind experiencing it.
As I climbed, the exhaustion and exhilaration combined to make it a rather numinous experience. Vivid memories of other travels kept welling up in my mind’s eye: standing on the Salisbury Plain staring at Stonehenge; driving across the North American continent with the other members of our medieval band; playing medieval music for packed houses in the Netherlands; staring up at the giant trees in California’s Muir Woods; getting a tour of the Romanesque churches in Cologne from my teacher and friend Ben Bagby; laying eyes on Taos Mountain for the first time; walking over the cobblestones of Gradoli, near Lake Bolsena in Italy, where my grandmother was born; staring at the Brueghels and Caravaggios in the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna, while tears ran down my face; standing with Coyotebanjo on the stone-age fort at Dun Aengus, on the Irish island of Inis Mor, staring across the sea to the Cliffs of Moher and feeling as old as Elrond. And Coyote was there now, too, standing there patiently waiting for my 53 year old legs to catch up to him, standing on the Great Wall of China. I felt overwhelmed with gratitude and wonder; I’d better keep trying to “generate merit,” as the Tibetans say, because I sure have drawn a lot of good karma out of my cosmic bank account. As stressful as this trip had been, on this day, the Universe reminded me that despite whatever hardships I’ve had, and despite the sorrows that Samsara brings to us all, I have had a pretty damned cool life. And that moment, my friends, was worth the entire journey.
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