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On
Completion
A Haibun
"You are not a
complete man; if you haven't climbed the Great Wall" Mao
Zedong.
Short stretches
of Wall are seen long before the bus reaches Badaling. There's
an unfinished zoo and animal park near the car park, but the
most interesting exhibits are the tourists, Chinese and
foreign. Finally we're here, a throng funneling through a
stone gateway to where two arms diverge. Undulating up a long
ridge is the soft route; the one to which politicians are
taken, the one Nixon and the Queen strolled along. On the
other side is the shorter, steeper, harder route, the one I
take. Mountains are large in my history. I love the high
places where the views are furthest. Looking down on clouds is
more absorbing than looking up at them.
Today there are no clouds, just the haze hanging over the
Beijing suburbs to the South. The air is cold and thin,
clotted with the last pale leaves blown off the leaning shrubs
below, red, gold and green. The wind nips exposed skin; snow
is not too long away, and ice glazes the black slabs in the
shadow of the ramparts. A good day to be well wrapped, and
shod with soles that grip.
Nothing has prepared me for this; it's like no slope I've
climbed before. Where the slabs steepen beyond comfort they
transform into steps, fine on the way up but tricky
descending. The Wall winds as it ascends, following each bend
in the ridge, always rising. I pause frequently to let my
heart slow down. It wants to rush on, to reach the top, to be
the first, but that is foolish—this
is not a race.
Of course I achieve the summit, and a feeling of pleasure, as
I do on most tops, but the scale of this Wall is beyond any
possibility of achievement. It stretches on, on either side an
endless stone dragon, a defender that could not be defended.
Yet here I find peace, the crowds thinner, all faces smiling.
In all the languages that surround me, the meaning of the
words is clearly the same, "I made it."
sign across the
valley—
One World, One Dream
Beijing 2008
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