'Ode to The Great Wall of China at Simatai'
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| The above photo shows a small bit of the hike I did. |
Upon low yellow mountains the lone stone wall snakes nakedly across the land; the serpent’s spine winds for miles and miles with rocky ridges and ramparts galore in disrepair and rubble, through gorges and gulley, valleys and plains, on and on, seemingly forever and this is its lore … .
The smooth stone born from the blood and bones of millions of lion-hearted men tells me a story, and if you put your ear to the earth you, too, can still hear its heart reverberating memories from its warm hearth.
All along the watchtower I go, the stone river shivers beneath my feet, ahead and behind, stretching as far back and forward into the past and into the future, in and out of the horizon it slips, splitting, stopping, starting, ending here, beginning anew there.
It is not one continuous wall, as rumor would have it, but a series of walls, sometimes staggered, at other times separated by miles, and all the walls together give but an illusion of true unity.
A fall from the tall wall would mean death, and if not death, pain immeasurable.
This dragon cannot easily be scaled, for it sits perched on the mountain top, always on the mountain top, always at the most strategic spot.
This I think as I hike along.
The outposts, which once held back the barbarian hordes of the north, are now completely overrun with foreign devils of all breeds, including myself.
Hiking like kings wearing Nikes, like racecars we race through arches upon this long scar of the world, a scar once purported to be visible from outer space. Our traipse becomes an art, our hearts keep pace, up the steep mountainside towards the next keep, using all our limbs to climb, we are ragged cragsmen.
We peek into dilapidated stations, round ramparts, hike up parts and down parts, stopping and starting, like poetry our feet make a beat, keep tempo, strike a cadence, a rhythm, our heavy breaths are a hymn; we dig our feet in again and again, pass over a ridge, cross a bridge, The Wall we ride is our bride, we have no need for a map – just follow the yellow brick road! – we scamper and trudge amped up, alive down below a slow sliver of a river flows, there thin fishermen wait patiently wishing to catch dinner, while white-horned mountain goats bleat about the heat perhaps, together heel to heel we pass through passes, wet we sweat sweet sweat, and sweat and swear until its time to stop for cold tea and a small something to eat.
In places The Wall falls apart, old man-made boulder that is no longer able to shoulder the weight of centuries crumbles into pebbles, and a haggard cragsman begins to feel a bit trapped in that rampart where an airy 10 feet keeps edges separate, keeps cragsmen from new Wall, but alas there is no turning back, the only way is through, but it is rough, and so you descend down on your own from the parapet, carefully, fully aware you would be worse for wear if you were to take a spill or slip, down, down into the shallow alcove to where the two-ton stones should sit– yet aren’t.
On the other side of the ruins you must lift yourself, flip yourself up the cliff lip. The dragon drags on and on. The Wall is waiting.
O Simatai!
Ancient China is alive.
One recalls the principles of feng shui, and remembers that surely those geomancers of yore had a huge hand in The Wall’s creation. They believe qi springs or dragon-gates crown certain nexus points of good energy, and there those ancient feng shui masters might have placed a guard tower or junction. In fact, the design of important buildings old and new in China are built by geomancer’s dictation. Of old, such sites as the Forbidden City sitting at the center of the Chinese cosmos confirms this truth, and we should remember that there was no small controversy when rather recently the Bank of Hong Kong opted not to consult modern feng shui masters prior to the skyscraper’s construction.
And so as I sit and write on Simatai’s so-called Sky Bridge I imagine that I now stand at intersecting rifts of good fortune and peace. Just for a second I imagine the mystic ley lines lapping over my body absolving my weary self of a lifetime of sin, the benevolent Force applying cosmic cosmetics of the highest order like balm to my soul.
Call it Mother Nature’s varicose veins manifest, or just a glorified fence if you like, or like the Chinese call it, the longest cemetery in the world ... whatever name you give it The Great Wall deserves many odes.
