If becoming a real-life Disney Princess was on my dreams list, then I would have been able to check it off. Even though it wasn't on the official list I still got to pretend for an evening I was Mulan protecting China from the Huns at the one and only Great Wall!
As a surprise, NDVS sent all of the current Summer Staff on an end-of-session retreat. The surprise came in when we found out we were taking a trip to the Great Wall and camping out there overnight! While getting to see the Great Wall in and of itself would have been a really neat adventure, it was even cooler because there was literally nobody else at the same section of the Wall. It was just the summer staff, two full time staff and two tour guides (thirteen people total) walking the wall for hours. It was absolutely gorgeous, and I was so happy to experience such an amazing two days with people who equally appreciated the beauty that surrounded us.
Obviously, there were lots of pictures taken—I snapped more in this one-day trip than I have this entire trip so far! But it was amazing because I got to stop and take in, breathlessly sometimes, how absolutely magnificent the landscape was. Those who saw my pictures from last summer in Alaska knew that a lot of my subjects ended up being flowers or rocks, and the same thing happened to a lesser extent on this trip as well. But I was also eager to take pictures of the clear, blue, sunny skies and the rolling green mountains in the distance. It was the most untouched place I've been in since arriving in China, so I did my best to absorb every single second of it.
The hike started with us trekking up a mountain through the trees, bushes and the occasional thorn bush (the cuts on my legs can attest to the former). When we got to the wall we spent quite a bit of time climbing into the remaining windows of the turrets before moving on and beginning the walk to our campsite. It took a few hours, but I almost wish it could have taken longer! It was so much fun after we walked so far to look back and see the wall winding up into the mountains. Our groups also like stopping at the towers and climbing on top of them in order to get the best view. As you can see, it was pretty hard to have a bad view. The only slightly frightening part was when I was trying to climb up one part of the Wall and the rock I was holding onto fell out. I fell (almost off the Wall, which could have ended very badly) and got pretty bruised and scraped up on my hip and arms. Fortunately it wasn't worse, so it turned into a good memory—yay for third degree fun!
We had to leave the wall and bushwhack through the forest a little bit to get to the camping site, but it was so cool to look at the sun set casting shadows onto the part of the Wall we had just been hiking. After eating dinner and pitching tents, we all took some time to reflect over the past five weeks. The atmosphere couldn't have been more conducive to thinking back over my time in China so far. While many of the Summer Staff were thinking about ending their time here, though, I was also thinking about what the next session would hold in store for me. It was a really great opportunity to evaluate what I've done so far and refocus myself before the next session.
The next morning we woke up, at breakfast at a little farmhouse, and then hiked the rest of the Wall section into the nearby village. After walking through the village for a bit (and stopping for ice cream, of course) we all hopped back into the van and made our way home. We were pretty smelly and only slightly less dirty, but I don't think I could have asked for a more amazing way to see the Wall for the first time.
After having some conversations with Guy Pierce, one of the long-term staff members, I realized that the awe the Great Wall inspired is definitely a double edged sword. Guy posed this question: Does it make you uncomfortable that we just spent almost two days walking around admiring a Wall that is also symbol of isolationism and slavery? I truly hadn't thought about it before he asked. I began to create a mental list of all the other man-made, so-called wonders we visit and photograph and bestow the title of "Great" on; structures that also embody darker historic and social elements we so often willingly, if not wittingly, ignore. Although I personally do not claim to have an abundant knowledge about the social, political, or economic factors that played into the construction of the Great Wall, I can't help but wonder cost Greatness should be capped at. I also asked myself whether there is a baseline negative impact that creating Greatness demands. Is it possible that, in order for anything truly Great to come into existence, it is necessary for both good and bad, for light and dark, to be intrinsic to such Greatness?
It's impossible to answer any of these questions definitively, I believe. But when I looked out over the mountains I was forced to reconcile the fact that I was standing over of the graves of those who died while creating the ancient wall on which I stood. I witnessed something awe-inspiring in both senses of the word, both awesome and awful. The only conclusion I've come to so far is to never forget the awful but also to remember the beautiful, the awesome, the Great.