13Three Days on the Great Wall

During the last weekend in October, I spent three days hiking along the Great Wall north of Beijing. The weekend couldn’t have been better; the weather was perfect — cool and sunny — and the autumn foliage was at its peak. We rose each morning at 5 a.m. and hiked by headlamp up to the Wall. The views of the wall snaking through the trees, rising and falling with the peaks, were spectacular.

Our guide, a Chinese farmer from a nearby village, spoke no English and was probably about 60 years old. He walked quite rapidly, which was surprising since he wore little canvas slippers and stopped every couple of hours for a cigarette.

On our last day’s hike, Chris, a fellow hiker who was a few meters ahead of me, climbed through to the roof of a crumbling watchtower, took in the view and called down, “You’ve got to see this!” We laughed because either he or I had probably spoken those words a hundred times by that point in the weekend.