great things to those who wait

A couple of days ago Maya and I climbed the "wild wall," which is the rather cheesy way that the unrestored sections of the Great Wall are referred to. During our first week in China, we had visited the Wall at Mutianyu and Maya had been pretty underwhelmed, mostly because there were too many tourists bustling around, plus there was the cable-car ride up and the flume-ride down, which all conspired to give everything an almost amusement-park vibe. Myself, I had enjoyed the experience just fine, being overwhelmed by the sheer Tolkien-esque proportions of the structure and the mountains around it. But we both agree that exploring the "wild wall" far surpassed our time at Mutianyu. It was just us, about 20 other hikers (from New Zealand, Scandinavia, London...), and our guide - a darkly tanned, deeply wrinkled old Chinese man who didn't speak a word of English but grinned at us with obvious sympathy as we huffed and puffed around while he clambered up the slope to the Wall and around its grand rubble, sipping from his canteen of tea and sucking down cigarettes, without breaking a sweat, it seemed. The mountains around us were cast in autumn colors; the air; fresh and cold; the path, treacherous; and the Wall seemed maybe even more majestic here than in its restored form, wearing its tenacious old age proudly on its worn face.