I’m in the middle of Shanxi. That’s a mountain and a west,
characteristically speaking. We’re
heading to the holy mountain of Heng Shan.
That’s 恒山 not 衡山。 Last year I was turning fifty and
I grabbed upon the idea of climbing Tai Shan in my wife’s home province,
Shandong. It is the eastern
representative of the Wu Yue 五岳, the sacred Daoist mountains. This year I managed to somehow talk everyone
into cultivating a fledgling tradition to go climb a second of the mountains,
this year, the “northern” mountain.
I have
visited the base of this mountain some fourteen years ago, driving up at dusk
to the Hanging Monastery that clung to the cliff face impossibly as the sun
went down. We’d driven up with only the
intention of catching a glimpse. Usually
one doesn’t get a chance to return to sites that merit a second visit. This time I may.
It is so
great to get up and out of Beijing. I
wanted to leave the city right after the girls got out of school. It was a fine goal but we didn’t have gas and
commence to mount the highway till well after 5:00PM. We traced the familiar
route up to the heavily touristed Badaling section of the Great Wall, and then,
as the sun set itself down behind the mountains, we were off and over into
Hebei, riding roads that were new for us all.
Off in the distance were dramatic rugged peaks with a new spring fuzz of
then green to soften them.
We’re set
to arrive about 10:30PM. Who knows what
there will be to eat. Who knows if the
small town hotel will be meet the standards of my three-lady team. Who knows if tomorrow it will suddenly rain
and mean we have to go scurrying for ponchos like last year. But the climb of Hengshan is apparently the
most modest of the five and with any luck I’ll be able to tell you what the
view from the top is like, by this time tomorrow.
I tell my
kids, who loved Greece that Shanxi is the Greece of China. I’m not sure I convinced them. May we all be fortunate enough to mount our
third peak next year.
Friday, 04/14/17
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