Yellow Fields of Rapeseed

In years gone by, the last four to be precise, I have asked and received a gift, every year on my birthday.  China has five core, holy mountains, the WuYue 五岳。 We have climbed four of the five, including the eastern mountain Taishan in Shandong (2016), the northern mountain Heng Shan in Shanxi (2017), the southern mountain, Heng Shan in Hunan (2018), and the central mountain Song Shan in Henan (2019).  The best, or at least the most dangerous, is saved for last, the western mountain, Huashan in Shaanxi.  And ain’t nobody going from New York to Shaanxi this April.  Had thought it might have been possible not too long back, but it isn’t.

When we were recently over at Olana above Tivoli, I’d noticed a remarkable Catskill peak, which I couldn’t name.   A squat, tilted trapezoid, it figures in some of the paintings of both Thomas Cole and Fredrick Church.  You can also see it just before you reach New Paltz from the other direction, as you speed up the New York State throughway.  Ulster County’s tallest mountain is Slide Mountain, near the Big Indian Nature Preserve, past Ashokan, which apparently has some real, live old growth within.  My suspicion is that Slide Mountain and the one I’ve been seeing are one and the same.

The shortest of the afore mentioned Wu Yue is Heng Shan in Hunan which is “only” 4230 feet.  Slide Mountain, by contrast, the third largest in New York State is “only” forty-feet shorter than old Heng Shan weighing-in at 4190 feet.   In China, hiking nearly anywhere in the heartland of the civilization during the month of April, things are in bloom.  Inspired by, these trips are reminders of my first birthday in China, riding out into Anhui province amid all the yellow fields of rapeseed with the woman who’d become my wife when we climbed the mighty Yellow Mountain during the this same month in a much less industrialized China of 1994.

So, Sunday then, we’ll go have a try.  I wanted to leave at 7:00AM sharp.  The ladies have been going to bed during our quarantine around 4:00AM sharp so this was certainly aspirational.  We seem to have settled upon a 9:00AM departure.  The peak is only a seventy-five minute-drive from here.  There won’t be any marble steps carved into the peak nor any historically relevant sites to consider like ‘rearing horse pass.’  Upon reaching the top thoughts won’t span from Qin Shi Huang to Mao Ze Dong considering the other leaders who’d stood on the same ground.  (As if both Hannibal and Harry Truman did the climb.)  But I think it will be fun.  And my dad will join.  And we’ll get up there and see what we can see, having made it through another year of life.

Friday, 04/17/20