So enthralled am I that I resolve to rest my head on history. Nearly every half km is what was a watchtower, with space aplenty and windows hollow to the wind. A few more weeks and it would certainly be too cold. Having passed only a handful of people all day, no authorities and brilliant
weather, if not now when? As the sun draws into night, I arrive at the Simatai Wall exit, just pass a 100m pedestrian suspension bridge.
We encounter a man at the exit, a small hotel owner who indicates that his place is just up the way, in the park. Some hot noodles and Shanshui, Tsingtao beer later, I borrow a blanket from the proprietor, while my companion more smartly takes a room. I hike past the Simatai exit, dark, steep, silent and exhilarating. The small headlamp illuminates my next step.
I greet Chinese photographers capturing the night sky, and ascent onward, past the exit I left a few hours ago, past tower after tower, and determine to reach the next mountain top I spotted on decent into the Simatai region.
10 pm. The top and end of this section. I locate a spot within a watch tower sheltered from the northerly wind. Candles from India illuminate my humble home this fortnight. I fall in and out of sleep, the Wall’s history at my back. Images and thoughts pass.
Far from the Vermont campsite where I began, I am still home. The strength to navigate between worlds, between walls, is a path less traveled. Boundaries sometimes must be respected but how seriously people take their positions, only to find themselves later in life on the other. Why not walk the distance between, and hedge your bet! No matter, courage is a prerequisite, at whichever watchtower you live, so long as you want to keep discovering new peeks. Experience is richer than worldly goods. The best things in life do not take VISA. This is the prevailing opinion of the backpackers I have along the way. That none – not one – has been a fellow American helps explain our alienated lives, comfortable in our own prison and threatened by bridges. 
I am in a land of authority and rules, yet I am defying them. Ironically, this is what China needs to take the next leap forward: creativity, risk taking, questions to the status quo. Herein lies one of the greatest questions. Can they make the transition when that’s not the paradigm here?
Asia. China. Empire. Great Wall. A soft howl, gentle breeze fills the void. I am riding a ball around an axis. If I don’t make it to tomorrow I will have lived today. Everyone’s journey is that of a hero. There are no short cuts. Courage is a verb. Clichés, the skeptic in me retorts. To the reader, perhaps. The question is, are you experienced?
Can you live the questions, and ride the uneasy answers? Reward comes the old-fashion way: hard work, fortitude and being brave in the face of adversity, whatever your circumstance. What we carry up the ladder of life we ride on the way down. Our most valuable assets compound with age, intangible annuities if we are so blessed: education, knowledge, discernment, wisdom. Honed by experience, they can provide us with the ability to reach toward a clarity of being, less susceptible to the capricious ways of this world. There’s a rub: no one can do it for you. No one can compensate for your fears. No one can move you an inch from where you stand.
At some point, like Ivan Illich on the edge of his mortality, we face our limitations and failures and misdeeds alone. Don’t wait; seize the world before it seizes you. The master game will be played with or without your participation, because no one can buy immortality. It’s not where you compare relative to others, ultimately, but how far you travel compared to where you start.
5:00 a.m. - Crescent Moon.
5:45 a.m. - Dawn
6:15 a.m. – Sunrise
I awaken high above the world, laughing that the Wall is beneath my back. It’s at least two hours before visitors might arrive.
The descent is slow, the eastern rising sun illuminating yesterday’s pass. Bach’s Cello Suites are commensurate with the magic of dawn. As I approach the exit, I encounter a pack of bustling tourists, smile and head down the stone steps to ground level. Shoe landing on the earth, one behind, between worlds, a moment in time, whispering good-bye to a symbol grand and audacious, bewildered and awe struck.