The Greatest of Walls
T H E G R E A T W A L L
pigeon squad takes the great wall
T H E C L I M B
Ok imma be real. I am a relatively fit person- I go hiking often, I ran track & field in high school, and I am a stubborn person who doesn’t enjoy admitting defeat- but the Great Wall (pardon my French) WHOOPED my ass. Here is a pic that shows some of a particularly enjoyable part of our time on the wall.
It’s amazing, but also so sad that this picture still doesn’t capture the slope of this situation. If it helps, I am standing almost straight up in relation to the ground. When going back down this section, you have to hold onto the walls because it is essentially a massive, ancient, dry slip-n-slide. So that’s fun. 10/10 would recommend.
T H E S U N S E T
I have experienced a couple of wow moments in my life. Those times when you are just caught in such awe of the situation, your dopamine is pumping, and you are thankful for being alive and being able to witness this moment. There are so few experienced in a lifetime, and this was definitely one of these moments. After our long and exhausting trek, we make it to the highest peak on the (east??) side. We are able to climb to the rooftop which has an incredible view of the mountains and the rest of the wall.
Next, a couple of awesome things happened. Firstly, we arrived at golden hour, the time of day right before the sun sets, giving the most bomb lighting (which is much appreciated). Secondly, the entire squad began blasting various songs to which we jammed. Most impactful of all of these hits, in my opinion, was the absolute banger, “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” from the Mulan soundtrack. Now, I don’t know about you, but that song gets me going. I am not kidding when I say I have almost wrecked multiple times from jamming too hard to this song, and “Trashing the Camp” from the Jungle Book. Needless to say, we went hard. I thought the hike was a workout, but goodness gracious I was sweating sooooo much after that dance party.
the demolished a birthday cake
H A P P Y B I R T H D A Y
The day we were hiking up the wall, I noticed our guide carrying a large box. Not thinking much of it, I carried on with my trek. Later that night, we found out that he was carrying a birthday cake for a person in our group. After singing the birthday song in 3 languages (English, Mandarin, & Spanish), we dug into the cake. I was horribly disappointed. Chinese cake= not cake. It was dry, tasteless, and the icing was not sweet at all. Twas a sad time in my life. I plan on baking my own birthday cake when my day comes around.
my sleeping arrangement for the night <3
T H E S L E E P I N G S I T C H
Soooo. Sleeping. It’s kinda important. HOWEVER, sleeping on the Great Wall means carrying everything you need to sleep (tents, sleeping bags, ground pads, water, etc.). And that stuff is HEAVY. Therefore, we packed light. (minus the birthday cake, but that’s another story) I decided to bring my ENO, in the unlikely event that there would be a place to string it up. We arrive at our site, a flat space with crumbling walls, vines, and a BOMB view. Sadly, the only possible place to hang my ENO was on the crumbling sides of the wall, which was quite risky because I could easily crumble the wall away just by picking at it with my hands. So that’s good.
Another thing, during the day, it is TOASTY. I was wearing jean shorts and a t-shirt, yet I was still sweating bullets. But, as the sun set, the temperature dropped. The wind was also pumping, which was great during the extremely hot hike, but horrible at night. I sat outside in my ENO for a while, just planning on admiring the stars, but I got way too comfortable and too lazy to move inside. I ended up passing out and was told the next day that I was being tossed about in the wind throughout the night.
