2. Between the Trees

I’m in China, but I’m thinking of my grandmother who owned a large apple orchard in northern Michigan.  She worked so hard on the farm for many years, and our family vacations were spent visiting her orchard at harvest.  My mother brought home bushels of apples to can, jar or freeze for the winter.  It makes me wonder whether people here do that since we are in the countryside and driving through orchard after orchard.  I don’t know what I thought I would see on my drive from Beijing to the Great Wall of China, but farmland didn’t come to mind.  Now, as I look out of the car windows, all I see are farms with apple, peach and pear trees and numerous greenhouses.  “We are going to leave the main highway now and go onto a much smaller road,” Alice, my interpreter, says.  “The landscape is going to change a lot.”  I nod my head in agreement, but I’m a little consumed in my own thoughts about the area’s beauty.  I smile to myself as I’m reminded of the many types of trees in Michigan, though few of them look like the species here.  “Would you like some fruit?”  Alice asks, interrupting my thoughts.  “There are strawberries for sale, or maybe you would like some apricots?  See the fruit stands on the sides of the road?  We can stop.”  “No.  I’m good, but thank you anyway.  But if you want some, why don’t we stop?”  She shakes her head “no”.  “We’re almost there,” she says.  “There” — a small word compared to the enormity of what it represents in her sentence.  “There” is the Great Wall of China.  She says it so nonchalantly, but I can barely sit still thinking about it.  Even last night, I hardly slept because my mind churned with the thought of actually being here in China and doing what I’m doing today.  This excited energy has been with me for days.  Even three days ago when I was in Michigan, I tried to calm my thoughts about the journey in my yoga class.  However, as my yoga teacher called out the vinyasa yoga flow she added an airplane pose.  I almost audibly giggled as I pictured a big airplane that was about to take me far away from home to the place that is in the mountains beyond the thick forest we’re in.  “There it is.  Do you see it?”  Alice enthusiastically asks as she points to the right.  “It’s there…  above the top of the trees.”  I look out the window to my right, scanning the forest for a break in the trees to get a glimpse.  I feel my heart start to beat a little bit faster as I look for what I came so far to see.  “Up ahead…  you’ll see.  There will be more breaks in the trees.  Look between the trees.”  As the road twists and turns and anxiousness makes my stomach do the same, I search for a clearing in the trees.  When I finally find one, my eyes fill with tears and I say softly, “Yes, I see it…”  The significance of what I’m seeing hits me.  “Wow…  There is the Great Wall of China…”