The Best Women's Travel Writing (13 page)

As we pause on the path, I ask Pablo whether, after more than twenty years of work in this field, he has more hope for the future, or less.

“Less,” he says without hesitation. “There isn't enough respect for the environment. There isn't the consciousness.”

He is serious, realistic, sad in a resigned way, but he still works, still beams as he watches Luis and me beam at the butterflies. “No one can ever believe it the first time they see it,” he says, and smiles.

We descend from the forest and climb back into the bug to head down the mountain, past political proclamations and party announcements, past logging trucks, past monarchs painted on Coke billboards, and under a sign straddling the street that says, “Thanks for coming. Monarch Country.”

Within days of my return to Mexico City, I will leave Luis. The butterflies will carry on in their suspended state for three more months, until something finally, belatedly, irresistibly, stirs in them and they awaken to the world of sex. Within just one or two days in the beginning of March, they will make a mass exodus, heading north toward Texas. There, under the cover of dark, the male and female will link bodies for hours at a time, and she will later lay her eggs on the shady side of milkweed leaves, and then die.

“Butterflies that weigh a fraction of an ounce travel 5,500 kilometers in order to make love,” one of the Papalotzin men told me back in the New York bar, in delighted exclamation. “Compare this with us. It's the same as going to the moon and back, running!”

For love.

I never see Luis again.

Meera Subramanian is a freelance journalist with a penchant for flying creatures. She covers culture, faith and the environment and is an editor of
Killing the Buddha,
an online literary magazine. She not so secretly wishes she had wings.

AMBER KELLY-ANDERSON

A Thousand Simple Steps

The journey of a single family begins with a thousand steps.

T
he Great Wall at Badaling curls up the mountains and out of sight like a gray velvet ribbon through a smoke chiffon veil. After three days of delays, sleeping in airports, and checking, claiming, and rechecking luggage, my first sight of one of the world's remaining wonders brings a heaviness to my chest that does not come from the weight of my nine-month-old daughter Liliana strapped to me marsupial style. I step off the embarrassingly lush tour bus, and my hand automatically reaches back, searching, for the large palm and fingers that have clasped mine since infancy: the calming grip of my grandfather, Clyde. The only father I've ever known, he's still a ringer for Walter Matthau at ninety-one.

My grandfather has taken countless steps in his lifetime—on glaciers and ships, in Italian POW camps, into the Australian outback, up Kilimanjaro, down the Grand Canyon, on all the world's continents. He has been a son, brother, soldier, teacher, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. Five years ago he became a widower, following fifty-five years as a husband. And now he's embarking on what he calls his last great adventure: the steps that will take him to the Great Wall of China. Too old to travel on his own, he has brought my mother, my daughter, and me across the world for this journey, the culmination of his lifetime of steps.

Around us, tourists from various nations pour out of cabs and buses, their heads turned sharply to the left, where the Wall climbs. At the base, a litter of stalls sells every imaginable trinket, shirt, fan, and antique replica. The vendors call relentlessly, their voices creating a dull roar, like squawking seagulls. David, our tour guide, asks our group of sixteen Americans to pose with the Wall in the background and then leaves us ninety minutes to do as we please. The group scatters, fallen leaves in a gust of wind—some begin to climb the first set of stone steps leading up the mountain; others rush to the stalls to start collecting treasures; a few sit on benches, content to look into the distance rather than attempt the stairs in the densely humid air. There are two paths to take: one smooth and flat, another steep and twisting. Grandpa leads us to the steep and twisting path and, with my mother at my side, we take the oldest and youngest visitors to the Wall this thick July day.

From a distance, the Wall zigzags, coiling back on itself so that actually following the line of it by sight is impossible. Standing at the base of this great stone dragon, I'm filled with wonder at its vastness, at the sheer strength of will its construction must have required.

Up close, climbing with a stream of visitors, the Wall is a series of stone steps uniform only in their unevenness and sharp incline. Some are low, like the drop of a curb. Others are higher than our knees. My grandfather's legs are the shortest part of his small frame, so he must lift his knees to his chest, placing one foot on the next step and then using the worn metal rail to pull himself up. Mom lingers on his other side as I trail behind, snapping pictures with one hand, stabilizing my daughter with the other, my weight shifting drastically up and down like a camel climbing dunes. We creep up the stairs, and I watch the peaked roofs with their ceramic tiles and ornamented gables fall farther toward Earth as we climb toward Heaven.

We come finally to a flat surface, the First Guard Tower. It's a wide space, but relatively short and brimming with people of all nationalities. Grandpa leans against an empty corner and rests. People swarm around me, pointing, smiling, reaching, gripping, wiggling fingers—all captivated by the blond-haired, blue-eyed baby, cheery through the pouring sweat as she clings to the olive-green front pack. An Indian couple gestures to their camera and then to Liliana. Their companion takes a picture of them posing on each side of me, as if we are dear friends on the trip of a lifetime together. Others don't ask, just snap pictures of my baby like she's a white tiger cub found wandering the streets.

“Do you want to go on, Pops?” Mom asks after a few minutes.

“Are we to the original Wall yet?”

She shakes her head. This is still the rebuilt section. The original Wall begins at the Second Guard Tower.

“Let's go on.”

We climb again. There are fewer rails now and the path becomes narrow. Mom abandons her post at Grandpa's side, placing herself in front, helping him ever upward. I am behind, guiding him forward. In places where the rail disappears, my mother grips his hand for balance and I place my hands on the small of his back, arms locked to cradle his weight. The passage becomes so tight that I find myself shifting my shoulder to allow those descending to pass without bumping me.

Grandpa begins to tire, leaning wherever there's a rail to rest. Worried that he might slip backward and hurt the baby, Mom suggests we switch places. I am the leader now, using one hand to steady my daughter, one to reach back, my fingers outstretched in coaxing inspiration to bring us up the next step and the next. The mist turns to rain, a smattering of fat drops that mingle with our sweat, the film of water dissolving any semblance of traction, making the stones harder to mount.

Even though we are climbing a wall, a simple set of steps made by man, I feel that we are climbing the mountains themselves and the stairs are merely crags of rocks for our feet to find hold. As the rest periods increase, I look out across the valleys and mountains. It's the setting of legends, where time and space cease as the peaks pierce through the mist and increasing rain. The Wall snakes beyond perception, without beginning or end. The deep-hued evergreens blend together, the forest without trees, the dark at the base of the gray mountains, the sky white in the place where fog meets cloud and heavenly bodies conjoin with earthly manifestations.

People stream up one side of the steps and down the other in a fluid and ceaseless motion. We cannot turn back. Liliana begins to cry as the rain increases its attack, and I'm torn between the need to extend a hand for my grandfather and use a hand for my own balance, and my desire to shield my sweet girl from the cold onslaught falling ever faster from the sky. I no longer look out over the side; instead my eyes are trained on the pathway before me, my shoulder cramping as my left arm stretches backwards, more frequently gripping the shaking veined hand reaching out to me from its unseen owner.

The shock of my feet falling on flat stone, first one and then the other, is such that my head jolts. The Second Guard Tower, stately in its simple functionality—it could be a guard tower in Europe—is within finger's reach. My shoulder jerks, and my grandfather comes to stand beside me. I keep his hand in mine and lead him to the flattened gray stones, where the color and texture shifts slightly, where the original Wall, created more than 2000 years ago, begins.

My grandfather moves next to me, his hand absently reaching up to stroke his crying great-granddaughter's cheek, and I notice his other hand is still clasped in my mother's. I take my baby from her pack and turn her into me, snuggling her close. She stops crying and peers over my shoulder. Grandpa pats her back, his hand on mine, as four generations look out over China. The moment fills me with the sense of standing at the edge of eternity, as if I could reach into the air, pinching it like silk between my fingers, tearing through it into the past and future. Even the rain seems to pause.

But the respite is brief. The sky rumbles and the rain pelts us. Some Japanese girls, no more than twenty years old, gesture that they'd like to take a picture with the baby. They lean in to her, and by necessity me, causing me to flash back to the final days of high school when I posed for photos with people I also knew I'd never see again. My grandfather looks out over the mountains for a moment, oblivious to the chatter of the girls as they press an electric blue umbrella with bright white Japanese characters into my hand: “For baby.” Instead he removes his thick glasses and, using his handkerchief, wipes his eyes. From the rain or something more, I cannot tell.

The descent is arduous. We are in essence sliding down a great stone chute peppered with broken teeth made of limestone and brick. The rain doesn't help our cause, for the way is slick and our eyes can't see through the sheet of water. My grandfather's legs begin to quiver as he fights to keep his balance, both hands gripping the railing and the Wall alternately, as if he is pulling himself along a rope to a boat after having fallen in the ocean. He rests every few steps for fear that he'll fall blindly down and into the crowd.

We're almost to the First Guard Tower when John, a physically imposing yet affable middle-aged man from our tour, offers to carry my grandfather the rest of the way. Grandpa does not hear the offer. My mother repeats it.

“No,” he says, waving John away and lurching from his resting place. The line of people following us grows impatient. I can feel them shifting behind me, looking around me to see the obstruction. They want down, out of the rain. Some try to push around us. Still my grandfather will not be carried, even when he lowers himself to his butt, sliding down from step to step the way Liliana descends our stairs at home on her unsteady legs. He'll do it himself, he tells us over and over again.

When we reach the First Guard Tower, my grandfather refuses to rest, toddling toward the final descent on his bowed legs. John keeps vigil next to us. We pass a boy half my age throwing up, sobbing that the climb is too much. Grandpa begins the final set of stairs.

He is a warrior, sliding, crawling, dragging himself to the end. My mother and I are the squires, holding the umbrella over him, flanking him, but afraid to touch him. John heralds our arrival by repeatedly trumpeting to the rhythmic drumming of the rain:

“He's ninety years old, and he just climbed the Wall! Ninety years old!”

We're fifty feet from the bottom when my grandfather's legs give out. He stumbles, but does not fall, finding a perch on my mother's knee. The Japanese girls locate us once more and throw a rain poncho over Grandpa, a cloak for the warrior. The ninety minutes have ticked away, and the bus will soon be gone. John disappears into the rain, returning with the fraternal twin teenage boys from our tour. Without asking, they slide their arms under my grandfather, preparing to lift him into the air.

“Please,” he says to them. “Please give me just a few more steps. Just a few more.”

They look to John, to me, to my mother. Her eyes brimming with tears, she nods. The twins remove their hands.

My grandfather rises to his feet and takes an unsteady step. Then another. And another. The twins remain at his sides, ready to catch him. John resumes his cry of victory.

“Ninety years old and just climbed the Wall!”

The stalls of trinkets draw nearer. At the sound of John's call, the hawkers fall silent. Everyone watches as Grandpa lifts his foot, his leg shaking so badly it looks as if it will break to pieces. He comes down off the final step and the air is shattered with applause.

My grandpa crumbles and the twins catch him easily, carrying him away from the clapping vendors and tourists and driving rain, marching to John's excited babbling praise. I fall in slightly behind them with Mom at my side. Somewhere along the way Liliana has fallen asleep. The three of us—my mother, grandfather, and I—say nothing.

On the bus, I settle into my seat while Mom tucks her red rain jacket around Grandpa. He soon joins his great-granddaughter in dreamland. David approaches me just as the engine turns over and hands me a large photograph. It's our tour group of strangers, taken less than two hours before, a fact that baffles me. I feel as if we have been to the edge of the world and back since then. Four generations of our family smile among the faces, and printed across the bottom in English and Chinese it says: