Polly Greeks - Embracing the Dragon: A Womans Remarkable Journey Along the Great Wall of China

To be honest, I had never given a stuff about the Great Wall of China. I knew it was long and could be seen from outer space, but so what? As far as I was concerned, there were far more exciting things to pursue than a line of ancient bricks dividing foreign soil.

But if China didnt feature in my dreams, I did have a yearning for adventure.

I had first heard of Nathan Hoturoa Gray while interviewing his sister for a newspaper story. In passing, she mentioned her brother. He was in the Gobi Desert with a group of men who were attempting to walk the length of the Great Wall of China. My ears pricked up. An adventurer, I thought. I want to meet him.

The opportunity came some months later, when the chief reporter at the newspaper where I was working informed me some freak had arrived in Wellington claiming to have walked 3,000 kilometres of the Great Wall of China. He was a local man. Would I please do an interview?

Questions sparked in my head as I made my way to the meeting. What kind of man would make such a journey? Why did he do it? What had he learnt? I tried to imagine what he looked like, and came up with a cross between Indiana Jones and a half-Maori Marlboro Man.

Instead, Nathan Gray was thin and wiry, clearly still malnourished from his journey. Although he laughed when we met, there was an intensity about him as we sat down to talk. He fidgeted a lot, continually smoothing his hair with his hands as he galloped through his story.

In 2000, hed been invited to join forces with an Italian, an Argentinean, a Buddhist monk and a fellow New Zealander to make history by becoming the first Western men to walk the length of the wall. It had been the monks dream to make the journey. A friend of Nathans brother was to film the trek for a documentary, and Nathan was to be part of the support crew. But the group had divided not long after theyd set off into the Gobi Desert. Clashing egos, Nathan said, chuckling ruefully. He told me hed decided to keep going anyway. And then his eyes had focused on somewhere unreachable, as he recalled months of trudging through the desert with his Italian companion, running from the Chinese military, dealing with extremes of weather, and encountering the gener ous hospitality of local people in remote villages. The more Nathan spoke, the more the wall came alive. It had been a teacher, he said, leading him through both physical and emotional landscapes as he followed it towards the sea.

He had been making his journey for almost a year now, stopping during Chinas harsh summer and winter to recuperate. He was intending to return to finish the journey in a few months time. He estimated there were about 1,000 kilometres left to reach the Bohai Sea. Meantime, trained as a lawyer, he was living off the savings hed made working for a law firm in Alaska. He was twenty-seven years old, the same age as me.

It was an exceedingly long interview. At some stage I stopped taking notes and we chatted like friends instead. I liked him very much. What he was doing made sense to me. I admired people who followed their dreams. Besides, he had sex appeal.

Before long we started dating. But if you went out with Nathan, I discovered, you also dated the wall. I hadnt counted on that. It accompanied him everywhere, misting his eyes with recollections, dominating conversations, and sighing to him like a Siren in his sleep. Although I felt proud of the journey hed made, there were moments when I wished the damn wall had never been built. Sometimes, though, as he cried while reliving desolate moments suffered in China, I admonished my self for failing to appreciate the pile of old bricks that had become such a large part of his identity. Without the Great Wall of China to follow, Nathan seemed lost. We both knew hed return to it once he was mentally and physically strong enough.

If Nathan had his dream, I had my own ones to follow. I dreamt of making documentaries about journeys through wilderness places. I wanted to live in a Himalayan village and write a novel. And sometimes I thought about returning to South America and studying witch-doctory with a shaman Id met.

I had accepted my newspaper job the year before, while still at journalism school. It wasnt really what I wanted, but everyone told me Id be mad to turn it down. They were right. I met lots of people, my workmates were a great team and I learnt much about writing.

But then one day I went to see the work nurse about a strange lump on my toe. It had been there for nearly a year and, despite my best efforts to ignore it, it was growing bigger and blacker by the month. After shed examined it, I noticed the nurses eyes had lost their twinkle.

Polly, she said, I dont want to frighten you but have you considered it might be a cancer?

I was booked with a surgeon for the following week.

As I walked back to my desk, mortality hit me like a tombstone falling from the sky. Life is short! The busy news room seemed suddenly as insubstantial as mist. Why wasnt I living the life Id imagined? Why wasnt I following my dreams? When I was eighteen years old, Id made a vow never to live a life of regrets. A bone manipulator had just finished telling me Id be in a wheelchair by the age of thirty unless something radical happened to mend my crooked spine. Id dismissed his words, but they had lodged like a seed in my subconscious and sprouted into a tiny what if? What if something happened and he proved to be right?