Step by step

Tristan and I watched the other students frog-hop up the stairs. Feet together, crouched low on each step, they burst upwards to land on the next. Some swung their arms for momentum, but the more senior students held their hands in prayer position as they jumped. A few students were already on their way down, hands first —right hand on one step, left hand on the next—legs wide, in a bear crawl.

Just walking up all those stairs like a normal human being seemed brutal to me.

“I hope Shifu doesn’t expect me to do that today,” said Tristan, eyes wide, clearly fascinated by the challenge.

This was our first mountain walk. Well, “mountain run” was what the students at Tristan’s Kung Fu academy called this walk-hike-run thing that happened every Friday afternoon. They loved it and loathed it, equally. The beauty of the walk through the woods, the Taoist temple, the 12th-century cave shrine, and the views from the mountain were supposed to be extraordinary. But the senior students were expected to experience these wonders at a run, except for the stairs, which they frog-hopped up and bear-crawled down, multiple times, before continuing their more restful uphill run. I think what they loved most about the mountain run was knowing that when they got back to the academy, training was done for the week and they had two full days to rest their bodies.

Walking up the stairs was enough of a workout for me, and Tristan seemed happy to walk with me, for now. He was tired from his first week of hard training after months of too much lethargy, weed, cocaine, and God knows what else.

After all we’d been through, I was amazed that we were here, in China, together, as if that were a normal thing for a mom and her 16-year old kid to do. I was only five days into my five-week stay, and I already knew this was a good place for Tristan. He had no second thoughts about spending a full year studying Kung Fu and Gi Gong in the rural mountains of China—in fact, he was thrilled. I saw a change in him, immediately, on our arrival. He became himself again: curious, and interested, and active. What had started as my grasping act of desperation to refocus Tristan on something other than drugs had become… this moment. The simple beauty of a pause before we climbed these stairs together. After months of anger and fear and anxiety between us, it seemed a miracle to be standing beside Tristan, at peace with each other, with no greater worry than putting one foot in front of the other.

Up we went, navigating around the frog-hoppers and bear-crawlers, passing the guardian statues at the bottom of the stairs—some sort of creature worn away from centuries of wind and snow. The stairs were relatively new: polished cement, perhaps forty feet wide, with plain concrete railings on either side. Gazing up, over a hundred or so steps, I could see the entrance to the temple. Bright red doors topped with ornate blue trim, multiple upturned roofs with gold adornments, all in sharp contrast against the clear blue December sky.

It didn’t take long for Tristan’s bounding gate to put distance between us, and he was hopping with excitement by the time I caught up with him, breathless, at the temple entrance. We didn’t enter through the ornately decorated doors, but through one of the open archways to the side. It took us to a courtyard lined with stone plaques, inscribed with Chinese calligraphy, ten feet high and four feet wide. Some were newer, with elegant script carved into black marble. Others dated back to the original 12th-century temple, nothing more than faded scratches on crumbling stone.

Up one more small flight of stone stairs we discovered another courtyard, lined with shrines to Taoist deities. Bright walls and painted ceilings blasted us with blues and reds and yellows. Flowers, fruit, and burning incense sat on each alter, along with statues of the deity, an assortment of other treasures and offerings, and a collection box.

We were told there was a shrine to the god of war, of fertility, of the earth, and of material wealth, among others. Tristan decided he needed to worship the deity that would make him rich. As he entered that shrine, he turned to me and asked, “how are you supposed to pray to these guys?”

“I don’t know. Light some incense?” I suggested.

He lit a stick of incense and stood it in the bowl. Kneeling on a bright yellow cushion, he put his hands together and lowered his head, praying to the universal God of money.

As we continued our slow meanderings, Tristan’s Shifu found us and told Tristan to hurry. There was more mountain to climb. He led us through a picturesque rest area lined with stone benches and a walkway to an open pagoda overlooking the valley below. We took a moment to admire the sweeping view of sleeping cherry orchards, a silver river separating the land from blue-grey mountain ranges, and the Kung Fu academy, tiny and barely recognizable in the distance.

Tristan’s Shifu was impatient now. “Up! Up!” he said sternly to Tristan, pointing to a small pathway leading to narrow stone steps.

“I’ll see you on your way down,” I said, smiling, and continued to admire the view.

My teacher, Master Lee, had been chatting with another teacher on a stone bench but, as Tristan bounded up the stairs, two at a time, he approached me and pointed to the stairs and nodded. My face must have shown distaste at the idea of more stair climbing, because he nodded again and said gently, “Go slow. You be happy.” I wasn’t sure that more stairs would make me happy, but his eyes told me differently. Over the past four days I’d been training with him in tai chi and meditation, I had noticed him occasionally looking at me. He seemed to be peering into my soul. Like language was no barrier because he knew my heart before I did. It was disconcerting. Mostly because I figured he’d know how deeply lazy I was and would be disappointed to have such a poor student. But his eyes didn’t seem disappointed now. They sparkled as if he knew something magical was waiting for me. I nodded and started my way up the narrow stone steps.

The stairs were steep and windy, with many loose stones. Nobody was hopping or crawling on these. I relished my aloneness and the silence as I walked. Aside from a few students passing me on their way down, an occasional bird chirrup, or mysterious rustle in the woods, the only sounds were my feet on the stairs and my heart beat. I walked in rhythm with my heart, imagining a soft drum encouraging me upwards. There were some steeper areas, where my heart-beat-drum banged too loudly, so I’d stop and wait for it to quiet, so I could enjoy a more soothing rhythm. After about half an hour, I was almost surprised to hear people laughing and talking as I rounded a corner which opened to a wide rocky outcrop. Eight or ten students were goofing around, striking Kung Fu poses both serious and silly, Tristan among them. When he saw me, Tristan ran over.

“Mom, you gotta see this!” he said, pulling me by my jacket in the direction of the mountain. I just wanted to get a better look at the view beyond the cliff where the students had gathered, but I let him lead me away.

He took me through an arched entrance set into the mountain face, to the cave which had become a shrine to the hermit monk who meditated here in the early 12th century. Walking together into the darkness, it took a moment for my eyes to adjust. The cave floor extended no more than ten feet before an alter of pale grey stone bricks filled the width of the shrine. Incense burned on the alter beside a bowl with two small apples and a vase with a sprig of pink and white silk flowers. A red collection box was set off to the side, unobtrusive. Two value-sized plastic buckets of red and white tealight candles and some bushels of incense sat atop of a stone ledge above the alter. But what caught my attention were the monks. Forming a semi-circle on the ledge above the alter, carved into the rock, were eight monks, each three or four feet tall. Around the shoulder of each monk was a red silk cape, tied in a simple knot at his chest. The soft scarlet fabric set against the hard, grey stone was a shocking contrast. I had a notion that these stone monks had been tended to, daily, for almost 900 years. The idea of such continuity stretched my short-sighted Canadian thinking.

Back outside, we found more treasures. A waterfall of mysterious origin and magical properties, where people came to pray and be healed. An old well, ringed by a two-foot circle of stone, that any child or animal could stumble into and never get out of. And a breathtaking view that showed constant, unwavering beauty. Standing beside Tristan, both of us silenced by the view, I was aware of the triviality of our troubles compared to the wonder, power, and grace of the natural world. I imagined that monk meditating on this view, almost a millennium ago, feeling the same magic. For him, it would have been undiluted by the modern world, amplified by his devotion. But still the same magic that illuminates the sharp edge we’re all balanced upon, between complete irrelevance and ultimate importance.