Over the years, I have watched some of this transformation, first as a student, then a journalist and now a writer and teacher. Like many people who have fallen in love with this city, I was disheartened and felt Beijing’s culture was lost.
Light fades as the sun sets way too quickly. We—my friend Randi and her 11-year-old daughter, Shaeli, who’ll be hiking the first leg of the trail with me—left Missoula late, and by the time we jounce my Subaru up 10 miles of washboard dirt to the trailhead, night is coming fast. I’m worried about making our planned campsite in time, or accidentally ambushing a grizzly in the dark, but I tell myself to chill: This is a spiritual journey, remember, so just go with it.
The Sacred Door Trail, like many pilgrimage sites, is intended as a place for spiritual reflection. It’s for “grieving, healing, and honoring life’s major transitions,” Weston told me over lunch a month ago. Inspired by a hike on Spain’s Camino de Santiago, in 2009 Weston started piecing together existing trails (including part of the CDT) into a loop route with the help of a coalition of local faith-based and indigenous groups. The trail officially “opened” in 2012 with a multi-faith ceremony, as well as a guidebook and website. But unlike many of the most famous pilgrimage sites—such as the Camino or the Hajj to Mecca—this trail is explicitly nondenominational. And it gets its sacredness not from the grave of an apostle or footprints of a prophet, but basically because Weston declared it so.
For most of my time in Beijing, I have always lived within walking distance of the Temple of the Sun. A 50-acre park in the Jianguomenwai diplomatic district, the temple was built in 1530, one of four shrines where the emperor worshiped key heavenly bodies. The others are dedicated to the moon, the earth and heaven. The Temple of Heaven is easily the most famous, but the Temple of the Sun reveals more because it is less of a showpiece.