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| Utopia: A cow grazes in the hills outside Shangri-La in southwestern China. Ariel SJ Mieling |
Paradise found in Shangri-La
Paradise was easier to hold onto than she thought.
from the September 13, 2007 edition
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I joined the circle and followed the steps of those around me – with varying degrees of success. I spun and spun until my body and the dance's complexity urged me to stop. Panting, I decided that I needed to go take a nap. I was beginning to see the charm in this town and getting just a glimmer of why a person might never want to leave.
When I woke up, leaving was still at the top of my agenda, but my fiancé and I still had hours before our bus departed. Squinting in the bright morning light, we surveyed the terrain surrounding the town and began walking through the winding streets toward the closest hill.
Soon, we found ourselves following three old men and their cattle. They weren't herding exactly; each man had only one or two cows. It was more like Shangri-La's version of a group of friends taking their dogs for a morning walk. We followed them all the way into the hills until we spotted a peak we wanted to climb.
We broke off, climbing upward as the men went along the valley floor. Pink and yellow flowers, red leaves, and gray puffballs lined our route up. While furtively catching my breath, I stopped every few feet to examine the unusual plants.
Finally, the terrain flattened out, leaving us with a panoramic view of the town on one side and an endless array of hills on the other. I sat down beneath the prayer flags that marked the peak and bit into an apple bought early that morning. Fresh cold air hit my face and filled my lungs, and a feeling of contentment settled over me. Paradise had crept up on me, and I didn't really want to leave, ever. Nonetheless, staying didn't seem to be the right answer either.
In "Lost Horizons," Hilton's main character, Hugh Conway, finds peace in Shangri-La and then leaves. After climbing down the hill and picking up my bags, I was about to do the same. As the bus weaved along the road out of town, I kept sight of a rainbow framed against a brewing storm. At each turn, I saw the rainbow in a new location, arching in a different direction. I began to understand how Conway and I could both choose to leave paradise. Paradise is not confined to a single place; it moves with us – like a rainbow. Paradise depends more on our perception than on the location itself.
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