Wednesday, 26 September
The next morning, about forty-five minutes into that day’s walk, I pulled off at a gas station for a morning break. I didn’t need to stock up on supplies, having eaten so much the night before, and I had plenty of water. I just took a seat at one of the picnic tables in the back of the gas station to rest awhile.
Some travelers from Ankara drove up in their car and stopped. They noticed my pack and came over to introduce themselves. As we made small talk, I felt a longing to go with them. I thought about how they would travel in an hour the distance I would travel in a week. They were driving to a town I would arrive at in maybe three months. They owned cars and worked in offices. Theirs was a world where iPhones, chargers, electricity, and hotels were common. They enjoyed staying overnight in Hyatt Regencies.
I longed to go with them, but at the same time I realized, No, I’m very happy to be here doing what I want to do. I was at peace with the reality that all I had was what the next kilometer was going to look like when I walked it.
As they loaded back into their car and sped off, I knew I had broken the spell of Denizli and Çardak. I stood up, swung on my backpack, and started the steep descent into the town of Keçiborlu.
The road was narrow and the shoulder almost nonexistent. As I walked down the grade I tried not to get hit by the oncoming trucks as they labored up the hill toward me. As long as I was willing to breathe their exhaust fumes, I was safe.
Early in the afternoon I got to the bottom of the grade and entered the village of Keçiborlu. It would take another short day of walking to get to Isparta, the next major city. I double-checked the financial calculations that I had made in Dinar and decided to stay at a cheap motel in Keçiborlu.
Thursday, 27 September
The next morning I once again feasted on the traditional Turkish breakfast that came with the hotel room: the huge round platter with sliced cucumbers and tomatoes, olives, sausage, two kinds of cheese, a plate of bread, and this time, in the center of the tray, a fried egg rather than the usual boiled egg. I didn’t care that the yolk was broken. I took a picture of the breakfast plate for my website.
Before starting my day’s walk, I figured it was time to answer some more questions from my friend Denise’s 4th-grade students near Seattle. I pulled out my phone to read their emailed questions and peck out my answers.
The next question was where did I get the hat I wore in so many of the photos they had seen. I wondered for a second, What hat?, then realized they were asking about the dirty, crumpled-up, sweat-stained hat from Fowler Nursery in California I had been wearing since the first day of the walk. That hat had become as much a part of me as my boots.
The next question was about how I checked emails as I traveled. I used my old phone. That phone was my computer, my workhorse, and almost as much a part of me as the hat and the boots. I set it down on the table and took a photo of it I could post on my website too.
One of the students wanted to know why I ate so much junk food along the way. I chuckled, thinking, Ah! When you’re an adult you, too, will be able to eat as much junk food as you want. But, wanting to be a responsible role model, I told her that many places along the walk were sparsely populated and I didn’t have room in my pack to carry much food. I had to get what I could along the way at the gas stations. If I couldn’t eat a nutritious non-junk-food meal, I told her, I would drink a carton of juice or just water and eat a roll of cookies that I could pick up at the gas stations. Whatever I could find to get me through to the next meal, that’s what I ate. I told her that I made sure I ate at least 1.5 healthy meals a day. I had learned that this was what I needed to keep up my energy for the walk. If some days I would just eat one, then the next day I would make sure I ate two.
After finishing my breakfast and my emails to the kids, I pulled on my pack and went out to the road to start the walk for the day.
I traveled that whole day through mile after mile of parched, dry terrain where the mountains had been carved away by strip-mining. I was hoping to make it into Isparta but it was taking a little longer than I had planned, and by the time sunset was nearing I was still about 10 kilometers north of the city. I was quite hungry and thirsty. I hadn’t seen a gas station or a restaurant all day and hadn’t eaten since breakfast. As daylight dimmed, I trudged on through the barrenness looking for a place to at least shelter for the night, but I was finding only dry open land. And then, suddenly, up ahead at the top of a hill, I spied an oasis. Perched at the top of a hill was an OPET gas station that sat on a huge green lawn surrounded by large, well-irrigated trees.
Happily, I walked up the hill to the station.
The gas station attendants were very hospitable and welcoming and told me I could of course camp there on the lawn. They even turned off their automatic lawn sprinklers for the night so I wouldn’t get wet. As I drank my carton of juice and ate my roll of cookies before dark, I sat next to my tent on the hill and gazed across the valley. Beyond one of the hills, I could see Lake Eğirdir, where I would be in a couple of days.
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In 2012, Matt sold off or gave away almost everything he owned. He strapped whatever was left to his back, flew to Turkey, and walked across it. Every foot, from one end of the country to the other. Along the way, he slept in mosque gardens, dined with strangers, and stumbled into refugee camps.
This is the story of that journey. We’ll be publishing one chapter each week from his book. If you would like to read the whole thing at once, you can purchase his book titled Heathen Pilgrim: Walk Across Turkey on Amazon.
