“No thing is too small for me to cherish and paint in gold, as if it were an icon that could bless us.”
– Rainer Marie Rilke
This morning, I awake on the couch of a family I only met last night, after yet another kind soul opened their home to me as I walk the Evliya Çelebi Way through northwest Turkey.
Shivering in the cold, I fold up the duvet with its sunflower print, slip on my hiking clothes and running shoes, and hoist the sack of stones currently masquerading as my backpack onto my shoulders, who are threatening to go on strike any day now (and who could blame them?).
After two cups of çay at the local kahve, or teahouse, it’s time to hit the road.
I arrive in the neighboring village of Deydinler one hour and some four kilometers later. As always upon entering a new town, I look around for its bakkal, a small market that’s usually just a single room stocked with pasta, bread, fruit, bars of chocolate, little one-serving Nescafe packets, and cold drinks – items otherwise known as pilgrim fuel.
The men in Deydinler’s kahve point me across the street to their bakkal, which sits slightly above the ground on a few stairs. It’s on the final step into the store that I hear music coming from inside the building – music that my mind immediately thinks to call jazz. Whatever it is, the tune is a marked change from the Turkish pop music videos I’ve grown used to seeing on TV here.
It’s only when I enter the shop that I see the music is no recording – standing behind the counter is the shop’s owner, whose name I will later learn is Erdağon, playing a silver clarinet, eyes closed as his fingers press the keys, warming the morning air with a simple, plaintive melody.
I stand in place, unable to move while the clarinet sings; the only word to describe its effect on me is that I am transfixed, mesmerized by this man’s solo performance on a Sunday morning in this tiny Turkish village.
When the song is finished, Erdağon apologizes – as musicians and artists are wont to do – and says he’s only been playing for seven months. He points to a piece of paper on the counter and moves his head back in the gesture I’ve learned means ‘no’ in Turkey; instead, he points to his heart and says, “Direct.” I take this to mean he plays straight from the heart, not sheet music.
In my broken-broken Turkish, we chat for a little while longer, somewhat ironically about how we don’t need language to feel and understand music; Erdağon plays another song for me, one fittingly inspired by Rumi; and then I go back to the kahve to pick up my backpack and begin walking again, this time to a village called Ortaköy.
As I walk, following the well-worn grooves of tractor tracks through fields shrouded in dense fog, I think about a conversation I had two nights ago, with a Turkish family visiting the family I was staying with.
Through the help of Google Translate on their daughter’s cell phone, they asked me a barrage of questions about how and why I’m doing this trek: “Why are you alone? Where are your friends? What if you get hurt? What if something happens? How will you eat? Where will you stay tomorrow? Who is paying for all this?”
But it was their final two questions that kept circling in my head long after they left:
“So what’s the point? What will happen at the end?”
The point is the journey, I typed into the phone, it’s everything that happens along the way – although their daughter said however Google translated this didn’t make sense. Our lack of understanding – due to more than just a language barrier, I suspect – sent me spiraling downward into one of those beautiful existential crises that occurs eventually on a big trip: Wait, what if they’re right? Why am I doing this?
But on the road to Ortaköy this morning, I feel my faith in this journey begin to return, just as the heavy fog is slowly burned off by the sun.
Erdağon is the point, with his gleaming silver clarinet.
A lone shepherd in the woods is the point.
Every step of the way is the point – that much I believe and hold onto, even as a perfectly round blister forms on the bottom of my right big toe.
As for what will happen at the end?
That, my friends, is still a mystery – and also part of the point, wouldn’t you say?
A few more photo highlights – the scenery:
The history:
The food:
The people:
Thank you as always for reading, and for your comments on recent posts – please know I’ll be replying to them as soon as I reach Simav!
My dear dear Candace Rose. All I really can say is wow. As to the “point” of why you are doing what you are doing…..only God himself knows. He will reveal it with each and every step. Two thoughts to muse over as you walk:
“Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?”
― Garth Nix, Sabriel
“Unexplored paths lead to undiscovered treasures.”
― Constance Chuks Friday
Keep moving forward…..undiscovered treasures await you.
*sigh* Candace. Absolutely loved this post and love love love these photos. I kept exclaiming to Ben that I wanted to have them printed and framed on my wall-especially the “walking above the clouds” one. That one is an escape in itself just to look at. Also, loved getting to hear all the serendipitous stories of hospitality and lost-in-translation conversations. Can’t wait to hear more about this journey!
Oh, Candace. What a beautiful journey. And the folks you’re meeting along the way must just *love* you! How could they not??
P.S. Your mom is the coolest ever. Just sayin’.
Oh, how I understand that question (why?). You will know why eventually but it is not yours to know right now. An amazing adventure Candace. Miss you!
So beautiful, as always, my dear friend. I have often struggled with the same question, but have learnt now that the point is not to understand, but simply to go. In the end you are left with a million different reasons why the going was indeed worthwhile. I hope you and your heavy backpack will soon be heading to France – there is a warm bed and endless supply of cheese and wine waiting for you, and I’m longing to head out on a sketching trip together xxx
The point is the journey – the lessons, the understanding, the clarity each step takes. Because the journey seems very long, especially when times are hard, you start to wonder if all this is worth the effort. There could be no answers at the end of the day but perhaps, the answers are in every step forward and it’s up to you to pick up all the bits and put them together. And you are the one who decide if it’s worth it.
I could almost imagine myself next to you as you trek through the countries. I remember I was once in India where I saw children being very grateful for the small things they had which I had never seen before in my own country. I realised that sometimes in the quest of our lives to pursue the ‘bigger’ things in life, we neglect and forget the ‘small’ things. Dont you think so?
Good luck to you and take care. I look forward to your next post 🙂
I travel vicariously through your posts. Thank you for your wonderful site.
Ahh!! I LOVE the picture of the small child with the lamb – so adorable! Your description of the clarinet performance is so beautiful; it was almost as if I could hear his music in my office. Good luck with the trek! I’m looking forward to more stories 🙂
Candace–thank you so much. These posts are pieces of life, things that are true. Thank you for sharing that. It brings me hope, it shows me things I am not able to see yet, but imagine and strive for. The places and people of the world are beautiful, if we open ourselves to it. Beautiful post, touching pictures. Keep up what you’re doing. You’re blessing people. My prayers are with you on your journey.
Candace,
I am a fellow WRPC-er, living in Izmir, on the southern coast of Turkey. If you need a place to rest your weary head/feet at the end of your journey, call me, email me, stop on by. My doors are open.
PS – LOVE your blog!
Hope Yetkin
(formerly Hope Strickland)
As always, such beautiful photographs. Makes me want to be there! (though in all truth, any walking adventure has my heart)
I think that at any point is our journeys and adventures on earth – we could ask ourselves – why? what’s the point? I LOVE my job – and I ask myself that. I LOVED traveling – and I asked myself that. I will travel again – and I am sure I will ask myself that – again.
To paraphrase Socrates – an unexamined life is an unlived one, no?
Me thinks the beauty is in the question and in those moments when the question feels so big.
Candace I never get tired of seeing the world through your eyes. The detail in which you notice the world around you and the immediacy of your stories is inspiring to read. I love the way you pick out moments that could be so easily passed over.
beautiful photos. if i’m not mistaken, the woman in the last photo is holding a small bucket of water. she would pour it on the ground behind you as you were leaving. it’s a gesture of some kind of a prayer/wish that make you’d travel “smooth as running water”.
What a journey you’re on. I love how your energy and spirit seem to invite the most beautiful people into your life.
Candace–what an amazing trek. You are an inspiration. I’ve been to Turkey twice and I found the people to be the most hospitable of any I’ve ever met. Your post makes me homesick for Turkey, a country I’ve never called home.. BTW have you ever read Patrick Leigh Fermor? In the 30s he walked from Holland to Istanbul. He wrote about it in two amazing books: A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water. Your journey reminds me of his in a way.
-mark
Love the photos and love the stories along the way. I’m also fairly certain I know how what I need to do once I travel to Turkey again….