Walk through the world and throw yourself on its mercy

Until recently I found myself waking up in the middle of the night wondering where will I sleep on that first night outside Kusadasi, 12 miles into a 1500-mile journey. Is someone going to take me in and let me sleep on their living room floor? If I sleep on the side of the road, will the cops haul me in on a vagrancy charge?

I know that people in that part of the world pride themselves on their hospitality and openness to strangers, and I know from experience living in Turkey that they are proud of their hospitality for good reason. But I’ve never pushed that trait as far as I will push it on Heathen Pilgrim, where I will depend on it every single day for six months.

A few weeks ago I asked Cat Jaffee about this. Cat is an exceedingly bright young woman who has traveled extensively throughout the region. In a few sentences describing her personal travel experiences, she made me comfortable with this particular unknown, and now I sleep without that worry.

People regularly offer other help too, some of them introducing me to others who have done something similar, some of them offering technical help designing a Heathen Pilgrim iPhone app.

Other times people give me inspiration and spiritual support, even if they don’t realize it at the time. One of my best friends in Seattle is nearly blind and has multiple sclerosis, but he asked if he could walk part of the journey with me. Another friend encouraged me to walk through Iran when I thought it was too much to ask. Another friend, before I left Seattle, said to me, “Matt, you HAVE to do this.”

These days I wake up at 5:00 am every weekday to walk 12 miles. I won’t start the real journey for another six months, but when I start it I want to know my body can walk 12 miles a day, day after day, week after week. As I walk, these people, and others like them, walk with me in spirit. The journey hasn’t begun yet, but already I know there are people watching over me.

I may be solo, but I am most definitely not alone. Thank you.

2011 has been a year of big change for me. I left my job as a supply chain manager for a kitchenware import company. I like that kind of work, getting stuff made in China, but it’s not for me anymore. In another big change, my wife and I split up. We were together for 8 years, five of them married. I like being married, but things just didn’t work out between us.

So I’m at a bit of a crossroads in life. I could turn this crossroads into a stereotypical midlife crisis. I could go out and buy a red Porsche. I could get hairplugs. I could start chasing after college coeds. But a couple years down the road, none of that would make me proud of myself. I would not be able to point to any of those activities and say, “That was a good use of my time here on this earth.”

So what I decided to do instead is take a walk. Not just any walk, a really long walk. A walk across Turkey, then turning south and crossing Syria into Jordan, and then heading west towards Jerusalem. It’s about 1500 miles. It’s going to take about a year. And I’m going to write about it. I figure, if you’re going to do something that big, you better share it with people. Actually, sharing it with people is a big part of why I’m doing it.

You see, I look around at my friends and family. I see them raising children, and building careers, and paying down their mortgages. They are doing the kind of steady, predictable work that builds a steady, predictable society. That’s a good thing, we need that.

But because they are busy doing those things, they don’t have time to address another kind of need I also hear them expressing. That is the need to connect with other people, specifically to connect with other people on the other side of the planet, not as the cartoonish caricatures they see in the newspapers, but as normal people, people like them, people who just want to raise good kids and make the world a better place.

My friends and family open the newspaper, or they turn on the TV, and the only Middle Easterners they see are the ones who make up less than 1% of the population, but get all the press because they run around shooting guns and blowing things up and chanting “Death to America” and generally just making a lot of noise.

My friends and family know in their hearts that 99% of the population “over there” is not like that, but they don’t have time to think about it much, because they are busy taking their kids to soccer practice, paying their bills, and putting food on the table. To address those more immediate needs, they have to ignore the need that says, “Know your fellow man.”

I, however, for better or worse, am in a position to address that need now, not just for myself, but more importantly, for the people around me. I can go off and spend an entire year, or two, or maybe even more, getting to know that land “over there,” and sharing it with people here.

I am certainly not the first person to do this. People have been doing it for thousands of years. Some recent examples: in the early 2000s there was a Scottish Member of Parliament named Rory Stewart who walked across Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nepal. In 2010 an Australian named Mark Kalch walked across Iran. For the past 10 years a team out of Harvard University has been heading up the development of a trail that follows the footsteps of Abraham from southeast Turkey through Syria and Jordan and then into Jerusalem and Hebron.

I am not a religious person. I am not an academic person either. None of the writing and speaking that emerge from this project will be particularly scholarly, or learned, or profound. I do not have any illusions that I am going to solve any of the world’s problems. All I want to do is do something my friends can’t, and then bring it back and share it with them.

I don’t want to take on a big, multi-year project like this and waste it by cranking out a couple half-assed books and giving some half-assed speeches. So I’m not planning on leaving Seattle on October 31 and starting to walk across Turkey the very next day.

In fact, I don’t plan to start walking across Turkey for another year. Over the next year I will be practicing my writing and speaking skills. I finished my first book a couple months ago, and I’ve started writing books #2 and #3. I will also start writing a weekly newspaper column for a national newspaper. I am practicing my interviewing and speaking skills by speaking about the project to Toastmasters clubs and church groups, and interviewing with reporters and bloggers.

By the time I start the walk, I will have written 3 books and over 50 newspaper articles, and I will have spent a year practicing speaking about that part of the world.

This is what I’ve chosen to do with my midlife crisis. I don’t know exactly how it’s going to play out over the next couple years, but my gut tells me this will be a more constructive use of my time on this earth than buying a red Porsche, getting hairplugs, and chasing after college coeds.

In the days that followed that initial conversation with Gayle, I floated my trial balloon of an idea past a handful of people. The reactions ranged from fear for my life (my parents) to the same patronizing disbelief you’d extend to a 5-year-old who tells you he’s going to jump over the moon (almost everyone else).

After all, at the time Iran was most famous in the American media for imprisoning three young American men who had strayed across the border while hiking in Iraq.

But I was midway through a book written by a Scottish MP who had walked across Afghanistan after having walked across Iran and Pakistan.

And I knew of an Australian who had walked across Iran in 2010. And for years I had had friends in Istanbul who did business in Iran and flew there regularly.

The needle could be threaded, maybe it would just have to be threaded carefully.

Walking across Iran, especially for an American, is not something you want to screw up. It is not something you want to abort halfway through because of technical difficulties, and it’s not something you want to get arrested doing. Starting, but not completing, the journey would completely defeat the purpose. If you’re going to stick your hand in a cookie jar, you’d better come out of it with a cookie.

So I figured I should work out the kinks first. That’s how I came around to the idea of walking across Turkey. Why not practice on a country you’re familiar with and already know your way around?

It all started with Gayle.

Actually, it didn’t “all” start with Gayle, but this particular part of the story did.

In early September of 2011, my friend Gayle and I were having coffee at a coffee shop in Seattle. She had just been laid off from the company I had left a few months before. She and her husband were about to take a vacation to Yellowstone, and I had just finished my first book. It was a time of change for both of us.

She asked me what was next. I shrugged and said, “I don’t know, I guess I’ll find out.”

Then a naughty thought came to my mind, naughty in the “watch me stick my hand in the cookie jar” sort of way.

“I’d like to walk,” I said. “In fact, I’d like to walk across Iran.”

It wasn’t the first time that thought had crossed my mind, but it was the first time I had voiced it to anyone.

I expected Gayle to balk at the thought, to rein me in, to tell me I was crazy. But she didn’t blink an eye. She looked at me with a matter-of-factness I would expect to see if I had just told someone I was going to walk down to the corner grocery store.

“I think that’s a great idea,” she said.

The horse was out of the barn, and at least one person was okay with it not going back in.