Turkeylurky goodness, and the Lycian Way

Falling behind on my links here, but there are two new Turkey posts on vagabondurges.com, including part one of our beginning of the Lycian Way... Unless you hate dogs. Then nevermind.

I am defeated

Not enough time, battery, or internet access to tell you about it here, but pity me on my snippet on vagabondurges.com here.

California is not in a drought.

It would have been the most benevolent vandalism ever. (Unless you count this, which you should.) On the bathroom wall was an earnest entreaty to my fellow rock climbers to save water, because “California is in a drought.” The statement was followed by some facts and figures, and some of those ubiquitous and alarming photos of dried-up reservoirs.

I agree with the sentiment, but I have a problem with the wording. Because I have bad news: California is not in a drought. At least, not in the sense in which we understand the term.

A drought is something you hunker down and wait out. You install low-flow toilets and let your lawn die, then two years later you replace the grass (in the meantime you've realized that NOT having low-flow toilets just doesn't make sense). But this? This isn't that kind of drought.

Should I list data? Talk about the mega drought? Would that be too depressing? The most important datum is that our definition of “normal” is based on the 20th century, which was the wettest in the previous millenium. Our “normal” was highly abnormal.

Hence my vandal urges (vandalbond urges?) in the bathroom: to change “California is in a drought” to “California is a desert.” The advice/plea for saving water is the same, but the mindset is crucially different. This is not something we just outwait for a couple years, this is the reality for the rest of the century.

When Lydia and I were in Sonora for the solstice, we found
this bridge over a nearly empty reservoir. A car crashed
at the bottom on the other side looked tiny.

Also, while the poster’s recommendations (like turning the water off while you soap up in the shower etc) are important, they’re not very well prioritized. Better is to skip beef and nuts. For that matter, call someone in government and point out how ridiculous it is that Jerry Brown's new water conservation rules say nothing about agriculture, which uses 80% of California's water. (All residential use combined accounts for 14%. Almond production alone guzzles 10% of CA's water. That's ridiculous. Time to find somewhere else to grow almonds.)

On the plus side, I'm going to get some epic desert photos in my home state. I wonder if we'll riot when the water runs out gets expensive?

Would you go to Europe with me?

My previous experience with tour guides was to turn and run the other way, snug and smug in my snobbish superiority as a solo traveler. No spoon feeding for moi! No comfy tour buses to take me from place to place without suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous chicanery from touts and hucksters, salesmen and dope dealers.

Or in those cases when I couldn't escape them, like at Ephesus,
I could just slap a neutral density filter on,
and blur them into ghosts.

But after a while, the sinking selfishness of doing things only for and with myself dragged me down. What was the point? I took the normal countermeasures, visiting orphanages, co-operatives, and chasing social justice the way I’d sought bargain dorm rooms and all-you-can-eat buffets. That path is a good one, and I'm sure I'll return to it, but it's still a solitary string, holding together pearls of connection and purpose, and if I keep moving, I’m going to keep leaving. I want continuity, to go with my novelty.

So I went back to the classroom. Teaching English to refugees would save me from the privileged malaise of my birth circumstances and demographic lottery win. And every time I see someone learn a new word, laugh in the midst of their incomprehensibly difficult transition, or even just show up with a smile, I do feel a popcorn pop of satisfaction at perhaps paying back a tiny piece of my debt.

It's a bit ironic that my first attempt at
on-tour training will be in Turkey.

I love to teach. I love to travel. I love to meet new people, share something of myself and welcome a piece of them. Is there a job for this? Indeed there is. So no longer will I turn and run from tour guides, because now, a tour guide am I.

Somehow I conned the good people at Rick Steves Europe into thinking I could be of service, so this June and July I'll be roaming Europe as an assistant guide, frantically scribbling notes in a cheap notebook rapidly becoming invaluable, hoping to learn the skills to lead my own tours. In that top notch company I found a philosophy that mirrors my own, where guides are not salesmen but teachers, travel not a means for profit but an avenue for growth and progress, both individual and pan-social. And they're damn friendly too. I couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity.

So in a bid to escape the tyranny of my incomprehensible blessings...I’ve found another one. But hopefully, if I can learn the skills, I can start to pay it forward, one contagious case of travel-lust at a time.

Brothers gone Turkish

Apparently my brother and I used to fight like cats and dogs, squids and whales, birds and bullet trains, though I barely remember any of that. But we’re in a good patch lately, a streak of getting along that’s lasted about, oh, a quarter of a century or so. But through the demands of modern American life, where geography and occupation insert themselves like bossy uncles into the affairs of our days (or like bed bugs into a traveler’s sheets?), we haven’t actually spent much time together since Clinton left office.

Turkey's past, further past, and present

All of that’s about to change. On Monday morning I’ll head towards Turkey, and on Thursday my older brother will arrive in Istanbul. We’ll pitter patter around that most layered of cities, clicking cameras at ancient angles and trying to espy the currents of culture and history that flow through the streets, with their Byzantine memories and Alexandrian heritage. Or maybe we’ll just eat a (metric) shit ton of good Turkish food. That sounds alright too.

What will we do in Turkey, a land that hosts such a surplus of stupendous sites? That encompasses a mass of contradictions and a horde of cultural candy, with relics of ancient ages and promises of future delight? The plan is to do something that spans all of that. It has the potential to be amazing, the obligation to be beautiful, and the capacity to be excruciatingly uncomfortable. Will we roast and burn, freeze and blister, starve and devolve into animals prowling for sustenance and warmth, seeking survival on the fringes of communities we cannot touch? It’s possible.

Turkish countryside from last time, I'll see you soon

But in my present haze of excitement, trying futilely to leave expectations behind, I am going to leave things mysterious. So for right now, I’m focussing on the Family FeelGood current, which will flood out in diluvian splendor to a FeelGood April (unless we do that whole freezing and starving thing). Because travel to foreign shores is a well established love of mine, but to do it in the company of family? That’s a new version. A new perspective, and chance at clashes and harmony, growth and remembrance.

Looking across the Bosporus to Istanbul's Golden Horn

So I’ll be incommunicado for the rest of April. I hope you can connect and share this spring with your family and loved ones, and I look forward to hearing about it in May.

Wishing you lavish travels and familial fortune!