In less than one week I’ll be boarding my first eastbound flight on my slow trek back to the states. I’ll be arriving to a purgatory of sorts, since I’m leaving again for Israel and Africa in January. A month and a half is certainly more than a weekend stay, but it’s not exactly an opportunity to start looking forward. Staying places for only a month or two at a time is really starting to wear on me and it’d be nice to get a little more established somewhere. The drive to be productive has really been striking me lately, but I’m not ready to head back to the US for good yet. I’m worried that I’ve opened a pandora’s box of wanderlust and I won’t be able to satisfy either of these two forces without sacrificing the other.
When I leave again I’m not sure if I want to leave for two months or twenty, and that makes it pretty hard to decide what to do with my time when I get back. Do I look for a job in Neuro? Keep on trying to write?* If I decide to keep writing do I want to do it in the US or abroad? It’d be nice to work on a farm for a full season, but that’ll just leave me displaced again in another 6 months.
This all sounds pretty bitchy, but it’s what I’ve been thinking about recently. Despite all these questions I’ve been feeling really good lately. I just got back from a month long hike along the coast of Lycia in Southwest Turkey. Camping out every night, I made my way along the coast weaving in and out of the inland mountain range through large expanses of pasture and down exposed cliffs towards towns and isolated beaches below. Most of the towns along the route were small goat herding and beekeeping villages. Steady water is unreliable in the mountains making irrigation difficult and pushing most agriculture down towards the coast taking the people of these small communities along with it. Greenhouses and communities of cheap temporary housing have sprouted up all along the coastal lowlands and produce fruits and vegetable that find their way all over Turkey.
Away from these greenhouses and the boomtowns that have built up around them, the entire coast is littered with ruins. Lycia was a powerful and wealthy area in Greek and Roman times, but hardly at all afterwards leaving many of the ruins undisturbed and largely intact: whole cities shrouded in forest, and fortresses long since gutted on the inside and grown over. Much of what remains are funeral monuments. Lycians were meticulous about burying their dead and giant sarcophagi lurk in the underbrush around almost every turn. One city, Aperlae, has largely sunken underwater and overturned sarcophagi descend from the hills into the water, where some lie half submerged poking out of the reeds near the shore.
One of the more striking things about many ancient cities are there incredible locations. Set up on hilltops and ridges for defensive purposes, they have incredible views of the countryside and the ocean. One night, I camped in the ruins of the city of Belos, which sat 900m above the coast on a ridge overlooking the sea and was used as a refuge from pirates into the 6th century AD. I lingered in the morning, packing up my tent while I watched the sun rise high over the mediterranean in warm oranges and reds. Another night I was at the eternal flames of Chimaera, a natural gas reservoir constantly burning and shooting flames out of holes in the ground. Bellerphon is said to have defeated the Chimaera here. It’s easy to see this place as the setting for an epic battle, and it carries with it a strangely foreboding warmth, especially after the sun has set, and the flames light the hillside, dancing along barren rocks in warm eerie light.
The whole trek was a welcome escape from Istanbul, where I’d started to settle into the general malaise that seems to strike me in most cities. I’m enjoying being back for now though. I have some really great friends here, and sadly have already said goodbye to some of them as many people have returned to their hometowns this week for the festival of Bayram. With the city feeling empty it’s clear just how many people have come here to find work. Talking the past couple nights with friends going home to Eskisehir, Cappadocia, and Cyprus it’s clear just how much people feel for their hometowns, but underneath all these conversations lies the implicit assumption that they’ll never go back. The jobs just aren’t there. It seems if you’re serious about making something of yourself, you need to be in the city.
*This has not been going well lately. I’ve only finished 3 stories since coming to Istanbul. I’m pretty happy with the quality, but that’s just not enough output for 3 months where I was supposed to be writing full time. I’ve had distractions including a week in the US and month trekking in Antalya , but that’s still just not enough.
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