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Trekking in Turkey
May, 2002
A PROLOGUE
Feet don’t fail me now!
Those immortal words of my tennis partner Nancy, uttered before each
critical point in a doubles game, came back to me in spades in the weeks
before my imminent trip to Turkey.
My feet would ache.
My legs would ache.
And above all, my knee would ache---and perhaps fail me. At least
that’s what I feared most in the weeks before I left. (I had torn the
cartilage in my knee playing tennis some months before the trek was to
commence.)
Carefully contemplating my two most obvious options—cancel the trip vs. go
and suffer—I decided, rather, to substitute a new more optimistic motto
for the old foolish foot one!
“No gain without pain,” I repeated over and over in the days
before I left.
I had plenty of both over the next three weeks.
But actually, the magic words worked. Ultimately, the gain far
outweighed the pain!
The test would come after I arrived in Istanbul and started walking---not
only on those cobblestone streets, but more specifically, up and down dusty
mountain trails, along rocky paths among the ruins we were to visit,
climbing over uneven stone steps to the tops of amphitheaters and down
into
rocky gorges to walk along river trails.
I knew this was labeled as an “easy” trek, but I wasn’t at all sure
I’d be able to keep up the pace, or more important, whether my knee would
actually give out on me.
Neither happened. I kept up the pace, though sometimes pulling up the
rear of the group while silently mouthing my mantra, mentioned above. At
times I hung back to catch my breath or stretch an aching muscle---but
though I wanted to a few times, I never dropped out.
In the process I gained an enormous new appreciation for this ancient land
and its many historical, cultural and geological “delights”—not to
mention living through a few new experiences I hadn’t anticipated---but
that’s just part of my story!
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