This road is made of stones. You can’t drive on it any more, for it’s broken in places, and there is a new, asphalt road which hairpins between the two ridges on the way to Kaya. I don’t know how old the road is. It is part of the Lycian Way, informally. People have been walking here for a couple thousand years. It curves in such a kind way, and I feel the cobbles right through my flat soles. I walked for two hours through the hills alone and only saw two men with dirtbikes roaring along.

At home in the Pacific Northwest of the US there is none of this human history, of people being here for ages and ages. In the backcountry I walk logging roads and deer trails, and those are never very old. The forest at home grows quickly, densely, moist and voracious. Pine trees, gorse, spikey goat bush, yellow grass, carob. The forest of southern Turkey is comparatively empty to my eyes, seeing between rubric trunks to the needle-coated earth. It is fragrant and dry. It shelters human relics, roaming goat herds, wild boars, ancient olive groves. So different.