On the Road (Walk with Me)

It seems I’m always on the road, in some exotic country across the oceans.  I’ve traveled to many continents and cities, but I love to just take walks.  I’ve walked with my children, so much enjoying their wide, surprised eyes and their small hands in mine as we bent to touch a dandelion or stretched up toward the moon.  I walked with my husband and sometimes friends.  I often walk alone, so often not by choice.  Yet, I was not all alone.  Christ walked with me, and though I should follow his footsteps more often, He doesn’t abandon me.

Writing begins in the mind, and when I’m walking, I let my body and mind relax.  Words come to me, and I can outline a novel in one afternoon.  A character, a setting, a desire, an object like an old camera held up to a seeing eye–images drift into my imagination as one foot naturally steps in front of another like the rhythm of poetry or my favorite music.  My eyes drink in all that surrounds me.  Wind washes my face like water, and salt from the sea fills my lungs.  I feel light as sunlight, as air, as a bird’s wing.

In Turkey, I have walked by some of the most beautiful places in the world.  Alanya, Turkey is one of them.  It is a place you should discover outside, not in a car or a building.  I took a path that started on the beach and led to the boat harbor, Red Tower, and the castle walls that line a swimming cove on the calm Mediterranean.  Shady olive groves, stone walls white in the sunlight, the depth of clear blue . . . these marked my way in Alanya.

Come, walk with me on this road atop the walls of a castle by the sea.  Come, explore the vast beauty of Turkey.  Maybe you, too, will write a story about it.