Shedding Season
Three days on the Lycian Way
It was shedding season. I came close to three wishes and watched them slough off me like dead skin. I watched the grey flakes accumulate as the hammam attendant carefully scrubbed my naked body. I’d just returned from three days on the Lycian Way, a long-distance hike that tracked up mountains and down into beaches deep in the valleys along Türkiye’s southwest coast. Beautiful, she said, staring down at my body. She spoke to me tenderly, then applied the kese with tenacious force. It was tough love. She had no reason to lie. I tried to believe her. Laying back on the hot marble slab, I closed my eyes, willing her to finish what the trail started.
The Lycian Way, or Lykia Yolu in Turkish, started in Ovacık and ended in Geyikbayırı. The trail covered 501 kilometers in roughly 30 days, but I would start by tackling the first three. I’d never done a multi-day hike, after all, and already my inexperience was showing. Arriving at the trailhead with my friend, I could see the hikers who passed us eyeing up my running shoes conspicuously. I’d booked my ticket to Türkiye in a hurry, fleeing a misery thicker than the fog that cloaked the peninsula of my childhood town. I didn’t see what was so wrong with my beat-up Nikes. I was running, after all.
The first day of the trail took us straight up the side of Babadağ. Father Mountain, as the Turks called it, was not fucking around. Though I climbed slowly, I was wheezing for breath. My ragged panting made my friend nervous. A veteran of the trail, she worried she’d signed herself up to hike with a dead weight. I kept assuring her I was fine in between gasping breaths. The truth is that I was. I’ve never been an athletic person through natural aptitude. Rather, I am driven by a self-imposed will. The trick is that I have to care. I didn’t care about soccer or running or basketball or tennis; I care about roller skating, boxing, long walks, and the ability to one day reach the top of a five storey spiral staircase without wheezing. Hiking is a natural offshoot of walking. It’s just extreme walking with a better view, and I live for a walk.