Just as the sun begins to break over the horizon the three of us say our goodbyes and our thank-you’s as we make our way out from yurt and onto the barren countryside.

       It’s early June here, but Turkey doesn’t follow normal logic. The day is still dark, and the 45º air hangs like lead around our faces. Our white puffs of fragmented breath interject into the heavy air like broken sentences. Wind whips through pathways between the yurts and out onto the hilly, uneven countryside as if it were transparent fire.

       I zipp one of my outer-layers up so that it covers the bottom part of my face. The three of us look outward towards the small mountain ridge that we have the “great pleasure” of walking to before the sun leaves us in the dark and the transparent fire swallows us up whole.
       “Over there?” Emanuel asks, pointing.
This is more of a complaint than a question. If I was not standing right next to him the wind would have eaten his words before I could have caught them.
       “I think so.” I respond, my speech clouded by the rust woven into the air.
        It’s been 20 days now since we left Greece, 50 since Germany, and 120 since Australia where we started. Once we make it over these mountains we’ll be in a city called Ankara. From there the three of us will fly to either Budapest or India. We’ll find out which one has the cheapest plane tickets and go from there.
         But for now we walk.

         Our backpacks weighing down our backs, and our brains are dizzy from the lack of coffee and the abundance of sky. The family that let us stay with them the night before had pointed us towards the mountains, telling us in their best broken english that there was a place where we might be able to stay if we got there by sunset. Only fifteen miles at most over the hills to the next camp.
        I breathe.
        The barren outcrops of land swell with my exhalation.
The sky pretends not to notice. A small yellow bird flutters somewhere in the distance, its wings burdened and heavy in the half light of morning.
        We’ve done worse, but I can already tell that today will be one of those long days with short words to carry along with us through the silence. We normally don’t talk before coffee and today there was none. Instead we let the wind chant far away memories against the insides of our eardrums. Reminiscents to evenings spent with the blare of a television set, heating, and all of the other things that we miss so much. I know though that I wouldn’t trade indoor plumbing for this metallic expanse of awe-striking landscape and the worn down soles of my boots.
          Everything is tinged a brownish-green this morning.
Hilly countryside spreads out wide and runs as far as I can see, until the grass blurs into mountains and the mountains brush up against the sky.

           The mountains hold the weight of the sky cornered into their crevices, glueing the world together. Protruding earth soldered against the sky like it has been for millions of years without any credit. Their very presence holding the world together as if so fragile that in theory a yellow bird, thought to be a goldfinch, could land on the highest peak and by doing so break apart the gentle gravity of the sky. It would shatter before us, a small infinity of fragmented glassy shards collecting into piles at our feet.
          I doubt that we would notice.
          They defy thought-to-be-small-yellow-birds and gravity. The mountains anchor the sky like the barbed wire razors of a fence. Without a single hesitation they hold the world in all of its fragility together so that we can trudge below the sky on a brisk coffeeless morning without even noticing or paying attention.  
             Today the sky is painted a vibrant cobalt blue with just the finest wisps of sunrise pink and bursts of orange left behind in the still, early morning light. That’s the best thing about these long morning walks; I don’t think that I’ll ever be able to get tired of looking at the snow-crested-mountaintops and sky that looks as if it were painted indigo and hung up to dry on a long clothing line above the tops of our heads.
         This morning I had almost wanted to stay.
         I had longed to stay until the next night, just until the winds had died down. I knew that we had to keep moving. I almost always feel like settling down in the place we take shelter under for a few days. That is, after the fright of waking up in a strange place each morning softens. It becomes a dull trill of a little voice in the back of my head telling me that this place too, will never truly be my own.
           I don’t like to live in a certain place. I don’t need a post office box, a garage filled with old christmas decorations, or the same set of walls to greet me every morning when I first wake up.
I like to think that I live in days.
        Although others might disagree, I find time more forgiving than physical places. Time is always moving forward: The eminent march towards the next sunrise. There is a comfort in knowing that even when the night falls, then sun will be there in the morning waiting to start again. That’s what the three of us have done every morning since February: We get up before the sun to see when time starts over.
       One thing that I have come to learn in my short lifetime is this: Houses can burn, people can die, and family can break apart. But the sun will always rise again each morning no matter the contents of the day before it. I live between the markers of infinite fresh starts. The stars that hold the past and sunrises that forget.

                                             ***
       As the night threatens at the corners of the sky we walk the last two miles towards the nomadic village. The shape of their camp is barely visible in the distance, muted by the glow of the firelight that softly incases it. It’s hard to think that just a day’s hike beyond the mountains is a small city. Everything out here seems so far away, so wild, so permanent.
        I want to keep a piece of this day forever; I want to take a fragile shard of indigo sky and tuck it away in my pocket where it will be safe. But the sunset will come to paint it red, then black before I can reach my hand up to the sky and break off a piece of my own. That’s the thing about sunsets; time never stands still long enough for your greedy fingers to grab at it’s jagged edges and claim it your own.

        One more mile separates us and the camp. There is a resigned placidity that hangs in the air between the three of us as we march forward. Each of us knows this will be one of the last sunsets we watch painted under this too-big-sky that we’ll see here.

        At some point we’ll have to go back when the money runs out. We’ll have to go back to our post office boxes, garages filled with old christmas decorations, and the same set of walls to greet us every morning when we first wake up.

       The sunsets aren’t so vivid there, more muted I guess, and not enough stars to fill the sky. tonight though, we’ll let the memory of our final sunset soak itself into our skin and lace its way into our consciousness. So it’s ready for when days end with five o’clock and rush hour instead of sunsets, and we live in houses with actual addresses instead of backpacks and the time between sunrises and sunsets.
     And that’s okay, because after tonight’s sunset will come the stars. Someday we too will make up the of constellations. After all of this, we will find out that we became the fading shards of sky we had chased after.
    So we go on.
    Bootsoles forcing our names upon the earth, oblivious and burdened by the weight of our own thoughts.
        Just as the sun begins to set over the horizon the three of us are greeted by the collection of people gathered outside of one of the yurts. The dark indigo sky is flooded with a deep rust orange that fades to an amaranth pink, and stars peek out from the cracks of the sky above us, they peak out from the wings of the india ink stained stage, ready to take their turn.