Yol Bosun

 Yol Bosun - May There Be a Road.

 

Yol Bosun.  It’s a phrase I originally learned from a Louis L’Amour book named “The Walking Drum”. According to that book it’s From an ancient dialect from the area of what is modern Turkey.  It translates to “May there be a road.”

 

Yol Bosun; May there be a road.

 

Not long after I developed a love for reading, I also developed a love for seeing something just over that horizon, or some place far away that I’d never seen.  I suppose it was a natural result that a boy who loved exploring woods, hills, and valleys around my home, would have his imagination drawn to the distant shores and hills described in adventurous tales in the many, many books I devoured as a kid.   

 

First there were books from Pleasant Gardens Elementary School library, then McDowell County public library was a gold mine of new stories about the long ago and far away, or the distant future.   Later I exhausted the resources at West McDowell Jr High, Granite Middle School, and South Caldwell High School libraries. 

 

All those books, all those stories burned one thing into my brain.  I wanted to see the places, and not just read about them.  I wanted skin in the game.  My own game.  I wanted to travel and wander from place to place and see as much of the world as possible.  There was one problem with my dreams.  We were poor and travel costs money, and jobs that pay that kind of money required college, and unfortunately that also required money.  It seemed like a hopeless cycle of interdependencies with no way out.  There was no road.  

 

I worked for my Pop after high school to help him.   It didn’t pay much, but I learned a lot and we were close.  We had a lot of good times.  I enjoyed it the vast majority of the time.  After work there was wood to cut and split, gardens to work, grass to mow, and big red sunsets sinking across the mountains in the west.  Oh how I watched those sunsets. 

 

I had discovered Louis L’Amour westerns in the South Caldwell library.   His poetic and vivid descriptions of the west had captivated me entirely and I longed for those western lands and gigantic mountains.   

 

I took to spending a chunk of my pay each week on gas to fill up my 1974 Chevy Luv.  Then on Friday or Saturday I’d go get lost in the mountains hunting places I hadn’t been yet.  I would spot a road and turn just to see where it went.   It wasn’t much, but there was a road. I did a lot of random driving. 

 

One Friday evening or Saturday morning, a friend, Eric B. mentioned to me that he was talking to a Navy Recruiter about joining up.  At that time the Navy’s slogan was:  “It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure.”  An adventure.  Maybe there was a road.  And maybe it took me to some of those places.  

 

I worked up the courage to stop and talk to the US Navy Recruiter in Morganton, NC. 

 

He was a Chief Petty Officer, and his name has disappeared down a long hole of years, but he talked to me and made his promises and pulled out an old pipe and puffed it while he talked.  I nibbled the bait.  

 

Over the next month or so my rides in the mountains became longer and more thoughtful. I drove, listened to music, and looked at the deep dark hills and valleys along the Blue Ridge.  That road was calling me, but I felt obligated to Pop.  It was not an easy decision but one day my mind stepped through a threshold and it clicked shut behind me.   There was a road.  

 

I told Pop I was going to join the Navy.  He didn’t try hard to talk me out of it, he just warned me it wasn’t going to be fun and games.  

 

In February I stepped on a bus in Hickory, NC. and headed to Charlotte to process in.  Then it was boot camp in Orlando followed by three electronics schools in Great Lakes Navy Base.  

 

Finally, in August of 1986 I parked my car on Norfolk Naval Station and walked down to the pier.  I turned the corner and there she was.  My home for the next four years.  She was old and smelled of fuel oil.  She was amazing.  The USS Barney DDG-6.  

 

I’ll leave the individual stories for another time. I had latched on to more than one of my dreams and had made them come true.  Now to see the world.  

 

The world is seventy percent water.

 

I had always loved tales of pirates and islands and seas.  Once repairs were completed on the boilers, we hit the tide, headed south, and sailed into the Caribbean Sea.  Those islands were everything I had dreamed of and more.  The sea was a deep azure blue and clear as glass.  The beaches were clean, sandy ribbons around emerald green jungles, and the natives were friendly and helpful, sometimes even for free.  

 

A few weeks of grueling work in Guantanamo Bay for refresher training, aka “RefTra” and we were ready for deployment.  There was a road.   It was pointed straight at the Mediterranean Sea for six months.  

 

In two deployments with the Barney, we hit almost every place over there I had ever dreamed of and some I had never heard of.  I explored castles, cathedrals, countryside, and cities that dated back three thousand years.  I ate food I’d never even thought about, most of the time loving it, sometimes gagging on it.   I climbed inside the pyramids, climbed mountains, and did a covert hiking trip behind enemy lines in Yugoslavia when the Soviets still controlled that part of the world.  

 

I almost died on a mountain and saved a guys life on the sea.  

 

I walked the roads Jesus walked with his apostles and saw the places where he performed miracles.  I knelt in the place he was born, and saw the place where he was crucified.  I stood on Mt Carmel and went quietly into Gethsemane.

 

I saw a jousting tournament in Spain, and walked up and down the French Riviera.  

 

I saw storms on the ocean I’ll never forget.  I saw the sea as calm as glass.  I froze and cursed the cold.  I sweltered and cursed the heat.  

 

Always there was a road.  I traveled all that I could.

 

In November of 1990, I stepped ashore for the last time.   I carry a part of that ship and the sea with me to this day.

 

I was married now.  Time to settle down and build a life, so that’s what I did.  

 

A job. A new house. Two absolutely wonderful kids.  The mundane, day to day life in rural North Carolina.  Chores and honey-do’s.  

 

Sometimes in an unguarded moment, I heard that call.  Often I watched the sun set over those ancient mountains with a deep and aching hunger, and thought: “May there be a road”. 

 

For years there was not.  Then some opportunities began to send me on far flung trips again.  I climbed the Alps in one of the most beautiful countries in the world, Switzerland.  I walked the banks of the Danube, and wondered in medieval cities.   I’ve ridden trains at 185 mph and went through the deep roots of a mountain on one in the longest tunnel I’ve ever seen.  

 

I’ve hiked into the back country of Wyoming and slept in the winter chill.  I’ve woke up to a blizzard and fought my way out with my son leading the way to the truck in near whiteout conditions.  

 

I’ve explored the Southwest and seen it’s Arches and canyons, and sand.  Lots and lots of sand.  The road is still there.

 

May there be a road.  May there be a road trip.  It’s more important to do stuff than it is to have stuff, once you have what you need.   

 

I have read hundreds of science fiction novels in my years.   They excite my imagination.   As I look out the window at the stars tonight, so distant and beckoning, I whisper quietly to the night.  Yol Bosun.  May there be a road.