October is one of the best times to be on the Smoke Creek Desert, the unique silence at the sagebrush ocean’s shore being perfect for contemplation…

…particularly given that three weeks ago Wednesday we departed Benicia  [see below]

…for thirty hours of airports, security checks, layovers, flights short, long and short again, ending up at midnight the following [i.e. Thursday] night in a boutique hotel high in the hills above Gocek, Turkey, having intersected our additional four fellow travelers at various points along the way among the layovers…

L. and I left from Oakland Wednesday morning…

To L.A. [and a four hour wait]…

left there at dusk…

 for an abbreviated night over the north Atlantic and an abbreviated day transiting northern and then eastern Europe;

to Istanbul;

…and finally, late that night, a fortuitously luxurious Airbus to Dalaman on the southwestern coast of Turkey…

The aforesaid boutique hotel, the Escape [though why a boutique hotel would be named for a low-end Ford SUV escapes me] was run by a most interesting and hospitable English expat couple; when we reached them our party included two lawyers, two professors, a film critic and, most surprisingly given my propensity for solo travels, myself.*  Among we six four friendships dated back to the Huerfano communes of the early 1970’s and four [a slightly different four] have traveled together extensively.  Anyway, there we were at the Escape Hotel, poolside for the jetlag and miles from Benicia Bay on Friday October third.

The unlikely and in some ways historic event bringing us to Gocek was “a dream trip for walkers and sailors alike, with fabulous swims and archaeology thrown in for good measure”  [http://www.petersommer.com/escorted-archaeological-tours/turkey/walking-lycian-way/]. Specifically this was inspired by two of our number who, having enjoyed a similar trip before, and one of whom having recently achieved septuagenarian status, managed to cajole the rest of us not all that unwillingly into it. A particularly compelling argument [the two in question being the Lawyers] was that since we were all in our latish sixties or even seventies, there would be diminishing opportunities for such activities…other enthusiasms entered into this as well [more on that later], but, well, here we were.

*  [Our party might also be described as comprising three writers, a sculptor, one [arguably two] photographer[s], a brilliant raconteur/backgammon aficionado, a painter and, hey, having self-published my illustrated memoirs, I could be an author, too, right? [Shameless Commerce 101: http://www.mikesmooreptgs.com/contact-autobios.html].  More identities than people already, so, onwards…]