For a couple of months now, I’ve been following an extraordinary story. Perhaps it has caught your attention too. A Brit named Karl Bushby left the military at 29 and decided to walk around the world. The hard way.
Bushby covered roughly 36,000 miles, well beyond the Earth’s 25,000-mile circumference, and set the record for the longest unbroken foot journey. He was the first person to walk continuously around the world, passing through 29 countries. Along the way, he joined the first modern teams to walk the Bering Strait and swim the Caspian Sea. He nearly died. He spent years stranded in Mexico after losing his sponsor. He was convicted of spying, held in custody in Russia, and sentenced to deportation. He has been threatened at gunpoint and faced the prospect of a polar bear for breakfast. Wars, economic collapse and a pandemic have all forced him to stop, and each time he retreated to Mexico until he could work out how to resume. Through it all he kept two rules: no mechanized transport, and no setting foot in Britain until the journey was done, even though that made seeing his young son much harder. Forrest Gump’s run looks like a 10K by comparison.
He pushed it all forward with the Beast, a modified golf trolley that carried his camping gear, clothing, toiletries, food and water.
The truth is, I would never dream of doing something so foolhardy. But I am fascinated by people who do. I’ve read Into Thin Air, Into the Wild, Wild and others, and I’ve wondered how long I’d last before asking to be put under a tree with a bottle of water and left for polar bear breakfast, or black bear, or lions, or bandits… whatever. Bushby’s trek dwarfs every one of those books. The years of walking, the grinding tedium of it. What could possibly motivate a man to do something so… so crazy! So terrifying! So dangerous! I’ve followed his exploits from time to time, trying to understand him.
The biography helped. Bushby never fully fit in. He was dyslexic (undiagnosed), the butt of endless jokes, and bullied and shunned at school. He didn’t drink, and when he joined the British Army, that drew derision and suspicion. Outsider again. Through it all he pushed past doubt and fear. And the biggest motivation, by his own account, was mortality: “I took death seriously. You’re dying, you’ve got one life, and what are you going to do with it? That really resonated with me.”
Judaism agrees that death must be taken seriously, and then asks the harder question: what does that seriousness do on an ordinary day? Rabbi Eliezer taught his students to repent one day before they die. When they asked how anyone could know which day that would be, he answered: then repent today. Bushby answers by walking into danger. My answer is to embrace the moments I have, peaceful moments of joy accompanied by sadness and loss, because that is what a life is made of.
I have never felt the need to run from everything and live alone in the wild, not knowing what might happen from hour to hour. I’ve never had to risk my life, and I pray I never will. I don’t need to prove anything to myself or to God. Our tradition understands the difference between risking your life and saving someone else’s. Pikuach nefesh, the obligation to save a life, overrides almost everything, and it runs toward danger for someone else’s sake. I know that you want me at the emergency exit; I will faithfully carry out my obligation to help others get out. That said, I plan to be the last guy sliding down the emergency chute.
Karl Bushby ended his trek a few days ago by returning to his mother’s home in Hull, England, as he promised years ago. I’d have liked to be there, raising a glass of l’chayim (juice for Karl), and asking him a million questions. A film about his journey is nearly finished, directed, of course, by Werner Herzog. And as I left his mum’s house, I’d have muttered under my breath, “Not in a million years…”
