When you’re deep in a mental crisis, the best solutions are always the simplest. Sleep, take a shower, or go for a walk. 

It’s easy to underestimate the power of a walk. But why? It’s what we’ve been doing for millions of years –  chasing, journeying, traversing. Something calls, and we answer. 

No one understands this probably more than Karl Bushby – the man who walks the world. He’s a pedestrian circumnavigator, or, a person who travels all the way around the Earth, and he’s on a journey that started from the southernmost tip of Chile, to a destination of his hometown of Hull, England. 

He has only two rules. 

1. He can’t use any form of transportation beyond walking.
2. He can’t see his family until he completes his expedition. 

It’s a walk that’s taken him through the Darien Gap, across the Bering Strait, into the Caspian Sea – all while watching the sun set a thousand times over, across the mountainous expanse of countries with problems ranging from lunatic presidents to decades long skirmishes and wars. 

And after 28 years of walking, he’s almost home.

This has been the adventure of a lifetime for him, one that we as observers can only know about through movies, but it hasn’t been without its sacrifices. Over the course of 28 years, Karl Bushby has only seen his mom three times, with the last time having been in 2016. He left behind an eight-year old son, who is now 36 and with a kid of his own, a grandchild Karl has never met. 

The uncomfortable truth is this: to be adventurous is to be selfish – whether you’re walking the entire world by foot, or spelunking in caves, or climbing the tallest mountain. As you chase horizons, you are also leaving something behind. Someone else holds down the fort. Someone else blows out the birthday candles without you. I can imagine this is a worthwhile sacrifice when it’s just a year. Or even five. But 28 years is something else entirely.

No matter what shape his life takes on after this journey is over, I hope the one thing Karl Bushby does often is hold his mom close.

As someone who has looked up how long the Camino de Santiago is immediately after they’ve been laid off, I kinda get it. (Which has happened twice, btw. I chose a different version of said fulfilling walk: going to grad school.) 

The idea of being 28, directionless, and stuck in your hometown? And that being the catalyst for this whole journey? I can’t say I’d do the same, but I can understand it. Still, this is some real Aries shit, man.