Book review: Globetrotting on foot

While in high school, author Tom Turcich was moved to embrace the concept of “carpe diem” after viewing the movie “Dead Poets Society” following the tragic death of a friend and classmate. He felt that circumnavigating the globe on foot would teach him to seize and appreciate each day more vividly. Unlike most of the bold and callow vows made by bored teenagers, he was eventually able to accomplish his goal.

Turcich began his solitary trek at age 25 in 2015 and completed his journey where it had begun at his home in New Jersey seven years later. Thus, he became only the tenth individual to accomplish this feat of endurance. He was accompanied by Savannah, a pup he acquired during the first stage of his planned route, who became the first canine to walk around the world. His book is an honest and straightforward account of his odyssey which is documented by sixteen pages of color photographs he took during the adventure.

Without divulging the details of his daily travails to survive and find food and shelter, both he and his dog were able to persist to the end. Along the way he was held at knifepoint in Central America, gunpoint in Turkey, survived a bacterial gastrointestinal infection that caused him to lose 32 pounds, and experienced the prolonged shutdown of countries during the worldwide pandemic.

In 1958, this reviewer read a similar book which is now out of print entitled “Walk the Wide World” by Donald Knies. This began a lifelong fascination with quixotic adventures in exotic locales that have influenced some of his review selections in this space. Books by Levison Wood, an ex-English paratrooper, explored the Nile River, the Himalaya mountains, South and North Americas, and the Middle East (4/4/16, 7/8/16, 2/26/18, 2/3/19). A book by Ben Montgomery about a man who walked facing backward was even reviewed (8/25/18).

The protagonists of these tales have provided many vicarious thrills for armchair adventurers. The lessons obtained from these intrepid hikers often seem mundane when compared with the dangers encountered. Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire” depended “ … on the kindness of strangers” to survive as did Turcich. Dorothy Gale discovered that “there’s no place like home” in “The Wizard of Oz.” Turcich would agree with these sentiments and would also concur with the inscription above Nebraska’s Memorial Stadium: “In the deed, the glory.”