In Via
Planning a trip? Or just on the pilgrimage of daily living? We are the podcast at the intersection of faith and travel, assisting you on the journey to encounter Christ. Hear stories, discover travel tips, and learn more about our Catholic faith. Along the way, we’ll show you that if God seeks to meet us in Jerusalem, Rome, Lourdes, Mexico City, or Santiago, he also wants to encounter you - right there in your car, on your run, or in the middle of your workday.
In Via
Art, Adventure, and a Pilgrimage Back Home: Around the World with Ben Hatke
In this episode, award-winning writer and artist Ben Hatke shares his latest adventure: a pilgrimage back home. Inspired by Phileas Fogg’s “Around the World in 80 Days,” Ben embarked on a bold plan to circumnavigate the globe using (almost) only surface transportation. With the historical precedents set by Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland, Ben talks about how modern challenges impact such a journey. His adventure started by leaving one door of a Virginia farmhouse kitchen... and will end when he walks in the other door.
In our conversation, Ben and Joan talk about how modern-day transportation has reshaped our perception of distance and time, the need to document his journey with the desire for introspection, and travel's unexpected gifts and surprises. Come along as Ben prepares to embrace the discomforts of the road as adventures, inspired by the wisdom of G.K. Chesterton, and get ready to hear all about a pilgrimage... back home.
You can find Ben and his work (and travels) here:
http://www.benhatke.com/
Instagram: @heybenhatke
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/benhatke
Welcome to In Via the podcast where we're navigating the pilgrimage of life. We are all in via on the way and we are learning a lot as we go. I'm your host, joan Watson. Join me as we listen to stories, discover travel tips and learn more about our Catholic faith. Along the way, we'll see that if God seeks to meet us in Jerusalem, rome or Santiago, he also wants to encounter you right there in your car, on your run or in the middle of your workday. You might notice something different in our episodes lately. Basically, I'm talking to really cool people and just finding out how their life and work relates to pilgrimage. Today is no different. I'm chatting with Ben Hatke, an award-winning writer, artist, author of graphic novels, a storyteller, and we're going to talk about an adventure. He's recently embarked on, a pilgrimage back home. Hi, ben.
Speaker 1:Hi how are you?
Speaker 2:I'm pretty good. It's been a while since we've talked, but we've known each other for like ever.
Speaker 1:I was going to say my whole life.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't think there's been a time that you didn't know of my existence. I think, yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So we go way back to childhood. Ben's sister's my best friend, so it's a lot of memories from childhood. But for those people who don't know you, Ben, which I feel sorry for them, I always start by asking people if they could tell us three sentences about themselves. What three sentences would they tell someone? Okay, wife-related work-related general introduction you want someone to know, okay, okay follow up with other questions.
Speaker 2:Sure, sure, sure, sure, okay, so I, I am ben hatke. I am an artist and writer working in virginia uh, originally from indiana. Mostly comics and graphic novels and picture books and other kinds of stories. That's one thing. That's one thing that pretty much sums up. And I've got a big rambling family in a little Virginia farmhouse and I'm very happy in a canoe and with a bow and arrow. Those are two things that make me happy.
Speaker 1:That was a lot do you have the bow and arrow in the canoe?
Speaker 2:once in a while, but if only if I'm going somewhere with it. Okay, fair enough, I don't know if I've ever loosed an arrow from a canoe. That would be something to try.
Speaker 1:I like it Well, all of that kind of plays into our topic today because it paints the picture of kind of this adventurer, I think, this kind of adventure with a family. Yeah, kind of this adventurer, I think, this kind of adventure with a family. But before we launch into why we're talking today, I would like to ask you a little bit more about your work, because I think not many of us have met a cartoonist maybe. I mean, I think it's really fun that I was telling somebody today about who I was going to interview and I said I never thought that this would actually happen. Like, I'm just excited that I know Ben Hackey and that Ben Hackey is a New York Times bestselling cartoonist. So can you tell us a little bit about, like, being a cartoonist?
Speaker 2:a big question, yeah, so, um, man, I grew up loving comics, um, and loving both, both art and stories, right, and and so, um, I never I can't really tell when the dream of combining art and stories solidified but. But, but, as you know, as a comics creator, it makes me both a writer and an illustrator, right, and those two hats, those two, um, ways of working, are in intercommunication all the time, and so so I think of myself as like a, like a storyteller who works with a lot of like, like visual language, visual storytelling, and so, for the past 15 years now, I guess, I've been able to write and draw stories, create books, create a lot of different kinds of adventure comics and picture books for kids, and that's been really neat.
Speaker 1:I guess you're a graphic novelist, right, I have a really hard time pinning down. That's been really neat. I guess you're a graphic novelist, right, it's hard.
Speaker 2:I have a really hard time pinning down when people ask at parties oh, what do you do? I have a really hard time committing to a lane on that one, because early on I studied painting and I've done like some like prose projects and one of my, one of my big heroes is Tove Jansson, who created the Moomin stories after it, like sort of in the. She was Finnish and shortly in the wake of World War II, when things were just kind of terrible, she started writing these. She was a daughter of artists, so her father was a sculptor, her mother was an illustrator and she wrote these picture books about this kind of like bohemian minded family of. They look like puffy white hippopotamuses. She called them moomin trolls and they're just the best little creatures, best little family and they had this very open way of living and uh, the, the books are charming and the uh.
Speaker 2:Eventually the moomins got picked up by, I think, a british newspaper for a daily comic strip. So she was for years doing the moomins comic strip and moomins got pretty big. I mean there was a cartoon of Moomins in the in the nineties. Snufkin is one of these characters who comes in and out and we might actually end up talking about Snufkin because he has a lot to do with this project that I'm working on now, but all that to say is is I love reading about the life of of this creator, toby youngson.
Speaker 2:She um felt a little bit uh um kind of trapped in that lane of of by her creations, right like she is making these movies, comics, and she wanted to be a painter. She wanted to work on and she did, and she worked on big uh, big uh mural type paintings and also wrote uh, fiction for adults, um, all these different things and um, so I'm really drawn to this sort of like multi-faceted creative career. Um, and comics, yeah, have been extremely good to me. So I suppose that's, I suppose, yeah, I suppose I should introduce myself as a cartoonist.
Speaker 1:But that I think. Yeah, I like Storyteller.
Speaker 2:Why do I feel so weird about that? Yeah, yeah, storyteller is good.
Speaker 1:Because it is in so many. I mean it's like Michelangelo, right, Like, what was Michelangelo? Like, was he a painter?
Speaker 2:He got mad when he had to do Sistine Chapel. He did not like that.
Speaker 1:He was like I'm a sculptor. He identified as a sculptor. He didn't see himself as a painter, right yeah, or like.
Speaker 2:Leonardo da Vinci is probably my sort of biggest historical role model and he was very like the thing we know one thing we know a lot about him is that he had a hard time finishing things.
Speaker 2:Some people say he would have been like diagnosed with add if you, you know, grew up today. He was homeschooled, he was all these, all these weird things, but he uh, you know, with the the last supper, there are a lot of stories of him just sort of disappearing for days on end. Uh, is he coming back to work on this, is he not?
Speaker 2:and it was because he was going off to get he was interested in other stuff. He'd just go out in the streets and be drawing. So that's the kind of sort of creative practice, like a very broad outlook creative practice that I've been interested in.
Speaker 1:And so it makes sense, I think, this next project that we're going to talk about because if people just know you as the creator of zeta or julia's house, or kids books, or that they're, they're not going to they're going to be like wait, what are you doing?
Speaker 2:yeah, like this isn't dragons and robots right, right, yes.
Speaker 1:So why don't you tell us um what you're about to do?
Speaker 2:okay. So, um, we're really we're talking in in the in the final countdown in um. Next, uh, next week, I'm I'm after, um, you know, 25 years of thinking about it and, uh, about a year of of um putting the project together and planning it. Uh, I'm going to be setting off on sort of a trip around the world to my house. So the idea is that we live in this little ramshackle Virginia farmhouse and this kitchen on our house has a door that faces east and a door that faces west, and the concept is that I would walk out the one door, circle our planet Earth and walk in the other door, the goal being to use as much as I possibly can though I think it's nearly impossible for a regular person to do this entirely right now but as much as I possibly can to um use only surface transportation, which means, like, no flying, if I can help it um, which, like I, I don't know if it's nearly impossible to do, but it's very difficult to do it in a compressed time period, right.
Speaker 2:So this is also in the tradition of phileas fogogg's Around the World in 80 Days, which was done in real life by Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland in like 1889. And the idea is, to you know, to basically approach my home from the other direction. So the whole journey is a journey home and yeah, and that's, and it's something that's been in my mind. I actually have the book, my actual copy of the Everlasting man from college, which has the quote. That sort of warmed its way into my brain the moment I read it and never left me alone, so it got to the point where I had to do it.
Speaker 1:I love it. So you're going out. Which door You're?
Speaker 2:heading going out. I'm going eastward, you're going eastward, okay, so heading east, heading uh, um, yeah, heading all across the did nelly do the same?
Speaker 1:did nelly blight go the same route?
Speaker 2:nelly blight, did she? I will be tracing a bit of her path. What's interesting is there was another woman journalist the same year. Same time when they heard that Nellie Bly was going, another publication sent a woman called Elizabeth Bisland the other direction.
Speaker 2:So they sent her west and it was actually sort of a race. Um, the other publication was trying to make it a race and the the new york world, I think, is the paper that sent nelly bly and they, they they sort of seemed to barely have acknowledged that the, that there was even a competitor here. Um, and they were very different. They're interesting because they were very different characters.
Speaker 2:Um, elizabeth bisland was um, uh, more of a woman of letters. She was um a bit more of a of a poet and a well-read woman who was not seeking a lot of, like, personal attention. Um, and and and was basically just told by the paper like, look, you're going, we expect you to go now, go go, you have to get out of here. And uh, nelly bly had a sort of more swashbuckling style and um really liked that kind of um, I don't know, would we call it gonzo journalism, the kind of thing that's like, like, really hard hitting, like, uh, she got, she got herself um institutionalized. Her first big sensation was exposing some really bad living conditions within mental institutions by getting herself committed. So, yeah, that's how she made a name for herself. She sort of had this reputation for for just um jump, she was like a lois lane character.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess, yeah, so it seemed like she was kind of doing it to show she could do it right, like she's imitating this. You know what's what we only know from fiction and deciding I'm gonna do it. Is that why you decided to do it like what captured you. To think like do you just want to see if you can do it like what captured you?
Speaker 2:big part of it. The big part of it is what it what's um, what's different in our world today that makes it easier or more difficult to do the same thing in the same sort of like. I mean, she nearly blighted it in like 72 days. She took that 80 days down to 72, which is pretty crazy.
Speaker 1:And she was never on an airplane. I mean that's mind boggling, right. I mean, obviously she was never on an airplane, but like it's mind boggling.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's pretty fast. So the idea is that Jules Verne was like I think you can do this, um, and then wrote an adventure story about it. And then 10 years, about 12 years later, when Nellie Bly left the idea, when I was reading about it, they said the idea was kind of hanging in the air, like this could be done. Somebody should be doing this. She pitched the story and the paper was like a woman Never. And then a year later they were like we changed our minds, you go. And she was given like two days to the one. They finally said yes, she had like two days to prep and go, which that part's, um, if you're really going to do it fast, that part's basically impossible now because you um like like I'm, I'm.
Speaker 2:The first leg of this is the Queen Mary II, which is really one of the last Atlantic crossing passenger place things that goes from point to point. It's not really cruising, it's technically a crossing, so you get on and then you get off, but with two days prep she just got on the next boat that was going out and with telegraphs they could sort of like keep in touch and keep the next thing kind of lined up, but still it was a big thing and there are things that are legitimately more difficult to do. There's no real actual passenger thing that I can find across the Pacific, on the other hand. Okay, and then in the 80s, late 80s I think it was late 80s, not early 90s, I think late 80s Michael Palin, who was part of Monty Python, he did a trip around the world in 80 days as a mini series and he did it. He did it, he, with a film crew. A lot of what he traveled on was cargo ships for the Atlantic, pacific specifically, and and that's like with Nellie, like she was on steamers a lot of the time. And what's also sorry now you got me going but what's also interesting that I found is like those steep, that time, that crossing time for like the Atlantic, that's basically the, it takes about the same amount of time today on those boats, right, those steamers were like trucking and there were lots of them and people could get on them and, um, but Michael Palin took cargo ships which for at least 30 years or so, you really could um, contact those big shipping companies and they would rent out.
Speaker 2:It was like this, like not little known but not widely used sort of a travel mode like real stripped down you just get a cabin, you eat, you sit on the boat and that's it, but that I'd been planning this book for a long time and that practice disappeared after COVID. Every major shipping company decided never again, no more. They weren't making any money on it and so it was like COVID was a good excuse to just stop. And I contacted a lot of them and they were like nope, that doesn't happen anymore. And I felt really close with one company called I'm Skip from Iceland, and one guy there was pretty excited about it but he couldn't convince them. And it was going to be so amazing because it was going to be more of a um, it was going to be more of like starting out driving the East coast up and then going across from, like Halifax or or something like this that makes sense so the Pacific is going to be your.
Speaker 1:That's. That's the difficulty. Is you're going to have the pacific, is the difficulty.
Speaker 2:The pacific, I might uh. Right now I'm like the only thing to do is get an airplane no bearing straight uh hopping over complicated.
Speaker 1:So I guess that brings up a question how did you tackle the itinerary? Did you look at countries you knew would be easy? Did you look at and you don't have to reveal what you don't have to reveal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, but.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you.
Speaker 2:How did you go about this? Nellie Bly took, which kind of more or less mirrored Phileas Fogg's journey. That route was really affected by British colonialism. Right, they were hitting places that were kind of easy there and then. So, from there, the other troubled part is just world conflicts. So there's the Ukraine, there's the Middle East and, as I was planning this, both of those became a little bit more difficult, escalated, yeah, yeah, so, uh, so I did a lot of reading and I ended up, um, and basically I ended up contacting a lot of like travel writers and travel bloggers and being like, what would you suggest? And, uh, this one guy got ahold of who's done all kinds of different, um, really, uh, uh, like, low budget sounds not great. Like, um, uh, just just, yeah, like, like, really like, what do you call? It's not low budget, it's like um like on a shoestring, like yeah but it just, he just like
Speaker 2:resourceful, resourceful. He was a very resourceful traveler. He um could just figure out like bus systems and all these different places, stuff like that. Like he's not using, um, he's not having planned trips, he's just like trying kind of traveling by the seat of his pants, um, and he does all these interesting ones. And so he he just emailed me back and was like here's, here's what would suggest. He gave me this route and it worked out really well and I'll say, like it's basically the Silk Road, it's like the old Silk Road, so it goes basically through, yeah, so up through, like Turkey and into Georgia and through Azerbaijan.
Speaker 1:Wow, and we will see it as it happens, that's the idea.
Speaker 2:So through, like Turkey, and into Georgia, and through Azerbaijan and and there, and we will see it as it happens. Um, that's the idea. So that's one of the parts that I'm most, uh, nervous and unsure about.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Is this idea that I've said I'm going to draw this as I go, or at least draw a draft of it as I go, and I don't, I don't know that I'm that, I don't. I don't know that I'm that, I don't know that I'm that fast. I mean, I don't know that I'm going to have like, uh, the amount of time every day to actually just sit and be drawing um, and not just like grabbing sketches is one thing, but like um fussily planning Cause I've done some like comics in advance and they're already like up online and you can read them and get a kind of a sense of what I'm doing. But those are um, those are ones that, like you know, I sat at my desk, I did like a like rough thumbnails and then I did like a nicer version and and I'm not I'm not bringing my desk with me, you know. So, yeah, I guess we kind of skipped. We said you, I guess we kind of skipped.
Speaker 1:We said you're doing this. We kind of skipped the actual project, that it's this idea of around the world in 80 pages and that it will be a travel log for adults to kind of see these places in 80 pages or something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a look at the world. Really. It's something where I wanted to be like I don't know if you're familiar with Robert McFarlane's Underland, so what I kind of wanted to do was just do that with the world as a graphic novel. Here is a look at our precious shared world. I was actually like and this is still like I signed this book up as Around the World in 80 Pages, which as a title sounds kind of young already. So this is actually an untitled project and I'm going to save the commitment to a title to when I get home.
Speaker 2:But we've thrown around a lot of different ideas and one of them which I don't know if it's going to be the name of the book, but I like the sentiment of it was homebound. Uh, because when you look up homebound, like in Webster's, it's like um, it's got two definitions and one of them is heading toward home and one of them is unable to leave home. And this is both right. If you think of the pale blue dot as our one precious home, we are homebound in a sort of universal sense, in a sort of like universal sense, like you're sure we might have people on Mars or whatever to poke around, but within our scope of history. We are homebound and that's precious, and so I kind of wanted to see and also, like the psychological size of the world is an interesting thing for me to look at.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, where, like I was even reading about when trains started coming up and before trains, there was local mean time, which meant like basically every town had its own clock setting. This town might be two minutes behind that town, but that's because that's their local mean time. Yeah, it didn't matter. It was when the railroads and the railroad barons needed everything to be like that that everybody had to decide okay, this is a time zone and it's noon for everybody in this time zone at this moment, and that kind of and being able to. There was another thing they said about the railroads was in Napoleon's day he could get around basically the same speed as a Roman emperor. That was the top speed, it hadn't changed. And then suddenly a couple days becomes a trip of seven hours and the world seems smaller. Days becomes a trip of seven hours and the world seems smaller. And now you know my family, we've gone back and forth from Italy a lot. I'm there. I don't think I've ever really like physically clocked that distance.
Speaker 2:You know, it's always you get on a plane and you sit there for eight hours and now you're in Pisa, or you know, or whatever, or you hop a couple of times, but it's just like I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting because in some ways, the world does seem much smaller because, yeah, I can get to Pisa I could be in Pisa tonight if I really pushed it Right. Yeah, but at the same time, like when you were talking about being homebound, and that we're all on the same blue dot in some, some ways, the world feels very large, in that I feel very distant from the conflict in Ukraine and I feel very distant from like you're going to be going to places and I think in some ways, the world is actually going to seem very small because we're all on the same blue dot.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I don't think about, like I don't think about people over there having the same home as me, but we do. We have this shared home that we have to, we need to care for, and I, I need to care for those people over there too, because we're all in the same home, and so it's this odd thing of like the world's very big but, at the same time, very small, because this is all we have right now. We're not colonizing the moon, we're not colonizing mars yet, and so how are we caring for each other and how are we caring for this blue dot?
Speaker 1:And so as the world gets bigger and smaller at the same time. I think it's something for us to think about in that responsibility.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and how we care for each other and how we care for like the world are kind of the same thing, you know, so, so, yeah, so there's that's, that's a whole big thing. And then there's like it's the historical travelers. And then there's like it's historical travelers. So, having, you know, studied history for a long time, I really like started to feel kinship with, because we talked about, like Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland.
Speaker 2:But there are some others who have sort of like touched this journey and are sort of pilgrims in different ways, and the three main ones I think are well, there's Patrick Leigh Fairmore who, when he was like 18, was kicked out of his, his fancy prep school in England and decided to.
Speaker 2:He was prodigiously smart and really, really good at languages and he was like, well, what do I do now? And he decided to walk from, he said, the hook of Holland to Constantinople. And he and this oh sorry, this was the 1930s, so this is, yeah, so this is early 30s. And he basically did it. And then he, years later, and then he had this adventurous life which you can read about is like a life like just packed to the gills with adventure. And then, when he was older he went back to those diaries and wrote the account. So it's this beautiful look at pre-war Europe with both the eyes of like this, like this, like really young eyed, white eyed young guy, and years of of subsequent learning, kind of layered on top of that beautiful, beautiful book called a time of gifts.
Speaker 1:Um so.
Speaker 2:So he's one, and whenever I and there's a part where my path will cross into his which I really am excited for. And then I've been rereading about Francis of Assisi.
Speaker 2:I started with the Chesterton biography, which kind of tries to get the spirit of St Francis and he was a person of the road in a lot of ways Like he, um, they had dwellings, but like part of the no owned dwellings, and he was so influenced by the troubadours which and they, that was a whole movement of, of the road and of travel, Um, so that was really interesting. And then I also there was another, there's a more, so I paired Chesterton's St Francis with another biography where I had the name written down he I don't know where I did it, oh, Augustine Thompson, that's who it was.
Speaker 2:He wrote a more like hard history version of St Francis, right Like to Chesterton's poetical version, right this is more like a historian's version of the St Francis, like what we know from the documents, what we know from, like all these other sources, and that was really interesting too, but it really dovetailed well with the travel angle. And the other one I really love is Ibn Battuta, who is the. Do you know about Ibn Battuta?
Speaker 1:I don't, and you'd mentioned him in an email and I thought I need to ask Ben. Oh, he's so great.
Speaker 2:He's the great Islamic traveler. He went on pilgrimage when he was in his early early 20s. He's like this young guy he's going to go to Mecca, so he sets out for Mecca and he doesn't stop traveling for 30 years and he clocked, and this is 1325. So this is straight in the middle of the Middle Ages and he clocked more miles than Magellan did.
Speaker 2:250 years later he was one of the most widely traveled people of his era or of the medieval era, and then when he came back as an older guy, he wrote a long account of all his travels, everything he'd seen, and called it like my gift and it's a great. It's a great and you know, like, like a lot of medieval texts, like there are, you know, disputed stories and and all these other things, and there there are some crazy accounts that you think like really that's interesting and odd, but all in all there are. It gives you a look at what travel and pilgrimage was like in the Middle Ages and also how kind of cosmopolitan the world was then. Still Like he got into China and ran into somebody from the village next to where he grew up Wow.
Speaker 2:And you're like oh okay, people were really moving around, so he's a good one. Um, yeah, so anyway, I've read a lot of like travel literature and gotten into it for a long time I think you're gonna have several books come out of this, it seems well you're gonna write one in 30 years.
Speaker 1:When you're an old man, like looking back and like looking back at it. Yeah, you know like there's, there's a lot here. Yeah, um, what place are you most looking forward to? Can you reveal that, or do you want to keep that a secret?
Speaker 2:oh, um, that's a tough one. I could.
Speaker 1:There's so many, you're not gonna be able to linger in these places I'm not.
Speaker 2:I'm being hosted by people in a few different places, which will be interesting and good, and then there are a few places that already feel like home, which I'm going to take short breaks in Nice, and so, I don't know, maybe I'm almost looking forward to those the most.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Because you know the village where my wife's family is from, from Gravagna. It's just this little mountain and I'm and I am swinging through Italy and I'm just going to be like, okay, I'm going to take a two day break here and rest, and it's like I know all the neighbors there. I knew everybody there. It's good, it's going to be. That's going to be basically like I watched my kids grow up there, right, so? So I'm going to get over there and I'll be stop at home and then, um, coming back, oh no, all the way back around the world, like I'm skipping everything, but like, on the way, you know, back across the the us, I'm gonna stop at my parents house in indiana, yeah, um, and work that into the book. And another place that I have that clocks very intimately as home, right, yeah, so looking forward to those. And, yeah, and there's a, there are a couple exotic places like like Georgia. I'm really looking forward to.
Speaker 1:That's the country of Georgia. For those who are not, the exotic state of Georgia.
Speaker 2:DC, georgia, so yeah, there are a lot of spots.
Speaker 1:I love the. You know we talk a lot in the pilgrimage company that I work for about the return, the importance of returning from pilgrimage, Because a lot of people neglect that, Like they go on this trip and they don't think about coming home and the responsibility to share what you've learned and to enter back into your world as a changed person. And so we talk a lot about the return. And what I love about your trip is that your return is your trip. That you're coming home, that's your trip. Your whole trip is the return.
Speaker 2:The sacred place that I am pilgrimaging to is my house is my home right.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I guess that's maybe one of the secret worries I have in the project is a little bit actually the performance aspect of it, the fact that I am planning to make and post a lot of things as I go because, like it's such a, like a, because it does clock as a pilgrimage in a lot of ways, and because it is like this deeply personal thing and because I like want to like, like, keep my eyes on that, you know, and keep, keep a little bit of silence inside as I travel, like I do worry that like the, the performative aspect of it, could take away from that.
Speaker 2:Um, so maybe if I had planned the, if I had the project to plan over again, I might even be like no, I am not posting anything about this as I go, I'm going to just do it and draw it and then I'll see on the other side. But I think I I don't know Like I was so intent on like selling this thing as, like a like please sign up this book. This is the book I really care about, that. I said I'll post it as I go and it helps build up a community for your project. I mean, it is a book, so I don't know.
Speaker 1:It's exciting. I think there still will be things that you take from it that maybe you don't you never share with people, and I think there'll be other things that people I mean it's a gift. I noticed that the idea of gift was in both of those books you mentioned.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it is my gift and a time of gifts, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a gift that you are also sharing with us that we get to follow along um, so you'll be giving gifts that I think remain for you yeah you don't share but the gifts of the road and road magic is a big uh is a big thing that I think about and have experienced in different ways, and it's always like the most special thing, talismans that people give you and stuff like this. Um, I was at a um like a book signing event in like golly, where was it? Like like alabama or something, where was I forget? Um, anyway, in the carolina somewhere, and I was in a bookstore and I was like, um, just, I hadn't brought a book, my own book, with me.
Speaker 2:And I was in a bookstore and I was like, um, just, re, I hadn't brought a book, my own book, with me. And I was like looking through the bookstore shelves and thinking like I just really want the perfect book to read and I couldn't find anything and I sat down, I was signing books for for kids and, um, this one, um, young adult guy came up and he was like you know, I, I just wanted to give you my copy of the princess bride and I was like you are kidding me of all, like it had been years since I read it and I was like somehow that was just the book that I wanted to read and it was just sort of like magic of the road that way. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:Always keep your eyes open. We always tell our, our travelers, that that go in with some, some expectations, but not a lot, because you're going to be given something, that if you have too many expectations, you're not going to have your eyes open to those surprises.
Speaker 2:So you work with pilgrims a lot.
Speaker 1:Yes, so my job is to help people prepare for their trip.
Speaker 2:I should be asking you for advice then.
Speaker 1:Well, I don't know about that. I just tell them, like, this is what you're going to see. Because, we also. We want to go into these trips kind of knowing and kind of expecting. You don't want to go completely blind.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:But you also want to be open to the surprises that God has waiting for you, right? You want to be like maybe it's better that you didn't bring a book to that trip because you were ready to accept the you know the gift. And so I think there's that give and take when we travel, of being open to those surprises.
Speaker 2:That's the hard balance I'm finding, like the nerves you know of it make me want to plan out every little. You know part of it right, and there's got to be some give and take. You can't just be walking through. You know, a predetermined series of very well thought out steps. Um, uh, I used to, um, when I was doing more book travels, uh, and a couple of different like book tours, I was working with somebody at uh for a second and when she would send it, this was a really good uh. But when she would send me, like all like the information packet of you know where I'm going and what I'm doing, it was always just like I could. I could basically shut my brain off and follow her steps and find myself at the hotel that I was supposed to be at or whatever it was. So that was really good. But that's not this. This needs to have a little bit of fuzziness at the edges.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there will be fuzziness when stuff doesn't go as planned. Yeah, that's true, and there will be fuzziness when stuff doesn't go as planned.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1:And just to kind of be open to okay, this is where we're going, because maybe there's something even better in store, and that's kind of what we help our travelers with is there are going to be surprises, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And you can either accept them as an inconvenience or you can. I mean, it's the Chesterton quote, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You can accept those things as inconveniences or you can accept them as adventures, and it's all about how you consider them, and I think that's a huge lesson that you're going to find in 80 days. Yeah, yeah, and that's it's also like a test of like am I a good traveler? Like I've always felt that I was pretty good at embracing the discomfort of travel, like actually enjoying I don't know all the yeah the discomforts, the weird little unfamiliar things and the things that like I don't know how, how adventures really are you?
Speaker 1:you're gonna, I know right and how how good at this am I really?
Speaker 2:I can't. I mean so. So there's a lot to, there's a lot to discover and also like um, I don't know stuff like minimalist traveling and yeah, yeah everything down to just what you need.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's another yeah, there's all these little lessons, I think in yeah, um, and I guess, as as we wrap up, I think what I loved about what I wanted you on was like whether you're taking a pilgrimage. I think you are, I think we agree like I think you're taking a pilgrimage, I think you are, I think we agree, like I think you're taking a pilgrimage home, and I think it's that sacred site of home and which made me think of the grant wood quote that grant wood said I had to go to france to appreciate iowa and I have that on a magnet on my refrigerator because, I really I think that's a really important thing, that sometimes we have to leave so that we can come back home.
Speaker 1:I mean I think we have to be stretched and we have to leave Iowa so that we can appreciate Iowa. So that quote really resonates with me and I think that really I hope I think you're going to get that right. You're going to appreciate when you walk in that Western facing door, you're going to appreciate that right. You're going to appreciate when you walk in that Western facing door, you're going to appreciate home a little differently, I bet.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I hope well. I'll report back, Maybe we'll do a post journey conversation, yeah.
Speaker 1:Where? How can people follow this?
Speaker 2:Oh, good question. Best place would be on my Patreon, where I'll be posting the most in-depth stuff, and you don't have to you don't have to you can sign up as a free member. So that's. That's a good spot. I'm posting a lot to Instagram. My website is in shambles, but it is benhatkecom. You can get the basics there. Yeah, those are the three. Those are the three main main bits. Great, and Patreon is just patreoncom slash benhatke. Okay.
Speaker 1:We'll put all that in the show notes so people can follow along. So actually when we post this you are going to be in route. So that's kind of exciting.
Speaker 2:Oh, cool Okay.
Speaker 1:So you will be on your adventure.
Speaker 2:I'll be off, okay, and people can immediately click and find out where I am or where I was the day before. Yeah, nice, anything else, anything you want to add as we finish up? No, this was a lovely conversation. I'm glad we did it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I am too. I'm really excited for your trip. I'm glad to live vicariously through you and yeah, we'll be praying and waiting and seeing what's in store. All right, so excellent. Thanks, ben, thanks listeners. And yeah, all those links are in the show notes so you can see right now where Ben is on his travels and see what I think multiple projects are going to come out of this. So really excited. So thanks for listening and be sure to share this episode with someone who would find it interesting. God bless.
