Finishing your life's work can feel like losing it
After nearly three decades walking the globe, Carl Bushby says he is unsure how he will feel the morning after he gets home.
The Headlines · Trump Administration Steps Up Midterm Interventions, and Israeli Elections Have No Clear WinnerCarl Bushby, who once served as a paratrooper in Britain's army, stopped at a pub along the last stretch of a walk around the world. When asked how he felt about finally reaching the end after nearly three decades and more than thirty-one thousand miles on foot, he did not talk about triumph.
"My purpose for living is about to abruptly end," Bushby said. "It's been half my life."
For Bushby, the walk has been the organizing purpose of his life, not just something he did. It has been the reason for his days, the thing he thought about when he woke up, for longer than he has done anything else.
He began in 1998 at the southern tip of South America with $500 and what he called a glorified push cart. He had told himself he had something to prove, and he would prove it by doing something so unlikely that most people would never even consider it.
What followed taught him how much finishing would cost. He trekked through some of the harshest climates on earth, got across the Bering Strait, and later escaped the grasp of the FSB, Russia's security service, without going to jail. He described that run of survival as "one miracle after another," Bushby said, and said luck had carried him through.
There were long interruptions he did not choose. He was deported, delayed by wars, and stopped by the pandemic, and each time he returned to the same spot and kept walking. By the end he had crossed South America, North America, Asia, and Europe, and swum across the English Channel, with a return to his mother's house in Hull, England, in sight.
The other cost was time with family. When he left, his son was 8. His son is now 36, and Bushby has a granddaughter he has never met. Bushby has said he wrestled with what being away that long meant, and hoped his long absence would give his son reason to feel proud.
So the arrival leaves him uneasy. He said there is "some apprehension there," and he is unsure how he will feel once the walk is over. "I'm not sure how I'm going to feel the next morning," he said.
Questions people ask
How can anyone walk around the world when oceans are in the way?
You cannot. Walkers link the continents where land nearly touches or ice forms, then deal with the water separately. Bushby crossed the Bering Strait, the narrow sea between Alaska and Russia, on foot, and he swam across the English Channel between France and England.
Why did the walk take 28 years?
He did not plan it that way. He was deported at one point, detained in Russia, and later delayed by wars and the pandemic. His rule was to stop when forced to, then go back to the same place and start walking again.
What does he mean by half his life?
Bushby started in 1998 and has been walking for 28 years, which he describes as half his life. That puts him in his mid-50s, meaning he has spent his late 20s through his mid-50s, much of his adult working life, on the road.