The idea came to him while lying awake in his San Francisco
apartment one February night in 1958.
”
What I wanted most in life just then was to walk from one end of
California to the other.
”
The idea came to him while lying awake in his San Francisco apartment one February night in 1958. “What I wanted most in life just then was to walk from one end of California to the other.”
We all have sleepless imaginings of some great life-altering quest, but they usually fade when the morning light calls us back to our more mundane existence. But for Fletcher, “Next morning, the idea still glittered.” Within a month, he was alone in the desert at the Mexican border, shouldering a 50-pound pack, beginning a six-month, 1,000-mile walk.
There is not much in Colin Fletcher’s resumé to hint at an adventuring impulse. Born in Wales, he was a veteran of the Royal Marine Commandos in World Ward II. After a succession of post-war escapades as a hotel manager, a farmer and a heavy equipment operator to name a few, he found himself in San Francisco employed as a hospital janitor.
In short, Colin Fletcher was, like you and me (despite what your mother tells you), an apparently unremarkable person. Yet this hospital janitor in his mid-30s made a remarkable decision. Ignoring all reasons not to take on the challenge; no outdoor experience, the heat of the Mojave Desert and Death Valley, carrying a pack up 14,000-foot mountains, sleeping on the ground for six months, sore feet, what about my future?, etc., etc., he courageously acted on that middle-of-the-night vision that most of us dismiss as foolishness. It defined the rest of his life.
Colin Fletcher isn’t a super-human extreme athlete climbing Everest without oxygen or crossing Antarctica on a dogsled. Colin Fletcher does something that any able-bodied person can do; he walks. There is a little more to it than that, but basically, Colin Fletcher just walks. It is inspiring that this man, seemingly on the path to a life of mediocrity, took this simplest of physical activities and has shown us that it offers us, as it did him, a taste of real adventure that is within our reach.
It is valuable, I think, when faced with important life decisions, to consider them the same way we might on our deathbeds. How many “should-haves” and “could-haves” will there be for us? When those final moments come, what will we wish we had done? We may not take a six-month walk, but we may take a three-week walk because Colin Fletcher has shown us that we can. Then, when we’re rocking on the front porch, looking back, we will have had a taste of adventure, and there will be one less should-have to regret.
Today “walking” and “Colin Fletcher” are virtually synonymous. He told of his California walk in The Thousand-Mile Summer. His most famous walk was along the entire length of the Grand Canyon (he was the first) that he described in “The Man Who Walked Through Time.” In 1968, he wrote “The Complete Walker,” the best selling hiking book of all-time and just released in its fourth edition. It is an exhaustively thorough how-to book that also includes the eccentric musings of the curmudgeonly man.
Colin Fletcher is special because, at a crucial moment in his life, he chose to follow his passion and ignore (or embrace) the risk and the uncertainty. He made a choice most of us, tragically, are too afraid to make. And he has also given us the knowledge through his example that we can do it too.
Two years ago, a motorist struck Fletcher and launched the then 79-year-old man 60 feet through the air while he was on a walk near his Monterey County home. He landed on his head. His incredible fitness has helped him make a remarkable recovery, but mental problems from his head injuries persist. But he is walking again, hoping he will be able to haul his backpack once again.
