Book Review: The Thousand Mile Summer in Desert and High Sierra by Colin Fletcher
Colin Fletcher is an iconic figure in outdoor literature and modern day backpacking. Many people know him as the author of Man Who Walked Through Time or The Complete Walker. His books have changed people’s views of the outdoors and have inspired countless people to don their backpack and get outside.
I had the honor to win his book, , in a raffle at ALDHA-West, a hiker gathering. I was quite possibly the happiest and luckiest person in the room, after all, I won the book while others were winning titanium flasks, t-shirts, sleeping bags and other such non-sense.
I haven’t read any of Mr. Fletcher’s works in the past. It had always been on my radar but just never in my reading queue. But ALDHA-West changed that and I am now a better person having read him, having gotten go to along with him on his journey, backpacking up through the state of California from Mexico to Oregon.
The book, The Thousand Mile Summer, was quite different than I expected and it seemed to me that he was young and a bit inexperienced in a way, but his descriptions are magical and artistic. His prose made me yearn to be out hiking in the desert, experiencing my own desert landscape and then in the Sierra, having glacial bowls carved into granitic giants as my backdrop.
It is perhaps his personal evolution, his maturity as the story progresses that is of the most interest to me. In the beginning of the story he is deathly and violently afraid of rattlesnakes. So much so he has a tirade about the evil that emanates from them and then beats one to death. I was totally perplexed by this. From a man who is a hiking icon, I was shocked by this behavior. But as the story progresses, he learns from a ranger the importance of rattlesnakes and the impact they have on the ecosystem, and the impact not having them would have on the ecosystem. He learns to let them be, to let them live, that they are not evil. As happens for many people, with knowledge comes decreased fear and increased understanding and peace. Mr. Fletcher is no exception.
Mr. Fletcher’s book is full of colorful stories of the people he met and the places he visited. He has his idiosyncrasies and is not afraid to display them, most notably his firm belief that rattlesnakes ooze evil and, coming in a close second, his obsession with Silver King and it’s Piute cutthroat trout. He is honest and shows reverence when musing about Yellowstone National Park and the 5 men who found it. “Back in civilization, they registered no land or mineral claims. Instead, they wrote and lectured on the wonders of Yellowstone’s natural beauty.”
I think the best passage to describe the book, and Mr. Fletcher’s message, is found on page 188. He says, “Before long the sun dropped behind a line of stark peaks. Down on the valley floor it was suddenly very gray. But I knew that the copper-red dragonfly beside the Rubicon had given me something I would never altogether lose. And I knew that it was for moments like these that people came to the Wild Area.
Wilderness would be worth conserving if it did nothing but make such moments possible. And as I walked I found myself wishing I could thank the five men who had sat around their Yellowstone campfire in the fall of 1870. It would have been satisfying for them to know that their altruism that night-their altruism in a cockpit of rapacity and exploitation-had done so much not only for me but for the nesting Girl Scouts and for Thor astride his horse and for the father and son fishing in Lake Aloha and for Jinny stretching ecstatically on the mountain top and for Twig in his jeep and for millions of other Americans and for millions more, born and yet to be born, all over the world.”
Thank you Mr. Fletcher for reminding me of your message, of the importance of gratitude to those before us, the importance of treasuring what you have at the moment, the importance of what we leave to future generations and for letting me live vicariously through your adventure. It was a pleasure to read your words.
