Backpackin'

To call this the hiker's Bible or a backpacking encyclopedia is ludicrous. Those are books and this thing isn't a book, it's a university. It's a univeristy offering a liberal arts degree that includes courses in economics, physics, meterology, chemistry, biology, philosophy, ethics, mysticism, manufacturing, alternative energy, shoe making, thermodynamics, hydrology, cooking, algebra, physiology, ancient Assyrian military techniques, electronics, business management, marketing and literature among many, many others.

I once had a magazine editor who gave out a template that every writer had to follow. The template explained in electron-microscopic detail what was to go in each paragraph, sentence by sentence. In this way, every story was the same. There was no distinction among writers. I knew of another editor who demanded each paragraph be exactly the same size so that, when printed, every story looked like a series of grey building blocks. I have a web-wizard friend who says everything from magazines to books is paring down to internet-style brevity; people simply lack the patience to read anymore.

Well, the first edition of this book came out about 50 years ago. It was big, it was good and it was successful. Since then - well, that life goes faster and faster and no one has time for anything has become a worn and tattered cliche. Yet, the saints at Knopf have at least in this case not fallen victim to what Fletcher calls Herblock's Law: "If it's good, they've stopped making it."

The book is huge, almost 900 pages with appendecies and Fletcher and Rawlins ramble on and on in ways that made even their long, long, long explanation of backapcking footwear a fun read.
You know how in The Matrix where they shove that thing in your head and you can instantly learn something like King Fu or how to fly a helicopter? Soon as that's available I want to download this book. That, the SAS Survival Guide and the Bible, which contains every form of story ever concieved, from bloody warfare to spiritual ephiphany to lusty romance. Those three and I'm set for life.

Anyway, these guys were emminently qualified to write this book. Here are their official biographies from the Barnes & Noble website (http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Complete-Walker-IV/Colin-Fletcher/e/9780375703232) from which you can by the paperback edition for $23.95. (Considering you'd never need another backpacking book again, a great deal).

"Colin Fletcher was born in Wales and educated in England. He moved to California in 1956 after serving in the Royal Marines, farming in Kenya, surveying in Zimbabwe, and prospecting in northern and western Canada. He is the first man to have walked the length of Grand Canyon National Park within the canyon’s rim. He is the author of numerous books on walking and the outdoors, including The Thousand-Mile Summer, The Man Who Walked Through Time, River, The Secret Worlds of Colin Fletcher, and three previous editions of The Complete Walker."

"Chip Rawlins has worked as a guide, outdoor instructor, range rider, firefighter, field hydrologist, and scientific editor. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, Rawlins has written previous nonfiction books—Sky’s Witness: A Year in the Wind River Range and Broken Country: Mountains and Memory—and poetry, with a recent award-winning book, In Gravity National Park. He served as president of the Wyoming Outdoor Council and on the board of directors of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He lives in Laramie, Wyoming."

The book is, simply speaking, crammed with great stuff. I suspect there is something in it that would appeal to anyone, in a personal sense, who has ever enjoyed anything about the outdoors.

For example, those who seek to be mystics often begin with a sense that there is something "behind" or "underneath" physical reality as we experience it ( a "sense", I fear, impossible to describe in words). I have. I recall as a kid standing in the woods, looking intently at a patch of ground - white sand, baby pines - and having this strange feeling there was something "behind" it, "supporting" it.

Fletcher, page 8: "The last thing I want to do is knock champagne and sidewalks and Boeing 747s. Especially champagne. These things distinquish us from the other animals. But they can also limit our perspectives. And I suggest that they - and all the stimulating complexities of modern life - begin to make more sense, to take on surer meaning, when they're viewed in perspective against the more certain and more lasting reality from which they have evolved - from the underpinning reality, that is, of mountain water and desert flowers and soaring white birds at sunset."

Then, on pages 295 and 296, he gives us the chemical formulas for a variety of backpacking stove fuels, from Ethanol to Isobutane, in among the mechanical, metalugical and thermodynamic details of how the stoves work, like some over-stimulated engineer solidly standing on concrete reality.

My notes have far too many examples of the good stuff to quote here. But I can't resist this one about gear, from page 31.

"The lesson is this; never, never, ever place your entire trust in gear. If you aspire to lightness, whether high-tech or low-, you need an array of primitive backup skills. The point is not to live in a rabbity state of fear, but to stay somewhat flexible in your approach."

Unfortunately, Fletcher died in June, 2007. He was 85 and died of complications from being hit by a car six years earlier. He was walking at the time.

The Complete Walker IV by Colin Fletcher and Chip Rawlins. © 2002 by Colin Fletcher and C. L. Rawlins, Alfred A. Knopf, NY, New York, 845 pages, $22.95.