Go Lookabout

I have recently been reading The Complete Walker by Colin Fletcher.  Yeah, I know, I’m 40 years late to the party…

But, what a great book!  A wealth of information and a singular voice.  He gives equal time to the ineffable experience of travel and to the practical aspects of camping.  Here’s what Colin has to say about maps:

…I want to know roughly where I’m going but also want to conserve that titillating element of the unexpected.

Another way to achieve that end is to take along only an ordinary road map of the kind you can pick up at any gas station.  Between roads, these maps are mostly blank space.  At the most, the have some rather speculative hachuring – a light shading that indicates the slope and direction of hill and valley.  With such a map you can easily set yourself the vague sort of target that seems necessary to almost any kind of walk.  (As someone has said, “Every journey must have a soul.”)  You just find a big blank space that intrigues you, drive to the edge of it, park the car, and walk in and find out what’s there.  Such an expedition can take an hour, an afternoon, a weekend, or a week.  With a little experience, local knowledge, and luck, you may be able to burst clear not only of roads but of the last vestiges of any kind of trail.

Maybe this doesn’t have anything to do with bicycles.  Or then again, maybe the bicycle is the urban equivalent to the Walker.  In a world of pavement and asphalt, a bicycle allows you to explore the insides of a city with an agility unachievable in a car or on foot.

There are four editions of the book, the last one being published just a few years ago.  For the original, head to the Portland Public Library.