Colin Fletcher > Quotes

“But if you judge safety to be the paramount consideration in life you should never, under any circumstances, go on long hikes alone. Don’t take short hikes alone, either – or, for that matter, go anywhere alone. And avoid at all costs such foolhardy activities as driving, falling in love, or inhaling air that is almost certainly riddled with deadly germs. Wear wool next to the skin. Insure every good and chattel you possess against every conceivable contingency the future might bring, even if the premiums half-cripple the present. Never cross an intersection against a red light, even when you can see all roads are clear for miles. And never, of course, explore the guts of an idea that seems as if it might threaten one of your more cherished beliefs. In your wisdom you will probably live to be a ripe old age. But you may discover, just before you die, that you have been dead for a long, long time.”
― Colin Fletcher, Complete Walker III

“Every walk of life falls under the Testicular Imperative: Either you have the world by them, or it has you.”
― Colin Fletcher

“Soon after I left the Canton I read, in an otherwise unsuccint paper on ecology: "Organisms themselves are relatively transient entities through which materials and energy flow and eventually return to the environment."
In my more skittish moments I am currently inclined to think that I would rather like this sentence as my epitaph.”
― Colin Fletcher, The Man Who Walked Through Time: The Story of the First Trip Afoot Through the Grand Canyon

“There is a powerful human compulsion to leave things tied up in neat little bundles. But every journey except your last has an open end. And any journey of value is above all a chapter in a personal odyssey. Its end is not so much a goal attained as another point in a continuing process. And the important thing at the end of a journey--or of a book--is to keep moving forward, refreshed, with as little pause as possible.”
― Colin Fletcher, The Man Who Walked Through Time: The Story of the First Trip Afoot Through the Grand Canyon

“The act of driving your body, very occasionally, close to its limit of endurance is for some reason one of life’s major satisfactions. And relaxing afterwards is one of life’s most luxurious rewards.”
― Colin Fletcher, The Thousand-Mile Summer

“Organisms themselves are relatively transient entities through which materials and energy flow and eventually return to the environment.”
― Colin Fletcher

“For the computerized, a wide array of weather reports and data banks can be found on the Internet by activating a search for “weather.”
― Colin Fletcher, The Complete Walker IV