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Women's Fiction
The Man Who Walked Through Time : The Story of the First Trip Afoot Through the Grand Canyon

The Man Who Walked Through Time : The Story of the First Trip Afoot Through the Grand Canyon

List Price: $13.95
Your Price: $10.46
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Overhyped but generally interesting
Review: After reading his fourth edition of "The Complete Walker", I went out and purposefully searched for more books by Fletcher. His writing always portays the most comprehensive language ever imagine. His attention to detail is astounding. This book contains some flowerdy prose, but is still a must read.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: None better than Colin Fletcher
Review: After reading his fourth edition of "The Complete Walker", I went out and purposefully searched for more books by Fletcher. His writing always portays the most comprehensive language ever imagine. His attention to detail is astounding. This book contains some flowerdy prose, but is still a must read.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I not only read it, I lived it.
Review: Another pilot and I were the ones who flew the Canyon that Colin Fletcher mentions on pages 190,191, I would love to tell Mr.Fletcher the rest of the story.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A fantastic journey through the Grand Canyon on foot!
Review: Colin Fletcher makes you feel you are by his side walking the entire length of the Grand Canyon National Park from border to border, West to East, over an entire season. The solitude and peace of this jouney is still with me after reading this story 21 years ago! You will be entertained throughout the trip with Colin's wealth of knowledge on Hiking, Nature, Geology, History, and his ever-dry sense of humor! I felt like he became an old friend with whom I wanted to visit again and again. -- Those who like this book will likely enjoy 'The 1000-Mile Summer' (California trek) and 'The Winds of Mara' (set in Africa) also by the author.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A book as alluring as the Grand Canyon itself
Review: Colin Fletcher's THE MAN WHO WALKED THROUGH TIME is as alluring as the Grand Canyon itself. Why? It successfully fuses human spirit with rock, water, bush, and animal. We walk the Tonto plateau above the Colorado River with Mr. Fletcher and even beyond because our senses are stimulated to wonder, sometimes worry, about what's around the next bend. We feel the heat, we experience the spiney shaft of a cactus plant, we see the ravens soar above in desert skies, and we pray that we will make it to the next cache of supplies and cool water. For those of us seemingly locked into the corporate world of time, pressure, and demands for productive performance, this book provides necessary relief. And yet, there are different pressures, different times, and different demands for productive performance in the midst of that incredibly alluring Grand Canyon far below the world of the rim. Time is measured in penetrating silence. Pressure is felt on the feet and in the stomach. High performance is demanded in scaling a steep angle of loose and crumbling rock

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Overhyped but generally interesting
Review: First off, let me start by saying that I envy Colin Fletcher, who walked the entire length of the Grand Canyon, walked from Mexico to Oregon and rafted the entire length of the Colorado River from source to sea at the age of 67, and each journey generated a book.

This is the second Fletcher book I have read (the first being "River"). I found this one to be better written -- less wordy and more to the point. However, I think the description on the back cover of this book overhyped this journey. I am not saying this two-month journey is not an amazing feat, but he certainly planned this trip well in advance, arranged 3 airdrops and several caches of water and food, so throughout the book there was no indication *whatsoever* of "lack of water" or "dwindling supplies" of any sort.

In "River" Fletcher said that this book is sometimes reviewed "in tandem" with Edward Abbey's "Desert Solitaire". Besides the fact that both books were published at roughly the same time and that both are about the desert Southwest (and written by opinionated lonesome men), I really don't see much similarity. Abbey is a much better writer, the desert -- the mesas, the canyons, the rivers -- jump out the pages and have a 3-dimensional quality. Both are loners, but Abbey, at least when he writes, is first and foremost a writer. Fletcher, on the other hand, is more of a backpack guru, sometimes too self conscious, too contemplative that he goes on and on about his thoughts and forgets about writing about what is happening around him. On the other hand, while Abbey is even more of an extremist, his comments are more an integral part of his writing about the environment. And it is obvious that Fletcher also lacks knowledge about wildlife (especially insects, besides a sandfly, he could not even name many other insects he saw in the Canyon).

Overall, though, despite its blemishes, since I plan on taking a Rim-to-rim hike in the Grand Canyon, I found this book to be pretty informative and reasonably interesting.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Seems forced
Review: Fletcher, supposedly the first man to walk the length of the Grand Canyon, below the Rim (seems unlikely), wrote a book about it. I must say I'm sorely disappointed in the result. It's horribly repetitive and boring, to begin with (he repeats his descriptions of how the Canyon formed again and again, for example). But my main objection is that Fletcher was determined before the trip began to have some sort of "break" with his old self, to become a new man, to have new heights of understanding. So every time he had some new impression of the Canyon, he would go on and on about how "now I had finally escaped the trivia of everyday life. Now at last I no longer needed to scrutinize the wildlife; I had become part of it," and so forth. And each time he would then begin to scrutinize the Canyon and have another grand Moment, and repeat himself about escaping the trivia again. All very tiresome; still there are some good scenes here, and his final chapter, consisting of his ruminations on Man, is pretty interesting. I just wish we had more of a memoir of what it was like to walk and live in the Canyon, not a diary of forced mystical epiphanies.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: The man who walked through time moved slower then a sloth!
Review: I am an avid backpacker as well as an avid book reader. I picked this book up after finding it on a reading list handed out by one of my perfesors. I expected an adventure full of zeal and corisma, but found only a mundan account of on man's attempt at bieng profound. Colin Fletcher uterly failed and should be banished. *Note to Colin Fletcher- Please Don't write any more BooKs!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Frustrated Reading...(or maybe it's just me....)
Review: I enjoy hiking the Grand Canyon. However, I don't quite experience it the way Mr. Fletcher had. Fletcher seems to be on a quest to find himself...or maybe lose himself...hard to tell.

In this book, Fletcher's literations and reflections are tired and drawn out...if you miss any of what is trying to be said, it corrupts the meaning of several paragraphs or pages and you find yourself re-reading and forcing yourself to try and muster some sense to his metaphrorical writing.

He also tiredly and repeatedly spoke of his becoming 'one' by 'entering in' with the rock, lizard, snake, bird, 'ancient one', or whatever. I was not amused by all his 'naked' talk...who cares if he was butt-naked while all his revelationing was happening...not a pretty picture in my mind.

His self-imagined theories of evolution also seem to bewilder and, in my case, left me questioning his intellect as well as Darwin's. Ironically, in many cases he seemed argumentative and challenged scientific thought about the canyon with his own overly-descriptive and subjective thinking...(p.s. AND I'm a Creationist!)

On the better side, I did enjoy reading about the Canyon I know and dearly love...many of the places he visited struck familar and I enjoy the recollection; and the places I haven't been, left me wishing I could go... Also, the animals and his description of their behaviors did keep my interest as I am always entertained by the wildlife I encounter while down in there.

Overall, I would recommend this book to avid Grand Canyon readers with plenty of 'uninterupted' time on their hands...otherwise, leave this one for deep thinkers....

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Frustrated Reading...(or maybe it's just me....)
Review: I enjoy hiking the Grand Canyon. However, I don't quite experience it the way Mr. Fletcher had. Fletcher seems to be on a quest to find himself...or maybe lose himself...hard to tell.

In this book, Fletcher's literations and reflections are tired and drawn out...if you miss any of what is trying to be said, it corrupts the meaning of several paragraphs or pages and you find yourself re-reading and forcing yourself to try and muster some sense to his metaphrorical writing.

He also tiredly and repeatedly spoke of his becoming 'one' by 'entering in' with the rock, lizard, snake, bird, 'ancient one', or whatever. I was not amused by all his 'naked' talk...who cares if he was butt-naked while all his revelationing was happening...not a pretty picture in my mind.

His self-imagined theories of evolution also seem to bewilder and, in my case, left me questioning his intellect as well as Darwin's. Ironically, in many cases he seemed argumentative and challenged scientific thought about the canyon with his own overly-descriptive and subjective thinking...(p.s. AND I'm a Creationist!)

On the better side, I did enjoy reading about the Canyon I know and dearly love...many of the places he visited struck familar and I enjoy the recollection; and the places I haven't been, left me wishing I could go... Also, the animals and his description of their behaviors did keep my interest as I am always entertained by the wildlife I encounter while down in there.

Overall, I would recommend this book to avid Grand Canyon readers with plenty of 'uninterupted' time on their hands...otherwise, leave this one for deep thinkers....


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