The Complete Walker was the first thing I purchased after I got the backpacking bug. I have poured over it countless times.

I came across a copy of The Secret Worlds of Colin Fletcher in a used book store a few months ago and read it on a recent trip to the Pisgah range. Devoured every page and it was well on its way to becoming a favorite until I encountered the last chapter.

In it he is musing on ways to save the wild spaces we have all come to enjoy. He looks around after years of backpacking and sees those spaces starting to dwindle. He fears the encroachment of "civilization" on these spaces that we use as our refuge. He wonders aloud what can be done to stop this. Somewhere in that thought process he begins to wonder if a culling of the herd is necessary and that perhaps this newfangled AIDS will be the thing to thin out our numbers.

I closed the book at that point. I haven't finished the last 15 pages, and I don't think I ever will.

Oh well...We'll always have the Complete Walker.

Has anyone else read this book? We're you stopped cold by that passage like I was, or am I overreacting?

I'm curious about what others think about this.

Opus