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 By Gregory McNamee
COLIN FLETCHER, THE author of The Man Who Walked Through
Colin Fletcher will sign copies of River and his other
books from 4 to 6 p.m. Monday, June 9, at The Book Mark, 5001
E. Speedway. Call 881-6350 for information.
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Time and the Complete Walker, is an English desert
rat of a well-known type: an intrepid, slightly dotty, and always
game collector of dry places, the more challenging the better.
In River, he recounts a 1989 season of floating and walking
the 1,700-mile length of the Colorado River, from its sources
high in the Wind River Mountains of 
Others have made this journey, or parts of it; devotees of the
Colorado will know the writings of John Wesley Powell, Ellsworth
and Emory Kolb, Ann Zwinger, and Philip Fradkin, among others.
Fletcher departs from went-here, did-that recitation, although
River has its share. Instead, he uses the river-voyage
metaphor to address the course of his own long life, musing on
lost loves, his fortunes in war (and good luck at having survived
World War II, in which he served as an infantryman), the arrival
of old age, the impending end of his own wanderings through the
world. He promises that his book will record "a journey,
not an exploit," and he delivers. In the bargain, he's often
disarmingly funny, and he has much to say about the geology, wildlife,
and human behavior he witnesses along his course.
