The Concertina of Life

One day last month, I perused my bookshelves looking for something to read for a trip I was about to take and landed on an old book I hadn’t read in years: "The Thousand Mile Summer," written in 1959 by Colin Fletcher.

Fletcher, a Welshman, fought with the Royal Marines in World War 2, and then traveled the world before settling permanently in the United States in 1956. He was the author of several outdoor books. His more noted titles were his second and third books, "The Man Who Walked Through Time," and "The Complete Walker" – the former a memoir of his hike that covered the length of the Grand Canyon below the rim; the latter a comprehensive guidebook for aspiring back country hikers. "The Complete Walker," updated four times, became the Bible for backpackers.

"The Thousand Mile Summer" concerns his hike up the spine of eastern California in 1958, from the Mexican border to Oregon - up the Colorado River, through the Mojave Desert, Death Valley, into the Sierras, and north. It took exactly six months to the day, from March 8 to September 8. And so, today marks the 50th anniversary of the walk's completion. At the book's end, as he reflects on the experience and how he had told the tale, he writes the following:

"There is a difference in shape between a journey as it happens and a journey as you remember it. At the time, there it is – day after roughly equal day. But when you look back afterward (and especially when you talk or write about it) memory pushes and pulls at time as if it were a concertina. The vivid moments expand, so that they stand out like cameos. The dull periods contract, until whole weeks become compressed into thin shims."

This paragraph really struck me. If you think more broadly about "journey" to imply the many experiences that comprise our lives, it makes perfect sense. We all do much the same. It's a wonderful metaphor, the idea of life’s memories as a concertina. The daily routines, with all their banalities, are compressed into the thin shims, while those joyful moments, sometimes so brief and fleeting, expand, stand out and over-shadow everything else.

The clever and creative among us are able to weave the pleasurable moments into larger-than-life events. Sometimes, we exaggerate some details while ignoring others. Indeed, a good storyteller, one who can entertain in relating personal experiences, is one who is able to play that concertina, expand the moments of joy and excitement to come alive and become something larger than they were.

Fletcher, who passed away last year at the age of 85, teaches us the importance of focus, of winnowing out that which is unimportant. His tale examined in wonderful detail the unusual people he met along the trail, the beautiful vistas of the eastern Sierras he witnessed, the harsh heat of Death Valley, and the like. Yet the last several hundred miles toward the Oregon border, his tale speeds to a conclusion, falling into the "thin shims" of his story. (He admits, “The last three weeks of the hike were dull.”)

I think of his words a lot lately, assessing how I might approach each new day, whether it will be a thin shim or whether I can make it stand out like a cameo. In the end, it is we who make those choices.