Walking the talk.

One thing leads to another.

After writing the last blog on motivation during these horrible, cold and wet winter months, I have since had two incidents that had me reflect on the topic and motivation and how there is a whole population of folk who have never lived with motivation, of any kind.

Was at yet another solo trip to the movies on Saturday.  Noted how in this period of winter doldrums there has been a flurry of movies about individuals doing walking adventures – mostly in the sunshine.  Just watching the movies has been motivation enough to will on the summer months.

It was only a few weeks earlier I went to see the movie ‘Wild’.  I had read the book and was interested in the movie interpretation of the story.  It aligned very well to the storyline in the book – for which I was pleasantly surprised, and relieved.  Nothing worse than reading a book then attending the follow up movie to find they are almost complete different stories. 

                                                      

Anyway, the book and movie is a diarised story by the author, Cheryl Strayed, who, as is the case in many of these walking stories, had a life crisis resulting in her determining to walk the Pacific Crest Trail on the West Coast of the USA.  A mere thousand miles and more of walking from Mexico to Canada.  The book and the movie make for enjoyable entertainment.  There are funny moments many of us ‘trampers’ (or ‘hikers’ as the Americans call us) can relate to as well as some most poignant moments. 

A couple of weeks after that a group of us went to see the movie ‘Walking the Camino-Six Ways to Santiago’.  It is a documentary that follows the walk of six hikers who are walking the 750 kilometre pilgrim trail in Spain.  For me this was a lightly uplifting movie that had me wish I stayed in the Northern Hemisphere longer last year to do at least part of the walk, either by foot or bicycle.  It would seem than many others in that night’s audience also found it enthusiastically uplifting as our group was almost booking their Camino trail tickets as we exited the theatre. 

                                      

It had me recall the most apt comment one reviewer made of the movies, “It’s a bit like sex, so much better if you have done it rather than watched a movie of others doing it.”

Fully understood why he printed that comment.

Moving forward to this past weekend when I took myself off to yet another ‘walking’movie.  This time it was the Robert Redford, Nick Nolte ‘A Walk in the Woods’.  Based on the true story by Bill Bryson.  It too is a movie about walking the Pacific Crest Trail.  Seems Bill Bryson also had a mid-life-type moment where he felt walking the trail was a must do.  Much like the author of Wild, he too had humorous moments getting to and along the trail, but unlike Cheryl Strayed who did it solo, Bill Bryson took along a long lost friend from his fraternity days.

As a movie reviewer, I would rate this as 3 out of 5.  Enjoyable, light, with a number of moments of truely funny humour; some moments of glorious shots of the magnificent views along the route and even some moments to reflect on our own experiences of hiking unknown tracks.  Minus the black bears.

It took me a good thirty minutes to become accustomed to seeing Robert Redford in this role.  I grew up with Robert Redford being the young, handsome, cowboy movie hero.  And if he wasn’t acting as a handsome cowboy he was the handsome hero in Out of Africa, All The President’s Men and The Sting.  Time, decades, have passed and whilst still handsome, he, like the rest of us, has aged.  None more so than his co-actor friend Nick Nolte, whose movies I have always enjoyed – be many of them rather puerile ones.  In this movie he truly has taken away any male-female adulation I may have had for him.  In this movie he is old, wrinkled, ugly, fat and one can almost smell his BO.  But he plays an amusing part as Bill Bryson’s side-kick and I somehow figure he couldn’t care less about this 30-something Kiwi woman being turned off from her previous infatuation with him.

                                     

So this was the final of a trilogy of ‘walking’ movies which have hit our screen this wet and horrible winter.

But it is not the movies or reviewing them that I am presently wanting to write about.  The point to this article is about people.  People and motivation. 

As the credits rolled for Saturday’s movie I could not help but be tuned into the conversation of the four people sitting alongside me.  They were three women and one man.  They were verbally giving their own reviews of the movie.  One women made the statement, ‘Gosh, 1000 kilometres, who would want to even think of walking a thousand kilometres?” 

“Yes,” responded the man, “I’ll have trouble walking from the theatre to the car.”

I looked at my fellow movie viewers.  Their ages looked approximately that of my own.  They were not old.  They were not overweight, nor did they look infirm.  I presumed he was being tongue-in-cheek.

“Well,” said another woman, “I’d certainly not want to walk on THAT particular trail.  It’s far too dangerous.” 

“No said another. Anyway, why would you go to walk there when we have so many walking tracks in New Zealand we can walk on?” 

“Yes,” was a response from one of the three women.  “Have you ever walked any of our trails, like Milford or the Heaphy?”

“Good God, no,” responded another.  “Didn’t have them around when we were young and it’s too late now.”

I looked again. That speaker could not have been older than I. 

“George and Sandra did,” said another.  "They went and did the Milford track last summer.”

“Yes,” came another response.  “Silly buggers.  Far too old to do that.  And now look at him.  He’s half a cripple now and needs a hip operation.  So much for walking being good for you!”

“Yep, you’re right,” said the man.  “Saw him the other day and he’s walking like a cripple.  Think I’ll stick to watching the movies of walking, it’s better for you.”

And with that the group of four stood, slowly, creakily and with the aid of the arm rests of the chairs.  They then crept and hobbled off up the stairs to the movie theatre exit.  I followed, mostly to enable me to take a longer look at these old-speaking people.  Once in the foyer I figured that maybe they were a year or two older than me.  No more, but certainly not on their last legs, life-wise, that is.  Physically, their first legs were certainly their last ones – and probably so unable to hold them up due to a life time of lack of use. 

But who am I to ponder these thing? Me, who at 30-something, had spent the morning running around Cornwall Park, with a bung knee.  If only my fellow patrons knew, they would surely have me also categorised as ‘silly bugger’.

Unfortunately I have to confess that I too crept and hobbled up the stairs and out of the theatre looking like I was on my last legs, due to this silly knee.  

But made sure they didn’t see my hobbling. 

Anyway, it made me look and rethink about the article I wrote only a few days earlier.  The article on motivation.  This winter and motivation.  And people in general and motivation.

My fellow movie goers had clearly never been motivated to do a lot – and yet despite their Milford track walking friend who was a ‘silly bugger’ and now needing a hip replacement – this group of four walked as though they all had a major case of group arthritis, hemorrhoids and flatulence and had never, nor would ever, experience the joys that wandering in our wilderness gives .  I would doubt that group had ever been on a gentle walking track in the Waitakeres or West Coast beaches.  Sad really.

That was Saturday.  Then came Sunday.

Went to my local gym and just as I was finishing off a work out someone I used to run with many decades ago tapped me on the shoulder and said, “I thought it was you.”

There was a friendly smile on the dial of a chap I first met some thirty years ago, when he was a youthful forty-plus year old.  I was the same age as I am now, thirty-something.

It has been some years since I last saw him and he did not look as though he had aged greatly.  He was looking in fine fettle;  small of stature but standing tall and upright, with a large smile and very few aging wrinkles on the face I had not seen for years.  My sense of humour had me ask for the brand of face lotion he used to keep the wrinkles away but it was clearly humour he did not understand as he looked at me seriously and said, “Soap.”

Well, the soap he uses must be magical because I was stunned when he told me he was now a 78 year old. 

It was all the more hard to fathom as he had just informed me that only 30 minutes earlier he had finished running 29 kilometres around the streets of Auckland. 

When I expressed delight at both his age and his 29 kilometre effort that morning, he continued on to tell me he was keeping himself fit as in two weeks time he is due to head off for a three week walking tour somewhere in Vietnam. 

Our conversation centred around his trip and he then informed me his plan is to return from Vietnam and then save for another tour in two years time, to Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary.  His plan after that is to wait two more years  and then do a three week walking trip in Israel and the Gaza Strip.  Blimey, that's risky living.  But he assured he that on this one he would take an 'organised' walking tour, whereas all the others he would be self guided.  Another blimey.

THEN  ….  he continued ... the trip after that will be to Tanzania where he wants to be the oldest man to ever walk Mount Kilimanjaro.  The present holder is an American who was 85 years and 201 days old.  My friend had figured that when he plans to do it he will be a month older than the present holder of The Oldest Person to Summit Mt Kilimanjaro.  He will be 85 years  and somewhere around 230 days older.

                         

Triple blimey.  This man is 78 years old.  He is planning his future.  His future has a mountain to conquer at almost 86 years old.

And what delighted me even more was he then said, “So after that?  I like to do my trips in 2 year gaps but figure by then maybe I’d be best to make them every year as I won’t have too many two year periods left.  Maybe somewhere in South America, the Amazon maybe.”

Quite frankly, I was almost speechless.  I didn't know what to say to congratulate him on his amazing plans.  I muttered something about being a great example to others, but he just chuckled and said, "But I'm not doing it for others, I'm doing it for myself.  I'm wanting to do and see as much as I can because whats the use of sitting around home and letting time pass when there is so much to do?" 

OK, I thought.  Good attitude.

I could not help but compare this conversation with the one I had tuned into only the night before.  The vision of those young-by-comparison 60-something year olds, creeping up the movie theatre steps came to mind.  They figured that the Milford and Heaphy and Hillary tracks weren’t around when they were young (where and what sheltered world had they lived in!) so it was far too late for them to contemplate doing anything that would drag them further than the theatre to the car.  

And here I had this 78 year old chap planning his future 10 to 12 years forward. 

He could teach my fellow movie viewers a thing or two about life, and living, and living it well. And motivation and attitude.

He could teach many other folk I know a thing or two about life, and living, and living it well.  And motivation and attitude.

He could teach the Y Generation, the Generation Xs and the Millennials a thing or two about life, and living, and living it well.  And motivation and attitude.

His attitude is his motivation.  Or is it, his motivation is his attitude?

Who cares!  It’s a great story.