Walter
There’s some of you out there, perhaps a good portion actually, who know Walter.
Related in some form or fashion, if not distance kin then at least good friends of the fellow.
I first read about Walter way back in school. Read a book about him,”The Life and times of Walter Mitty”. Although our names spell different, we’re blood bound through and through.
He commuted to work as many of us do, he’d miss his get off point, bus stop, or train station, whatever the case may be. All because his mind was elsewhere. I think we can relate. In grade school one of my teachers early on told my mom I was forever gazing out the windows. Yes, Walter and I go back many years.
That’s where voyages begin actually. Even if they be of a few days duration, the imagination is sparked or set afire and go we must. Some even go so far as building a specific sailboat for a specific event. There’s plenty of the Mitty folk who’s done the Texas two hundred in craft especially built for the event, another is the Everglades Challenge, there are more as well.
Of the Mitty clan, I suspect they’re one of the few family’s that can cross all boundaries of every nation on earth and people group ever to exist. This Mitty clan I also suspect may very well be the only clan that allows others entry irregardless of place of birth. It shouldn’t outta be but that’s the way it is.
Walter’s done some microcruising as well. A friend of his, years ago, lived aboard a 12 footer for a spell, another older gent I read about with one leg gone lived aboard his twelve as well, under a bridge, sold bait after having rowed out to obtain it.
These dreams we hold don’t have us yearning to live under bridges, safe to say, but those bridge type certainly had dreams we could relate to at one time or another. The voyages of the dreams , truth be known, are just the thing that spurs many on to accomplish the unaccomplishable, or so their told. You can’t do that! How are you going to eat? Where you going to live?
I met a fellow sailor who took his many years of experience backpacking, along with another friend of similar knowledge, and were dropped of in the wilderness as if they were whisked off the street. Only the clothes on their backs and the knowledge in their heads to see them through for a month.
Where did it start, this dream to do such a thing? To sail the tip of South America, to Kayak the west coast of the America’s, to sail across the bay to the next harbour? Uncle Walt, the inspiration of so many known, and the unknown of many more.
To all the relatives of Walter Mitty, arise and offer a toast in his name. May his name ever be an inspiration.
Michael j beebe
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