After retiring from the Merchant Navy of the United Kingdom in 1976, George Meegan immediately set out on an extraordinary seven-year journey.
He walked 19,019 miles and wore out 12 and a half pairs of hiking boots as he trekked from the southernmost point of South America to the highest point of North America, a feat that had never been attempted before.
Before ending his journey in September 1983 in Alaska, George Meegan set eight world records, settled down with his wife and two children, and self-published his book, The Longest Walk:The record of the first human crossing of all of the Americas.
However, Meegan’s journey was far from simple.He started out without any money or equipment, and the kindness of strangers helped him get from one location to another.
He was even shot at, slashed with a knife, and attacked by his own guide at one point while traversing the well-known Darién Gap.
But George Meegan never gave up, no matter what.”I think there’s something in every human being that has to try and go the limit,” he later stated to the Washington Post.
George Meegan’s Yearning for Adventure in His Childhood George Meegan was born in the United Kingdom on December 2, 1952.
His mother died of cancer, and his father left shortly after his birth.According to Geographical, Meegan’s adoption by his mother’s brother left him with a sense of gratitude as well as debt, which he felt he had to “pay back.”
Meegan was a voracious reader of survival and adventure novels when he was a young boy. He has written that becoming a cub scout was his first dream when he was eight years old.
He dropped out of elementary school to pursue the life of an adventurer because he was so determined to realize his fantasies of adventure.
He told Geographical, “We were expected to be factory fodder.”However, I made a break.
By the time he was 18, he had enlisted in the Sea Scouts and, later, the British Merchant Navy, traveling the world in both directions.
The traveler himself stated that he was unfit and had severe shoulder acne, “such that I was a bloody mess within four hours.”
Meegan, on the other hand, appeared to have exhausted typical adventure possibilities by the middle of his 20s. He desired something brand-new and previously unheard of.
He was inspired one day while he was at sea while looking at a globe map on the bulkhead of his naval vessel: He would walk across the Americas, something no one had done before.
He went to the Brigham & Cowan shipyard and had two carts made so that he and Yoshiko Matsumoto, his girlfriend, could go to Tierra del Fuego, which is the southernmost point of South America. He started his long journey there.
Meegan got into trouble almost immediately.
The Difficult First StepsIn January 1977, he and Yoshiko began their journey in Tierra del Fuego. However, just 300 yards into their walk, Yoshiko began to weep.Since Yoshiko was Japanese, it appears that she was misled into thinking that they would travel by bus.
While he consoled her, they halted near a damp bush, only for a robber to approach with a gun in his hand.However, they were able to escape unharmed, which would become somewhat of a pattern for Meegan.
He assured Yosh and his partner, “Don’t worry.”There are only 30,000 more kilometers to go.