(originally published Oct. 9, 2011 in the Kamloops Daily News)
By Catherine Litt
MONTE CREEK — She lives in a modest little house on five hectares of unspoiled grassland, surrounded by a landscape so serene and picturesque it seems plucked from an old Hollywood western.
Cattle drovers once roamed this land. She is like them in many ways — bound by nothing but the wide-open terrain, the endless sky, the desire to explore, to keep moving, always moving.
“I love it out here,” said Thelma Sharp, as she walked through the tall grass outside her patio and gazed at the hills in the distance.
She is at home in this countryside that stirs her soul, feeds her restless spirit.
“My neighbour and I are thinking about walking up that mountain,” she says, pointing to one of the hills that line Highway 97.
“You see that part over there, the part that looks like it was in a fire? We’ll probably walk up through the gully to the right of it, then follow that route to the top.”
It will be an easy hike, insists the senior — a day trip — five hours at the most. “Oh, yes, not rough at all.”
To imagine Sharp scrambling up a mountainside takes very little stretch of the mind — especially when you consider what she did in September.
Which, by anyone’s measure, was extraordinary.
“Really, I don’t know what all the fuss is about,” insists Sharp. “People are making such a fuss about this, but it’s no big deal. You put one foot in front of the other, that’s all.”
Early last month, Thelma Sharp left her home in Monte Creek on a walking journey to Abbotsford. Yes, a walking journey.
She pulled a modified luggage cart behind her, loaded with camping supplies, clothing, instant noodles, a cellphone, an extra pair of running shoes and a Christmas cake.
Her 2007 GMC Canyon pickup truck, in mint condition, sat parked in her carport at home and her driver’s licence, valid and up-to-date, sat parked in her wallet inside the money belt on her waist.
She was a 78-year-old woman on a 426-kilometre expedition.
* * *
The tiny sticker on her front door is a clue.
It reads Hike Now, Work Later and it is a literal and figurative sign that the woman who lives inside prefers to be in motion.
“Even as a little kid, she was always on horseback,” said Sharp’s sister, Jenny Bonaface, six years her junior.
“We lived in a very rural area, so she was practically born on horseback. . . . always outdoors and not into the normal things we would be interested in as girls.”
The eldest of five children, young Thelma Wessel began her life in France where her Dutch father and French mother were dairy farmers. The family moved to Canada when she was five, just in time to avoid the outbreak of the Second World War, and eventually settled in Westwold, a small farming community 56 km south of Kamloops.
Both parents were progressive in their attitudes toward gender roles, teaching their two daughters and three sons to be equally independent despite the social norms of the era.
“We never heard of women’s lib,” said Sharp. “We were women’s lib.”
But as a young woman, Sharp was not opposed to social convention. She would eventually marry and start a family of her own, giving birth to a son, Wayne.
Still, there were signs that she had neither the time nor interest in the mundane expectations most women her age embraced. She began working as a letter carrier, hauling mail on foot at a time when men still dominated the job.
She stayed until retiring at age 65, her postal route in Westsyde an ideal escape for a woman born to be in motion.
* * *
“I had been thinking about this for quite a while, actually,” said Sharp, as she sat at her kitchen table earlier this week, recounting the steps that put her on a walking path to Abbotsford.
She wasn’t out to prove anything, she insisted. She wasn’t out to dispel myths about age or gender or the capacity of the human spirit.
She just wanted to walk.
And, so, on Sept. 12 she left her house in Monte Creek and began her journey toward the Fraser Valley to visit Jenny in Abbotsford.
She covered about 25 km each day, travelling alternative routes along Highways 5A, 8, the Trans-Canada and, finally, the Lougheed Highway.
She camped at night or stayed in hotels and motels. Strangers opened their homes to her, in awe at the sight of the white-haired, grandmotherly figure walking alone on the side of the road through blazing heat and driving rain.
When they learned that she was walking to Abbotsford to see her sister — for no other reason than she wanted to deliver a Christmas cake and a pair of sunglasses her sister forgot on a recent visit — they were at once confounded and inspired.
One man was moved to tears.
“He had just turned 65 and I think he thought life was over,” said Sharp.
“He said what an inspiration I was. The tears were just flowing down his face, unabashedly; he didn’t wipe them off or anything.”
The man’s wife asked Sharp if she was scared to be out on the road alone.
She said yes, she was scared of people and dogs. She was taking a huge risk being so exposed to harm, even if she had a cellphone and kept her son apprised of her location daily.
“She’s fearless,” said her sister. “She always has been. But I absolutely knew she could make it. If anyone could do it, it would be Thelma.”
The trek wasn’t easy, though. While Sharp managed to avoid any harm, there was a close call with a German shepherd (she kicked it and it ran) and there were the many hills, the endless climbs that wore her down physically and mentally.
At one point, she wrote in her journal, “I am completely thrashed.”
But she kept going, kept putting one foot in front of the other.
“Just give it another burst, kid,” she would say to herself, “and you can stay under a roof tonight.”
The final leg of the journey, just outside of Abbotford, was the most difficult.
“It just rained all day,” said Sharp. “It was the most miserable I’ve ever been in the rain. Jenny happened to come 15 minutes early to find me that day. I could hardly unfold myself to get into her car — I was stiff and cold and wet.”
But she had done it. After two weeks and five days of walking, she had made it to Abbotsford.
Thelma Sharp had done the extraordinary. She had proved that age was only a number, that gender limitations existed only in the mind and that, with perseverance, an 78-year-old woman could walk 426 kilometres and inspire untold numbers of people along the way.
litt@kamloopsnews.ca
Diane Courneyeur
November 21, 2011
i am so impressed, so in awe of what you have done. It is one of my dreams but you have done it. What a role model.