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Polly Letofsky first visited Cortez when she walked through town Sept. 3, 1999. The Montezuma Valley Journal records her visit with a photo and article on page 1 of the Sept. 4 issue.

Polly Letofsky, of Vail, poses with an Akha woman of northern Thailand in January 2002 during Letofsky’s global walk to raise awareness and funds for breast cancer organizations. Letofsky stayed several nights in Cortez on her walk.

Polly Letofsky, of Vail, poses with an Akha woman
of northern Thailand in January 2002 during
Letofsky’s global walk to raise awareness and
funds for breast cancer organizations.

Letofsky stayed several nights in Cortez on her walk. She told her hosts then, "I’ll be back to thank you, but I’ll drive the next time."

A month earlier, on Aug. 1, 1999, Letofsky walked away from her home in Vail, Colo. That was the beginning of a five-year, life-altering experience as she began a 14,124-mile, 22-country, around-the-world walk, raising more than $200,000 for 13 breast cancer organizations worldwide.

Letofsky, now 43, was welcomed home by her mother July 30, 2004, in Vail. She will be in Cortez again Tuesday, Oct. 11, to speak and show slides of her trip at the Cortez Elks Lodge, 2100 N. Dolores Road. The Women’s Cancer Control Coalition event will run from 5:30 to 8 p.m., and tickets will be available at the door.

Most people ask her if she had a great time. "If you’re left on your own to fend for yourself in a foreign land," Letofsky said, "it’s not exactly a great time, but you develop a level of confidence you’ve never had before."

Letofsky said she spent a lot of time learning nine different languages, none of which she could speak easily now, since once she traveled into the next country, she was busy plunging into learning that language and forgetting the previous one.

"I had to become a very fast learner," she said. "I hadn’t learned any languages except English until this trip. I became quite good (at learning them). It was a sink-or-swim experience." Letofsky traveled from Vail to Los Angeles, where she and her support crew of one, Debra Company, flew to New Zealand and then Australia.

"That was like being in America," she said. "They’re almost as American as apple pie, but don’t tell them that."

From then on, Asia was much more difficult in terms of culture clash. She flew into Singapore, then walked across a one-mile bridge to Malaysia and on to Thailand. "They speak what they call Singlish in Singapore, so that was easy," she said. "And in Malaysia, everyone wanted to practice their English. In Thailand, no one spoke any English."

She said she often walked with a map, a guide book or a language book in her hands while she pushed "Bob," a stroller that carried her belongings, including a laptop computer for journaling. Letofsky had been in Malaysia about a month when the 9/11 attack fell on New York City, but found the Asian communities very supportive. She was adopted by the Lions Clubs International there, and was accompanied by as many as 100 people, from the Lions and/or breast cancer organizations, all the way through Asia.

"I had prepared myself to be alone most of the time," she said, but in Asia, "their definition of being a host is to overwhelm you, even to the point of putting food in your mouth to make sure you aren’t hungry."

She also said she was very nervous on the roads, even with the crowd of people surrounding her. "We weren’t on a private hiking trail," she said, "but on the road with trucks going everywhere. The traffic is horrific."

She worried a lot, saying she felt like a mother hen clucking over her brood, from teens to adults. "The toughest stretch, though, was in India," she said. "Every morning I would wake to dirty, dusty roads, and walked in temperatures of as much as 120 degrees Fahrenheit. My skin was actually sizzling."

And she said she was constantly harassed by the men there. That part she compared to what it might be like to be a cancer patient. "I couldn’t throw up my hands, call it quits and call a taxi to the airport," she said. "Women with cancer have no way out, so it wasn’t even an option for me to consider."

Her analogy was like meeting someone on a mysterious road for which you don’t know the end. "You start out with one step in front of another," Letofsky said. "Sometimes you take a wrong turn and back up and start over, but you figure out how to get through it."

There was not one single person who caused Letofsky to start her trip. When she was 12, she dreamed of going around the world. She knew several people in her life who were affected by breast cancer in life-changing ways. Through those women, she learned that what her doctor had told her, about not being at risk for breast cancer because it didn’t run on her mother’s side of the family, was false.

She has settled very seamlessly back into life in the United States and is not interested in world traveling or even going on a hike in the hills.

Polly Letofsky is happy to be visiting Cortez again and sharing her story so that people can find the support they need to make it through the ebbs and flows of their own lives. "When I realized that every single woman in the world is at risk for breast cancer," she said, with an emphasis on "in the world,"

"I knew I had my reason for going (around the world)." She sees the ebb and flow of life much more clearly now, whether it’s having cancer, or walking a dusty road with men hassling her, or getting through a tough day in the corporate trenches.

"I’ve come a long way in five years," she said. "And I’m ready to settle down, make a nest." Her journey taught her a lot about the ebb and flows of life, and about domesticity. She essentially had dinner with a family, stayed the night, got up and walked 15 miles, and sat down to dinner with another family, each night talking about how to raise kids, hearing different political views, learning about people’s hobbies.

To learn more about GlobalWalk, log on to globalwalk.org or write to GlobalWalk, 857 South Curson Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90036 or e-mail Irv@globalwalk.org