Former West Marin ‘Planetwalker’ returns with new film

The film will be shown from Friday through Aug. 15 at the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael.

To this day, within the coastal corners of West Marin, the legend of John Francis remains — the man who, while walking with a pack on his back and his banjo slung over his shoulder, found kindness throughout the world and discovered himself one step at a time.

The year was 1971. Francis was living in West Marin when two oil tankers collided on Jan. 18 by the Golden Gate Bridge, sending around 800,000 gallons of oil into the water, which later washed up along Bolinas and other parts along Marin’s coast. It remains the largest oil spill in Bay Area history.

When he and his then-girlfriend Jean drove to check out the accident, the stench of the oil was overwhelming and the impact it had on wildlife, especially local species of birds, a creature he’s had a special connection with since he was a child, devastated him. He joined volunteers who scrubbed the beaches and fought to save the birds and other creatures impacted by the spill.

That experience would, in part, inspire his decision to stop using motorized transportation in 1972, which he did for 22 years, traveling by foot initially around Marin to raise environmental consciousness. Not long after, on his 27th birthday in 1973, he took a vow of silence that continued for 17 years.

“If someone had told me this is going to happen, that if you stop riding in cars because of an oil spill, if you start walking, and then if you shut up and just walk across the country, you will become a (United Nations) ‘Goodwill Ambassador,’ you’ll get a PhD in environmental studies and you’ll be able to have this platform, I would be in disbelief,” says Francis, whose nickname is the “Planetwalker.”

Now, he’s telling his story — in his own words —  in “Planetwalker,” a 31-minute film by husband-and-wife team Dominic and Nadia Gill. Their film production company, Encompass Films, specializes in outdoor and adventure storytelling. After they all connected, a mutual friend vouched for the couple to Francis as “good people to trust with his story.”

“I’m happy I did,” Francis says.

The film will be shown from Friday through Aug. 15 at the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael. All of the screenings, except for Aug. 14 and 15, will feature conversations with Francis, the filmmakers and a moderator. Admission is $10.50 to $14. For more information and to get tickets, go to rafaelfilm.cafilm.org.

“The nature of how we wanted to make the film was to make sure that we heard from many different people who John had touched in one way or another,” says Dominic Gill, a former biologist.

Along with archival footage, the film includes interviews with his family, friends and those who he met along the way in Marin and beyond. Some of the subjects include West Marin photographer Art Rogers, poet and educator Lawson Fusao Inada and environmentalist June Holte.

While Francis spent a lot of time walking alone in his thoughts, he didn’t need to speak aloud to make an impact and connect with others on his journey. He made connections through playing his banjo, sign language and other hand gestures and, most importantly, he says, listening.

“I did have a formal education and I was very blessed for that. But I also had this informal education from everyone. And the informal education, I think, envelops the formal education. And the most important part of that education or receiving that education was to just listen to people, to listen to all the stories that are being told,” says Francis, who got two of his degrees and started his PhD in land resources from the University of Wisconsin–Madison while under his vow of silence.

He broke it on Earth Day in 1990.

“I felt it was time to start speaking for the environment,” he told the IJ in 2009. “We commit ourselves to something because we have a vision, but we have to go back and look at what we’re doing to make sure that it’s still applicable. Whether you’re a developer or an environmentalist, you have to say to yourself, ‘Maybe I should change.’”

He would go on to work for the United States Coast Guard helping write oil spill legislation.

While Francis feels excited to return to a hometown crowd, Gill has been amazed to see how far and wide Francis’ work has been felt and experienced.

“There’s always at least one person who stands up and says, ‘I remember John. He walked through and did a talk at our school.’ Or ‘he was living down the road with a friend of mine.’ Or ‘my friend walked with him for a little bit,’” Dominic Gill says.

Musical choices

Music plays an important role in the film, which was shown at DocLands in Marin earlier this year. Some of the music includes Francis playing the banjo as well as the Youngbloods’ 1967 song “Get Together,” which has a special connection to Francis’ story.

While the oil spill started to change his thinking about motorized vehicles, it was the death of a West Marin friend, who drowned in 1972 when his small boat sank in the Tomales Bay, that made him realize there were no guarantees for tomorrow.

To celebrate his friend’s life, Francis and his girlfriend walked from West Marin to the Youngbloods concert at a nightclub in San Anselmo. They made it there at the end of the show, where they heard the anthemic song, before he decided to head back home again on foot. And his walking continued.

“It was a really beautiful opportunity that music was inherently a part of the story because of John’s journey and his best friend, the banjo,” Gill says. “It was very easy to thematically choose a backbone in terms of the sound of this music. John was living in a part of the world during an era that had a very specific and famous sound as well. The Youngbloods’ song that we used toward the beginning of the movie has a formative part to play in John’s own story, so we decided to honor it.”

‘Spiritual home’

These upcoming screenings will be special for Francis.

“I feel that Marin County is my spiritual home,” says Francis about the place where he and his wife Martha raised their two sons before moving in 2009 to Cape May, New Jersey, a fond place he grew up going to. “It was like being around people who were like me even if we were different. I’m very happy to be able to bring this film to Marin County, particularly the Rafael theater because I’ve been to the theater so many times to see so many movies with friends. And some of the times, I had to walk over from Point Reyes to the theater. I would leave the day before, get there and then we would get together and see the movie. They would drive back to West Marin, and I would take about maybe two or three days to get back there.”

It’s also the birthplace of his nonprofit Planetwalk, which was founded in 1982 to raise environmental consciousness and promote peace at the grassroots through environmental education programs and scientific research. They aim to educate people not just about the physical environment, but the human environment as well.

“At the end of my walk across the United States, I realized that if people were part of the environment, then how we treated each other really was our first opportunity to treat the environment in a sustainable way. And so (environmentalism) became about human rights, civil rights and gender and economic equity, and all the ways that we relate to each other. Ultimately, for me, ‘environment’ is about being kind to each other,” says Francis, who wrote his children’s book “Human Kindness” in 2022.

“I know that sometimes it seems like a very simple thing. But maybe it’s not so simple, when we just really need to work at it and practice it and see where it can take us. I think the message and the hope of the film (is) that it’s just a step. It’s just the beginning.”

And at 78, he’ll keep spreading this message one step at a time.