These days Warren MacDonald travels the world and inspires people with his message of perspective, meeting challenges and overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

But on that mountain climbing day in April of 1997 — the day when a quick trip to take a leak ended with him trapped beneath a many-ton boulder with no way out — he wasn’t sure it leave the mountain alive.

“The thought had crossed my mind,” MacDonald said this week from his home in British Columbia.

MacDonald, who had both legs amputated above the knee because the incident and uses a wheelchair and prosthetics to get around, will be in town this week for a Mankato Clinic Men’s Health Forum talk.

His talk, set for Tuesday at the Alltel Center, aims to be healthy dose of inspiration at a time when economy-driven doom seems just around the corner.

“Some people are blown away at how far things can appear to have gone wrong but they can still be OK,” MacDonald said.

MacDonald and another man were climbing the highest peak on a mountain on a island near Australia when, after a full day of climbing, the two decided to set up camp.

Before going to bed, MacDonald said, he needed to relieve himself. So he headed off away from the camp site, and away from the creek running nearby.

As he looked for a proper place, a piece of the cliff broke away, and MacDonald and that piece of cliff fell to the creek below. He was trapped beneath a giant boulder and couldn’t move.

“And that’s when things got interesting,” he said.

His partner left to get help, but it would be 45 hours before the boulder was raised off his legs (a process that took a grueling two hours.) A paramedic stabilized him, but he also gave him some devastating news: His legs more than likely would need to be amputated.

MacDonald sort of shrugged that off. He wanted to let a doctor take a look. And when he arrived at the hospital, it didn’t take a doctor long to tell MacDonald the same news, and add this exclamation point: It needed to be done now.

“That news slammed me broadside,” he said.

But he agreed. Not agreeing was to risk certain infection, the severity of which could kill him.

Within the next 10 days he had five surgeries, all on his legs.

How was his mood?

“I was just happy I was still around, because it didn’t look like it was going to pan out that way,” he said.

Then came recovery.

MacDonald had to relearn simple life tasks such as getting in and out of bed and going to the bathroom. Initially he didn’t deal with prosthetics, instead using a wheelchair.

And something happened early in his recovery that would be prove crucial:

“Something clicked in me early on,” he said. “I started to look at it as an adventure. I said, ‘How many people get to experience something like this?’ An adventure. Having to figure something out. It was kind of demoralizing, but I got a huge kick out of figuring out ways around obstacles.

“I don’t like being shut down,” he said. “It really affects you psychologically to get shut down.”

How’s this for an obstacle: MacDonald, who says he grew up watching “The Six Million Dollar Man” and had a they-can-rebuild-me attitude, was told by his doctor he probably wouldn’t be able to use prosthetics and that he shouldn’t look forward to walking again.

“He did me a real favor,” MacDonald said. “I decided I was walking out of there.”

MacDonald takes about 30 to 40 speaking engagements annually and is booked by all kinds of groups.

“Pretty much any group facing some kind of challenge tends to gravitate toward me,” he said.

And the big challenge these days is the economy and trying to persevere through tough times.

“If you want to see that this is the end of the world, you’re guaranteed that’s what you’re going to get,” he said. “It’s about seeing how we fit into the new world. Doesn’t have to be the end of the world.”