Interview: Rand Timmerman~Miracles On The Appalachian Trail!

Rand shares so many powerful stories in this episode, including those that shaped him into the man he is today. But it is his story of supporting his brother, after the loss of his brother's wife, that especially resonates. These two over-70 year olds decided to walk the Appalachian Trail together and heal, and cry, and witness beauty in the process!

Transcript

Hi y'all and welcome back to the podcast.

This time I'm introducing you to Rand Timmerman and you know what he actually began walking the Appalachian Trail at age 72 and he tells so many incredible stories of he and his brother's adventures on that trail.

To be honest I really do think the miracle is how he showed up for his brother but then as you'll hear many other miracle moments happened on their journey.

Some funny,

Some scary,

And some just meant to remind us that magic is all around.

So without further ado here's my conversation with the really intrepid and kind of unstoppable Rand Timmerman.

Now I have an artificial leg and my right leg is a half inch shorter from the left where the artificial knee is so I limp and pretty badly actually and had for years and so we're limping.

I'm limping around the desert with him and and he starts talking about hiking the Appalachian Trail.

I said you went really?

He said yeah.

I said what are you gonna do?

He said well I'm gonna I'm gonna take a and I go well that's not a very good plan.

That won't work.

Yeah my name is Rand Timmerman.

I grew up in a very rural area of upstate New York way more cows than people and my father was a Mustang pilot.

World War II came home married my mom had me my brother and then he got polio and ended up paralyzed from the waist down.

Eight months in an iron lung,

A year in the hospital.

I have you know it took me a long time Kirsten to figure out how life-changing that was for him.

All I knew is that somewhere around five years old I looked around said we're screwed.

You know we were very very poor and I did not like that.

My mother had been raised in the Baptist Church so she was you know we were raised in the Baptist Church.

Me and my brother and I had a sister and then a younger brother.

I don't know I was so kind of baffled by the God thing right from the get-go.

I felt like we were being punished.

That my family was being punished and it was our life was so hard.

You know wearing clothes that other people were worn out,

Wearing shoes with holes in the bottom,

Being looked down upon in a very rural area where everybody was basically poor.

My brother Ron who was a year younger than me was very spiritual.

He grabbed on to his concept of God and you know became a very spiritual man his whole life.

But anyway so I had a lot of doubt,

Loving God,

All these rules,

I'm starving at times,

Stealing candy bars,

You're gonna be a bad boy,

You know all that kind of stuff.

So I graduated in 1964.

I went to college but I was dirt poor still and I was working as a janitor from midnight to 8 in the morning and I just didn't like college very much.

And I had an affinity for alcohol.

I discovered that young age,

13.

The first time I drank it,

It transformed me.

I thought I was Clint Eastwood.

I'm not five foot eight with acne all over my face and skinny,

You know 99 pounds,

The lightest guy on the football team.

I'm Clint Eastwood,

Six foot four,

I'm handsome,

I'm just everything I always wanted to be.

It was amazing.

And I knew it was probably gonna be a problem someday.

I actually made a,

The good part of that of my story,

Kirsten,

Is that I made a pledge I'm never gonna do drugs because I just liked it so much.

I just knew it was gonna be potentially a real serious problem.

So that kind of had that aspect of my personality right off the bat that I I knew about.

And so anyway,

I got drunk in college in the middle of winter in Moswego,

New York,

A snowstorm.

And when the owner came in the next day,

I was the only person still in the bar.

I was on the pool table where I had spent the night.

And I heard him put the key in the door and he came in and he never said a word to me.

It was kind of weird really and I'm laying there and I'm not happy with myself.

I'm not happy with my life.

Everything sucks.

And he turns on the radio and he's washing the glasses from the night before and they're talking about First Marine Division going into Vietnam.

And I made the decision.

Then a month later,

I'm down at the War Memorial in Syracuse,

New York,

Raising my hand,

Pledging to defend my country against enemies foreign and domestic.

And six,

Seven months later,

I'm in a rice paddy going,

I think I made a mistake.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah,

Really.

And then my brother,

Ron,

He graduated from high school.

He enlisted in the Army.

So he was actually in Vietnam before me.

And he was a machine gunner on a helicopter in the Army unit down by Chu Lai.

I ended up in the First Marine Division,

Which was very ironic when you think about it.

So I'm fighting in the jungle.

I actually did a tour with the First Marine Air Wing as a gunner on a helicopter,

Which was,

That was actually kind of fun sometimes.

And then terrifying.

Flying around was a heck of a lot better than slogging through the jungle,

I can tell you that.

But it was very dangerous too.

So we both had some pretty,

You know,

Bad experiences,

But we both survived,

Thank God.

And then when we came back,

They offered,

They made me a Mustang Lieutenant the last few months I was in Vietnam.

So they gave me the option to go.

Can I ask you a question?

Sorry,

I'm rambling here.

No,

No,

I want to ask you a question.

Well,

Two questions,

Really.

So you're bringing up the Mustang name again.

Can you describe what that exactly means?

Because you said your father flew Mustang aircraft.

Is that what you said?

Yeah,

Yeah.

Those were prop turbo airplanes during World War II.

That's a holdup.

In World War II,

They called them battlefield commissions.

Second Lieutenants do not do well in combat.

They just don't.

I mean,

It's a leadership position.

So in World War II,

They would make more seasoned enlisted people combat Second Lieutenants.

In the Marine Corps,

They called them Mustangs,

Because we're kind of like the Wild Bunch sort of thing,

You know,

The one-off type of thing.

And so they did that to me.

And just as I was coming back,

I was back to being a Corporal again.

A Colonel came and talked to me.

He said,

Well,

You can go back and get out because you're almost done.

Or you can go to OCS and be a real Second Lieutenant.

Nobody can ever take it away from you.

So I did that,

Which is ironic.

Yeah.

The irony,

When I look back on it.

So the Marine Corps damn near got me killed like at least 20 times.

I mean,

Just an inch or two one way or another.

And then it gave me a career.

Oh my gosh,

Rand,

You're so funny.

You're such a great storyteller.

I want to just ask you and go back to the beginning.

OK,

I am completely naive because for some reason I thought polio only struck children.

Oh,

Gosh,

No,

No,

No,

No.

It's a virus.

I had the Salk vaccine probably 10 times that came out right after.

You know,

In our little village of twenty five hundred people,

There was probably at least two or three hundred that had polio.

And some of the lady across the street had six kids.

She had polio.

She never got out of a wheelchair again.

I mean,

It was rampant.

My father had two cousins that got polio on the same day and died on the same day.

So it was just a fluke that they managed to get him.

And they took him to the Children's Hospital in Utica,

New York.

It's a miracle he even survived.

I mean,

People have no idea what it was like.

I know hundreds of people over the years that had polio.

And a lot of times you wouldn't be able to tell right away,

But if they lived or whatever.

But,

You know,

It was all different grades of it.

But it was it was bad.

It was really bad.

Oh,

My goodness.

And it scared the bejesus out of my parents.

I'll tell you what they got when Salk came out with the vaccine.

I got it every year until I said,

No,

I've had enough,

Basically.

But so.

Wow.

Well,

Gosh,

It was your father.

Then he was in an iron lung,

Which,

First of all,

I can't even imagine that.

But then was he in a wheelchair?

Was he able to walk again?

No,

He he walked again.

Very difficult.

He had full leg braces.

His legs were probably five inches in circumference.

I mean,

It was there was nothing to him from the waist down,

But he had he had crutches and he was an automobile mechanic for many years.

Very hardworking man.

I don't even know how he did half of what he did.

He worked his butt off to provide for us.

And then he ended up in the FAA,

Which is a godsend.

And he finished out that career doing that.

So but yeah,

It was those early years were really unbelievably difficult.

And I'm sure it changed my dad.

My dad was a tough,

Tough guy.

You did not.

There was no messing around with him at all.

But he was also very loving in his own way.

I mean,

You know,

He was just a tough guy.

And so and he used to he I was in boot camp from the time I was about five years old.

And whenever he wasn't working,

I had to be with him because I was the oldest and that was my job.

And so I didn't really have much of a childhood.

I was always helping him pretty much.

Although that gave me a life of service in a way,

Too.

I got used to being useful.

You know what I mean?

Even very young.

Yeah.

And my brothers,

Too,

To some extent,

But I got the brunt of it.

And I resented it for a long time.

But that's a whole different story.

Yeah,

I mean,

I bet.

But I'm I just wanted to say how sorry I am,

Because,

You know,

That just sounds actually I can't even conceive of that.

It just seems you hear the word polio and you think,

Oh,

That's eradicated.

But I think a lot of people don't understand that it didn't.

It happened not too long ago.

That's right.

It was horrible.

I don't know the actual number of people that died,

But the number of people that were crippled was just amazing.

And people just accepted it and they did the best they could.

And that was that,

You know,

They'd lived with it.

Yeah.

And they didn't talk about it.

They didn't make excuses.

My dad would call himself a cripple.

And and he didn't take that as a slur of any kind.

No,

I'm a cripple,

But I'm doing the best I can.

Thank you very much.

Get the hell out of my way.

He does sound kind of a guy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He sounds formidable.

You know,

You brought up your childhood and how,

You know,

It kind of prepared you for a life of service and indeed was a life of service.

And I love asking this question.

When you were a kid,

What did you dream of becoming when you grew up?

I want to be Clint Eastwood,

Actually.

You know,

I didn't know I was one of those lost kids.

I just didn't really know what I was going to do.

And then,

Like I said,

The Marine Corps damn near got me killed.

But then it gave me a career because what happened was I became an officer.

I decided I didn't want to be a grunt,

Which means infantryman anymore.

And I volunteered to go into the air wing.

And I ended up in the first Marine air wing down in Cherry Point,

North Carolina.

And when I got down there,

There was a guy there who was captain of the day,

Was a had been my staff sergeant drill instructor at Parris Island in Mayburg.

So I kept running into this guy.

They made him a Mustang lieutenant.

He ended up being a Mustang captain.

When I got out of the Marine Corps,

I was the first lieutenant and he was back to gunnery sergeant.

But anyway,

So I show up and,

You know,

We do the hugs and we didn't kiss,

But you know what I mean?

We're happy to see each other.

And he's going,

Hey,

I got a whole bunch of schools here.

You want to go to a school?

And I said,

Well,

I don't know what you got.

And he's rattling him off.

And I heard him say Rhode Island.

And I say,

Well,

I've never been to Rhode Island.

What's that one?

He says JAG school,

Judge Advocate General School.

It's a school for lawyers,

For legal officers in the Marine Corps and the Navy.

Actually,

It's a Navy school.

And so the next day I'm in Rhode Island and there's 99 other guys there.

They're all captains.

They all have college education and a law degree.

They're real live lawyers,

Captains,

Because they couldn't get anybody to do that unless I gave more money.

So that's how they solved that problem.

And 20 of us rented this mansion because it was the off season right on the ocean.

Beautiful.

These guys are drinking and partying.

And I thought,

You know what?

I'm going to work at this.

I don't know.

I just like the idea.

And so I studied and then I partied with them on the weekends.

And lo and behold,

When we got done,

I had the highest score.

I was the class honor man.

Really ticked them all off.

They couldn't believe it.

What the hell's with this guy?

Anyway,

So I went back to Cherry Point.

I defended a couple of guys.

I got a guy off on a really serious charge.

He was looking at Fort Leavenworth and dishonorable discharge.

And then the jury is not of your peers in the military.

It was a colonel,

Major,

Captains and stuff.

It was kind of unheard of for anybody to be acquitted in a trial in the military.

And then I got another guy off.

So they solved that problem by making me a prosecutor.

And then every few months,

They'd send me down to Roosevelt Roads,

Which is a Navy base in Puerto Rico,

To do Article 32 trials down there.

And I would be at the top of the list to rotate back to Vietnam because I would have been a second lieutenant.

I would have been back out in the field again,

Probably a forward observer,

Because that's what the air wing,

You know,

They need those guys.

And I would go down to Puerto Rico and come back.

I'm not at the top of the list anymore.

I'm halfway down the bottom.

And I would go down to Puerto Rico and come back.

I go to my friend there,

The captain.

What the heck's going on?

I should be rotating over.

He said,

You dumb bunny.

Why do you think I keep sending you to Puerto Rico?

So I had a guardian angel in my core.

And I never did go back to Vietnam.

Wow.

Yeah.

Well,

You know,

One thing I do want to say is I want to say thank you for your service.

And I think what is missing in that thank you statement is I have no concept or idea of what you went through over there.

I think most people don't have any idea.

You know,

When you said,

Suddenly I found myself in a rice patty,

And I was thinking,

What was I thinking?

I mean,

That's like the understatement of the century,

Frankly.

And I'm grateful that you and your brother both,

Both made it back.

It was a miracle.

And actually,

One of us would not have had to go if we had protested.

But we both we both wanted to serve our country.

We felt we were doing something patriotic.

I felt very strongly about that.

Yeah.

Well,

That thread of patriotism runs in your family,

Because your father was the same way.

Would you agree?

Oh,

Yeah,

All my uncles,

We were a warrior family,

For sure.

All my uncles served in Vietnam or in World War Two.

They never talked about it,

Never talked about it.

One D-Day,

One was a gunner on a B-24,

I think it was.

Yeah,

And they were noble men.

And they were regular men.

They were hardworking,

You know,

Blue collar guys.

Never complained about anything.

You could drive a nail through their foot and they'd say,

Please don't do that again.

You know,

That kind of guy.

Well,

I yeah,

Note to self.

Now I know that if I run into family members.

Um,

Well,

Yes,

And also the story about your father and in his matter of factness of saying,

Well,

I'm a cripple,

You know,

I'm,

But I'm not going to let that define me.

I'm going to do everything I want to do.

But here's the facts,

You know,

And that just sounds what an incredible spirit.

Oh,

Yeah.

Tremendous.

My brother.

So I ended up being a lawyer and I had a great career and I went through all the schooling and all that stuff.

And but Ronnie came back and he ended up being a commercial pilot,

Which made sense because our dad,

You know,

Is a pilot and so on.

And but next thing I know,

He is dating our mother's best friend,

Edie,

Who is 14 years older than Ronnie,

With seven kids divorced.

And their first day he shows up with three of the youngest kids.

Yeah.

And my brother fell madly in love with her.

And they had a great life.

They they became very involved in the Church of Latter Day Saints,

Better known as Mormons.

They moved to St.

George,

Utah.

Oh,

Gosh.

Forty five years ago,

Something like that,

Lived out there.

And then I only saw my brother over the decades,

Usually like once a year when they would come east to see all the kids and they'd get a cottage and we'd go to the lake and stuff like that.

And my younger brother and I would get drunk and make fun of him because he was a bishop in the church and he didn't drink and he was very boring.

And he took it all in good stride.

But then he had a stroke in 2011.

And it was one of those deals where it was bad and it never got better.

It got worse.

And she was in a wheelchair.

And Ronnie took care of her very devoted,

Loving husband.

And and then she passed in 2017,

In November 17th,

I believe it was.

And he was devastated.

Wow.

Yeah.

But he had always been a very faithful man.

But I,

You know,

He didn't talk about it very much.

I called him.

I had never been out there.

I had my own family life,

You know,

In the east.

So anyway,

I called him and then we I said,

I'll come out.

And so I came out in January of 2018.

And he had told me on the phone,

Kirsten,

I'm going to I said,

What are you going to do?

Because I could tell he was really overwhelmed with grief.

And he said,

I'm going to hike the Appalachian Trail.

And my brain went danger,

Danger,

Danger.

That's because I'm 72.

He's 71.

This I mean,

And I had hiked quite a bit on the Appalachian Trail over the years because,

You know,

Warriors come back from war and they have trauma.

And then they I ended up drinking too much sometimes.

And I would deal with things by just taking off and going in the mountains and hiking by myself for two or three days and fake charging with bears and just,

You know,

Being a man,

I guess,

And trying to keep myself together.

And so I knew quite a bit about it.

And so I went out in January,

And we're hiking in the desert of Utah.

Now,

I have an artificial leg,

And my right leg is a half inch shorter from the left where the artificial knee is.

So I'd limp.

And pretty badly actually had for years.

And so we're limping.

I'm limping around the desert with him.

And,

And he starts talking about hiking the Appalachian Trail.

I said,

You went?

Really?

He is?

Yeah.

I said,

Well,

What are you gonna do?

And he said,

Well,

I'm gonna,

I'm gonna take a bus down to Springer Mountain,

Georgia and start hiking.

And I go,

Well,

That's not a very good plan.

That won't work.

The Appalachian Trail is 2200 miles from Springer Mountain,

Georgia,

The Katadyn Mountain in Maine,

Goes through 14 states,

The elevation,

It goes over 600 mountains,

The elevation elevation changes,

It's almost a half a million feet.

Wow,

Longest footpath trail only in the whole world.

There's some trails that are longer,

None of them are footpath the whole way.

But everybody realizes the Appalachian Mountains are in their own league.

They're in the A league big time.

Because it's so difficult.

About 3 million people hike on it every year,

But only about 2500 to 3000 actually try to do it the whole way.

They call them through hikers and of that 17%.

So like 500 people a year.

So this is you know,

It's a monster.

It's very,

Very difficult.

And I like to brag,

It's probably the oldest limpiest man to do it.

But so I didn't think he was serious,

But he was dead serious.

I said when he said March 22.

I got this year.

Yeah.

So I wrote a book about it called the spiritual passage.

And there's,

I took 5000 pictures,

But there's 500 pictures in there.

It's in a journal format.

So you can actually see Ronnie was very good.

He's a pilot.

So he's very data driven guy,

Right?

So he would record where we were,

Where we went,

What mountains we went over up and down,

Changes elevation,

All that kind of stuff.

I was more like,

I'm just gonna enjoy this as much as I can.

And so I took a lot of pictures,

Right took hardly any Ronnie was,

We were hiking different.

Ronnie was head down March,

Boom,

Boom,

Boom,

Get this done every day.

And we average 11 miles a day.

That takes all day long in the mountains.

It's very difficult.

And I was more like,

I'm never gonna go this way again,

I'm gonna enjoy it as much as I can walk around the corner.

Oh my god,

Look at that.

That's crazy.

So I took a ton of pictures.

So in the book,

I have pictures,

You could actually picture where we went from and to if you had a map,

You could see right where it was.

And you can see what it looked like along the way.

And then I wrote in there about my recovery from alcoholism,

Which I was became a sober man four years before that,

Before we did the hike.

And Ronnie's some of Ronnie's spiritual experiences,

We both had experiences on the trail that were spiritual to us for sure.

And then a lot of funny stuff that happened.

So I ended up writing this 382 page book with 500 color pictures that tells the story of this amazing adventure that two pretty kind of normal guys,

I mean,

We're not big mountain men,

We're both about five foot eight,

160 pounds,

You know,

Kind of scrawny,

Actually.

But there's the background,

I love that.

Yeah,

The background.

I love that.

Because,

Well,

It's interesting that,

You know,

Your brother moved away with his new wife,

And they're living in Utah.

And you don't really see him that often.

But then you have this meeting and he says,

Yeah,

I kind of just want to walk the Appalachian Trail and your ears perked up.

I think you were interested.

I had fantasized about doing it back in my 40s and 50s.

But I was very busy being a lawyer and raising,

You know,

Kids and all that kind of stuff.

And I worked very hard.

I was like my dad,

In many ways,

If I decided to do something,

I did it.

I ran 26 marathons.

I was always a runner.

Ronnie did a lot of hiking.

So we were both in pretty good shape for guys our age,

Actually.

But I'll tell you what,

I was walking six,

Seven miles a day for years after I couldn't run anymore.

And from destroying my knees.

Yeah.

And Ronnie did too,

You know,

Hiking,

But it was so much harder in the mountains.

I mean,

I could walk three miles an hour,

Which is like 20 minute miles.

That's pretty normal for younger people anyway.

But you get in the mountains,

You can't with pack,

There's no way you're lucky if you can do a mile and a half in the mountains,

And you're either going up or going down.

I would be praying to the God I finally believed in,

The one that got me sober.

And I have a really strong connection with him ever since that happened over 12 years ago now.

And I was like,

Come on,

Just give me 100 feet flat.

No,

How about a football 300 feet flat?

And you come down the mountain,

Especially in the beginning in Georgia,

Because they're really packed in there.

You could go over six or seven mountains in one day in Georgia.

And I'm the bottom like 10 feet and you're going up the next mountain.

That sounds wow,

That sounds insanely arduous and really,

Really difficult.

Let me ask you,

Would you care to share one of the funny stories from your trip?

I'd love to hear it.

Oh,

Gosh,

Yeah.

So you get in a bubble where you see the same people for a while.

And of course,

Ronnie and I were kind of stood out a little bit because of our age.

And there was a whole bunch.

In the beginning,

There's a lot of people.

And you get in these bubbles where you kind of see the same people pretty much every day.

And younger ones usually were a little bit faster than we were,

But we hike longer.

So we kind of see them anyway.

And then somebody would take a day off or whatever.

My brother and I never took a day off.

It was crazy.

We averaged 11 miles a day.

We went one stretch 33 days.

Yeah,

33 days.

So we were in this bubble and there's this oriental gentleman.

He's probably five foot four.

Very stout,

Very rugged,

Handsome man dressed like a samurai.

He's got the robes.

I swear he could have had a sword in his sock.

And you wouldn't have seen it.

Right.

He's wearing the robes.

He's got this very ornate,

Kind of like a priest type hat on his head and a full pack.

Right.

And some walking sticks.

And I see him every little bit every day for a while.

And then one day he stops and he goes,

Rambo,

My trail name was Rambo.

He said,

Rambo,

I'm going to I'm going to help you with your knees.

You hold my hands.

So I,

You know,

I'm standing there holding hands with this guy.

And he's looking down and he's praying or whatever,

Chanting away.

And then people are walking by us and everything.

This goes on for like five minutes.

And all of a sudden I realize I hear him say Macbeth.

And I go,

He's quoting Shakespeare.

I said,

I think my knees feel a lot better.

And he goes,

Oh,

Really?

OK,

Good.

And I swear to God,

They did.

My knees feel better.

So what you thought was a prayer was,

In fact,

A recitation of a Shakespeare play.

Apparently.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I love how I love how at the end he actually cited it and said,

Macbeth.

Yeah.

So you would know.

Yeah,

It was amazing.

Things like that happened.

So was he was he hiking in that samurai clothing?

Yes.

Oh,

Yeah.

Well,

In the beginning,

Especially,

I mean,

The day we there's a picture of my brother in the book standing inside of a shelter that's empty because it's in the morning and you can just see out of the face this expression like,

What have I done?

And it's snowing.

The ground is covered with snow.

Wow.

It was cold.

You get up in the morning and your shoes would be frozen.

I actually gave a water purifier bag to a guy because on top of one of the mountains,

I felt sorry for him.

His bag,

He froze.

Normally,

You would put it in a sleeping bag with you or something.

I don't know what his problem was,

But I gave him mine because I could get another one easier.

And he could.

My brother and I both had a vehicle.

So we were we hiked on the trail and we parked on the trail every night,

But we were able to what we did was in the morning.

So we're on the trail,

Right?

We spent the night in the morning.

We would eat.

I would start hiking north.

Ronnie would drive down the mountain on whatever road we were on,

Go down the valley,

Go up the next road because there's roads crossing the Appalachian Trail every 10 to 15 miles in most places,

But not all places.

And then he would park there and then he would come south and we would meet in the middle.

Then he,

When he got to my truck,

He would just drive back around and I would meet him at wherever his car was.

And we just,

I pitched my tent every night.

I like to brag,

I slept in the tent every night,

But a lot of nights my truck was like 10 feet away,

Right?

So that did give us a big advantage of being able to have a lot of food and water and stuff like that.

So we shared with other people quite a bit.

And Ronnie was kind of famous for giving away candy and stuff.

So who doesn't?

I mean,

You need the calories when you're doing a hike like that.

I mean,

My goodness.

I'm sure you were the trail angels.

Everybody probably loved you.

Well,

Yeah,

Within the small group that we were with,

But they do have trail angels too that come and park at all those kind of intersections and help hikers.

There's a lot of support there.

A lot of,

It's a kind of a family feeling about it.

And then you don't see people and then you see them again sometimes.

And when we got to Harpers Ferry,

Which is about halfway,

I think we were 1,

836 and 37 in the log that we logged in there.

And then after that,

It just dropped way off.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

Let me ask you,

You know,

The main question of the podcast is I would so appreciate hearing a story of,

Of an incident in your life.

And it can be from the Appalachian trail where you feel like you witnessed or experienced something magical,

Miraculous,

Or mysterious.

Do you have any stories like that?

You'd like to share?

Sure.

Absolutely.

So for my brother,

Who's stricken with grief is always believed in a higher power,

Never had a drinking problem,

Um,

Much more sane and rational person than his older brother to some extent,

But he was really struggling.

Edie was the love of his life.

He just can't even imagine.

Real quick.

So one more,

We didn't talk a lot.

Uh,

And we never complained.

I was amazing when I got his journal and what he had written in there about how much pain he was in and we never complained like that,

But he was in spiritual and emotional pain from the loss of Edie.

And then father's day in 2018,

Really dark day,

We ran into a guy that was a Ranger.

His name was Jean Anderson talking to Jean.

I ended up walking with Jean some,

Cause he was going same way I was Ronnie was going the other way.

And the Ronnie was really down the dumps and thinking about our dad,

You know,

Father's day and all that.

And then you walked around a corner and it was this huge,

And there's a picture of it.

He took a picture of it,

Huge halo,

A bright sunlight in the trail,

Just this one spot.

And it looked like there was some kind of a huge,

You know,

Spiritual,

It could have been Jesus Christ.

It could have been Mohammed.

It could have been Buddha.

I don't know.

You could have been whatever you wanted to be.

Right.

But Ronnie saw it was so magically overwhelming that he was actually afraid.

He turned around and he started to feel like he should run.

And then he goes,

Well,

Wait a minute.

No,

I've never ran away from anything.

So he turned back.

And then as he approached it,

He could feel the presence of Edie and our father and Edie's telling him,

Ronnie,

It's okay.

You're doing the right thing.

God is with us.

God,

I'm here with dad.

We're both here.

We're going to,

You're going to be with us someday.

It's good.

It's all good,

Ron.

You're doing the right,

You know,

And it took,

You know,

What God does for us.

He takes away the weight of our difficulties,

Right?

We still have them.

There's a sentence in the recovery program I'm in,

It's for,

It's anonymous and it's for alcoholics.

And it's a God take away my difficulties that victory over them may bear witness to those I may seek to help with my power,

Their love and their way of life.

May I do thy will always,

Which basically is to serve people.

Right.

And so that's what he experienced.

That's what I experienced in the mountains.

Something that happened to me was that my perception of my higher power just grew immensely.

Hiking in the mountains because they're just so majestic.

And it was one moment for me.

We were in New Jersey.

We had just crossed the Hudson River.

I thought we got across the Hudson River.

The mountains got to be a little smaller.

They're not going to be near us.

Oh my God.

No,

They're worse.

I swear to God.

So one morning I'm in New Jersey.

I know I'm in New Jersey.

I'm on top.

We had just crossed Bear Mountain and some other one.

And it's early in the morning.

There's nobody around,

Nothing.

And I'm standing at the very top of the mountain.

There's two raptors up there flying around.

I just love to watch them float the,

You know,

In the current and everything.

And I realize there's millions of people.

I'm in New Jersey.

There's millions of people down in the valleys,

But there's no sign of human being at all where I am at the top.

There's no contrails.

There's no power.

There's nothing.

All I can see is God's creation.

And I thought,

Oh my God,

God created all of this.

I could be the only man on the planet,

Right?

That's how powerful it was.

And then I finally,

I realized I'm looking way out and I could see about 50 miles away.

I can see the top of some skyscrapers in New York City.

Oh my goodness.

Just look at that.

It was just stunning.

And you know,

From that point on,

My God got way bigger.

Just made me realize.

And somebody else said to me at one point,

Well,

Maybe it's because you felt so small.

Yes,

I did.

I felt overwhelmingly small,

But I did not feel insignificant.

Right.

God made me feel significant,

Even though I'm really small in his world.

I'm incredibly small.

Yeah.

Wow.

I have a purpose.

I had a purpose to do that with my brother.

I have purpose to work with guys every day so they don't drink.

I do that every day.

And I'm 80 years old now and my life is filled with joy.

That's amazing.

How the heck does that happen?

You know?

That is amazing.

That is amazing.

I am going to guess that you finished the Appalachian Trail.

How long did it take you?

I did not finish it actually.

I went 1,

863 miles.

I fell down Wilcox Mountain in Massachusetts on a rock slide.

Oh,

That was terrible.

And if I had just fallen face forward,

I would have been fine.

I was almost at the top.

I'm like 10 feet from the top.

But I stabbed with my poles and it flung me around and then I did a swan dive off this rock slide.

Yeah.

Oh,

My God.

I closed my eyes when I hit.

I knew it was going to hurt but when I hit it was so,

It was way beyond anything I had ever experienced in my life.

And probably,

I would have died except my foot got wedged between two rocks and that caused me to stop bouncing.

Oh,

My gosh.

Oh,

Yeah.

And I'd gone in three miles so I had to walk nine more miles to get out of there,

Which I actually did.

And then the next day when I got out of my tent,

I couldn't move.

And so we stopped and went back to home.

And I never got medical treatment.

Within a week,

I'm walking again.

Ronnie calls me up and he goes,

You want to go back and see if we can finish it?

I said,

Sure,

Because I'm not real bright sometimes.

And we got into the whites.

We got into,

We did,

We passed Washington.

Washington was closed.

Mount Washington,

The highest winds ever recorded,

246 miles an hour,

I think it is.

Oh,

Yeah.

It's,

So Mount Washington gets snow every month of the year.

So when we went through there,

They closed it because the weather was bad.

It's very dangerous.

So we went up,

We did Moosilauk and then we did Wolf and then we went back and we had a full pack because we're going to have to hike three days,

You know,

There's no roads or anything.

And we started in and I was just,

I was in so much pain.

I couldn't sleep anymore at night.

I was having a hard time sleeping and I just stopped and I turned around.

I was crying.

I was like,

I can't,

I can't,

I can't do it,

Bro.

I can't,

I'm done.

And so I ended up going home and Ronnie ended up finishing it with his son,

Rick,

And they made it to Katadin Mountain.

So,

But I have no regrets.

I did the best I could and I went a hell of a long ways.

Oh,

Yeah.

That is a long way.

I walk the Camino in France and I went 500 miles.

So,

But I took a long time.

I walked for about a little over three months.

I took my time.

I didn't rush.

If I wanted to stay in a city for three or four days,

I did that.

I just took my time because I wanted to remember it.

And just,

You know,

And one of the things that I loved so much about walking the Camino was all the other cares of life just dropped away.

And every day was me getting up,

Brushing my teeth,

Brushing my hair and getting dressed,

Eating a little breakfast,

Putting the pack on and walking and just walking.

And you never knew what kind of adventure the day was going to bring you or who you were going to meet or what kind of experience you were going to have.

And then at night,

Reverse,

You eat some dinner,

You know,

Maybe take a shower,

Get ready for bed,

Brush your teeth,

Go to sleep.

And it was just so contemplative over and over doing the same thing.

It was like time out of time because I was out of the rat race.

I was out of all the concerns of everyone else.

Did you experience that as well?

Yes,

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And people are so wonderful.

We were in Virginia and it was,

We had a really rainy stretch there.

And so one day,

Just to show you how kind and loving people can be on the trail,

A guy and a girl came out that we knew they had been in our bubble.

And Ronnie's talking to him,

I'm putting up a tarp so we can,

Not in the rain,

Putting up tents and stuff like that.

And he's talking to him.

All of a sudden I see him take out his wallet and give him some money and then they leave.

And I go,

What's up,

Bro?

And he goes,

Well,

They've been working their way through.

They don't have any more money.

They don't have any food.

So I gave him 50 bucks.

I said,

Okay,

Good.

Son of a gun,

About a half an hour later,

The lady comes back with a hiking pole.

And there had been a dog running around in our campsite earlier.

And I,

You know,

It was there and then it wasn't there.

I didn't pay any attention to it very much.

And this girl had walked back.

So she had walked probably a mile at least.

And then turn around and came back because she found this dog with a hiking stick.

And she looks at me and she goes,

I think this is your hiking stick.

It looks just like the other one I saw when we were here.

And I go,

Oh yeah,

I didn't even know.

I would have been lost without it.

You know what I mean?

And she gave it to me.

I'm like,

Holy crap,

Who does that?

She went,

You know,

Two miles and an hour more hiking out of her way to bring back my pole.

That's amazing.

She didn't have to do that.

My brother didn't have to give her 50 bucks,

But that's how we roll,

Right?

That's what we do.

We help each other out.

Yeah,

We do help each other out.

And I think that's one of my favorite aspects of the human species.

Now,

I used to love dogs,

But now hearing that that dog stole your hiking pole,

I'm going to reconsider.

Yeah.

There's another picture of me standing on a mountain.

There's nobody around.

And I didn't even realize it until later.

My brother goes,

There's a dog beside you.

And I go,

Oh yeah,

I forgot all about that.

He said,

Where'd that dog come from?

I have no idea.

It hiked with me for like three hours that day.

That came out of nowhere.

And then at one point it was gone.

That was it.

I have a similar story.

It was walking through the French forest and I mean,

Kind of in the middle of nowhere.

And all of a sudden the cutest dog comes out of nowhere.

I mean the cutest.

And,

You know,

Of course I say,

Oh my gosh,

Are you starving?

Are you okay?

So I start giving it,

You know,

Biscuits and cookies and stuff.

Cause I'm worried about the dog.

The dog totally has a grift going on.

He knows that these pilgrims are like,

They'll feel sorry for it.

So he walked with me for about three or four hours.

I was,

I didn't see another human being.

At one point I was walking on this mountain.

I came up to the top on this escarpment where this giant just ledge was leaning out and someone had built this huge stone on the ground,

Labyrinth with stones.

And so,

And it just looked out over,

Over the French forest on this mountain and you could do the labyrinth and walk the labyrinth if you wanted.

The dog was like,

Oh,

This place is cool too.

And we sat there for a while and then he kept walking with me.

And then,

And then at some point he peeled away and I presume went home,

But you know,

It made the walk a lot less lonely.

I'll tell you that.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

You have some great stories too.

That's awesome.

Oh yeah.

I mean,

I,

Um,

My favorite is that you could eat,

You know,

30 French chocolate croissants a day and still lose weight because you're hiking.

That's my favorite.

I mean,

Were you ever,

Were you ever like,

I'm losing weight.

You must've lost so much weight.

Not that you were overweight,

But that is a every day for months.

Your body just starts.

Yeah.

We were down to,

We took three,

It took us three years.

We were down to like 155.

You cannot possibly carry and eat enough food to,

You can't even eat enough food to make up for the calories you're burning as you well know.

And we got to,

I don't know,

Like we were in New York state,

I think.

And it was one of those hundred degree days,

A hundred percent humidity,

Just exhausting.

And I came out and my brother wasn't unpacking like normally would be just standing there with his hands on his hips.

He looked at me,

He says,

You want to go home?

And I said,

Yeah.

At that point we had done 1500 miles.

Okay.

That's,

I mean,

That's incredible in its own right.

And I thought we were done.

So we went home and then the next year he called me up and he said,

You want to try to finish it?

And I said,

Yeah,

Sure.

So we went back and then we just kept going.

But,

And then when I fell down that rock slide,

We went off for a month and then we went back again.

So we had some,

I got a real bad infection at one point,

I was in the emergency room.

I almost had septic.

Doctor said I was hours away from septic.

I thought I had shin splints or something,

But it was,

The pain was wicked bad.

So we had,

You know,

We had our challenges and they're all in the book.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah.

I was going to just,

You brought up the rock slide again.

And frankly,

I was hearing you and listening to you tell the story.

And I thought to myself,

You know,

You said,

And I would have died except my foot got caught between these two rocks.

And I was thought to myself there,

That's God right there.

You know,

Um,

Those rocks had probably been there for time from time immemorial waiting to catch your foot.

Yeah.

People don't realize how many rock slides there are.

Another really cool experience I had,

And I was by myself and we were in,

I'm going to say Massachusetts on a ridge line.

And,

Uh,

No,

I hadn't seen anybody in hours and I'm walking and I hear a noise and I took,

I turn around and there's a whole pack of,

I'm going to call them coyotes.

They weren't wolves.

They were,

But they were big,

Wild coyote,

Like a whole pack of them.

And they're flying right at me.

And then,

So I'm just standing there and they come,

They part and they go around me and then I turn around and they're a pack again and they are flying.

I mean,

It was the most amazing thing to see.

I'm like,

I didn't even have time to take my phone out,

Take a picture or anything.

I'm just,

And then I'm like,

What the heck?

So I turned back around and I look and I kind of heard a noise and I look way back and there's a bear.

See,

They got tangled up with a bear and this bear was coming down too,

But it,

It veered off at an angle.

I don't know if it saw me or smell me or what,

But it didn't come right at me.

It was coming at me and then it just kind of veered off and I watched it go.

And I'm like,

Wow,

That's amazing.

You don't see that every day.

No,

Rand,

I do have to say that your Appalachian trail sounds like it was full of adventure.

Absolutely.

Pretty much every day,

Something.

Yeah.

Well,

And,

And I think it's important to note incredible beauty as well.

And that it was,

It was life-changing,

Easily life-changing.

Yeah.

There's lots of gorgeous pictures.

And every time I would think this is the best picture I will ever take.

A few days later,

It'd be,

Oh my God,

No,

This is the best picture I'll ever,

You know,

It was like that.

It was just amazing.

And it kept me going.

It gave me a spirit of hope and,

And,

Um,

Not fearlessness,

But willingness to take on risk.

It's dangerous too.

It's dangerous as heck.

There was one spot there.

There's a million places on the Appalachian trail.

If you step in the wrong place or you fall off,

Nobody will find you.

Your body probably won't even make it to the ground.

It'll be in a tree,

Thousands of feet down.

And,

And I,

One day I saw,

I'm hiking by myself.

We were gone quite a ways into the deal.

And,

Uh,

I could see the trail collapsed.

It was very clear.

Somebody,

And I took a picture in my,

It's in the book with my hat on a rock.

Like,

Well,

Somebody was here,

But they're not anymore.

Right.

Type of thing.

And I looked and it,

You could see where they bounce down the mountain,

Like a golf ball,

Like,

You know,

Divots.

And I'm like,

Holy crap.

And I started yelling and screaming.

You all right.

No answer,

No nothing.

So I started walking down the trail.

I'm like,

The brain part of my brain is like,

You got to do something.

You got to do something.

You can't just walk away.

So I took out my pack and went back and I stepped off the trail myself with my poles and I slid down the damn mountain.

I mean,

The whole leaves and everything just,

It was like being on a rug that just starts moving.

Right.

And you can't stop it.

And I slid down quite a ways.

And then I started trying to go back up.

I couldn't go back up.

That was impossible.

So I ended up going sideways.

Right.

Using my poles to hold me and gradually go two steps sideways and three inches off.

And after about an hour or so,

I get come back up to where the trail is and I get on the trail,

Go all the way back,

Get my pack,

Go on back down through and probably went like another half a mile or so.

And then all of a sudden I realized somebody else did the same thing I did.

Right.

Only took them a lot longer.

And I'm like,

Oh,

God,

Well,

At least they're okay.

But I mean,

It is very dangerous.

Very,

Very dangerous.

Wow.

So along with the beauty and the life changing adventures,

There's danger as well.

So you can't take it for granted.

It's not some easy trail.

You absolutely cannot take it for granted.

No,

That's true.

Absolutely.

But it's also beautiful.

And some of those pictures,

You look at them and you say,

There's no way they walked down.

Yeah,

We did.

Sometimes on our butt scooting along.

Yeah,

It's a challenge.

Big time.

I hope you all so appreciated the conversation that I had with Rand and Rand's reminder that we can be present to those who need us,

To those that we love in ways that maybe we can't even imagine yet.

To be honest,

I don't know if my sister and I would survive being on the Appalachian Trail together,

But that doesn't mean that if she needed me,

I wouldn't drop everything to go and help her.

And I think Rand's story of hearing his brother's need of seeing his grief and just knowing that he could do something about it.

Well,

That's one of the miracles in this story.

And I think,

Yeah,

It would behoove all of us to recognize that and then live it out in our lives.

However,

Those opportunities present themselves.

I wanted to thank Rand for being on the show.

I also want to thank him for being so open and vulnerable with his stories.

Thank you for listening.

And here's my one request.

Be like Rand.

Be unstoppable.

I mean,

When he was telling me his story of,

You know,

Limping through the Appalachian Trail and I was remembering my Camino journey and how I have two legs that function,

And I still complained.

I mean,

I actually couldn't believe it.

This human being has more fortitude,

More bravery,

More just tenaciousness than the average human being.

I just had to sit back in awe.

I think he is living proof that if you decide to do something and you have conviction,

Then you're going to do it and it's going to happen.

So be like Rand and never give up.

And Rand leads with this whole heart,

Too.

I want each and every one of you to know that.

He leads with his heart and he's here to make this world a better place.

See you all the next time for the next episode.

It's going to be number 300,

Which is so exciting.

I'm really excited to get to this milestone and it's going to drop in the very next week.