Hiking for Healing: A Veteran's Journey on the Appalachian Trail

Hey, one more thing before you go. There are journeys we choose and journeys that choose us. Some happen in our youth under fire, in places we never forget.Others happen decades later when the world is quiet and the only thing left to face is ourselves. Today you'll meet a man who walked more than 2,100 miles at age 72, along with his brother, not to prove anything, but to heal.A marine combat veteran, a recovering alcoholic. A brother trying to save another brother from grief so deep it nearly swallowed him whole.This is the story of Rand Timmerman and the trail that changed everything. I'm your host, Michael Hirsch. Welcome to one more thing before you go. Today's guest is someone who life reads like a novel.War, loss, redemption, humor, danger, and the spiritual awakening that happen one step at a time on the Appalachian Trail. Rand R. Timmerman is a Marine combat veteran from Vietnam, a retired attorney, a recovering alcoholic, and the author of A Spiritual Passage.It's a photographic and emotional journey of 2,100 mile journey he took with his brother Ron, who was grieving the loss of his wife. This episode is about brotherhood. It's about survival. It's about the long road home, physically, emotionally and spiritually.Today, we're exploring three big questions. What does healing look like when you've carried pain for decades? How do war, grief and addiction shape a man's identity?And what happens when two brothers walk into the wilderness searching for something they can't name? Welcome to the show, Rand.

Thank you, Mike. I'm really glad to be here.

You know, what an amazing journey that your life has taken from. I mean, from the beginning, all the way through till now. I mean, so many. You've had obstacles you've had to overcome.You've had problems, know little blocks in the road. You've had successes, you've had failures, and you've had family and you've had colleagues, you have comrades.So, you know, thank you for taking that journey because it brought you to a point where we can have this conversation.

Yeah, I'm very, I'm the most luckiest man on the planet some days. I'm very grateful for everything.

It's the little things, isn't it? Little things. One step at a time. Yeah, well, I like to start things at the beginning.So can you kind of take us back before the trail, before the book, before the recovery?We're kind of a, as you young man stepping into the Marines, you know, what do you remember most about that and most vividly about your time in Vietnam?

Well, I grew up in A very rural village called Adams, New York. And very briefly, my childhood was challenging. About five years old, you know, you become aware. And I looked around and I thought, we're screwed.We are really screwed. My dad had been a Mustang pilot in World War II, and he came home, married my mom and had me and my brother.And then he got polio, and he ended up a year in a hospital, eight months in an iron lung, and it paralyzed him from the waist down. So I knew we were. It was going to be a struggle. I went to bed hungry a lot of nights. So I just had a really tough childhood.I experimented with alcohol at 13 and discovered an elixir that made me feel really good about myself and the world for a few minutes anyway. And so I knew that was kind of going to be a problem, Mike. And it kind of lingered in my background.The good news about that experience was I realized I reacted to it differently than other people and I was going to have to be careful. And I made a vow not to ever do drugs. I never did any illegal drugs whatsoever. So. But anyway, I liked alcohol. I did go off to college.First person in my family to go. At the same time, my younger brother Ron, who was a year behind me when he got out of high school, he enlisted in the Army. And so I'm in college.I'm working as a janitor from midnight to 8 every morning, cleaning the toilets at my old high school. Yeah. And I'm working as a pin setter in a bowling alley. So this was before pin setting machines. Right. Friday nights would be a whole lot of fun.All the drunks would come out and try to kill you while you're changing the pins. And I was selling Amway, and I kept changing my major because I had no idea what it was going to be when I grew up.And so finally I changed it to psychology because I knew I was a nut job. And I got drunk one weekend, and I was at Oswego State in upstate New York, right off Lake Ontario, and I passed out on the pool table.Next morning, I hear a key in the door. When I come to wake up, whatever the hell I was doing, and the owner comes in. He never said a word to me. Mike.He came in, he went over, started cleaning up, turned the radio on, and they were Talking about the 1st Marine Division going into Vietnam.

Wow.

Yeah. And for me, that was like my French Foreign Legion moment.

Yeah.

You know, that's what in the old days, I talked about if you didn't know what you were going to do. With your life. Go in the French Foreign Legion and get a. Get a set or whatever. Right.So, yeah, a month later, I'm in the War Memorial in Syracuse, New York, raising my hand, swearing to protect my country against enemies foreign and domestic.

Well, I mean, that's a. That's an interesting, unique way of getting involved in the military. I. I do have one question, though.How did anybody not notice you sleeping on the. On the pool table before they locked up?

I have no idea. I might have been in the bathroom or something. I don't know. We. I was there for a couple days or a couple nights.

Yeah. That's crazy. That's crazy.

It was crazy. But, you know, it's a blizzard going on and. Well, I don't know. That's just what happened. Probably in the bathroom or somewhere.And when he left, he didn't realize he still had a patron.

That's funny. Get locked up in the middle of the night. In a different way, you and your brother both served in different branches.You served in the Marines, and your brother was in. In the Army. How did that shape your relationship? I mean, Marine. Look, my brother was in the Navy.I started off my career in the Navy and ended up in the National Guard. So, you know, I got both sides between the Navy and the. In the. In the army. And, you know, there's always that rival. Right.Did you guys have that rival both as brothers and in the same, you know, the military?

Yeah. Ronnie ended up being a machine gunner. He was assigned to an air unit in the army down by Chu Lai, which was kind of in the middle of Vietnam.And he was using M60 machine guns. That's what we had in the Marine Corps, too. It was a really good weapon. And I ended up being a machine gunner for a short period of time.But, yeah, I don't know, somehow, you know, in a recovery program I'm in one of the founders. In his story, he talked about his.His wife would complain about his drinking, and he would say that all men of great intelligence came to their best decisions and ideas when they were drunk. Apparently. I subscribed to that my whole adult life pretty much, because it just didn't seem like I could make a decision without getting hammered.And then somehow, I don't know. It's a weird phenomena, but it's not uncommon among people who are alcoholic, that's for sure.

I relate to that. I understand that. Both my parents were alcoholics, my father and my mother both. So I grew up in an environment similar to yours.And just in the fact that, you know, we were, I grew up poor, we grew up hungry, had to go to my grandmother's house to eat, you know, a lot of the time. So we didn't have much to eat when we were there.And it changes you as an individual, especially as a child growing up in that environment, it creates kind of a, you create kind of a protection, a world of your own to kind of stay protected. And I think some of us go towards the alcohol as more of a, as part of that protection type thing.My brother, you know, kind of milled it that way as well, so. But you found your way out and that's a positive thing, I think, because it, you know, we'll talk about that here in a little bit. But it's.When you build that wall and you build that protection around you, sometimes it's hard to break it down when you return home. What stayed with you? What didn't you talk about when I.

Came back from Vietnam?

Yeah.

Well, I ended up being. So I enlisted, I fought in I Corps, the northernmost province of Vietnam.So we were west of Da Nang and up to Quang Tree and over towards Laos and all that area. It's all jungle and mountainous and. And I did, I volunteered for the air wing.Trudging around the jungle all day long is not only dangerous, but it's miserable.And so they made me a second lieutenant the last couple of months, which was kind of common because lieutenants didn't do well in that combat environment. You had to stick your head up a lot if you were leading troops.So anyway, they gave me temporary commission and then when I left they said, well, you can, you go back to corporal. Which I did actually. You can either just get out because it was a two year enlistment or you can go to ocs. So I ended up.I didn't know what the hell I was going to do in my life still, Mike, I mean I. So I went to OCS and basic school in Quantico, Virginia. Decided I wanted to be in the air wings.So the 1st Marine Air Wing was the unit I had did a little time with in Vietnam. So I ended up at first MA in Cherry Point, North Carolina. And this is amazing. Part of my. It's so amazing how coincidences can happen.It seemed to have happened my whole life. And I get there and my ex drill instructor is the officer of the day because he's a Mustang captain now. He had been.I had seen him in Vietnam a couple times. They made him a Mustang lieutenant and he went up quick through the Ranks. So anyway, he's a captain when I get to Cherry Point.When I leave Cherry Point, two and a half years later, I'm a first lieutenant and he's a gunnery sergeant again.

That's.

Yeah.

So anyway, you know, it's almost. It's almost. Take that, Sarge.

Yeah, well, he was my guardian angel. I didn't even know it. So I get to Cherry Point, I'm signing in, it's on Sunday, and we, you know, we're glad to see each other and everything.And he says, you know, I got a bunch of schools, Rand. You want to go to a school? And I don't know what the heck. So he rally him off and he says, newport, Rhode Island.I said, wow, I've never been to Rhode Island. What's that? He says, it's a JAG school. It's for legal officers. Next day, I'm checking in at Newport.To the Navy, it's a naval base, and that's where they did all the justice. Naval justice stuff. And I get there, and the class is a hundred of us, 99 captains who have all gotten a college degree and a law degree.And they went through the same training I did, but now they had to make them captains in order to get the money up there enough that somebody would even want to do that. Right? Yeah. So, yeah. Anyway, 20 of us rented a big mansion right on the ocean because it was the off season, and each had our own room.And these guys are kind of partying it up a little bit, you know, celebrating finishing the officer training and getting out of law school and all that stuff. And I'm like, I shouldn't even be here, but I'm going to work at this.And so I didn't drink during the week, and they were kind of partying all the time, and. And I ended up being the class honor man. I got the highest scores.

Very cool. Yeah, very cool.

It's amazing when you think about it. And so I went back to Cherry Point, and I was a defense lawyer for a couple of cases.I got a couple acquittals, which was amazing because you don't have a jury of your peers in the military. Right, right. The juries are mostly. Generally, it's a colonel, a major, maybe a captain, maybe a first lieutenant.There was usually four or six somewhere, you know, four or five or six of them or whatever. So I got. I got a couple of acquittals, and I really liked doing it, what I was doing. So they fixed that problem. They made me a prosecutor.

Doing well on this side. Let's. Let's flip you.

Yeah. Now I'm due to go back overseas and I'm probably going to be a forward observer. If I hadn't gone to the JAG school especially.So this captain, his name was Dale Moan. I'll never forget him. And he.So every few months I'm creeping up the list to go rotate back over and then all of a sudden I get orders and I'm sent down to Roosevelt Roads Naval Base where there was a Marine contingent.And I would go down there and do all that Article 32 trials for a month or so and then I would come back and I'm not on the top of the list to go overseas anymore. Well, that happened twice. And the second time, so I almost. I had like just a year left. I'm like, I might not make. I might not be sent back over.So I'm talking to Dale one day, I said, I don't understand why I keep getting pushed back down the list. And he said, why do you think I'm sending you down to Roosevelt Roads? That's why you keep moving down.If you go back to Vietnam, you will definitely get killed a second time. There's just no question about it because, you know, I had used up a lot of credits. He knew that. And it was amazing.

It's kind of a guardian angel type, you know, Lucky. Lucky for you, but. Yeah, that's amazing.

Yeah. You know, he was an amazing guy. Is a drug. He looked like a Marine Corps drilling sergeant.I mean, picture Clint Eastwood, you know, tall, handsome, good looking. I mean, poster man, recruitment type guy. Right. I mean, he just looked like the perfect Marine and he was in many ways.But the funny part about him was he could be tough as hell one minute and loving and carrying the net. I never. He was the most. I don't know. He was an amazing guy. I don't know whatever happened to him.I never saw him after or heard from him after the day I left.

Well, hopefully he had a long and healthy life after that. You know, it's nice when we run into people like that within our lives that make a positive impact for us. That's very. That's cool.Well, you built a successful career as an attorney. I mean, what was happening like internally during those decades as well as how did the alcohol shift, you know?

Oh, man, that's. That's amazing perspective you have on that because. So I came back, I got married while I was at Cherry Point.I met a girl the day I went in the Marine Corps the day before.

That sounds like a movie rant.

Oh, my God. Yeah. I ended up marrying her and figured out at one point, we had only been together about 30 days.

Wow.

When we got married, you know, she blessed me with three wonderful daughters. We came back. I came back. A lot of the guys I knew struggle with alcohol. They got in trouble in the. In the service. It was.It was dismaying to see guys. Guys would come back from Vietnam. I'm a legal officer. Right. I'm at Cherry Point. These guys would come back, their chest would be covered with.I did not get a whole lot of money. Metals. Trust me. I was more about trying to survive this thing. And these guys have come back. I mean, they're real solid warriors. Yeah.And then they would go on leave, and they would go down to Myrtle beach or someplace, get a motel, stay in the motel for 34 days, drink their brains out. So they come back, they're AWOL three or four days, and the next thing you know, they're pfc and they're. You know, they've been in the brig for six.It was horrible the way we treated. Even the Marines, Howie and a lot of those guys didn't do very well. And so I. I thought, damn, it's kind of weird. I don't seem to have any.I was very determined to become a lawyer. You know, After I got out of the military, I moved back to Syracuse. Moved to Syracuse to go to Syracuse University.Got three jobs, got a wife and two kids. Got. Still got no money. Syracuse was expensive. The GI Bill didn't even pay the whole tuition. So I'm still economically challenged, to say the least.And I was determined to be successful and not to be living in poverty. I was so sick of it. And so that drove me. But I kept thinking, every once in a while, I take a moment, I think, I'm. You know, I seem to be fine.And it was kind of amazing because I had a fair amount of trauma, too. My brother, the same thing. And then one night, oh, my God, I. We're in bed. I'm. I'm back in Vietnam. In my world, at that moment, I'm back in Vietnam.I mean, there's no question about it. I can smell the smells. I can smell the gore. I can hear all the noise, the bombs going off, the grenades, the firing and all that stuff.And all of a sudden, I'm gutted, basically. And I'm sitting on the ground holding my guts, and I'm trying to put them back inside of me. And I'm like, this time I'm done. I can't fix this.This time they got me, you know, and I'm screaming and all of a sudden I'm bathed in white light. And I open my eyes. My wife is laying on the floor by the door to the bathroom because she had just reached up and flicked on the light switch.That's where the light came from.And I'm sitting in bed and I'm not covered in blood, I'm covered in sweat and I'm screaming and I'm smelling the smells I'm smelling because I avoided myself in that bed. And that was one of those moments. My wife and I looked at each other and her eyes were like. The fear and the panic in her eyes.We both knew that this was not good, that our lives were changed at that moment. And then I had been a machine gunner on the helicopter. And then I started having other nightmares.Usually when I would be, I would be, you know, we'd be fighting and I. Something would happen and I would fall out of the helicopter, which actually did happen to me in one battle.And I ended up on the, on the skid underneath. It somehow got managed to get back in. But so I had these falling dreams.So between those types of nightmares, I started, you know, I'd put the kids to bed, my wife would go to bed, and then I would spend like an hour just drinking my brains out. So I started medicating with alcohol. Didn't do it all the time.I tried to be responsible and you know, I had to go to work and all that kind of thing. I was all self employed. I had a great career, Mike.I mean, I was the first lawyer to cross examine the chief of the FBI lab in Washington D.C. in a murder trial in Lewis County, New York. Wow. Well done in Louisville. Yeah, this is a town with 3500 people. It's a county that's 1200 square miles and there's 30,000 people.And they're all farmers or farm related, you know, agric, agribusiness and all that kind of stuff. I mean, you walk out of the courthouse there, you almost in bareback, see a tractor going by, pulling manure or hay or some darn thing.I mean, just that kind of a world, you know. And we had a very unusual murder case. And I ended up defending one of the defendants and subpoenaed the director of the lab.And she came up and, and told me, she said, nobody. I said, anybody ever subpoena you before? She said, no. This is the first time that we're testing DNA.

Oh, that's very cool. From a perspective. That's desperate.

Yeah. I went on a legal podcast and talked about this. The guy was very interested in that. Yeah. So, I mean, I just had a.You know, my whole life has been full of these kind of weird things that would happen and I'd get right in the middle of them. And I don't know, I was pretty well set after that because once you do a murder trial, you're pretty well known. You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah. Especially when that's probably profile. Profile like that. That's.I mean, it's interesting going back to your, your dreams and your, and your, your issues with that. The ptsd. You know, I, I respect that because I understand PTSD from a personal perspective as well.I got injured in line of duty and that still haunts me. And the suicides, the murders, the assaults, the working domestic violence for four years, the traffic accidents, it all comes back and haunts.You know, it's for those people that are, that are watching and listening.You know, post traumatic stress comes from a variety of perspectives and you know, you experiencing that at that time, especially that time period, they didn't have such a, a broad understanding of PTSD at that time, and they understood that people come back with those kind of nightmares and people did come back with shell shock and, and stuff like that, but they really didn't understand PTSD from, from there. So it's a positive thing that you were able to come through that and get through it.

You too. I mean, I, I sincerely, I have a lot of friends that were. If you're in the criminal defense business, you're going to know a lot of.Yeah, police officers and state police and, you know, DAs and all that kind of stuff. And I always got a lot of. Some of them are my friends, actually. Clients would say, how can you go out after a trial?How can you go out and drink with those guys? So we're just friends.We're not, you know, we, we have to wear our masks and do our work in the courtroom, but we're, you know, we can separate our professional life from our personal life. Right. But my hat goes off to you because my trauma was pretty much condensed to that 13 month period.And then one client who tried kill me, that was another trauma thing. But you know what? I so admire police officers like you, Mike, because your whole career is seeing all this trauma or EMTs or firefighters.I mean, they have probably more. You probably had more trauma than I did in your career. So hats off to you.

Well, and again, with respect, what you've gone through doesn't diminish anything, you know, from what I've gone through. I think that, you know, we share a commonality within that, that we both had trauma from our jobs that, you know, we weren't.We were expecting because we knew the environment we were in. But that doesn't take away from the fact that those visions continue to come back and haunt us, you know, from those perspectives.So for anyone that's out there that has those, whether you're a soldier, a warrior, firefighter, a paramedic, cop, any. From any of those perspectives, you're not alone. And, you know, just quick psa, you know, there's always.There's always solutions for you to help get through all that. But thank you.

Well, now there are. Back in those days, there wasn't.

Yeah, there was. There really wasn't. There was again, they say, well, you know what you signed up for, right? Kind of an attitude type thing.Well, life delivered another blow. One that really didn't come from the war. Your brother. Let's talk about your brother a little bit because I know that your.Your brother Ron, he was your younger brother. He lost his wife, the love of his life. Suddenly he was a man carrying grief, like heavier than. Than any pack on a trail.What did grief look like for you, brother? How'd you help him?

Well, my brother, when he came back from Vietnam, our mother's best friend was edie. Edie was 14 years older than Ron, divorced with seven kids. So Ron comes back from war, he doesn't know what the heck.Well, he kind of knew he wanted to be a commercial pilot. Our dad had been a pilot. Ron, I think he might have already had his pilot's license.Actually, I ended up getting mine too, while I was at Cherry Point because it was cheap to do and. But my brother was way better pilot than me. And our father was an incredible pilot. He could do things with an airplane you could never imagine.

But that's cool.

So Ronnie comes back on the first day with the Edie. She shows up with the three youngest kids and he fell mad in love with her. And so they. She got. She was very religious person.My brother was a very religious man. I had no spirituality from. From my youngest.You know, somewhere around 18 or 19, I decided I don't understand this loving God with all these rules, and I'm breaking the rules. I'm stealing candy bars because I'm hungry and all that kind of stuff. But Ron's faith, never. And then when I Got to Vietnam.I mean, that first time I got, you know, tested, so to speak. I mean, I did okay, but I'm like, there can't be a God. These guys that just died in this battle are better men than me. What? You know, I just.I just gave it up. I just. I'm never gonn believe in a higher power or God. So that put me in a different spirit. But Ronnie was.And I asked him about this while we're hiking, actually, Mike, did you ever really be challenged, even in Vietnam? Because he suffered a lot of trauma, too. I mean, he saw and he said, no, not really. But when Edie died, I think he had been such a good man.So they moved to Utah. They got involved in the Mormon Church. Edie had a stroke in 2011 and ended up in a wheelchair. And then she had a bunch of minis.So some people get better. That's not Edie's case. And Ronnie took care of her for six years all the time. He wouldn't let anybody else do it.I mean, when we were hiking, Mike, one day, Ronnie.I don't know how the topic came up, but Ron said, well, the thing I really liked about Edie was that every morning when she woke up, she had a big smile on her face, and she was always like, oh, my God, where do you find a woman like that? You know, I mean, that's just that amazing type of person. And. And so when she passed In November of 2017, he had seven kids.There were step kids, but he was really their dad. 27 Grandchildren and 27 great grandchildren.

27 Grandchildren. Holy smoke.

Now he has 30 great grandchildren.And they keep coming because you get married young in the Mormon Church, and then they like, you know, they play around like rabbits, and kids just start popping out. And, I mean, it's amazing. I couldn't even remember all their names. But Ronnie, you know, he's been this huge family. He's always riding car.He sends everybody five bucks is all he can afford. Because every week it's a birthday, it's a graduation, it's Christmas, you know, all the. Just think about it.And you got all these people in your life.

Broke. Go broke. With his grandkids and great grandkids.

Yeah. So. But when Edie died, he thought he was ready for it. I mean, he'd been a bishop for four years.He'd done a ton of funerals and services and all kinds of things, baptisms or whatever they do. And, you know, he's a man of service and a man of God and But the grief was just so. I could just tell.I talked to him on the phone, and he said something about hiking the Appalachian Trail. Well, I had hiked out. You know, I had hiked parts of it. He turned out Ronnie had done a lot of hiking and camping. I had to.I would take weekends and just go in the mountains and just start walking. I know something about combat veterans. We need to get out into the world, and we need be able to. Yeah. Go out and test ourselves. And.And I. I hiked a cold mountain one time that's in Pisgah, over in the Smoky Mountain. So I knew quite a bit about the mountains. I had done fake charges with bears, which is no fun at all. So I had a fair amount of experience.Ronnie had quite a bit. But when he said that I'm 72, he's 71. I mean, this is crazy talk. Right.I felt like if you're going to do that, you need to be in your 30s or 40s, not 70s.

Not 70s. Yeah. I mean, any hike up in the mountains is tedious, but the Appalachian Trail has got to be something that is immense.

It's the longest footpath, only trail in the whole world. In the whole world. 2200 Mountains from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Ketadin Mountain in. In Maine. And it goes over 600 mountains.300 Of them are named. It goes through 14 states. There's 14 Bear Mountains. It seems like every state has a Bear Mountain.

Yeah. They can't think of a different name.

Yeah. 460, 500,000Ft of elevation changes. So that's a half a million feet of going up and down, basically. Right. You're never, very rarely going flat.About 3 million people hike some part of the Appalachian Trail every year. About 3,000 try to do the whole thing. 17% Roughly make it. That's about 500 people a year.

I mean, well, that puts you into that arena, but at your age, what. That's a significant achievement at your guys's age. I mean, it's interesting that he suggested the Appalachian Trail first.I mean, had you even thought about that prior to that?

Oh, I had thought about it. I had actually wanted to do it, but I was so busy as an attorney and my family and all that kind of stuff, I just never.I could never take the six months to do it. And I thought it was impossible. So when he said that, I said, well, why don't I come out and see you?And so I went out to see him in January of 2018, and we went hiking in the Utah man, that was beautiful. Utah, this is St. George. They lived in St. George. Beautiful area there. And he brought it up again. I'm like, are you serious?So I said, you really going to try? He said, yeah. I said, when? He said, March 20th.

We already set the date.

He had the date. He had the gear. I mean, he had the maps. He's got it all. And I'm like, my brain is like, there's no way. And I said, well, how are you going to do it?He said, I'm going to get on a bus, go to Springer Mountain, start walking. Well, that's not a good plan, bro. That's not a good plan. And so I said, I'll go with you. So that's what we did. We enjoyed.

It. Wasn't like just going out for a cup of coffee or breakfast. No, a little bit deeper than that.What were you guys hoping to find out when you got there? Were you afraid of anything? What. What did your family think?

Well, my wife knows I'm insane, so they were supportive for sure in one way, but pretty. My kids didn't. I mean, they thought it was impossible. I thought it was impossible. I actually wrote in the book, Mike.I ended up doing a book about it. And we can talk about that in a minute. But in the book, I put two weeks max.So when I gave Ronnie a draft of the book, which has 500 beautiful pictures in it, and it describes what we did every day and shows pictures of where we went, among other things, and I said, two weeks max. He looks at me, goes, you didn't think we could do it? No, I didn't think we could do it. I figured two weeks max and you'd give up. Oh, my God, that's.

That's like brilliant. What was the moment you guys realized this isn't just a hike, it's a spiritual passage. I mean, that's the name of the book, you know.

Yeah, I didn't think of that until afterwards, actually. The spirituality part of it for me. We had both had experiences on the trail, were definitely spiritual in nature, Mike.But I also wrote about my recovery. Every third paragraph or so talks about how I went through my recovery program and, and how I did this. They have 12 steps and.And then how after I had done that, I started working with other men and it just changed my whole life. I still do. I went to a meeting this morning.I've already talked to two guys on the phone that I'm helping try to get to, to do this deal so they don't have to Pick up a drink again. And then Ronnie's spiritual journey, of course, and, and also things that happened on the trail that were. That relieved him of his grief.There was some amazing. He had some amazing moments, and he had some really hard moments, too. I mean, so that's where we got that, the title from.But I never planned on doing that. We both kept journals. They were completely different. Ronnie is the pilot type guy, right?So he's got a lot of detail where we were, changes in elevation, where we went, and all that kind of stuff. And then every. He would write about how happy he was to have the support of his family.And I was more about, here's the names of all the people we met. We have all trail names, right? Everybody's anonymous in the Appalachian Trail.So I would write down the trail names and funny things that happened and stuff like that. Ronnie took hardly any pictures. I took 5,000 pictures. You know, some days I take 40 or 50 pictures, and it's just amazing.I walk around the corner and go, oh, oh, my God, look at that. I'll never see that. Would take a picture. So I had all these beautiful pictures, and. Yeah, but it was very, very difficult. I didn't really think.I don't know. We kind of got into hiking shape. After a while, you just do.Your body, you know, everything tightens up, and like I said, we're both pretty good shape. I ran 26 marathons while I was an adult. We were weekend warriors, or I was at least. You know, Ronnie did a ton of hiking. I'm 80 years old now.I've already walked five miles today. I probably do two, couple more. So we had that warrior mindset of, you know, staying ready and being in good physical shape, which is a good.

Thing, especially at your age. I mean, you know, look, I'm not a young person myself either, but you, obviously, you're. You're a little more than me.I, I meant that's what I miss mostly about Colorado, because in Colorado, we lived in Colorado Springs, and then before we moved here, we lived up in Woodland park, which is up behind Pikes Peak. Literally, our front come out on our front porch, where our front yard was the backside of Pikes Peak, which is about 8, 500ft.And, you know, I, I did the same thing. I, I. We went up in the mountains as much and as often as we possibly could.And when I had bad days, I'd go up in the mountains and I'd take a hike and walk around in the streams and the trees and the bushes and The. You know, and get back to Mother Nature, basically. And it helped us. Helped me immensely.It helped me to work through things, helped me to kind of solve things. Did that trail teach you guys anything? Did you come out of it with some new perspectives or anything that was really, really like. Like a. Like wow.

Yeah, there was a lot of wow. Mountain moments. I fiddled around with a rattlesnake one day for a few minutes.

No,.

There was a. A lot of the hikers are. Well, they're all younger than we were by decades, most of them. And especially after a while, it's.You get down to the ones that just look like they can do it. You know, some of them are in their 40s and 50s. There are a lot of tough guys and women.I would say half the hikers in the first half, until we got to Harpers Ferry, which is roughly halfway, were women. I mean, amazing women, tough women. There's one woman with her four kids. Youngest kid was six. I mean, that was.

She was bringing all four kids up there.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, early introduction, I think that's impressive for somebody to be able to do that, introduce them to what nature is, what. What exists here. Because especially if you grew up in a city environment and you don't really understand the beauty of what's really out there.And I think you captured that in photographs.

Yeah, for sure. One night, Ronnie, we were both tired. We didn't talk much at night because you're so tired.But, yeah, one night my brother says, man, bro, there's a lot of weird people out here. And I go, ron, they're all weird. We're all weird. You and I aren't weird. And I said, yeah, we are. Normal people don't do this.They don't walk in the mountains from dawn to 3, 4 o' clock in the afternoon. Averaging 11 miles a day like we were doing takes a lot of time. The fatigue factor was unbelievable.

See, all those other people are probably thinking the same thing. Those guys are weird. They're. What are these two old guys doing out here?

Oh, yeah. And there's amazing kind of a camaraderie and the people were unbelievable. And they would do things you wouldn't. One day we were.And we were well into Virginia and it was raining. We had finished. We were putting up my tent and stuff. And this lady and this guy come out. Well, before that, there's a dog.This dog just comes out of nowhere. And then after a while it leaves and. And then this couple comes out and it's raining And I put up a tarpon, was standing on her.Ronnie's standing on her and putting up the tent. And all of a sudden I see him give. Get out his wallet and he gives the girl some money. So they leave and I go, hey, bro, what's going on?He says, well, they ran out of money, so I gave him 50 bucks. And they're going to get a job at one of the hostels to. For a few days to. That's.Apparently they were trying to work their way through the Appalachian Trail by, you know, part time jobs or whatever. Okay, good, that's great. And then a few minutes, like a half an hour later, the lady comes back. Now it's pouring rain, it's miserable.She comes back and she's carrying a hiking stick and she goes, is this yours? And I go, oh my gosh, that's. Yeah. How. What happened? She said, well, I saw a dog with it down the trail.She'd already walked about probably a mile at least, so she recognized. She said, I saw you had one just like this. And I said, I didn't even know it was gone. She. So she walked back.She hiked an extra an hour to bring me back my pole.

That's crazy cool, actually, how that, how the dog sneak in there and steal your stick.

I don't know.

Ninja. Ninja dog on the trail.

There's another picture of me and I think we're in Shenandoah Mountains in the national park there. And I had somebody take the picture of me and I'm standing right on the edge of a cliff. So it's kind of a cool picture.Well, there's a dog at my feet and my brother saw the picture and he goes, where'd the dog come from? I don't know. But it hiked with me for about, I don't know, an hour. And then all of a sudden it disappeared.

Just picked up on her, say, hey, you're my friend now. That's cool.

Yeah.

What was the hardest, the hardest day on the trophy, physically or emotionally? Both.

So we had to skip around a little bit. We would go north and then go back down south.So when we got to the Smoky mountains, the first 80 some miles in Georgia, and then you come to what's called Fontana Dam. And now you're on the Tennessee, North Carolina border for the most part at Fontana Dam.And then you got to go like 40 miles to get to Cleveland's Dome, which is right in the middle of the Smoky Mountains. And so when we got there, it was snowing, it was bad and actually, we found out later a whole bunch of hikers got stranded in like a foot of snow.Really?

Because you guys. You guys left in March, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So Ronnie and I jumped up north, we went to Damascus, and we went a couple hundred miles into Virginia. So then we had to go back. And I hiked south from Route 40, which is on the north part of the Smoky Mountains. Ronnie went around.We had two cars, so we were able to drive. And Ronnie went down to Fontana and we did. What we did most of the time is we. We didn't hike together.I couldn't keep up with him anyway because I got an artificial left leg and my right leg is a half inch shorter. And I. I am the limpiest man to ever hike the Appalachian Trail. I got a really bad limp.His son hiked with us some of the time, and he took a video, and we were watching it here a few years ago at his house. And I go, who's that guy limping? And he goes, that's you.

That's you.

I had no idea how bad it was.

But that's funny. You should find the trails that you could put the. The shorter one on the upper end so you look even.

Yeah. Really well, without the walking sticks, I probably would never been able to make it. But.So anyway, I left Clingman's Dome and went south towards Fontana Dam, and Ron was going the other way. And I looked at the map and I saw it said Fake Gap or False Gap.And we were getting bad storms all the way through the Smoky Mountains, so I decided the shelter was jam packed. There's no room. So I took off, and I'm going to stay at this false gap. Well, when I got there, there's no gap. It was.The trail was about 12, maybe 15ft wide at the max, and it dropped off hundreds of feet on both sides. Like, it was just. I'm like, I got no choice. It's getting dark. I can't be.So I pitched my tent right in the trail, and thunderstorms came up, and I got in the tent, fell asleep, and about midnight, I hear this freight train coming. That's what it sounded like. Freight train went right by me on the right. I go, holy crap.And what I didn't realize until the next morning when I got up was that the valley to my south was probably a mile wide at the furthest point. But then it came to a point, like right where I was. So it was following these tremendous winds from the south right up to me.And sometimes they would go to the right or they go the left. And then every once in a while, one would hit me.So I wake up in the middle of night, I'm in this really bad situation, and the tent was just whipping me to death. The winds were so strong, the temp kept collapsing like an accordion. Just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.My brother said, were you trying to hang on to the rods? We had mountain tents, so they were good tents. I said, hell no.I was pushing down on the stakes as hard as I could, just hoping they would hold, because they didn't. I was. I felt like it was in a body bag, Mike. I knew if that tent detached from the earth, I was going to be dead.And nobody would probably ever find me, even so. And they wouldn't even know what happened. So this went on all night long. And I was like, okay, God.You know, I made a connection with a higher power in my alcohol recovery program. And so I'd been praying for quite a while. I'm four years sober at this point, almost five years. God had saved me from.Took away the obsession from alcohol. It was amazing. So I was having these prayers. God just. I don't know, maybe if this is it for me, God, okay, I'll accept that.I guess you want me to come and hang out with you or something, but I've been a good boy now for four years. I've been helping a lot of men. I kind of like to stick around, help some more men if it's okay with you.But it was the scariest night for sure I've ever had my whole life, other than some things in Vietnam, but. And then when dawn came, it was like, oh, my God, the winds let up. And I was just amazed I was still alive. It was so bad.And then when I got out of the tent, I turned my phone back on. Well, I had two guys that would call me every morning, just check in because I was helping them, right? And they both called me.And one of them, I said, yeah, it's fine. I'm doing good, thanks, and how are you doing that kind of thing. The other guy called me, he goes, rand, are you okay? And I said, yeah, why?And he said, well, I've been watching the weather and it's really bad there where you are. And there were tornadoes or something. I said, well, I didn't see tornadoes, but it was bad.

You think that was a tornado that went past you?

No, it was just the wind funneling. It was probably 70, 80 mile an hour bursts of wind that would just come. They Sounded like freight trains.I mean, seriously, you know, we typed in Estes.

I don't know if you've ever been in Colorado, but Estes Park, Colorado, has winds like that. They can get like, 60, 70, 80 miles an hour. And even in the middle of that, it is just horrendous. I mean, I can only imagine being in a tent.

On top of a mountain, totally exposed.

Yeah, That would be kind of unnerving to decide whether or not this was going to be your. Like you said, a body bag. And they'll never find you because you'll be buried by snow. And then.And then they have to wait till thaw, and you may or may not.

There's a million places on the. Out on the Appalachian Trail. You fall off, nobody's ever gonna find you. It's just incredibly dangerous. People don't realize how.It's amazing that more people don't get hurt or killed, but. Yeah, and a lot of people have. They. You know, people disappear.

Well done for what you guys accomplished. What do you think the trail taught you about your brother? I mean, your brother was there. He started this journey.He's the one that, you know, say, hey, I'm going to do this. Do you think that it allowed him to get the closure that he needed to kind of get the spiritual moment?

Yeah, he had a. He had. His best spiritual moment was Father's Day in 2018, and we were in the Shenandoah Valley part of the trail, the national park there.And it was one of those days.It was really dark, and I happened to be hiking with a ranger, Gene Anderson, who I ran into the day a couple days before that, and I ran into him, and I. Somehow we just ended up walking together for quite a while. And then Ronnie came along, because I'm going north, he's going south.And it was dark, and Gene said, this is the darkest I've ever seen it in the. In the woods during the middle of the day. And my brother said, yeah, you probably need a flashlight. So anyway, we separated, and then Ron.So it's Father's Day. Ronnie was having a really bad day. It was. He's, you know, thinking about Edie, thinking about our dad, and came around the corner.There's a picture in the book. It was the only light that day. And there's a. It looks like a halo Mike in the trail. You can see it in the book, and it's just a golden glow.It's huge. And it looks like there's something standing in the middle of. It. Could be Jesus it could be, I don't know, Buddha, what?You know, whatever your savior is, I guess. But Ronnie, it was so impactful to him that he actually turned away, thought felt like running because he felt like it was supernatural or whatever.And then. No, I've never run before in my life. I'm not going to run away from it. And he walked towards it and then he could feel Edie.He felt like Edie was telling Ronnie, it's okay. This is okay. What you're doing is okay. You're fine. We're. I'm fine. I'm with dad. You know, know it's going to be okay, but your time is not now.And God bless you, you know, that kind of thing. I don't know. He got a huge relief from. He felt it was a sign, a spiritual sign, spiritual experience from his higher power that he calls God. And.And it just relieves him of a whole lot of that weight of that grief and loss.

Profound. That's profound.

Yeah, yeah. And actually picture of it, so that's great. I had that picture in the book. It is an amazing picture. It really is. Yeah.

It give me chills.

Yeah.

Every journey has a moment when it stops being something you're living and it becomes something you feel kind of. Kind of feel called to share.After everything that you've lived through, everything, the war, the recovery, the grief, and this 2100 mile spiritual passage, what was the moment you realized the story needed to become the book, the book in itself? Because it's. I think that documenting it that way, you're sharing it with the world from a personal perspective.

Yeah. Well, I don't know. When we got done, you know, we were both amazed that we had done it. I did not complete the whole trail.I fell down Wilcox Mountain and should have got killed that on that thing, but I didn't and. But I did damage my body. And so Ronnie finished it with his brother while I was getting a hip replacement. That's the short story.It's a lot more complicated than that. But I, I actually.We went off the trail for a few days and I went back and hiked another 300 miles, but I had done a serious damage, so I only did 1863 miles.

That's still. I mean, what an accomplishment that is. That's not only. That's amazingly brilliant.

Well, yeah, it was amazing. And Ronnie finished it with his son Rick. We did get into the whites. I did Wolf Mountain was the last mountain I did.I did Musa Lac the day before that. There's some fantastic mountains There and Ronnie had to go back and do Washington Mountain. We had to go around that.It was closed when we went through the first time because the weather. You know what Mount Washington is, right? The highest wind speeds ever recorded in North America. We're on Mount Washington. It snows there every.Every month. June, July, August snows. And they close it and then they open it back up again. So I didn't do Mount Washington, but.So I ended up with a hip replacement, which is. But I'm still hiking every day, walking, I should say.

That's a good thing, trust me.I spent four years in a wheelchair because of my injuries, and I have a hip replacement, two knee replacements, a foot surgery, and two shoulder replacements. So from my journey, call it that.So, yeah, I mean, you're still here and you, you created this incredible journey and you brought it to us visually and you documented it in this book especially. That was a great idea to take the 5,000 pictures. How'd you narrow down. You have 5,000 pictures. That would be an immense library of books.How'd you narrow down to what you put in the book?

Well, yeah, so we came back and I don't know, after about a year or so, we were enjoying the pictures and talking about it quite a bit. We still do, actually to this day. We. Every time we do it. How did we do that? We just like, unbelievable.But at some point I began to think, you know what, this is kind of unique, for one thing, for sure. And I do have all these pictures. So I got Ronnie's journal.Ronnie's journal was completely different than mine, but between the two of them, it made for kind of a complete story. One was the technical part of it, and then the other was kind of the spiritual, visual, daily experience type of it.Just there's pictures of people and all the stories and a lot of humorous things that happened and that I put in the book. So anyway, I decided to write a book for the family. So I wrote the book, picked out the best 500 pictures, made it. So it was a daily thing.Every other chapter is what, you know, where we went on a day or two or three. And with pictures, so the reader can say, well, they were here. If they had a map, they said, okay, they were here, they went there.Here's what it looks like, these three or four different places. And then in between, I put the other stuff in it and I self published it.I didn't realize that was doing that, but I paid to have it printed up and I gave some away and gave it to My family and Ronnie's got that huge family, so they all got a book and. And then I was starting to get responses back from people I was. Once in a while I would give to somebody that was.Knew somebody that was struggling with my addiction and. And it came back to me. Some people were being moved by it.

Right.

So in a helpful way, I can.

Understand why that would be like, what an opportunity to really get close to nature and experience the trail like you experienced it.

Yeah. So.And then I ended up with a real publisher, Wildebeest Publishing, and now I've been, you know, getting it out there more and more and sales are starting to pick up a little bit. It's tough, the book business, I mean, years old and I've started a new career.I've written some other books and I'm getting another one published here in a couple weeks, actually. It'll be coming out. So.

Yeah, I think that especially in today's day and age, when you have Audible and you've got, you know, a lot of people listen to books, they don't necessarily pick up a book and read it anymore. That would be a little tough to get it. But I'm going to help you.At least I hope I can help you to get some more exposure for it because I think it's a wonderful opportunity for people to get a better understanding of a spiritual, positive, spiritual journey and reconnection and, you know, give people hope and so forth. What do you hope readers take away from this book?And like your grandchildren, your brother's grandchildren, what do you hope they take away from this documentation?

I hope that it helps a lot of people, especially people that are struggling with any kind of an addiction. They can find a path that I took, that millions of people have taken successfully. So there's that aspect of it.The other part I really hope that helps people is, you know, you and I are both getting golden years. We're in the golden years and we end up seeming to spend a lot of time in doctor's offices and stuff like that.But a lot of people don't do what we're doing. See, you're. You're doing something that's helping the world, right?You're sharing people's stories in your podcast and you're trying to help people be motivated to get off their couches and do stuff. And that's what I want to do. That's what I'm trying to do because I see it all the time.A lot of people, they get to where you and I are and they Just shut down. Yeah. Look at all the injuries and wounds that you have. And you're. And you. And I'm. Same way, man. I just went blind for two months.

Yeah. Yeah.

I went blind one day.

You know, it. It. I think that.I think we both have a wonderful opportunity to inspire, motivate, and educate people to such a point that it gives you a little bit of hope that there's more out to the world than sitting in front of the TV set and surfing channels and forgetting about the world that's out there that we really should grasp. Because, you know, one more thing before you go is. Was a foundation of this. Was. There's always one more thing, and life can change in an instant.And that you should grasp every moment that you have and share that with people. So I think that you've done that very brilliantly.

Yep.

So I appreciate that. Especially from our golden years.

Yeah. Well, you know, for two months, I couldn't do anything on the computer. I had to have emergency surgery and all that stuff.And I didn't know what the outcome was going to be. But I'm driving. I got prescription glasses. I survived that.I walked every day because I could at least see the curb, but I couldn't read or do any of that stuff.And now I'm doing my eight, ten hours every day working on books and stuff, but gives me joy and working with other men in recovery program gives me incredible, incredible joy.

Every day gives you new.

Yeah, that's what you and I have, right? We got that kind of a warrior mindset. I'm going to go out. I'm going to go out with a fight. I'm going to fight right to the end.

Yeah. Yes. I respect that. Yes, I think we do. It's a. It's a never give up, never say die and continue to protect and serve, you know, in any way that we can.So we share that. We share that.

Absolutely.

We could talk for another hour. I gotta ask you a couple more things before we leave. Okay. Before we wrap up, I asked this to everybody.Before we wrap up, what words of wisdom would you leave with the audience today?

Accept whatever God has given you and just learn how to deal with it one step at a time.I think we tend to cut ourselves short and actually we can have a joyful life and just take one step at a time, try to keep our tasks and things, you know, small level. And God doesn't want us to be miserable when it's our time to go. He'll figure it out and tell us one fashion or another.But in the meantime, let's enjoy life one step at a time and deal and cope. Right. Deal with what you got.

Brilliant words of wisdom. How can somebody find you and get this wonderful book?

Actually, if you go and I just did this again the other day because it's kind of, if you just Google a spiritual passage, it pops right up,.

Which is a good thing.

Yeah. Or you can probably like what you did if you put my name on the Internet, there's a bunch of stuff that'll pop up.Or they can go to my website, which is Rand Timmerman, just my name, no dots or anything, just randtimmerman.com and there's like, you know, there's a lot of stuff there, some videos and all the information about the book and link to booksellers, including Amazon Thrift Books and like that.

And I'll make sure that there's a link in the show notes so that people have a very easy way to just get click and go right to you. So that should be helpful. Brad, thank you very much for reaching out. Thank you for what a wonderful journey we've had today. I appreciate you.I appreciate what you bring to the world. Thank you for your service in totality from your Marine Corps days all the way through to today and beyond.

Thank you. Mike.

Ranger book and just a collection of photographs. It. It isn't just a journal. It's a map.It's a spiritual map of what it looks like to walk through pain, through memory, through brotherhood, and come out on the other side with something worth sharing. You remind us that healing doesn't always happen in the therapist's office or the hospital room. Sometimes it happens on the trail.Sometimes it happens in a quiet. Sometimes it happens when two brothers decide to take one more step and then another, and then another. Your story is a gift. Your honesty is a gift.And your book, a spiritual passage, is a reminder that it's never too late to begin again.So thank you for walking this journey with us today and if this conversation resonated with you, take, please take a moment to like subscribe and follow the show. Help us reach more people who need these stories. You can find us on Apple Spotify, your favorite listening platform.You can head over to YouTube and catch the full video version. I'm Michael Hurst. And one more thing before you go, have a great day. Have a great weekend. Thank you for being part of our community.

Thanks for listening to this episode of One more Thing before you go, check out our website@beforeyougopodcast.com you can find us, as well as subscribe to the program and rate us on your favorite podcast listening platform.