Assorted Conversations

Ep. 45 - Through Hiking the Appalachian Trail Conversation with Rand Timmerman

• Helen

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A snowstorm at Springer Mountain. Two brothers in their seventies, both Vietnam veterans, staring down 2,190 miles of Appalachian Trail and a tangle of pain that maps can’t solve. That’s where our conversation with Rand Timmerman begins—raw, funny, and unexpectedly tender—as we unpack the hike that stretched into a three‑year passage through grief, addiction, and the kind of honesty only a long trail demands.

Rand walks us through the blueprint that made the miles possible: two vehicles, opposite‑direction section hikes, camps near trailheads. We dig into what the AT really asks of older hikers—elevation, rocks, relentless climbs. The stories are vivid and human: a rattlesnake guarding its meal, seven straight days of bear sightings in Shenandoah, and the day a bad slip on a Massachusetts rock slide turned into blood, shock, and eventually a hip replacement. Through it all, the brothers’ differences become their strength—Ron’s pilot‑precise logs and spiritual reflections, Rand’s people‑first eye and gritty humor, including a running gag where hikers mistake “Ran Bow” for the movie Rambo.

The heart of the episode lives in their inner work. Ron, shattered after losing his wife, stumbles into a literal halo of light on a gray Father’s Day and feels peace wash in. Rand, four years sober when they start, carries recovery into the woods and finds that the rhythm of hiking mirrors the 12 steps: one step at a time, surrender, service. A terrifying night on a knife‑thin ridge in the Smokies becomes a prayer and a turning point. By the end, one brother tags the terminus with his son, the other chooses to stop with integrity—and both finish with something larger than a summit photo.

If you care about the Appalachian Trail, long‑distance hiking, resilience or how to keep moving when the map turns mean, this one’s for you. Share it with a friend who needs courage, and leave a quick review to help others find the show. 

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Rand Timmerman's Home Page.  

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Credits

Music Credit: True Living by Patrick Moore

Royalty free music license purchased at soundotcom.com

SPEAKER_09:

Thanks for tuning in this week. Remember to hit that subscribe or follow button wherever you downloaded this podcast. And if you're enjoying the content, please tell a friend about assorted conversations and help me spread the word. Thanks. And now for this week's episode.

SPEAKER_08:

Everyday people following their passions.

SPEAKER_06:

That's probably like one of the highlights of my life so far. Just being able to be creative like that. Something I've always wanted.

SPEAKER_03:

And then I decided to get another hive, and that turned into a lot of hives.

SPEAKER_02:

As long as I can do that, I want to be a good citizen, help people out.

SPEAKER_08:

Putting themselves out there, taking chances, and navigating challenges along the way.

SPEAKER_07:

I I absolutely identified with having stage right because, you know, anytime I went on stage, I just felt like I was having a hot attack.

SPEAKER_05:

Very first lap, very first practice session, I crashed, turned the car upside down, made a spectacle of myself, and I got back on that horse and started riding again.

SPEAKER_08:

As they pursue what makes them happy and brings them joy.

SPEAKER_00:

As long as people are having a good time and I have the opportunity to put smiles on people's faces, I love what I do.

SPEAKER_01:

I have done things that I never thought I could do.

SPEAKER_12:

To have somebody tell me how real it looks and how, you know, from their actual memory. Because that's telling me I captured what I was trying to get.

SPEAKER_08:

Welcome to Assorted Conversations. I'm your host, Helen.

SPEAKER_09:

It's Wednesday, and welcome to anybody who's joining Assorted Conversations for the first time, and welcome back to anybody who's coming back for another episode. I am so glad you are all here. So this week's episode is pretty inspiring. My guest this week, Drew hiked the Appalachian Trail with his brother, and they were both in their 70s. Now, although that's an amazing physical feat in itself, you'll hear from Rand Timmerman, my guest this week, that both brothers not only used this journey to complete a physical goal, but they also used it to help them work through life difficulties. One was battling addiction and maintaining sobriety, and the other one was battling grief. And you'll hear at the end of this 2,000-mile journey how they found peace and closure, as well as some funny trail stories, and some pretty scary trail stories. So not for the faint of heart, but a fantastic story. So take a listen to this week's episode, and I'll see you on the other side. This week's guest has quite the background from the army in Vietnam and on to becoming a JAG officer to practicing law in upstate New York. Rand Timmerman has seen and done a lot, but those things pale in comparison to what he accomplished at the age of 72. He, along with his brother, strew hiked all 2190 miles of the Appalachian Trail, and they published a book about their journey. I am thrilled to welcome Rand Timmerman to Assorted Conversations. Hi Rand.

SPEAKER_04:

Hi, Helen. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_09:

How are you?

SPEAKER_04:

Oh, I'm fine. I'm good.

SPEAKER_09:

Good, good. And and I I trust that you've recovered from that long walk in the woods.

SPEAKER_04:

Yes. Well, I'm 80 now. I was 72 when we did that in 2018. And I still hike. I hike three miles this morning before daylight, and I do a lot of exercises and stuff. So yeah. Gotta keep moving. Use it.

SPEAKER_09:

Good for you. You're my inspiration. So what inspired you to take this journey along the Appalachian Trail, all the way from Georgia to Maine?

SPEAKER_04:

My brother, Ronnie. You know, we were both combat veterans from the Vietnam War. I was in the Marine Corps, he was in the Army. And then when we came back, he married our mother's best friend, Edie. Edie was 14 years older than Ronnie, divorced with seven children.

SPEAKER_10:

Wow.

SPEAKER_04:

And the next thing I know, they're hanging out, going line dancing, and stuff. He fell madly in love with her and she with him. And they got married and ended up moving to Utah and became very involved in the Mormon church. And then so Ronnie was just very happy. He was always a you know a religious man, a very spiritual man. I lost all of that pretty much my childhood, resentment, poverty, which we were really buried in. My father had been a Mustang pilot during World War II, and he came home, married my mom, and then had me and my brother, and he got polio and ended up paralyzed from the waist down for the rest of his life.

SPEAKER_09:

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_04:

So we, you know, we were raised in a very poor, more cows and people type place, which actually was good. I had a really interesting child. I had to grow up fast, and I was driving tractors by the time I was 12 and trapping and hunting and all kinds of stuff. So I had a pretty good childhood, but so yeah, Edie, you know, Ronnie married her. They went out there and she produced not only the seven children, but 27 grandchildren and 27 great-grandchildren when she died in 2017.

SPEAKER_09:

Holy cow! What a legacy!

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, and you know, my brother and I have both been very active our whole adult lives. I became a lawyer as you introduced me as a fluke in the Marine Corps. Marine Corps gave me the worst experiences and one of the best. I had no clue what I was gonna be when I really grew up. So, you know, they sent me to Jag school without even having a college degree or anything, and and that was an amazing experience. I ended up there with 99 guys who were all real lawyers, graduated law school. They were all captains. They made them captains because you know they needed to do that in order to inspire them to come in the military for a stint. And when we got there for that, I I decided, you know, I had an alcohol problem. I kind of knew I I liked it way too much, even at that stage. And I decided not to drink at all during the week, and I really worked that out. Ended up being the honor man of the class.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, and I realized, holy cow, I can do this. So I ended up being a prosecuting attorney in the uh Marine Corps for a while, and then when I got out, I was married, had my first child, and went to came to Syracuse and got uh my degrees. Ended up being a you know self-employed lawyer for four decades. So but Ronnie and I both were very active our whole lives. He became a commercial pilot, mostly freight, mail, until at the end he was taking tourists on on flights through the Grand Canyon.

SPEAKER_02:

Wow.

SPEAKER_04:

That was pretty exciting. So anyway, Edie had a massive stroke in 2011. Oh and then unfortunately, she never got better, she got worse. She had a whole bunch of mini strokes. So she spent the rest of her life in a wheelchair pretty much. Ronnie took care of her very lovingly and diligently. He wouldn't let anybody else. And then thought he was ready when she passed, but I could tell by the voice, you know, when I talked to him on the phone that he was struggling. I think it challenged everything that he believed in, in a sense, about, you know, spiritual power and God and all that. He certainly was still somewhat spirit. He was just challenged big time. He was incredibly sad, probably almost clinically depressed in a way.

SPEAKER_09:

Yeah, that well, that was the love of his life, right?

SPEAKER_04:

Yes, absolutely. She's a beautiful person, she really was. Anyway, we so I went out to see him in January of 2018, you know, which is like a month and a half after she passed. And I said, Well, I had talked to him on the phone, and before that, and I had never been out there. So they came east every year. We would get together like one day a year. So when I talked to him on the phone, he said, I think I'm gonna hike the Appalachian Trail. I thought, well, that's crazy. It's absolutely insane. Because I had hiked in the Smoky Mountains quite a bit.

SPEAKER_10:

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_04:

You know, I ran 26 marathons, I did cross-country ski races in the wintertime. I was very active. I was like a weekend warrior type person.

SPEAKER_09:

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

And as a result of that, though, I had destroyed my left knee, and I had an artificial left knee, and then my right knee, my right leg was a half inch shorter than my left. So I walked with a pretty bad limp. And but I had hiked in the uh Appalachian Trail in the Smokies quite a bit. I like to go on weekend just myself. We both had PTSD. I had horrible nightmares for quite a while. And I would just go on these adventures, right? So I knew quite a bit about the mountains. What I didn't realize was that Ronnie was doing a lot of hiking in Utah. He and he and Edie and the family had done a lot, he was in really good shape. Even when she was taking care of her, he would put her in the wheelchair by the front window, and then he would go out and run a few miles, and he'd swing by every once in a while and make sure she was all right and stuff like that. So he had a good physical base too.

SPEAKER_09:

Right.

SPEAKER_04:

We both, but we're in our 70s.

SPEAKER_09:

Right, right. So I'm like, this is I mean, I'm telling you, in your 70s, you guys are far more active than I am currently.

SPEAKER_04:

So yeah. Well, we're kind of that warrior class, I guess you would say. Yeah. Guys, I don't know, we just can't help it. Plus after the the Vietnam War, we both pro I know myself, I needed that physical exertion every day. I needed that feeling of the endorphins and the Yeah. You know, you spend 13 months walking in the jungle, armed to the teeth, you know, always got a certain level of anxiety and fear, you know, undercurrent, because you know, you know, things are gonna happen, you just don't know when or what.

SPEAKER_11:

Yep.

SPEAKER_04:

And then and then you'd have these moments of terror. And so you get used to a gentle and rushes and things like that. So we both replaced it with physical vigor, I guess you would say. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. So I asked him how he's gonna do it. We're hiking in the desert in Utah, and and he's insisting he's gonna hike the Appalachian Trail. I said, What are you gonna do? And he said, Well, I bought a butt, I got all my gear. And he'd actually done a lot of studying, he had got all the maps, and I mean he had really thought it through pretty much as far as actually doing the trail. And he said, Well, I'm gonna take the bus to uh Springer Mountain and start walking. And I said, Well, that sucks. That's not a good plan, bro. I don't think that'll work very well. How about if I go with you? And he said, Would you? And I said, Yeah. Now, in my brain, Helen, I'm thinking, two weeks max. Right. I'm gonna pacify him, we'll go down there, and it's gonna hurt like heck, but I can do two weeks, and then he'll be come to his senses and we'll come home, and you know, that'll be the end of it. And because, you know, I did do a lot of hiking and stuff like that, walking, but I was in pain all the time.

SPEAKER_09:

And right, right. So at the time he proposed this, did you it you didn't think you guys would finish?

SPEAKER_04:

I absolutely was a hundred percent guarantee we won't. Okay, we won't. And when I wrote the book, which was a couple years after we did it, and then he was I was showing it to him, and he when he read in there, I wrote in there two weeks max. He said, Did you really think we only go two weeks? And I said, Absolutely. Wow, anyway, we could but I was not going to let him go by himself. You know what I mean? I felt it's not safe, it would be very unsafe and very difficult. It was very difficult anyway, but it would have uh to me, it would have been possible, and I would have been I wouldn't have been able to sleep for you know six months, right? Wondering where he was and what he's doing, and how much did he need me to help him and you know stuff like that? So yeah, and so we ended up you know on March 22nd of 2018, we're at Springer Mountain in the snowstorm.

SPEAKER_09:

Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_04:

I have a picture of my brother on that first day, and he's standing inside of one of the shelters, and it's just like an open, it's a three-walled little wooden shelter like a bus depot, yeah, with the front open, and he's standing in there and it's snowing. I don't look at his face. It's like I could just see you was thinking, what have I got myself into?

SPEAKER_09:

Right, right. Oh wow.

SPEAKER_04:

But I also knew my brother, if he makes up his mind he's gonna do something, he'll do it, he'll do it. He will he will do it, he will do it until it kills him. And there's a little bit of that in me too, maybe not quite as powerful as he was, but yeah.

SPEAKER_09:

Well, I would think it's the it's gotta be in anybody that through hikes the Appalachian Trail. I mean, it's it's many miles through many states. I was taking a look at it on the on a map, and I'm not sure my map is that clear, but it starts in Georgia, goes through Tennessee. Does it clip North Carolina or does it stay in Tennessee and go right into West Virginia and then Virginia?

SPEAKER_04:

No, it goes it goes Georgia, like 85, 90 miles, and then you're in Tennessee, and then the the Appalachian Trail goes right through Tennessee. The eastern border of Tennessee and the western border of North Carolina are the same.

SPEAKER_09:

Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

There's like I can't remember the exact distance, but they're like 150 miles where you're that can't common border. And as a matter of fact, and when we were in Madison County, North Carolina, on the western side of it, we came across a cemetery, really old cemetery.

SPEAKER_09:

On the trail?

SPEAKER_04:

Right, yeah, right there. I saw it as we as I was walking by, and I just went right in there and started looking at the tombstore. It was older than sin. And I found a tombstone that said they were members of the Shelton family that were Confederate soldiers and that they had been massacred by Confederate soldiers.

SPEAKER_09:

Wow.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, and I took a picture of it and I thought, how could that possibly happen? That just makes no sense. I ended up writing a 600-page about the Shelton Laurel Massacre in Madison County, North Carolina, because it really did happen. I could not believe how could that be possible, but it was. That's what happened. There's a huge history. I have like 50 books at home on the Shelton Laurel massacre in Madison County, North Carolina. What's right on right, it's right on the western side of North Carolina in 1863. It was a real gosh.

SPEAKER_09:

Some of the things you stumbled upon and got to discover.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09:

Pretty cool. So then it goes from Tennessee, North Carolina border into West Virginia and Virginia, all the way up to Pennsylvania. Does it clip New Jersey a little bit?

SPEAKER_04:

Yes. You go in and out of New York and New Jersey a couple of times.

SPEAKER_09:

Okay. And then Connecticut, Mass, New Hampshire, Maine.

SPEAKER_04:

Yep.

SPEAKER_09:

Wow.

SPEAKER_04:

Virginia's the longest, 550 miles in Virginia.

SPEAKER_11:

Yep.

SPEAKER_04:

So once you get into Virginia, it's like, when are we ever going to get out of Virginia? It is crazy, but I would say too, you asked which was the most beautiful part. I'm going to say Virginia.

SPEAKER_09:

Virginia.

SPEAKER_04:

Oh my God, yes. I mean, I took there was one day I took 50 pictures because it was just so amazingly beautiful. I mean, beyond and the pro the thing is too, the Appalachian Trail, the mountains are only a couple thousand feet high there. And Virginia, other than the mountains, is fairly flat, right? So a lot of times you'd see these amazing vistas. You can actually see, you know, you can see 500 miles of the state down below what it looks like, you know. And a lot of raptures and things like it was very beautiful. A lot of stones, a lot of rocks, a lot of slides. But Virginia, I found it to be the most beautiful. And I took so many pictures because I would come around the corner and my jaw would just go, oh my god, look at that. That's so cool.

SPEAKER_09:

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, the rock outclimbings. There's a picture of me on a rock outclimbing where it looks like I'm suspended in space. I mean, it's just so cool. Out there, yeah. Ronnie did not take hardly any pictures because he was he was about being very precise about where we were, how far we went, you know, how many feet in elevation. There's 2195 miles on the Appalachian Trail, like you said, 14 states it goes through. Goes over 600 mountains. 300 of them are named. Every state has a bear mountain. A lot of bears. 3 million people hike some part of the Appalachian Trail every year, but only about 2,500 to 3,000 try to do the whole thing. They call them. And 17% make it. So you're talking about 500 people a year. So an 80 year old 80-year-old lady just did it this year.

SPEAKER_09:

Really?

SPEAKER_04:

Yes. That's in that's incre I know how hard it is and how dangerous. I don't think my heart would my heart would go, we're done, kid.

SPEAKER_09:

This is I don't think I could handle it now.

SPEAKER_04:

That person is really a freak of me.

SPEAKER_09:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

I mean, literally be able to do that at eight. My hats off to her. All respect.

SPEAKER_09:

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04:

Amazing. And then there was another lady that ran it in about 45 days, I think it was. I mean, there's some God has created some amazing people. We're not, I'm not one of them as far as physicality goes. I'm more or less kind of normal or average, maybe a little above average, but not. But it's amazing what people have done on the Appalachian Trail. But most people most people don't make it.

SPEAKER_09:

I I would say, I mean, for you and your brother to have done it in your 70s, you know, um, I don't know if if you trained for it or if it was just your your background naturally, always being active, having that military experience, you know, always hiking, running, doing marathons, if that got you to the shape that you needed to be to even consider trying to do something like this.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. At that time I was walking eight to ten miles a day, and I could walk like two and a half miles in an hour. I did have that baseline. Ronnie was kind of the same, but I'm telling you, when you get into the mountains, it's a whole different ball game. If you could do a mile and a half in the mountains, that is practically sprinting.

SPEAKER_09:

Right.

SPEAKER_04:

We did we averaged 11 miles uh a day. We went 30, 33 days in a row a couple times. That's insane too, actually. Wow. But we would start at daylight, and I Ronnie usually got done quicker than me because of my limp. I was slower than him, but he would usually get finished about a half an hour, an hour before me. And but it would always be like three or four o'clock in the afternoon. I mean, and I remember even in Georgia when we first started out, you'd be climbing these mountains, and you think with Georgia, it's like they can't be that bad. They're big ones. And we and we would go over five, six mountains in 11 miles.

SPEAKER_10:

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_04:

And you get up the top, it's all like rocks and really challenging, and then down. And I would be praying, Helen, God, just give me, just give me a hundred feet. No, a hundred yards flat. I want to walk flat, just a hundred yards between the next before we get to the next mountain. And you get down the bottom, you walk ten feet, and you're going up the next one. The gaps are like 10 feet wide. That's it.

SPEAKER_09:

Yeah, I have a friend who's a through hiker, and her goal is to hike the entire Appalachian Trail. And the part that runs through Massachusetts, she out she asked me, Hey, would you want to meet up with me and do the Massachusetts part of the hike? And I was like, I don't know. Is it flat? I'll do the flat part. So she hasn't made it to Mass yet. I think she just completed everything in Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Delaware, I think, just uh maybe a month ago. So and she's she's in decent shape. So I can't imagine uh the type of shape you need to be in to tackle through hiking it. And you know, to the point of how few people actually complete it versus the the people that start it. I mean that stat was a little mind mind-boggling.

SPEAKER_04:

Right.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

It took us three years. It took us three years. Yeah. And because we had two vehicles, Ronnie hiked south most days, and I hike north. And you can say, how the heck did you do that? We parked on the trail almost every night or you know, at nighttime. But there's a there's a some kind of a road going over the Appalachian Trail on average every 10 to 15 miles. Now there are places where that's not true, like Priest and in the Smoky Mountains around Clingman's Dome, there's a couple of 35-mile stretches and so on. So we had to do the full pack thing. Carrying a 40-pound pack versus carrying a 40-pound pack is a lot different. Those days were really, really challenging, and we couldn't do 11, we'd do nine or ten at the most. But oh my gosh. So what we did in the morning, I would get up, I would start hiking. Ronnie would drive down the mountain to the valley, take the next road, take a road down, find the next road. Usually they were dirt, some of them were really bad. Drive up to the top of the mountain. So he's back on the Appalachian Trail. Now he's on the Appalachian Trail, you know, 11 miles further north than I am. He would walk south, I would walk north. So we would meet in the middle for a few minutes, right? And then he would get my truck and repeat what he had done in the morning and come back up to where his car was, and then we would stay right there. And usually, you know, I had a whole bunch of food and and water and stuff like that in my truck. I bragged that I slept in a tent every night on the Appalachian Trail, but usually it was about 10 feet from my truck.

SPEAKER_09:

So you you the two of you didn't really experience the hike together.

SPEAKER_04:

No, we could. It would never have worked. When we did we did walk together a few times. The problem is I can walk the same pace as Ron, but because of my short leg, I'm I'm moving forward uh, you know, an inch and a inch and a half to two inches shorter than he is. So within moments, he's pulling away from me. And if I try to keep up with him, now I'm getting up up on a different, I'm in a different gear. Long range gear, I'm in the short range gear.

SPEAKER_09:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

It was and and then so what would happen the few times we did, he'd get way ahead of me, almost out of sight. He would stop, wait for me to catch up. When I got within about 10 feet of me, turn around and go. Yeah, we it just didn't work well. His son Rick hiked with us for a couple weeks in the beginning, and then him and Ron finished it to the end. I did not finish the trail, I only did 1,863 miles.

SPEAKER_09:

Ah. Only.

SPEAKER_04:

I fell down a rock slide in Massachusetts and did uh it was bad. Really, really bad. And we ended up going off. I couldn't even walk after that. So I'm almost to the top of Wilcox Mountain in Massachusetts. When you get near the top, you see this great big rock slide. I mean, huge rocks and boulders, and it's steep. And you look at it, you go, there's no way the trail goes up there. And then you look all the way up the top and you see a white slash mark on a tree. The trail goes up there. So I climbed up that rock slide, and this there's a lot of them. But this I got within about 10 feet of the top, and my my pole slipped, and when it did, I tried to correct it. I should have just fallen forward, right? It wouldn't have peel. I would have, you know, I might have gotten a bloody hand or something, but but I didn't. I stabbed, try to regain my balance, and when I did it, flipped me 180 degrees, and then I stabbed with the other pole, and that didn't work, and I did a swan dive off that rock slide, and I went down about 20 feet, and I closed my eyes because I knew I I was thinking this is gonna hurt. I mean, I've been banged up, you know, in Vietnam, hurt and stuff and uh wounded, whatever. So I kind of know a lot about pain, and but I thought this is gonna hurt, but I didn't imagine it hurt way worse than anything else I had ever experienced. I mean, it was just incredible. And then my leg, my foot got caught between two rocks, otherwise I probably would have got killed.

SPEAKER_09:

Oh wow, so that stopped you from going down farther.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, I laid there with my eyes closed, I don't know, for a little a bit for sure. And then finally I, you know, opened my eyes. I had it covered with blood for my my elbows and my hands and my face. And it felt like somebody had taken a the one of those steel bands that he put on barrels, put it around my waist, and then just crank it down as hard as I could. I mean it was so I crawled to the top and I'm standing, I finally got stood up, and I'm like, I've come three miles, I got nine more miles to get to where my brother is, where he left his car. Fathom how I would ever get down that rock slide. I'm just like, I can't, I can't do it.

SPEAKER_09:

Right.

SPEAKER_04:

So I just turned around and started walking, and for a while, I don't know if you've ever You were able to walk. Yeah, I could walk. You know, I mean the way the pain was ridiculous, but then after a while, I don't know if you've ever been hurt bad, but I knew that if I just got moving, at some point it would just kind of dissipate into usually it dissipates into just kind of a dull ache, you know, an ache.

SPEAKER_09:

Yeah, and that was I think that's kind of being in shock though.

SPEAKER_04:

No, yeah, probably. When I met my brother, he said, What the heck happened to you? I said, Well, it wasn't good. He said, What are you gonna do? And I said, Well, nobody's gonna get me out of here, so I'm gonna walk, I'll meet you like we always do. So we did, but I knew I was so anyway. I got up the next morning, I got out of my tent. I couldn't uh I couldn't I couldn't walk on an 80 hang on to something. And uh so my brother said, What do you want to do? And I said, I think we we better go home. And uh so we did, and I I didn't get medical treatment or anything, and after a few days I started walking again, and and then Ronnie calls me up and says, You want to try to finish it? And I said, Sure, let's oh my god. So I did another 300 miles after that. We did the whites, but not Mount Washington because that was close. Well, Washington gets snow every month of the year.

SPEAKER_09:

Yeah, I they have two seasons good sledding and bad sledding. That's it.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, they have that cog rail road that goes up it and everything. I mean, it's it's a amazing thing. That's a three-day because it's like 60 miles to get across. Well, not that far. It's like 35 miles to get across there. There's no road or anything you can um so we jumped ahead. We did Moose Lock, which is a really beautiful big mountain. I thought I was gonna fall in that sucker too. Getting back down was amazingly difficult. And then I did Wolf, and then we went back to do Washington. We had our full packs ready to do three days together, and we went in and started up the mountain, and I turned around, I just started crying. I looked around and I said, I can't do it. My pain was so bad I couldn't even hardly sleep anymore, you know. So I, you know, he just looked at me and he said, Well, you want to try to do Just do a day hike. And I said, no, I I'm done. We had both lost 35 pounds. I'm 155 for crying out loud. Not a big only 5'8, but my normal rate was weight was around 175, 180. So he finished it with his son Rick. So I didn't do the last couple hundred miles.

SPEAKER_09:

Wow. So what I mean, what injuries did you sustain from that fall? I know you didn't get medical help, but I mean you were still in pain. I'm hoping eventually you sought medical attention.

SPEAKER_04:

I couldn't sleep at all. And I ended up having well, I was having a hip replacement while Rick and Ronnie were finishing the trail.

SPEAKER_09:

Oh my God. Yeah. Well, yeah. I know it's dangerous, but holy cow. Any uh like let's look on the brighter side of the hike. Because I am still in shock about that fall and then how you tried to continue on and you know where you wound up. Throughout throughout the hike, what state had uh had the the toughest terrain?

SPEAKER_04:

And I'm guessing it might have been Massachusetts, but no, you know, it's funny too because I when we crossed the Hudson River, I thought these mountains aren't gonna be this is gonna be nothing, right?

SPEAKER_11:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Oh my god. No, they're just as bad as any of the other mountains in New York and New Jersey. You know, you'd be up there and all you could see is raptors and trees. And at that point, it after Harper's Ferry in West Virginia, before that, you see people all the time, right? That's about roughly halfway. We logged in there, they have you know, you you get to prove that you went that far at least. And after that, and in the first half of the hike, Helen, probably as many, if not more, women than men. Really? Yeah, yeah. No, I I mean we saw a lady out there with four kids. Her kids, 16 was the oldest. I think the youngest was like six years old. And this was in Virginia, so they'd already gone quite a ways. The probably oldest woman we saw, I think, was 68, so not that much younger than us. A few people in their 60s, most of them are in their 20s, 30s, 40s.

SPEAKER_09:

Yep.

SPEAKER_04:

Some rugged guys in their 50s. But then after Harper's Ferry, we didn't see too many women, or anybody, really. I mean, it it just tapers right off big time after that.

SPEAKER_09:

How how can you tell the difference between a through hiker and somebody who is a a section hiker?

SPEAKER_04:

Smell.

SPEAKER_09:

I don't know why I didn't think of that.

SPEAKER_04:

Oh yeah, no. Well, you you you we would uh after a couple weeks, we would try to stay. We would always find a campsite somewhere that had showers.

SPEAKER_11:

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_04:

And we would stay there for a day or two and then hike north or south. Like in Loft Mountain in Shenandoah Park in the southern part of Virginia is a perfect example. We got a campsite there. I have a picture of my brother there with a buck standing next to him at our picnic site. Campsite. And then we had a shower. So we stayed, I think we stayed there four days because we had the vehicles we could drive down and hike a 12-mile section and then do another one. And come back. Yeah, and come back. So we did that when we could, so to get clean. Biggest thing, you get so you don't even like you can't even stand the way you smell. I mean, your own self. You're like, you're a turd. You can just tell through hikers. They just, you know, like I said, we lost 35 pounds in in the first year. Actually, we were in oh, I think we were almost in New Jersey when we stopped in 20 uh 18 because we both lost like 30 pounds at that point. We look like usherwood survivors. I mean, the all the through hikers, they have that gaunt face, they have that kind of like like a base level of fatigue written out.

SPEAKER_09:

Kind of yeah, hollow.

SPEAKER_04:

You can just tell the way their gear is the way they move, you know, they're not lackadaisical, they're pretty you're pretty precise about. And I fell every day, I broke four hiking poles.

SPEAKER_02:

Ouch.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, we had the look.

SPEAKER_09:

Yeah. And how did you guys get supplies? I mean, because you had your vehicles, you were able to, you know, when the stop allowed for it, were were you able to, you know, drive somewhere, go to a store, get water, get you know, whatever you needed.

SPEAKER_04:

There is, believe it or not, there's a food general or food city, the dollar stores at the base of almost every road that crosses over the Appalachian Trail. I mean, literally, you can almost hike. The problem is you got to get down the mountain to get to the store, right? And usually that could be two, three miles. I mean, we gave people rides almost every day. Will you can we ride down with you to get some food at the yeah, sure, get in, you know. Then drive back up. So we would buy I buy you know freeze-dried food there and water and stuff, and then we just kept it in our truck. I still have a bucket full of you know dried food in my truck. Wow, but yeah, that's and we shared some too. I mean, a lot of campers were not particularly well prepared. Prepared. I always carried two 24 bottles of water because there's no place to get water on the top of the the trail does not go around the mountains, it goes over them. So you're always on top, pretty much, whether you're on the ridge going up to the top or whatever. And once you get to top of the mountain, there's no water. I had some of those uh aluminum blankets. People would get trouble. I gave away my water purifier twice. I gave away because people had they didn't have proper, you know, thing. The other thing that people did was if you went to the shelters usually like in the afternoon, I would go to the shelters just to log in. I wanted to have proof. So many pictures too, I think. I want in my own mind. I I didn't know I was gonna write a book, but I I just I don't know, I was documenting that we were actually doing this, right?

SPEAKER_09:

Right.

SPEAKER_04:

And I if you were going down to the shelter, and then usually aren't on the top of the mountain, you have to walk down a little bit, I could usually smell where it was before I could see it. Okay. Yeah. So a lot of these younger hikers, you see them the next day, they've got their earbuds in and they're hiking, and their eyes look like you know, are big.

SPEAKER_10:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

They're not very present. Right. They're just kinda so for whenever I saw like poisonous snakes, I would try to make sure they got off the trail because I was afraid somebody would get hurt, you know, they're paying attention. And one day, you know, you were talking about critters at the very beginning. One of my more memorable, memorable experiences was I came across a rattlesnake, big, big snake. And he would not get off the trail. Usually they just you know go right away, right?

SPEAKER_11:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

But he was had an attitude, and he coiled on me, and I'm like, oh, this is not good. And then I couldn't, he would not leave. And then I look down and I see a chipmunk laying by my foot, and it's got two blood spots on it.

SPEAKER_09:

Oh no. And I go, Oh, you were standing on his dinner.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, he was it was quivering, and I go, Oh, I get it. So I I squatted down. We I'm eyeball to eyeball with this snake, right? He's watching me intently, and I'm staring at him. Don't, don't, I'm, I'm a good guy, you know? I squatted down, picked it up by the tail, I shook it in front of his face pretty much, and I threw it as hard as I could over his head into the forest. And that rattler, you could not have shot an arrow faster than that snake went. I mean, my jaw almost hit the trail because I'm like, oh my god, I had no idea how fast he could move. And I thought, if he wanted to strike me, I would there's nothing I could have done. There's no way. Oh, I would have missed him. I would, he would have got me in a heartbeat. But I wanted to make it that's crazy.

SPEAKER_09:

And you have any other any other animal encounters on the trail?

SPEAKER_04:

Bears. Bears. In the Shenandoah Mountains section, the national park, there's 300 square miles. And for seven days, we ran into a bear every day. I ran into a bear every day.

SPEAKER_09:

Really?

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah. And which is fine because most of the time they run away, right? They don't they're not gonna mess around with you. But one of them, huh? I've had bad experiences on solo hikes in the uh smoky mountains. I had a bear that I played hide and seek with not in a fun way for about an hour and a half. Oh my gosh. He was stalking me. And it was in the fall, and I suspect because he was getting ready to hibernate, he was really, really hungry.

SPEAKER_11:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

And he fake charged me. I fake charged him because you cannot you cannot show a bear any fear. You cannot, and you definitely don't want to run away because if you do, they will attack you immediately because they can't see very well. They just see kind of movement. They see a movement and it's going away from them, they their brain goes, food, and they attack right. So he's trying to make me run away by charging. He'd do these fake. I mean, if you ever saw like a nature film when they charge, they're like growling and their feet are the paws are going fast, but they're not really moving, they're just putting out a big show, right?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and then I would say the same act of them.

SPEAKER_04:

And I would do that, and then he would leave, and then I would go down the trail further, and then he would come back out. Oh my god. And then I at one point I almost I had a weapon. I was thinking, I don't want to shoot a bear, I really don't want to shoot a bear. Absolutely don't, but this guy is not leaving me alone. Eventually that bear did leave, and I just I got the heck out of there slowly, but I walked out of there. So anyway, I came around the trail on the in Shenandoah Mountain, pretty close to Loft Mountain, and there's this bear.

SPEAKER_12:

I came around a corner and he was right in front of me. I mean like 10 feet.

SPEAKER_04:

Oh and he stopped, so his paws in the air, he froze like a statue with one paw in the air. His head looked like a bowling ball.

SPEAKER_12:

And wow in my brain saw, oh my god, this is the most beautiful beast I have ever. Helen, he was gorgeous, his fur was shiny, shiny black. I mean, it was just unbelievably vivid.

SPEAKER_04:

And his eyes, big brown eyes looking at me, frozen, and so and I'm not thinking very clearly, right? I'm not going for my bear spray or anything. I reached back and got my phone so I could take a picture, right? And I'm standing there froze, he's frozen. I'm bringing it up. As soon as I got up in front of me, he whirled and went down the trail like as fast as he could. I never within two seconds he had gone a hundred feet at least. And then he took to the left and went down the mountain. Now, the day before I had seen a bear in a similar situation, except he was way further away from me, right? When he saw me, he just went off the woods in the right and disappeared. I actually ran down the trail. Well, sort of ran, because I want to take a picture of him, right? To where he went down the mountain, went out into the forest down the mountain, and I didn't see him, I didn't hear a thing. But this bear, this day, when he turned off that trail, oh my God, another hiker came up behind me and he goes, What's that? And I said, That's a bear. No way. I said, because it sounded like somebody in a bulldozer going down the mountains. It sounded like he was knocking trees over the boulders or something like it was a huge racket. And then shortly after that, I ran into a conservancy guy by the name of Gene Anderson, actually. And I have his picture in the book. And so we were talking about the bears, and I was telling him a little bit about what had happened, and he goes, Yeah, there's a he said there's 600 bears in this Shenandoah National Park. And I said, Well, there's 300 square miles. So that's two bears for every square mile.

SPEAKER_09:

Right.

SPEAKER_04:

And and half of it, half of those 300 miles, they're not gonna, they're not gonna walk there. Right, you know, they're that's there's a reason why they're walking on the trails. A lot of the the bears aren't even gonna walk there. You know, I walked under a tree with a bear in it at one point. That was fun. And Gene Anderson said, Yeah, he says we got way too many bears. The reason is they don't allow hunting. Someday somebody's gonna get hurt.

SPEAKER_09:

So they just keep reading.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, and I said, someday somebody's gonna get hurt. And he said, Yeah, probably will. I don't know. But you have to be smart about it. Don't show fear, don't run. Ronnie had a situation with uh a lady that went hysterical on him. I had a similar situation. There was whenever there was stuff across the trail, because of the we had some zombies out there. Yeah, I would get it off the trail. So one day there's this huge log, it was probably 10 feet long, it was about you know almost half a foot in diameter, so it was good size, but it was totally rotten. So it was I thought, well, if I can move it, I'll move it. And when I got a hold of it, it was I could pick it up on one end. I stood up on one end and I gave it a big shove. And when I gave it a big shove, it went off the hit mountain and it made you know a crash down the mountain a little ways. Well, there's a man and woman right behind me. I didn't realize it. And they were just coming around, they hadn't seen me yet, but they heard it.

SPEAKER_03:

And they go, the the woman screaming, bear, bear, bear! And the husband's going, No, honey, it'll be okay, it'll be okay. And I said, I turned around and walked back towards them. I said, It's not a bear, it wasn't a bear. Yes, it was, it had to be a bear, it couldn't be anything, could not.

SPEAKER_07:

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_04:

I think they ended up uh they were not through hikers, so they just turned around and went back the other way. They didn't believe me.

SPEAKER_09:

Oh, that's funny. That's funny. Now, we've talked an awful lot about the book, kind of indirectly, but based on your your journey on the Appalachian Trail, both you and your brother journaled, and eventually you put the two pieces of writing together, along with thousands of photos that you took. I actually just received the book maybe two or three days ago, and I've and I've looked through all the photos, and I am like just blown away by how beautiful everything is. Talk to me a little bit about melding your written account and your brother's written account to create a spiritual passage.

SPEAKER_04:

Right. Both of us kept journals on a daily basis, and luckily they were completely different. So I had made a decision after my brother would be there's map, there's pictures of him in the book, and he's always looking at a map. I mean, he studied those maps every night, and somewhere along the line, the first couple weeks, I said, thought to myself, you know, uh, I'm just gonna I'm not gonna do this anymore. I'm not gonna try to figure out what it looks like, you know, what the terrain is and all that stuff. I'm just gonna hike it like it's in 1970, and whatever is is, right? I'm just gonna follow the light slashes, and so Ronnie's journal entries were like, we were here, we went to here, the elevation changes were there's 46,500,000 feet of elevation changes on the Appalachian Trail. That's almost a half a million feet of elevation changes. Wow, yeah, and so the topographical maps show those, right? Wow, so he would record all that stuff, and then he would say, I love my family, my family's supporting me, blah, blah, blah. You know, he always had that spiritual thing in his mine, it was completely different. I'm like, right, a little bit about where we were and where we were going, but I was like, this happened. I recorded every trail name of people that I met, and and I put them in there because the trail names were fascinating. Ronnie's fail trail name was Attitude Indicator, which is an instrument in an airplane because he's a pilot that tells you what the attitude of the airplane is relative to the horizon, right?

SPEAKER_11:

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_04:

My trail name was Ran Bow.

SPEAKER_09:

I love it.

SPEAKER_04:

Ronnie came up with that. Yeah, well, almost got me killed.

SPEAKER_09:

Oh no.

SPEAKER_04:

So I would say, when I ran into hikers, I would say, I stick my hand out, say, my name is Ranbo, what's yours? You know, and then they would tell me and we'd shake hands, right? Or same thing. And then I would write all the names in my journal at night. So I and then I did put them in the book. Well, one day we were up in the whites. I had I was days were going by, I wasn't seeing anybody. And this one day I saw two people, two people, two duos twice, and they were both men and women. And the first time I stuck my hand out, Rambo, and the hot and the guy goes, Oh, whatever his name was. Oh man, yeah, I'm so great to see you. Uh can I can I have my picture taken with you? And he put their arm around me, and the guy would go, I thought you'd be bigger, and the book was the guy taking the picture, like, you know. And then the first time I happened, I was like, that's kind of weird. And then it happened again. A little few hours later, and I thought, what the heck? So that night we were eating dinner, you know, getting ready to go to sleep. And and I I said to Ronnie, I said, Something strange is happening today, bro. Twice I ran into these couples, and they went on my picture taken. The guy said something like, Oh, yeah, can I have my picture taken with you? And I thought you'd be bigger. And Ronnie's not looking at me. And I go, What's going on, bro? And he's nothing, nothing. Come on. Something's not right here. And he goes, Well, I've been telling them that you're you're Rambo and you're the guy they made the movie about.

SPEAKER_10:

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02:

Um war with Sylvester Stallone, Rambo. You get you gotta love brothers. I said, Don't do that. You're gonna get me killed. Somebody's gonna say, I'm gonna take this guy, I'm gonna kill Rambo.

SPEAKER_09:

Oh, too funny.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it was funny.

SPEAKER_09:

Too funny. So you you mentioned that that Ron was more methodical and more planned out and more spiritual in what he captured in his journals, and it sounds like you were there for every experience. The beauty, the challenge, and that you were more into the journey, and your brother was more into getting to the final destination. Is that accurate?

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, that is accurate. He did have a situation where he saw a halo in an otherwise very dark day with no sun at all the whole day, except this one moment when there was a a halo, a very bright light in the on the trail, and there's a picture he took a picture of it. Because it was Father's Day, it was June, what is it, 21st, 2018, and he was thinking about Edie and he was thinking about our dad, and then he saw that light, and he had a spiritual experience. He ended up walking towards it. It had looked like there was somebody in it, like Jesus or Muhammad, or what you know, it could be whatever you want, but and he got a feeling of peace and serenity finally. He thought he could feel Edie saying, Ronnie, it's okay, it's okay. I'm with your dad.

unknown:

It's okay.

SPEAKER_09:

Wow. Yeah. Wow. So pretty cathartic for him.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, for me, I had been sober four years. I had been in the program, I did the program, I did the 12 steps, I had a really great sponsor. And then right after that, I started sponsoring guys because men work with the men and women work with the women. And I I, you know, was a part of seeing men turn their whole lives around. And one of the things I had talked to my sponsor about was what am I going to do on the trail? I'm not going to be going to meetings or anything because I go to meetings every day.

SPEAKER_10:

Right.

SPEAKER_04:

I work with guys every day. So he had suggested I memorize the readings, and I did meetings in my head on the trail. Every people would do like an hour and pretend I was in a meeting and we'd bring up a topic and somebody, and I would go around the room because I knew what a lot of these people would say. It would be like the easiest day of the hour of the day for me. I just get in that zone. I'm not even, and all of a sudden at the end of it, I'm like, man, I don't remember walking this last hour. You know, it was it was beautiful for me. And I had guys, I would turn my phone on every morning. I had a couple guys that I had been working with, and they would call me and just check in. Yeah, we're doing good, Rand. How are you? You know, that kind of thing. So I had that spiritual thing, and then I had a really bad experience. I almost died in the Smoky Mountains during a horrible night, windstorm. I I pitched my tent, and it was called False Gap, which means there was no gap. And I was on a ridge that was only like 12 feet wide, and it dropped off hundreds of feet on both sides, and I had to pitch my tent, and the weather turned really bad right at dark, dusk, and uh and these freight trains of wind came flying up during the night and right over me. And it was my tent was beating me to death. Ronnie said, Would you were you hanging on to the rods that hold, you know, we had these tents that were made for you know, for survival tents, basically. I said, No, I was pushing down with the stakes as hard as I could with my feet and hands because I felt like it I felt like I was in a body bag and it was gonna just blow me off. And I and I was praying to God, the one I didn't used to believe in, to me, I'm just you know, I was saying, I've been a good boy, God. I've really been a good guy for the last four years and I've been helping people. So if you want to kill me tonight, okay, I guess that's the way it's gonna be, but I'd really rather not.

SPEAKER_09:

Right, right.

SPEAKER_04:

And it's uh daylight, just as it started getting light, the winds finally abated. It was scary as hell. I I was convinced I was gonna get blown off of there, but I didn't until wow.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_09:

Well, you know, looking back on the experience, because it sounds like you were very in the moment and you got a lot out of it from the AA meetings in your head to the beautiful pictures you took and the people you met and the experiences you had, both good and dangerous. Looking back on it, what did you get out of that journey? What did that journey mean to you?

SPEAKER_04:

It means everything. I think, you know, our one of our mottos is uh one step at a time, and I incorporated that into the book because in the book I ended up describing how I got sober at 68 years old. Alcohol didn't really bother me a whole lot for for many years, but if you're an alcoholic, you metabolize alcohol differently than normal people. That's why the AMA just made it a disease. American Medical Association defined it as a disease in 1956. And when I learned that about myself, I thought it was some kind of a moral failure, you know. Very common with alcoholics to think, why can't I do it? I did all these other things, you know.

SPEAKER_10:

Right.

SPEAKER_04:

Could not, at the end, if you're an alcoholic, alcohol will get you. It would just, and you it will take over and you will have un be unable to not drink. You just it's an amazing thing that happens. So you need a higher power. And I had been taught how to do that, and I had a relationship with a higher power, and it definitely grew, it got way bigger on the trail.

SPEAKER_09:

Yeah, oh I bet.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, so now today I don't have any problem turning the weight of my difficulties over to that power that got me through a war, it got me through. I had a client try to kill me as a lawyer. Wow, got me through all kinds of stuff, and and I didn't know it for a long time, but I came to appreciate the fact that something bigger than than me existed that could help me get through my difficulties and a lot of other people, yeah. All over the world, you know, and be happy, be serene, right, be joyful. Gave me joy. That's beautiful. Gave me joy, Helen. It really did.

SPEAKER_09:

That's amazing. I'm so happy for you. And thank you and your brother for your service to our country. I've got to say that at the very beginning, but thank you because there's there's an awful lot that goes into that that a lot of people don't know about. And I am so happy that you and your brother worked through a lot of that and that this journey was part of working through those things that you've sacrificed for us. So thank you very much.

SPEAKER_02:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_09:

And I also want to thank you for all the time you've shared with me. Besides the book, is there anything that I can put in the show notes for our listeners to follow along with you, contact you, see what you're up to?

SPEAKER_04:

Yes, they can randimmerman.com. It's just my name run together, lowercase, no dots or anything, just randimmerman.com. I'll take them to my website. And they can see some of the videos and and the pictures and the book, you know, information, and they can order books on there too if they want to.

SPEAKER_09:

Great. Thank you so, so much for your time, Rand. I'm so glad you survived. And you took all of those, all of those experiences and turned them into something positive. So thank you again for all your time. This is a fantastic conversation. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_10:

Thank you, Alan. Appreciate you.

SPEAKER_09:

Truly an amazing story. Although both Rand and his brother Ron were rugged men from their military backgrounds to the way they kept themselves in shape and some of the other hobbies that they had that helped them do that. I found it incredibly funny that at the very beginning, Rand thought, no more than two weeks will this go on, and we will come to our senses and go home. And uh little did he know they would persevere for the next three years to complete the trail and just how much they would experience, learn, and grow from that time on the trail. I also found it funny how Rand was more of in the moment, here for the journey and the experiences, and his brother Ron was methodical and tactical and planned, almost linear, if you will. And life with the Appalachian Trail is anything but linear, and yet the trail finally brought them peace and clarity with all of its ups and downs. I just their story truly is inspiring to me. If you enjoy Assort of Conversations, please leave a five-star written review wherever you downloaded today's episode. It helps the podcast become visible to other folks who may be interested in these stories as well. So that's it for this week. Keep on following your passions, and I'll see ya in two weeks.

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Helen

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