A Spiritual Passage: Reflections on Hiking, Healing, and Brotherhood with Rand R. Timmerman, Esq.

# Rand Timmerman - Audio

[00:00:00] **Howard:** Hello, everyone. This is Howard Fox, and welcome back for another episode of the Outdoor Adventure Series. Rand Timmerman is our guest today.

[00:00:09] **Howard:** Rand is the author of A Spiritual Passage, a story of two 70-something brothers who hike the Appalachian Trail, and really the story about the why. Why did these t- these two guys decide to hike? And we're gonna l- learn a little bit about the, their history, uh, really the challenge of preparing for

[00:00:33] **Howard:** really arduous journey, and also what was the, th- kind of the lessons learned, the aha moments that came out a- as a result of this, uh, very

[00:00:45] **Howard:** spiritual,

[00:00:46] **Howard:** uh, journey as well, and a- a really athletic journey.

[00:00:50] **Howard:** So Rand, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Welcome.

[00:00:54] **Rand:** Thanks, Howard. Glad to be here

[00:00:56] **Howard:** Fantastic.

[00:00:57] **Howard:** Now, I, I have to ask, uh, I love [00:01:00] the, uh, behind you, you've got the, obviously your, your Marine Corps, history. I love that. And you've got the flag, you've got

[00:01:07] **Howard:** copies

[00:01:07] **Howard:** of the book. So, I imagine you get up

[00:01:10] **Howard:** speak

[00:01:10] **Howard:** in front of audiences, uh, a lot, uh, 'cause y- you've got the, the, the, the veteran connection as well as the author connection, as well as your professional background as well

[00:01:22] **Rand:** That's true. Yeah, I do speak quite a bit, and I've been doing a fair amount of podcasting and, and talking about my book

[00:01:28] **Rand:** and my history and trying

[00:01:30] **Rand:** help people who might be struggling with, um, some of life's difficulties, including addiction. I had a alcohol problem, and

[00:01:37] **Rand:** I've been 12 years sober yesterday.

[00:01:40] **Howard:** Excellent.

[00:01:41] **Howard:** Excellent.

[00:01:42] **Howard:** Yep. It,

[00:01:43] **Howard:** I, I, I guess I sh- I never really asked anyone this question.

[00:01:49] **Howard:** I-

[00:01:49] **Howard:** Uh, h- ha-

[00:01:50] **Howard:** ha-

[00:01:51] **Howard:** being 12 years sober, that's, that is in itself a major accomplishment, because I know how bad the addiction

[00:01:58] **Howard:** of

[00:01:58] **Howard:** alcoholism can [00:02:00] be, uh, from others in, in my life that have faced this. But

[00:02:04] **Howard:** ha-

[00:02:05] **Howard:** ha- had, had...

[00:02:07] **Howard:** Y- and

[00:02:07] **Howard:** also your background a- as a veteran, and r- in Vietnam for that matter, and just being around in a very high-stress environment, working with lots of young kids, m- men and women, uh, and then some older, and you're seeing a lot of things, you experience a lot of things.

[00:02:25] **Howard:** When, when did the alcohol become a part of your life? I'm curious about that

[00:02:34] **Rand:** Yes. I grew up in a very rural, uh, village in, called Adams, New York, in Upstate New York, in the n- in... I was born in 1946. And my,

[00:02:44] **Rand:** my...

[00:02:45] **Rand:** I was surrounded with relatives, men, who were veterans of World War II, including my

[00:02:49] **Rand:** father, who was a

[00:02:51] **Rand:** Mustang pilot.

[00:02:52] **Rand:** And, When he

[00:02:53] **Rand:** came back,

[00:02:53] **Rand:** got polio, ended up a year in the hospital, eight months in an iron

[00:02:58] **Rand:** lung, and he

[00:02:58] **Rand:** paralyzed from the waist [00:03:00] down-

[00:03:00] **Rand:** it- when it was all over with.

[00:03:02] **Rand:** But he, he was a very hardworking man. My parents didn't drink, thank God, but

[00:03:05] **Rand:** we were very impoverished.

[00:03:08] **Rand:** the first time I drank alcohol, I was 13 years old.

[00:03:11] **Rand:** I got invited to a party, and I was so uncomfortable. I, I'm wearing clothes that other people wore out. my shoes have holes in them. I mean, we were really poor. Mm-hmm. Went to bed hungry a lot. And I found a bottle of Jim Beam in

[00:03:24] **Rand:** the basement.

[00:03:26] **Rand:** And my friend that came with me, uh, we're both the same height,

[00:03:29] **Rand:** but he's

[00:03:30] **Rand:** 200 pounds, I'm 99.

[00:03:32] **Rand:** Mm-hmm. And the next

[00:03:34] **Rand:** morning,

[00:03:35] **Rand:** I went and

[00:03:36] **Rand:** told my dad,

[00:03:37] **Rand:** I figured he was gonna find out what happened, and I swear I drank more of the, of the bottle than he did. It was a pint. It wasn't a lot,

[00:03:46] **Rand:** but when you're... First time, man.

[00:03:49] **Howard 3:** yeah. I mean,

[00:03:49] **Rand:** it just gave me such a rush. It, it was unbelievable. we

[00:03:53] **Rand:** crawled home. I

[00:03:54] **Rand:** walk anymore, but I didn't get sick, and, uh, it had a profound,

[00:03:59] **Rand:** uh, [00:04:00] effect on me. So

[00:04:01] **Rand:** I

[00:04:02] **Rand:** I owned up to my father, uh, Howard, and I stood way back

[00:04:06] **Rand:** my father,

[00:04:07] **Rand:** uh, had a short temper,

[00:04:09] **Rand:** Mm-hmm. He didn't like a whole lot of mes- emotional strain given his, what he'd gone through. And-

[00:04:14] **Howard 3:** Sure ...

[00:04:14] **Rand:** I stood way back and told him, and he just looked...

[00:04:17] **Rand:** He shocked me 'cause he looked at me, he says, "Okay, Butch. Well, just don't do that again, and David's in the hospital." David ... David, David who weighed 200 pounds and- Okay

[00:04:28] **Rand:** drank less, ended up in

[00:04:30] **Rand:** hospital.

[00:04:30] **Rand:** And I just knew at that

[00:04:32] **Rand:** that I

[00:04:32] **Rand:** was definitely gonna do it again, 'cause I had become Clint Eastwood. When I drank,

[00:04:37] **Rand:** I was turned into a movie star. Okay. I was six foot four, not five foot eight. I wasn't, I didn't have acne.

[00:04:43] **Rand:** I was handsome, I was sexy, I was funny. I was everything I wanted to be. The rest of the time I didn't feel adequate in any, any domain.

[00:04:51] **Rand:** But the good thing was I made a decision not to do anything else.

[00:04:57] **Rand:** Why would I,

[00:04:58] **Rand:** right? Mm-hmm.

[00:04:58] **Rand:** But I realized it was [00:05:00] so powerful

[00:05:01] **Rand:** and becoming a part of my life, probably gonna be a fairly significant part

[00:05:05] **Rand:** of my life, that I would never did any other drugs. And I didn't. I never

[00:05:08] **Rand:** pot or anything.

[00:05:09] **Rand:** That was the upside, but...

[00:05:11] **Howard 3:** Right ...

[00:05:11] **Rand:** and for a long time it didn't really bother me.

[00:05:13] **Rand:** for a long

[00:05:14] **Rand:** time, wa- it

[00:05:14] **Rand:** available. My

[00:05:15] **Rand:** parents didn't drink,

[00:05:16] **Rand:** God.

[00:05:17] **Howard:** Right. Yeah.

[00:05:19] **Rand:** But- So the- ... I went through the war and all that. my, my brother did, too. We were both traumatized from it. He was a religious person right from the get-go and never lost it. I, that first battle, I just, um, decided there wasn't...

[00:05:34] **Rand:** If

[00:05:34] **Rand:** there was a god, he really had things messed up. And,

[00:05:36] **Howard:** Really?

[00:05:37] **Howard 3:** Wow. Yeah,

[00:05:38] **Rand:** I fought like hell, but I just, I was very angry and, uh,

[00:05:42] **Rand:** I

[00:05:43] **Rand:** I would never have a relationship with a higher power again, if I had one at all. Right. But, you

[00:05:48] **Rand:** know, when I finally,

[00:05:49] **Rand:** disease took over in my late 50s, early 60s, I struggled for

[00:05:53] **Rand:** quite a while.

[00:05:54] **Rand:** But I, uh, I finally made a connection with a higher power, which was a,

[00:05:59] **Rand:** such a [00:06:00] blessing. It changed my life

[00:06:01] **Rand:** so many ways. I'm in, I'm still active in the same recovery program.

[00:06:04] **Howard 3:** Mm-hmm.

[00:06:05] **Rand:** and I go

[00:06:06] **Rand:** to meetings every day, and I work with guys every day, and

[00:06:08] **Rand:** just changed my life. And it made it possible

[00:06:11] **Rand:** for me, because I was four years sober when my brother lost his wife,

[00:06:15] **Rand:** to

[00:06:15] **Rand:** do

[00:06:16] **Rand:** trail.

[00:06:16] **Rand:** If I had still been drinking- Okay ... there's

[00:06:18] **Rand:** no way.

[00:06:20] **Rand:** No way.

[00:06:21] **Howard 3:** Okay.

[00:06:21] **Rand:** So

[00:06:22] **Rand:** that's

[00:06:22] **Rand:** quick

[00:06:22] **Rand:** history of my

[00:06:24] **Howard:** Okay ...

[00:06:25] **Rand:** alcoholism.

[00:06:26] **Howard:** Well, there's a lot of ways to go. I, I love the fact that that first drink, nothing happens to you. You've got this bravado, and that it kind of plants the seed in a way of, in some ways, who we are becoming or going to become. And it's like, I am, like, invincible in some ways.

[00:06:43] **Howard:** Yeah.

[00:06:44] **Howard:** Your, your brother, had you both gotten along growing up? You mentioned that he was more religious than you, but had you gotten along? Did you break bread with each other, go

[00:06:56] **Howard:** play,

[00:06:56] **Howard:** walk in the woods, with each other, go fishing, do things with [00:07:00] each other? Or had you, had you been fur- a little farther

[00:07:03] **Howard:** apart?

[00:07:04] **Rand:** No, we were very close. We were a year apart. I was

[00:07:07] **Rand:** the oldest

[00:07:08] **Rand:** and we had

[00:07:09] **Rand:** a very difficult time growing up.

[00:07:11] **Rand:** I kinda took a different path than,

[00:07:13] **Rand:** than,

[00:07:13] **Rand:** Ronnie. Ronnie was very,

[00:07:16] **Rand:** uh, willing to do whatever my p- our parents said. He

[00:07:20] **Rand:** did it.

[00:07:20] **Rand:** I mean, he was almost

[00:07:21] **Rand:** like the perfect kid.

[00:07:22] **Howard:** Mm-hmm.

[00:07:23] **Rand:** And because of my father's situation, when he wasn't working at his jobs,

[00:07:27] **Rand:** uh, I had to be

[00:07:28] **Rand:** him all the time. And, I was his gofer, get this- Okay ... get that. I helped my dad.

[00:07:35] **Rand:** So I resented

[00:07:36] **Rand:** My brother and my younger sister and then my little brother, who was

[00:07:40] **Rand:** nine years behind us, uh, they had a normal childhood, but I really didn't because I was, I was working all the time.

[00:07:48] **Howard:** Right.

[00:07:48] **Rand:** I

[00:07:48] **Rand:** I wasn't in school or, or

[00:07:50] **Rand:** And, uh, I got very involved. We were in a rural area. I

[00:07:54] **Rand:** I

[00:07:54] **Rand:** running around farms, working, telling li- I was driving tractors and hauling manure spreaders at 12 years old.[00:08:00]

[00:08:00] **Howard:** Oh, wow

[00:08:01] **Rand:** I was hunting in the woods with a single-shot

[00:08:04] **Rand:** .22 rifle,

[00:08:06] **Rand:** shooting squirrels

[00:08:06] **Rand:** and rabbits and stuff

[00:08:08] **Rand:** bringing meat home, so we'd have some meat,

[00:08:11] **Rand:** some meat, uh,

[00:08:11] **Rand:** I was 12, 13 years old.

[00:08:13] **Rand:** I mean, I don't really s- I was a trapper.

[00:08:16] **Howard 3:** Mm-hmm.

[00:08:17] **Rand:** I trapped. I got very involved in the Boy Scouts. I pretty much did anything I could to get

[00:08:20] **Rand:** out of the house.

[00:08:22] **Rand:** So my brother and I were kinda on a totally different track. Right. I'm kinda the wild, frisky, you know, I'm pretty good kid 90% of the time, and then I would do something, my dad would get really angry with me, and sometimes we would, uh, get physical, uh, which I regret.

[00:08:40] **Rand:** I knew where the buttons

[00:08:41] **Rand:** were. I was partially to blame for sure

[00:08:43] **Howard:** I,

[00:08:44] **Howard:** when I was growing up, I, I, I,

[00:08:47] **Howard:** I,

[00:08:48] **Howard:** l- as I look back, I can see where I pressed buttons too, and, uh, I, I, I re- I'm sure if my dad was alive, may he rest in peace, would have regret. I know I have regret as I think [00:09:00] about my, my father.

[00:09:02] **Howard:** What,

[00:09:03] **Howard:** What, what I'm, what I'm finding is very interesting is you have this thread, the story of, of growing up, the challenges that you faced, the relationship with your brother, and he went on to a, a, a, a great career, an important career i- in the, in, in the Marines.

[00:09:22] **Howard:** Then on to, being a JAG, judge, uh, judge advocate general.

[00:09:28] **Howard:** That... It,

[00:09:28] **Howard:** it seems like those two paths, you wouldn't anticipate you going from this one path that you were on to this other path

[00:09:39] **Rand:** Yeah. I know. I... sometimes I feel

[00:09:41] **Rand:** like,

[00:09:42] **Rand:** uh,

[00:09:43] **Rand:** the movie

[00:09:43] **Rand:** w- you know, uh,

[00:09:44] **Rand:** Tom Hanks,

[00:09:46] **Rand:** um... Oh, what the heck is the title

[00:09:49] **Rand:** of it?

[00:09:49] **Rand:** Gump. Forrest Gump. Forrest Gump. You know the butterfly thing? I mean, my wi- my life took so many twists and turns. I did go off to college when I graduated.[00:10:00]

[00:10:00] **Rand:** My brother went right into the Army

[00:10:02] **Rand:** he graduated a year later. but I was a lost soul in college, because I didn't know what

[00:10:07] **Rand:** I

[00:10:07] **Rand:** wanted to be

[00:10:08] **Rand:** when

[00:10:08] **Rand:** grew up, and I was a janitor cleaning toilets from

[00:10:12] **Rand:** midnight to

[00:10:12] **Rand:** 8:00 every day, and then- Mm-hmm

[00:10:14] **Rand:** worked

[00:10:15] **Rand:** as

[00:10:15] **Rand:** pin setter in a bowling alley, and I'm going to college full time, and I

[00:10:18] **Rand:** I was getting

[00:10:19] **Rand:** grades, but I had no

[00:10:20] **Rand:** money, and

[00:10:21] **Rand:** didn't know what the hell I wanted to

[00:10:23] **Rand:** be.

[00:10:23] **Rand:** I finally changed my

[00:10:24] **Rand:** major my third semester to psychology, 'cause I knew I

[00:10:28] **Rand:** was a nut job.

[00:10:30] **Rand:** I had to

[00:10:30] **Rand:** figure out what the hell

[00:10:31] **Rand:** wrong with me.

[00:10:32] **Rand:** And then I got drunk in a

[00:10:33] **Rand:** bar one night,

[00:10:35] **Rand:** and the next morning I'm on the pool table when the owner came back

[00:10:39] **Rand:** in,

[00:10:40] **Rand:** Oh,

[00:10:40] **Howard:** boy.

[00:10:41] **Rand:** just coming to, and he turns the radio on, starts

[00:10:44] **Rand:** up, and they're talking about the

[00:10:45] **Rand:** 1st Marine Division being in Vietnam,

[00:10:48] **Rand:** and I had one of my a-ha moments.

[00:10:51] **Rand:** And, uh,

[00:10:52] **Rand:** I

[00:10:53] **Rand:** got off that

[00:10:54] **Rand:** table and walked out of there, and a month later I'm at the War Memorial in Syracuse, New York, pledging to defend my [00:11:00] country against enemies foreign and domestic, and nine months later I'm in a rice paddy going, "Oh my God, what have I done?"

[00:11:06] **Howard:** I

[00:11:06] **Howard:** I can imagine

[00:11:07] **Rand:** Yeah. But, uh, I did survive

[00:11:11] **Rand:** that.

[00:11:12] **Rand:** I like to say that the Marine Corps got

[00:11:14] **Rand:** killed at least almost 20 times. I mean... And then by a fluke it gave me a legal career, because they made me a second lieutenant

[00:11:23] **Rand:** in Vietnam

[00:11:24] **Rand:** a couple months. They called them

[00:11:25] **Rand:** Mustangs.

[00:11:26] **Howard:** Okay

[00:11:27] **Rand:** So I could

[00:11:28] **Rand:** officer

[00:11:29] **Rand:** even though I wasn't

[00:11:29] **Rand:** a real officer.

[00:11:31] **Rand:** I was a corporal actually. And then when I was getting

[00:11:34] **Rand:** I survived,

[00:11:35] **Rand:** which

[00:11:37] **Rand:** Most of us

[00:11:37] **Rand:** didn't think we were going to.

[00:11:39] **Rand:** the mortality rate and the injury rate was

[00:11:41] **Rand:** incredibly high. But

[00:11:43] **Rand:** a colonel came to see me. I hadn't seen a colonel in six months, I

[00:11:46] **Rand:** swear to God, and

[00:11:48] **Rand:** started talking to me.

[00:11:50] **Rand:** He said, "Well, you're gonna...

[00:11:51] **Rand:** You're not a second lieutenant anymore. Now you're a corporal again, and you're gonna get out in three, four

[00:11:55] **Rand:** months, or I'm recommending that they send you to [00:12:00] OCS, Officer Candidate School, and you be a real

[00:12:01] **Rand:** officer."

[00:12:03] **Howard 3:** Oh.

[00:12:04] **Rand:** Well, I didn't know what the hell I was gonna do. I had real nothing. I said,

[00:12:07] **Rand:** "Okay, sure. Why not?"

[00:12:08] **Rand:** Okay. So I went back home, uh, had 30-day leave, went into the OCS. They actually made me a sergeant in OCS. I got promoted to sergeant. Good.

[00:12:19] **Rand:** But

[00:12:19] **Rand:** when I got done, I was a second lieutenant, and then, uh, I decided to be ... I wanted to be in the air wing, 'cause I didn't

[00:12:26] **Rand:** wanna be in the first... Actually, when I got to

[00:12:29] **Rand:** Vietnam, I was with

[00:12:30] **Rand:** the First Marine Division.

[00:12:32] **Rand:** Okay. That's, that was my unit. Talk about butterfly effect, right? And then, so when I get done with

[00:12:38] **Rand:** all my officer training, I had been a machine gunner

[00:12:41] **Rand:** on, uh, helicopters with the First Marine Air Wing,

[00:12:46] **Rand:** which was right next to

[00:12:47] **Rand:** First Marine Division in Da Nang.

[00:12:50] **Howard 3:** Right.

[00:12:50] **Rand:** So I I didn't wanna be a grunt anymore.

[00:12:54] **Rand:** That's what they call infantrymen.

[00:12:56] **Rand:** and

[00:12:57] **Rand:** I went to Cherry Point, where

[00:12:59] **Rand:** the [00:13:00] first Marine Air Wing was.

[00:13:01] **Rand:** So now I'm in the First Marine Air Wing,

[00:13:03] **Rand:** and I run into an old friend

[00:13:04] **Rand:** of mine.

[00:13:05] **Rand:** had been my drills instructor. he was a, a Mustang captain at that point, and I didn't know it, but he

[00:13:14] **Rand:** my guardian angel.

[00:13:15] **Rand:** And when I got there he said, "You wanna go to any schools?" And I go, "Well, I don't know. What you got?" And he goes, um, he's rattling off these places

[00:13:24] **Rand:** and

[00:13:24] **Rand:** goes, "Newport, Rhode Island." And I go, honest to

[00:13:26] **Rand:** God, Howard,

[00:13:27] **Rand:** is what happened,

[00:13:28] **Rand:** And I

[00:13:28] **Rand:** "Newport, Rhode Island. What's that?" And he goes, "It's a Judge Advocate General school.

[00:13:32] **Rand:** It's a Navy school for

[00:13:34] **Rand:** legal officers

[00:13:35] **Rand:** the Navy and the

[00:13:36] **Rand:** Marine Corps." The next day I'm checking in.

[00:13:39] **Howard 3:** Oh, wow.

[00:13:40] **Rand:** Yeah.

[00:13:40] **Rand:** so I get there.

[00:13:42] **Rand:** The class I'm in, there's

[00:13:44] **Rand:** 100 of us. 99 of them are captains who have

[00:13:50] **Rand:** college degrees and

[00:13:51] **Rand:** their law degrees.

[00:13:52] **Rand:** Some of them had already passed the bar. Hmm. They went through all the Marine Corps training for officers, but

[00:13:58] **Rand:** they made them captains[00:14:00]

[00:14:00] **Rand:** if they didn't,

[00:14:00] **Rand:** nobody would ever do that route, right?

[00:14:02] **Rand:** the money was

[00:14:03] **Rand:** good enough, so...

[00:14:04] **Rand:** And little

[00:14:05] **Rand:** old me, and they're all looking

[00:14:06] **Rand:** me like, "Where did this guy come from?" And I don't know about-

[00:14:11] **Howard:** that's like a case for imposter syndrome. Why am I here?

[00:14:14] **Rand:** Yeah, exactly. Well, 20 of us rented

[00:14:17] **Rand:** a mansion out by the Atlantic Ocean,

[00:14:20] **Rand:** it was the off-season.

[00:14:21] **Rand:** We each had our own room in this palatial place. And, uh, for whatever reason, these guys wanna party. You

[00:14:27] **Rand:** know, they've been working hard, and

[00:14:29] **Rand:** they're just kinda celebrating, and some of them

[00:14:31] **Rand:** are gonna go to Vietnam and so

[00:14:33] **Rand:** and so for- so

[00:14:34] **Rand:** forth.

[00:14:34] **Rand:** And, and

[00:14:35] **Rand:** for whatever reason, I just, I'm not drinking during the

[00:14:37] **Rand:** week. I'm just gonna study, and then I'll hang out with these guys on the

[00:14:41] **Rand:** whatever. Well, son of a gun, we graduated. I am the class honor

[00:14:46] **Rand:** man.

[00:14:47] **Rand:** I got-

[00:14:47] **Howard:** Oh

[00:14:47] **Rand:** Oh, boy.

[00:14:48] **Rand:** I got the

[00:14:49] **Rand:** highest scores of anybody in the cl-

[00:14:51] **Rand:** all those

[00:14:52] **Rand:** guys are like, "What the hell? How

[00:14:54] **Rand:** did

[00:14:55] **Rand:** you... You

[00:14:56] **Rand:** You don't know anything."

[00:14:57] **Rand:** Well, I knew how to study, and I knew how, I [00:15:00] knew a lot about the Uniform

[00:15:01] **Rand:** Code of Military

[00:15:02] **Rand:** So I went back to Cherry Point. They made me a defense attorney. I actually had a

[00:15:08] **Rand:** of acquittals, so they solved that problem by

[00:15:10] **Rand:** making me a prosecutor.

[00:15:12] **Rand:** Okay.

[00:15:13] **Rand:** And

[00:15:13] **Rand:** then,

[00:15:15] **Rand:** excuse me,

[00:15:17] **Rand:** We had a contingency down at Roosevelt Roads, which is a Navy

[00:15:20] **Rand:** base down in Puerto Rico, and it was

[00:15:22] **Rand:** contingent of Marines.

[00:15:23] **Rand:** And I would go down...

[00:15:24] **Rand:** They would

[00:15:25] **Rand:** me down there every six months or so,

[00:15:26] **Rand:** and I'd be there for a month

[00:15:27] **Rand:** do trials and things like that.

[00:15:29] **Howard 3:** Mm-hmm.

[00:15:30] **Rand:** And the

[00:15:31] **Rand:** sec-

[00:15:31] **Rand:** time I came back, I'm going, "Holy crap, I'm not at

[00:15:34] **Rand:** the top

[00:15:34] **Rand:** the list to go back to Vietnam." 'Cause if I

[00:15:36] **Rand:** I had gone back

[00:15:36] **Rand:** Vietnam, I probably would've been a forward observer.

[00:15:40] **Howard 3:** Right.

[00:15:41] **Rand:** Right? They would've, 'cause I was kinda like the perfect guy

[00:15:44] **Rand:** for that. and but I

[00:15:46] **Rand:** I'm not back down the list, and six months go by, I go back down to Puerto Rico. I come back, I'm talking to my friend who's keeps giving me all these orders, and I said, "Darn, I'm, I, I'm not at the top. I might [00:16:00] not have...

[00:16:00] **Rand:** There

[00:16:00] **Rand:** might not be enough time

[00:16:01] **Rand:** for me to go back to Vietnam." And he looked at me

[00:16:03] **Rand:** me and he goes, "You stupid. Why do you think I keep sending you down to Puerto Rico?" 'Cause he knew if I went back to Vietnam, I would get killed

[00:16:12] **Rand:** almost certainly.

[00:16:13] **Howard:** he was like a guardian angel

[00:16:14] **Rand:** Yeah, absolutely. Yep.

[00:16:16] **Rand:** And but, see, here's the thing.

[00:16:18] **Rand:** It, it gave me a whole career. Yeah? It changed my whole life in, in tremendous ways, and I had a awesome legal career. I

[00:16:27] **Rand:** I was married

[00:16:27] **Rand:** one child, another one on

[00:16:29] **Rand:** the way. When I got out of the Marine

[00:16:30] **Rand:** I went to Syracuse. The GI Bill didn't even pay the tuition. I'm working three jobs again.

[00:16:35] **Rand:** I'm going to college

[00:16:36] **Rand:** full-time.

[00:16:37] **Rand:** You

[00:16:38] **Rand:** You

[00:16:38] **Rand:** I'm sleeping five hour, four

[00:16:39] **Rand:** or five hours a night.

[00:16:41] **Rand:** So I'm not... I'm still poor as hell and, and not liking that at all, but I ended up having a great, uh, legal career. I took on some pretty

[00:16:50] **Rand:** crazy cases right away, and

[00:16:52] **Rand:** on TV all of a sudden. I'm in the radio and the newspaper.

[00:16:55] **Rand:** And, and then I ended up being the first lawyer to[00:17:00]

[00:17:00] **Rand:** ever cross-examine

[00:17:02] **Rand:** the director of the FBI

[00:17:05] **Rand:** lab on the efficacy of DNA in a murder

[00:17:09] **Rand:** which was all based on circumstantial evidence,

[00:17:11] **Rand:** and I was representing one of the defendants

[00:17:14] **Howard 3:** Right.

[00:17:16] **Rand:** I mean,

[00:17:16] **Rand:** what are the odds

[00:17:17] **Rand:** that? In upstate New York, in rural counties that

[00:17:20] **Rand:** have way more cows than people,

[00:17:23] **Rand:** and there was absolutely hardly any publicity

[00:17:25] **Rand:** about it. So there's another butterfly.

[00:17:28] **Rand:** I mean, my life was just,

[00:17:31] **Rand:** has been amazing that way.

[00:17:32] **Rand:** And, uh, and then of course the whole Appalachian Trail thing, which the way that came

[00:17:36] **Rand:** about is,

[00:17:37] **Rand:** is amazing too.

[00:17:39] **Howard:** Had you, uh, a-

[00:17:41] **Howard:** and believe it or not, we're gonna talk about

[00:17:43] **Howard:** and it's, it's trying to weave... I'm trying to figure out, look at, f- as I share with my clients when I'm coaching them, I like to know what the sandbox looks like and what the guardrails, where are the guardrails? but how, a- and, um, as far as being an, uh, a- an alcoholic, had [00:18:00] that always been, as you were g- as your career is moving forward, had the alcoholism always been there to the, until you made that decision one day, "I'm done with

[00:18:13] **Howard:** that

[00:18:13] **Howard:** another aha moment?

[00:18:15] **Rand:** in the beginning, like m- a lot of alcoholics, it was mostly a ce- ce- cele-

[00:18:22] **Rand:** celebratory thing I would do to celebrate,

[00:18:24] **Rand:** you know- Okay ... an outcome in a trial or what- like that, or partying

[00:18:28] **Rand:** with friends. I didn't... I wasn't crazy.

[00:18:31] **Howard 3:** Okay.

[00:18:31] **Rand:** I

[00:18:31] **Rand:** was very driven

[00:18:32] **Rand:** be successful. I was very s- much family-type man and stuff like that.

[00:18:38] **Rand:** Okay. But I would party and, and do stuff. And every once in a while I'd get a little overboard, and I would just stop for three or four or six months, okay. So I

[00:18:45] **Rand:** wasn't a slave to it for m- decades. The

[00:18:49] **Howard:** Okay

[00:18:49] **Rand:** problem is

[00:18:50] **Rand:** you are a real alcoholic, which turns out I am, you metabolize alcohol differently- Right

[00:18:56] **Rand:** and your body creates an excess of acetone, and that's what gives you that[00:19:00]

[00:19:00] **Rand:** unbelievably obsessive feeling that you have to drink.

[00:19:04] **Rand:** I thought it was some kind

[00:19:05] **Rand:** of a moral

[00:19:07] **Rand:** deficiency on my part when I got in my late

[00:19:09] **Rand:** 50s, early

[00:19:11] **Rand:** and, ... I lost

[00:19:12] **Rand:** control,

[00:19:13] **Rand:** Okay. And it just damn near killed me. I mean- Okay

[00:19:16] **Rand:** I could tell you some pretty awful stories. But for the most- I- And I actually thought- I can imagine ... yeah, I actually, before it really went off the rails, I made a decision not to, to stop my legal career.

[00:19:28] **Rand:** I, you

[00:19:29] **Rand:** I didn't need, uh, I didn't think I had enough

[00:19:32] **Rand:** money, but it turned out I did.

[00:19:35] **Rand:** Okay. I'm not ostentatious at all, so, but,

[00:19:38] **Rand:** uh, and then

[00:19:40] **Rand:** I just

[00:19:40] **Rand:** in on my...

[00:19:41] **Rand:** 'Cause it took me a while

[00:19:42] **Rand:** to, um,

[00:19:44] **Rand:** to co- overcome the obsession and to make a connection with a higher power, which changed my whole life dramatically.

[00:19:49] **Howard:** Okay.

[00:19:50] **Rand:** Yeah.

[00:19:50] **Howard:** Wh-

[00:19:51] **Howard:** when did this idea of, of even hiking the Appalachian Trail, let alone with your [00:20:00] brother, come about? Is it... 'Cause

[00:20:02] **Howard:** I, and

[00:20:03] **Howard:** what you have shared so far, other than the rigor of being in the Marines, other than the rigor of having served, uh, in a very hostile environment, I'm not hear- I m- mean,

[00:20:15] **Howard:** you

[00:20:15] **Howard:** talked about, uh, yeah, we'd go out in the forest, and I would go hunting, this and that.

[00:20:19] **Howard:** But

[00:20:21] **Howard:** The

[00:20:21] **Howard:** Appalachian Trail, when did that, that, that come onto your radar? W- and what planted that seed for you?

[00:20:29] **Howard:** Like, "I

[00:20:29] **Howard:** wanna go do this, and then h- how did you come... And y- y- talk a little bit also about your brother, how he came along, after the loss of, uh, of his spouse. But where did that linkage come in, like, this is something I wanna do?

[00:20:44] **Rand:** I actually did some hiking in

[00:20:46] **Rand:** the, uh, in the Smoky Mountains

[00:20:49] **Rand:** in, on some sections of the Appalachian Trail in my 40s and 50s.

[00:20:53] **Howard 3:** Okay.

[00:20:53] **Rand:** combat veterans come

[00:20:55] **Rand:** back, uh, things would pile up on

[00:20:58] **Rand:** I would just go into the woods for a [00:21:00] weekend and go hike.

[00:21:01] **Howard 3:** Oh.

[00:21:01] **Rand:** And, uh, and my brother had moved to

[00:21:04] **Rand:** So here's what happened.

[00:21:06] **Rand:** Okay. It was totally my brother's fault, Howard, 100%.

[00:21:09] **Howard:** I

[00:21:09] **Howard:** will stick, we'll stick with that

[00:21:12] **Rand:** Because when he came back

[00:21:15] **Rand:** from Vietnam, he,

[00:21:16] **Rand:** s- my mother's best friends

[00:21:18] **Rand:** was Edie. Right.

[00:21:20] **Howard 3:** Right?

[00:21:20] **Rand:** Edie was 14 years older than Ronnie, and when Ronnie met her and they

[00:21:25] **Rand:** went on their first date,

[00:21:27] **Rand:** she brought the three youngest of her seven children with

[00:21:31] **Rand:** her.

[00:21:33] **Rand:** Honest to God truth.

[00:21:34] **Howard:** That's called chaperoning. Wow

[00:21:36] **Rand:** So Edie's divorced with seven, with seven kids,

[00:21:40] **Rand:** and,

[00:21:41] **Rand:** and here's Ronnie,

[00:21:43] **Rand:** this, warrior back from the war, and they, they started

[00:21:47] **Rand:** out, and Ronnie fell madly

[00:21:48] **Rand:** in lo- they fell madly in love.

[00:21:50] **Rand:** And they, uh,

[00:21:52] **Rand:** they got involved in the Church of Latter Day Saints-

[00:21:55] **Howard 3:** Okay

[00:21:55] **Howard 3:** in,

[00:21:55] **Rand:** in, uh, Watertown, New York. They bu- they

[00:21:59] **Rand:** a house [00:22:00] close to there. they rai- Ronnie helped raise the kids and do all that stuff. They got very involved

[00:22:05] **Rand:** in the church. Ronnie was

[00:22:06] **Rand:** bishop for four years. funeral services, c- weddings, all kinds

[00:22:10] **Rand:** of stuff, and then they ended up moving out to Utah.

[00:22:14] **Rand:** so Ronnie lived in Utah for, like, 35 years, while I'm on the East Coast. Some of their kids are on the East Coast,

[00:22:21] **Rand:** so they would come back

[00:22:22] **Rand:** summer. We would spend, like, one day a year together.

[00:22:25] **Howard 3:** Okay. And

[00:22:26] **Rand:** me and my youngest brother, Marty, who also liked a little juice now and then, he and I would get a little buzz going on at these picnics we'd have,

[00:22:34] **Rand:** and then we'd start making

[00:22:35] **Rand:** of Ronnie for

[00:22:36] **Rand:** 'cause he wasn't having any fun 'cause

[00:22:37] **Rand:** he didn't drink, and he

[00:22:38] **Rand:** a bishop in the Mormon Church. And-

[00:22:40] **Rand:** and

[00:22:41] **Rand:** And it was all in good nature. my siblings and I have always been very respectful and, and decent with each other. Mm-hmm. We never had any, uh, problems

[00:22:51] **Rand:** that I know of anyway, but we weren't really

[00:22:54] **Rand:** close.

[00:22:55] **Rand:** Well, then Edie had a stroke in 2011. By then they [00:23:00] have, uh, they ended up with 27 grandchildren.

[00:23:03] **Rand:** My brother today has 27 grandchildren

[00:23:06] **Rand:** and 30 great-grandchildren.

[00:23:08] **Howard 3:** Oh,

[00:23:08] **Rand:** wow. 'Cause a lot of them got involved in the Mormon Church, and they believe in- Yeah ... they're like rabbits. They get together

[00:23:14] **Rand:** real young, and they're very frisky,

[00:23:17] **Rand:** and their families start, you know- Right

[00:23:21] **Rand:** in their

[00:23:21] **Rand:** late teens, early 20s,

[00:23:23] **Rand:** and, uh, that's kinda what happened there.

[00:23:26] **Rand:** But Edie

[00:23:26] **Rand:** had a massive stroke in 2011,

[00:23:29] **Rand:** and unfortunately it was one of those deals where it didn't get better.

[00:23:34] **Rand:** It actually got worse, and Ronnie took care of her for six years.

[00:23:38] **Rand:** So she passed in November, I think, 17th of

[00:23:43] **Rand:** 2017,

[00:23:44] **Rand:** and

[00:23:45] **Rand:** I

[00:23:45] **Rand:** he was struggling.

[00:23:46] **Rand:** I was talking

[00:23:46] **Rand:** to him on the phone. I finally went out there.

[00:23:48] **Rand:** I had never been there before. And I went out to

[00:23:50] **Rand:** house in January,

[00:23:53] **Rand:** and

[00:23:53] **Rand:** hiking in the desert in Utah.

[00:23:55] **Rand:** We're both pretty...

[00:23:56] **Rand:** know,

[00:23:56] **Rand:** we're in our 70s. I have an artificial knee

[00:23:59] **Rand:** [00:24:00] Mm-hmm

[00:24:00] **Rand:** in my left leg

[00:24:01] **Rand:** that should've been worn out by then, and my right leg is a half inch shorter than my left from

[00:24:06] **Rand:** a whole bunch of problems,

[00:24:08] **Rand:** and I have nothing but bone on bone in my- Mm

[00:24:11] **Rand:** right leg, so

[00:24:12] **Rand:** I limp

[00:24:13] **Rand:** pretty badly. Yeah. I like to brag I'm the limpiest man that ever hiked the Appalachian Trail.

[00:24:18] **Howard:** yeah, it's, that's an added burden too of,

[00:24:22] **Rand:** yes. I could tell you some stories, but so

[00:24:25] **Rand:** I'm hiking with Ron, and, a- and I said, "So what are you gonna do?" And he

[00:24:29] **Rand:** says, "I'm gonna hike the Appalachian Trail."

[00:24:31] **Howard:** Oh,

[00:24:33] **Rand:** I

[00:24:33] **Howard:** so he was the spark

[00:24:35] **Rand:** Yes, absolutely. And I was very skeptical because

[00:24:38] **Rand:** like I said, I had done

[00:24:39] **Rand:** hiking there. I

[00:24:40] **Rand:** mean,

[00:24:41] **Rand:** it's unbelievably, uh, difficult. and we're ... I'm 72. He's 71. And I said, "How are you gonna do that?" And he says, "Well, I've already..." Turned out he'd

[00:24:50] **Rand:** done a lot

[00:24:50] **Rand:** prep.

[00:24:51] **Rand:** He'd bought

[00:24:51] **Rand:** all the maps.

[00:24:52] **Rand:** He'd got- Right ... food. He had

[00:24:54] **Rand:** gear already.

[00:24:55] **Rand:** He had it all planned out pretty much,

[00:24:57] **Rand:** and then he said, "Well, I'm

[00:24:58] **Rand:** gonna get on a bus and go [00:25:00] to Springer Mountain and start walking." I said,

[00:25:04] **Rand:** "Ronnie, that's not a

[00:25:05] **Rand:** good plan. I'll

[00:25:07] **Rand:** go with you."

[00:25:08] **Rand:** So that's

[00:25:09] **Rand:** what we ended up doing,

[00:25:10] **Rand:** and in the book I wrote, the first version of it, I wrote in there af- two weeks max. And when Ronnie was looking at

[00:25:18] **Rand:** it, he goes,

[00:25:20] **Rand:** "Two weeks max? What, what's that mean? You didn't

[00:25:23] **Rand:** think we could do it?" I said, "Hell no, I didn't think we could do it.

[00:25:26] **Rand:** I figured

[00:25:26] **Rand:** weeks max, and you would get, come to your

[00:25:28] **Rand:** senses and we'd go home." But,

[00:25:32] **Rand:** hap, what happened at that two-week point then?

[00:25:36] **Rand:** we were in...

[00:25:38] **Rand:** So let me tell you a

[00:25:39] **Rand:** a little bit about the Appal- Appalachian Trail.

[00:25:41] **Howard:** Okay

[00:25:42] **Rand:** It starts at Springer Mountain, Georgia. Right. The, the first, I think it's 82 miles, takes you to Fontana

[00:25:48] **Rand:** Dam.

[00:25:49] **Rand:** It's right at the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, and Clingmans Dome and

[00:25:54] **Rand:** all that. It's in, right outside of Maryville, which

[00:25:57] **Rand:** very close to Knoxville, where I have two daughters that live.[00:26:00]

[00:26:00] **Rand:** Okay. so in that, I just didn't

[00:26:03] **Rand:** think we could,

[00:26:04] **Rand:** we would be able to finish it, but, um, w- we actually did. We

[00:26:09] **Rand:** went, we... It was amazing. But, uh, I struggled. It was really hard in the beginning, and I ended up,

[00:26:17] **Rand:** actually, I thought...

[00:26:19] **Rand:** Well, my daughter thought I'd broken a bone in my

[00:26:21] **Rand:** leg. I thought it was a really severe sh- case

[00:26:25] **Rand:** of shin splints, except

[00:26:27] **Rand:** the fact that when I got

[00:26:28] **Rand:** in the

[00:26:28] **Rand:** at night

[00:26:28] **Rand:** and went

[00:26:29] **Rand:** sleep, normally if you

[00:26:30] **Rand:** have shin

[00:26:30] **Rand:** in the morning

[00:26:31] **Rand:** they'll be, you'll feel, you've,

[00:26:32] **Rand:** you'll be all right until you aggravate it

[00:26:35] **Rand:** again.

[00:26:36] **Rand:** But this pain wasn't

[00:26:37] **Rand:** letting

[00:26:38] **Rand:** So when we got to, uh, Fontana Dam, uh, I told Ronnie,

[00:26:42] **Rand:** "I gotta go

[00:26:43] **Rand:** some... I'm gonna have to go to urgent care. This is, something's really not right."

[00:26:48] **Rand:** So,

[00:26:48] **Rand:** I drove to my daughter's, which was only,

[00:26:51] **Rand:** 30 miles away.

[00:26:52] **Rand:** I went to

[00:26:53] **Rand:** bad for that ... went to urgent- Anyway,

[00:26:54] **Rand:** turned out I had

[00:26:55] **Rand:** very

[00:26:55] **Rand:** severe

[00:26:56] **Rand:** infection

[00:26:57] **Rand:** because I have hammer [00:27:00] toes,

[00:27:00] **Rand:** And the top of my toes would go... Every night

[00:27:04] **Rand:** my socks

[00:27:04] **Rand:** be full of

[00:27:05] **Rand:** blood. And

[00:27:06] **Rand:** Oh,

[00:27:06] **Rand:** I didn't

[00:27:06] **Rand:** okay. And I didn't think too much about it. I'd just wash them out and let them dry out and put them on again in the

[00:27:10] **Rand:** the morning.

[00:27:11] **Howard 3:** Right.

[00:27:11] **Rand:** But I got an infection, and by

[00:27:13] **Rand:** the

[00:27:14] **Rand:** I got to medical treatment in the hospital, I was...

[00:27:17] **Rand:** They said I was about 12 hours from being septic.

[00:27:21] **Howard:** Hmm.

[00:27:22] **Rand:** So they put me on major antibiotics, and, uh, I was off the trail for

[00:27:27] **Rand:** about a week,

[00:27:28] **Rand:** and then I went back on with, with Ro- And we

[00:27:31] **Rand:** just had

[00:27:31] **Rand:** kind of problems,

[00:27:32] **Rand:** and we

[00:27:33] **Rand:** kept

[00:27:33] **Rand:** going. But the Appalachian

[00:27:35] **Rand:** goes from Springer Mountain, Georgia- Right

[00:27:38] **Rand:** to Katahdin Mountain in Maine,

[00:27:40] **Rand:** which is

[00:27:41] **Rand:** right up

[00:27:41] **Rand:** at the top part of Maine. Oh, yeah. It's 2,200 miles. Oh, yeah. It goes over 600 mountains through 14 states.

[00:27:49] **Howard:** Right.

[00:27:51] **Rand:** 550 miles in Virginia. You think you're never

[00:27:53] **Rand:** gonna get out of Vi-

[00:27:54] **Rand:** Virginia. When you're hiking the Appalachian Trail. The elevation [00:28:00] changes is 465,000 feet, right?

[00:28:05] **Rand:** That's almost a half a million

[00:28:06] **Rand:** feet of up and down on the Appalachian Trail. And

[00:28:09] **Howard:** 10 miles a day every day, 120 days

[00:28:13] **Rand:** 11. Yeah, we averaged 11.

[00:28:15] **Howard:** Okay

[00:28:17] **Rand:** The, uh, about 3 million people t- hike on some part of it, like you were talk-

[00:28:22] **Rand:** mentioning

[00:28:22] **Rand:** you had done that. 3,000 or

[00:28:24] **Rand:** or so every year try to

[00:28:25] **Rand:** the whole thing.

[00:28:26] **Rand:** Of that, about 17%, about 450 people-

[00:28:29] **Howard 3:** Right ...

[00:28:30] **Rand:** actually

[00:28:31] **Rand:** do the whole thing.

[00:28:32] **Rand:** But That was amazingly difficult. After my infection,

[00:28:37] **Rand:** we actually jumped up to

[00:28:39] **Rand:** Damascus, which is up by Bristol.

[00:28:42] **Howard 3:** Mm-hmm.

[00:28:43] **Rand:** and went north

[00:28:44] **Rand:** because

[00:28:44] **Rand:** we had gotten word that, uh, there was, like,

[00:28:47] **Rand:** foot and a half

[00:28:48] **Rand:** in

[00:28:48] **Rand:** Smoky Mountains. A whole bunch of hikers got stranded, and one group of, there was 17 of them

[00:28:55] **Rand:** that got stranded together, and

[00:28:57] **Rand:** they got a hold of forest service and said, "You [00:29:00] gotta come and get us."

[00:29:01] **Rand:** And they said, "Hell no, you're gonna

[00:29:02] **Rand:** have to walk out

[00:29:02] **Rand:** yourself." So they had walked out. But so we jumped up to Damascus and actually did the lower part of Virginia, and then went back to Damascus,

[00:29:11] **Rand:** and then went back south,

[00:29:13] **Rand:** Okay. And

[00:29:15] **Rand:** till we got back to, uh, Fontana

[00:29:17] **Rand:** and

[00:29:18] **Rand:** then we went

[00:29:18] **Rand:** back up to Pearisburg in Virginia and just kept going after that.

[00:29:21] **Howard:** Okay.

[00:29:22] **Rand:** But we had

[00:29:23] **Rand:** to jump

[00:29:23] **Rand:** around a little bit

[00:29:24] **Howard:** All right.

[00:29:25] **Howard:** Is, it's, I've heard that a lot of

[00:29:30] **Howard:** hikers

[00:29:31] **Howard:** on, on the AT, i- it's a solitary thing. And y- yes, you're gonna meet folks along the way, along the trail at the, where you stop at night and, and, and, and, uh, get in your tent. But what was it like for you hiking with your brother, and what was the, what were the, like what were the conversations like, and how did you kind of feed off of each other, support each other, or [00:30:00] maybe just get pissed off at each other?

[00:30:03] **Howard:** What was that like? Yeah, I don't

[00:30:04] **Rand:** think we ever got pissed off at each other. Okay. Which is very

[00:30:09] **Rand:** good thing.

[00:30:10] **Rand:** we, we, we were very, uh, helpful to each other. Ronnie and I didn't hike together. Because of my limping, I could not keep up with him. Okay. And it drove me crazy. I could hike the same pace as him without much difficult.

[00:30:22] **Rand:** you have kind of a natural pace that your body can, if you go slower, you're just wasting time. You try to go

[00:30:28] **Rand:** a bit faster, you're

[00:30:29] **Rand:** probably gonna be in really bad shape at

[00:30:31] **Rand:** the end.

[00:30:32] **Howard:** Mm-hmm.

[00:30:32] **Rand:** So you, you kinda have that gear that works

[00:30:35] **Rand:** for you. Well, my gear was l-

[00:30:36] **Rand:** about the same as Ronnie's, but when you limp like I did, I, every step

[00:30:40] **Rand:** I'm, like, two

[00:30:41] **Rand:** shorter than he is, so he just pulls away from me, right?

[00:30:44] **Howard 3:** Okay. Okay.

[00:30:44] **Rand:** And then

[00:30:44] **Rand:** he would stop and wait for me, and then when I'd catch up

[00:30:47] **Rand:** him, he'd turn, like I had to be 10 feet away, and he'd

[00:30:49] **Rand:** turn and go, and

[00:30:50] **Rand:** God, I can't keep up with him."

[00:30:53] **Rand:** So we didn't

[00:30:54] **Rand:** together. We had two vehicles, so we did it

[00:30:56] **Rand:** a little bit untraditionally in

[00:30:58] **Rand:** fact that we had two [00:31:00] vehicles.

[00:31:00] **Rand:** There's some kind of a road crossing the Appalachian Trail every 10 to 15 miles. Yeah. A lot of them are dirt roads. Some of them are really bad. Right. there's long stretches in the Smoky Mountains. There's two stretches about 40 miles,

[00:31:14] **Rand:** no roads.

[00:31:15] **Rand:** Mm-hmm. Priest is another area up in Virginia. So there's some places where you have to carry a full pack and

[00:31:20] **Rand:** go the whole,

[00:31:21] **Rand:** the whole 9 yards.

[00:31:22] **Rand:** nine yards.

[00:31:23] **Rand:** Most days what we did, I like to brag

[00:31:26] **Rand:** I slept in

[00:31:26] **Rand:** tent on the Appalachian

[00:31:27] **Rand:** Trail every night, because I did, but a

[00:31:30] **Rand:** lot of

[00:31:30] **Rand:** of nights my truck was right, five feet away,

[00:31:34] **Rand:** right?

[00:31:34] **Howard:** Ah, okay. So- So we got all

[00:31:36] **Rand:** our food, we got

[00:31:37] **Rand:** all the gear

[00:31:38] **Rand:** need and everything, so we're carrying day packs most of the time. Ah, okay. And in the morning I would start out going north.

[00:31:45] **Rand:** Ronnie would

[00:31:46] **Rand:** would drive down the mountain,

[00:31:49] **Rand:** get down the valley, go

[00:31:50] **Rand:** down

[00:31:50] **Rand:** the next road that went over the Appalachian Trail, drive up to the trail, park his car, and he would hike towards me and I would hike towards him.

[00:31:58] **Howard:** Gotcha.

[00:31:58] **Howard:** Okay.

[00:31:59] **Rand:** Then we would meet, and he would always say, he wouldn't, when he would meet me,[00:32:00]

[00:32:00] **Rand:** and he would always say, he would, when he

[00:32:04] **Rand:** he would say, he would look at this thing, he had a Fitbit and, uh, he had a

[00:32:08] **Rand:** map thing that he was using.

[00:32:10] **Rand:** I chose

[00:32:11] **Rand:** not to do what he

[00:32:12] **Rand:** He was studying maps and all, he wanted to know all the technical

[00:32:14] **Rand:** stuff because he's a

[00:32:16] **Rand:** commercial

[00:32:16] **Rand:** pilot, right? That's what they do.

[00:32:18] **Rand:** They gotta know all the facts.

[00:32:19] **Howard:** Gotta have checklists

[00:32:20] **Rand:** Yeah. I decided

[00:32:22] **Rand:** after a few

[00:32:23] **Rand:** days, I'm just gonna hike it like it's 1970,

[00:32:26] **Rand:** or even 1990,

[00:32:28] **Rand:** like, Bill

[00:32:29] **Rand:** Irwin did

[00:32:29] **Rand:** in, when- Okay

[00:32:30] **Rand:** he did it.

[00:32:31] **Rand:** And, and I'm not gonna pay att- I'm not

[00:32:34] **Rand:** gonna know what the elevation

[00:32:35] **Rand:** are gonna be.

[00:32:36] **Rand:** I'm just gonna

[00:32:37] **Rand:** enjoy it. And I

[00:32:38] **Rand:** took a lot of pictures. Ronnie took hardly no pictures.

[00:32:41] **Rand:** was just marching. For him it was like, "I'm doing this. I'm gonna be in nature. I'm gonna get

[00:32:46] **Rand:** over

[00:32:47] **Rand:** grief and sadness." And, and I was, like, more, more in the mindset, "I am never coming here again."

[00:32:54] **Howard:** I just want

[00:32:54] **Howard:** this. My one...

[00:32:55] **Rand:** I'm, I'm... No, but I, in

[00:32:57] **Rand:** a good way.

[00:32:58] **Rand:** I'm never gonna be in this spot [00:33:00] again.

[00:33:00] **Rand:** I am going to enjoy it. Okay.

[00:33:01] **Rand:** right?

[00:33:02] **Rand:** I'm trying to take it all in. I go around the corner and say, "Oh my God, look at that," and I take a picture.

[00:33:08] **Rand:** so Ronnie going south s- was running into hikers all the time.

[00:33:12] **Howard 3:** Right.

[00:33:13] **Rand:** Yeah. And when we were going north, uh, when I was going north, in the beginning there was, a lot

[00:33:19] **Rand:** of

[00:33:19] **Rand:** were passing me

[00:33:20] **Rand:** 'cause they'd be faster.

[00:33:21] **Rand:** We even, we almost never stopped, Howard.

[00:33:24] **Rand:** Never stopped except when Ronnie and I met. Right. And then Ronnie would always go, look and see and go, "Well, bro, I've walked 6.4 miles and you've walked 5.9." "Oh, okay. Good, bro." So this, he did this every day. So one day we were in an

[00:33:40] **Rand:** area where it wasn't really arduous

[00:33:43] **Rand:** a lot of rocks and stuff like that, and I thought, "I'm gonna, I'm gonna beat him."

[00:33:47] **Rand:** So was jogging in

[00:33:51] **Howard 3:** some places.

[00:33:51] **Howard:** Oh, wow

[00:33:52] **Rand:** So when I ran into Ronnie, I re- immediately his face, he goes. And then we're sitting there having a little snack

[00:33:59] **Rand:** and he goes, [00:34:00] "I've walked 5.9,

[00:34:02] **Rand:** and you've gone..." "6.3.

[00:34:05] **Rand:** How did you do that? Well, I never beat him again. That was

[00:34:09] **Howard:** the one

[00:34:10] **Rand:** and only

[00:34:10] **Howard:** time.

[00:34:11] **Rand:** A

[00:34:11] **Rand:** Yeah,

[00:34:15] **Howard 3:** Exactly. A-

[00:34:16] **Rand:** exactly

[00:34:16] **Howard:** A- as you, uh, and I, I, I do love the fact that, you

[00:34:21] **Howard:** y- this

[00:34:22] **Howard:** was a, a, uh, kind of an, a, a, a, an alternative approach to hiking the trail. Okay? And, and then, i- it's also testament there's no one way to do it. I mean, you have, yes, you have to be prepared.

[00:34:34] **Howard:** Yes, you have to have good mindset and want to do it. And,

[00:34:38] **Howard:** and, and

[00:34:41] **Howard:** I love the fact that you also were in the moment, like, "I'm never gonna do this again, so I wanna enjoy it." 'Cause your book is actually very interesting, and y- we were chatting about it before the show. It's a big book. So how did you organize the book, and what, what are the, are the, a lot of those photos [00:35:00] that you took

[00:35:01] **Howard:** are

[00:35:01] **Howard:** actually i- in each chapter as, as well

[00:35:05] **Rand:** Correct. Yes. That's a good question. Yeah,

[00:35:07] **Rand:** this is what the book

[00:35:08] **Rand:** like on the outside. Spiritual Path to- Turn

[00:35:10] **Howard:** it side, turn it on the, uh, on the, on the spine. That's a thick book

[00:35:15] **Rand:** Oh yeah, it's 364 pages.

[00:35:19] **Rand:** It's

[00:35:19] **Rand:** full of pictures.

[00:35:22] **Howard:** Oh, wow.

[00:35:23] **Howard:** Nice ...

[00:35:23] **Rand:** somebody buys this book, they

[00:35:26] **Rand:** can hike the...

[00:35:27] **Rand:** If you're, ex- you're a hiker, and you're in your 80s, and you're like, "I'm not gonna hike the Appalachian Trail, but I sure would like to," you could actually do it vicariously by...

[00:35:35] **Rand:** Because, uh,

[00:35:36] **Rand:** every other chapter is about where we were, where

[00:35:41] **Rand:** we went, what

[00:35:42] **Rand:** mountains and

[00:35:43] **Rand:** things

[00:35:43] **Rand:** we went over, what the elevation changes were, some of that kind of stuff, and then pictures

[00:35:47] **Rand:** of what

[00:35:48] **Rand:** looked like along the way.

[00:35:50] **Howard 3:** Mm-hmm.

[00:35:50] **Rand:** right?

[00:35:51] **Rand:** So you can actually

[00:35:53] **Rand:** through the book and see what the trail looks like on that day, the things

[00:35:58] **Rand:** that I saw. The best

[00:35:59] **Rand:** Oh, that's- ... of the [00:36:00] things that

[00:36:00] **Rand:** I saw. I took 5,000

[00:36:02] **Rand:** There's 500

[00:36:03] **Rand:** in

[00:36:03] **Rand:** the book

[00:36:04] **Howard:** I love that.

[00:36:05] **Howard:** A- as

[00:36:06] **Howard:** you were on the trail, a- and, earlier in our conversation as you were, as you were sharing about your journey in the military, and that first colonel that, that you talked about, who in some ways was like a guardian angel helping to shift your trajectory of where you're gonna go.

[00:36:27] **Howard:** Then you had your friend that was, kept giving you these assignments in Puerto Rico. Was there anybody on the trail that you just connected with and they were, whether, not so much a guardian angel, but just, "Wow, this, I like this person. I could, I'm glad I met them." Was there anybody like that

[00:36:48] **Howard:** you met? Oh my

[00:36:48] **Rand:** gosh, yeah. And there's pictures of, uh, some of the hikers in the book

[00:36:52] **Rand:** too.

[00:36:53] **Rand:** it was amazing the people on the Appalachian Trail that I, that we ran

[00:36:57] **Rand:** into.

[00:36:58] **Rand:** And you get into a bubble [00:37:00] where you see the same people, uh, for a while, and then they take a day off,

[00:37:05] **Rand:** and

[00:37:05] **Rand:** move ahead of them or, or whatever. And so you had like these bubbles. And one in... So I

[00:37:14] **Rand:** was kind

[00:37:14] **Rand:** a spectacle in a way, well, both Ronnie and I were,

[00:37:17] **Rand:** 'cause we're a lot older than

[00:37:18] **Rand:** Mm-hmm

[00:37:19] **Rand:** anybody else, right? And with my limping too, that

[00:37:23] **Rand:** kinda s- stuck out to people. And, and, uh,

[00:37:27] **Rand:** fairly early on,

[00:37:28] **Rand:** on, I don't know where we were exactly, probably

[00:37:31] **Rand:** lower Virginia, ran into

[00:37:33] **Rand:** this

[00:37:34] **Rand:** Oriental man. Mm-hmm. He's like 5'4",

[00:37:39] **Rand:** dressed like

[00:37:39] **Rand:** samurai warrior, right? He's got the man bun

[00:37:44] **Rand:** on

[00:37:44] **Rand:** back. He could've had a sword in there for all I know.

[00:37:47] **Rand:** I mean,

[00:37:47] **Rand:** he's wearing these robes, but he's got a full pack and everything, and

[00:37:50] **Rand:** the, and the hiking sticks and

[00:37:52] **Rand:** stuff. And his,

[00:37:53] **Rand:** his trail name was Half Slow. I

[00:37:55] **Rand:** don't know where he came up

[00:37:56] **Rand:** that, but-

[00:37:57] **Howard:** Okay

[00:37:58] **Rand:** so one day [00:38:00] he

[00:38:00] **Rand:** got s-

[00:38:01] **Rand:** sick of watching me limp, I guess. I don't know. He came up to me and he goes,

[00:38:06] **Rand:** "Rambo." That was

[00:38:07] **Rand:** trail name.

[00:38:08] **Rand:** Ronnie gave me my trail name, Ranbo. He said, "Ranbo." Ranbo. Okay. "Stop. I wanna... We're gonna hold

[00:38:15] **Rand:** hands. I'm gonna

[00:38:16] **Rand:** a prayer. I'm gonna help you with your knees." And I said, "Okay."

[00:38:21] **Rand:** So we're

[00:38:22] **Rand:** in the

[00:38:23] **Rand:** middle of the trail holding hands,

[00:38:25] **Rand:** and he's saying a prayer, and people are walking by

[00:38:29] **Rand:** us, like, looking at us a little bit funny.

[00:38:32] **Rand:** And I'm standing there, and he goes on and on and on. And all of a sudden I hear him say,

[00:38:36] **Rand:** "Macbeth."

[00:38:37] **Rand:** And I, and then I realized he's reciting Shakespeare. Nice. And I go, "Uh, hey, Absalom, I think... You know

[00:38:46] **Rand:** what? I think,

[00:38:47] **Rand:** I think I feel better.

[00:38:48] **Rand:** I, uh,

[00:38:49] **Rand:** I, I really

[00:38:49] **Rand:** appreciate you, you doing this

[00:38:51] **Rand:** me." And he

[00:38:52] **Rand:** said, "Okay, fine."

[00:38:53] **Rand:** And we let

[00:38:54] **Rand:** of hands, and I walked away, and I did. The pain in my le- in my knees was gone. [00:39:00] Ah.

[00:39:00] **Rand:** "How the heck did that work?" I

[00:39:01] **Rand:** don't know. Of course, it came back, but, you

[00:39:04] **Rand:** know. oh, yeah, I could tell you all kinds of stories of,

[00:39:07] **Rand:** of the other hikers and, uh, that's a big part of it. everybody out there is probably

[00:39:14] **Rand:** there-

[00:39:14] **Rand:** for- Because

[00:39:17] **Rand:** of some aspect of their life they don't like.

[00:39:20] **Howard:** Mm-hmm.

[00:39:20] **Rand:** To be honest with you,

[00:39:21] **Rand:** day, one night my brother goes, "Hey bro, there's a lot of weird people." There is. He's right. Mm-hmm. There's a lot of weird people

[00:39:28] **Rand:** out here.

[00:39:29] **Rand:** And I go, "Yeah,

[00:39:30] **Rand:** Ronnie,

[00:39:31] **Rand:** know. We're all weird." And he goes- Mm ... "Man, you and

[00:39:34] **Rand:** I aren't weird." And I go, "Yeah, we are.

[00:39:37] **Rand:** Everybody out here is weird, bro.

[00:39:39] **Rand:** Normal people don't

[00:39:41] **Howard:** do this."

[00:39:43] **Howard:** You, you just got, you just have gotten used to it over the years. It's like the frog in the, in the water s- in the pot of water story. That slow boil, the frog's never gonna jump out of that water. So it's ... So you guys are who you are. You've got a 70-some years [00:40:00] of getting to that point versus

[00:40:03] **Howard:** the,

[00:40:04] **Howard:** the, you

[00:40:04] **Howard:** just

[00:40:05] **Howard:** jumping right in.

[00:40:05] **Howard:** Oh, let's just, let's just do it,

[00:40:07] **Howard:** and

[00:40:07] **Howard:** not be prepared.

[00:40:09] **Howard:** Right.

[00:40:09] **Howard:** What w- would imagine the ... I mean, those photos are very interesting to me, 'cause I'm a, a, I have a photography background as well, and I love just being in the moment, slow hiking, slow birding, just co- even coaching in nature. going on walks, coaching folks on the trail.

[00:40:30] **Howard:** And I

[00:40:31] **Howard:** love

[00:40:31] **Howard:** just being in the moment. I don't know that I could do the trail, because I'd also wanna feel like I would need to finish, get to Katahdin, and do that. Did you g- When you got up there, did you and your brother have the poles in your hand with the Katahdin sign behind you going, "Yay"?

[00:40:48] **Rand:** No. I have that

[00:40:49] **Rand:** picture of me on

[00:40:50] **Rand:** Killington Mountain in Vermont.

[00:40:52] **Rand:** I

[00:40:53] **Rand:** only did 1,863 miles.

[00:40:56] **Rand:** Okay Ronnie-

[00:40:58] **Howard:** 'em?

[00:40:58] **Rand:** finishes

[00:40:58] **Rand:** up

[00:40:59] **Rand:** with Rick while I [00:41:00] was having my hip replaced because

[00:41:03] **Rand:** I fell down

[00:41:04] **Rand:** a,

[00:41:05] **Rand:** a really bad rock slide in Wilcox Mountain in Massachusetts.

[00:41:11] **Howard:** Oh, okay.

[00:41:12] **Rand:** Yeah.

[00:41:12] **Rand:** And

[00:41:14] **Rand:** I would have been killed except my foot

[00:41:17] **Rand:** got wedged

[00:41:18] **Rand:** two, uh, rocks, and that's what stopped me from

[00:41:21] **Rand:** tumbling

[00:41:21] **Rand:** all the way.

[00:41:22] **Rand:** I... It was hor- ... I was 10 feet from the top, Howard. I'm almost to the top of the mountain. I've already been hiking

[00:41:29] **Rand:** for, like, three hours

[00:41:30] **Rand:** get here, right? But I'm on this- Yeah ... huge rock slide. There's pictures of rock slides in the book. I don't- not that particular one, but... And you look at them and

[00:41:39] **Rand:** and you go,

[00:41:39] **Rand:** "There's no way the trail

[00:41:41] **Rand:** goes up that."

[00:41:42] **Rand:** Mm-hmm.

[00:41:43] **Rand:** And then you look way up and you

[00:41:44] **Rand:** a white blaze mark, Mm-hmm. Damn,

[00:41:47] **Rand:** that's where the trail goes. How, how could they

[00:41:50] **Rand:** do that?

[00:41:51] **Howard:** Why would they do that?

[00:41:52] **Rand:** Why? Yeah. Well, what... See, the trail used to be, in the '70s, the trail was only, like, 22,000 miles. Mm-hmm.

[00:41:59] **Rand:** [00:42:00] It's 200 miles longer because every year they started making it

[00:42:02] **Rand:** over the top of more and more mountains.

[00:42:05] **Rand:** Back in the '70s, they didn't go over the top of every mountain in the, in, like, in Shenandoah Mountain area. There's a road that goes through. That's where the trail went. Now it goes over every mountain in the Shenandoah National Forest.

[00:42:20] **Howard:** They're making you work for it.

[00:42:22] **Rand:** W- would- Absolutely. And they've added to it.

[00:42:23] **Rand:** Mm. That's why every year

[00:42:25] **Rand:** they add more m-

[00:42:26] **Rand:** miles to it, and it's, uh- Wow ... I don't know if they're gonna do that anymore. They're kinda running out of mountains, I think, but, Yeah, you'll be

[00:42:32] **Howard:** in Canada next.

[00:42:33] **Rand:** When you- Well, it does go into Canada,

[00:42:35] **Rand:** Canada, actually.

[00:42:36] **Howard:** It does? Okay.

[00:42:39] **Howard:** When

[00:42:39] **Howard:** you finished, again, your, your decision, here's where I'm going to end,

[00:42:47] **Howard:** w-

[00:42:47] **Howard:** how did you feel? Was there, like, the, "Oh, thank God," or the euphoria? Or what, what was the s- what, what, if any, transformation[00:43:00]

[00:43:00] **Rand:** What happened- Came

[00:43:01] **Howard:** about for you

[00:43:02] **Rand:** Yeah, what happened

[00:43:03] **Rand:** me, so I fell down that rock slide, I crawl back up to the top. I'm

[00:43:09] **Rand:** standing there, look,

[00:43:10] **Rand:** I cannot go down this

[00:43:11] **Rand:** m- I can't go back down. It's just, it was...

[00:43:14] **Rand:** I w- I probably would've, right? I was afraid I was

[00:43:17] **Rand:** gonna die on that stupid rock slide.

[00:43:19] **Rand:** I'm standing on the earth and trail on the top of Wilcox Mountain. I gotta go nine miles to get to

[00:43:24] **Rand:** where I'm supposed

[00:43:25] **Rand:** be, and somewhere in there I'm gonna run

[00:43:27] **Rand:** into

[00:43:27] **Rand:** brother. Or I can go three miles back down, and I,

[00:43:30] **Rand:** Nope, I'm not.

[00:43:31] **Rand:** So I just started walking. The pain was incredible. Mm-hmm. The pain was ... When I fell, I closed my eyes. I did that in combat a couple times too, when

[00:43:41] **Rand:** I was in a

[00:43:42] **Rand:** where there was nothing I can

[00:43:42] **Rand:** do and it

[00:43:43] **Rand:** gonna be bad.

[00:43:44] **Rand:** and I, I

[00:43:46] **Rand:** just have that habit. I closed my

[00:43:48] **Rand:** eyes and I thought, "This is gonna hurt really bad." Well,

[00:43:51] **Rand:** it

[00:43:51] **Rand:** hurt 100

[00:43:53] **Rand:** 100 times har-

[00:43:54] **Rand:** worse than I thought. I don't even know how I stayed conscious. I

[00:43:57] **Rand:** it was

[00:43:58] **Rand:** unbelievable. [00:44:00] So anyway, I got up there,

[00:44:02] **Rand:** I walked out. After a couple miles, the

[00:44:04] **Rand:** pain kind of morphs into more like a hot type of ache.

[00:44:10] **Rand:** And that night, uh, we went to bed. I was really hurting

[00:44:15] **Rand:** bad, and then the next morning I couldn't,

[00:44:17] **Rand:** I couldn't walk.

[00:44:18] **Howard:** Okay.

[00:44:19] **Rand:** So I said to my brother, I said, "I'm gonna

[00:44:21] **Rand:** have to,

[00:44:22] **Rand:** I can't go any further."

[00:44:24] **Rand:** So

[00:44:24] **Rand:** we went home for a

[00:44:25] **Rand:** a month. I

[00:44:27] **Rand:** not get any medical treatment. I went home, rested a couple days, started walking again. Okay. And then finally one day Ronnie calls me up and says, "You wanna go back and see if we can finish

[00:44:39] **Rand:** it?" I said, "Sure, why not?"

[00:44:42] **Rand:** Okay. So but I was, I was kidding myself.

[00:44:45] **Rand:** I actually did another 200 miles after that.

[00:44:49] **Rand:** We got into the Whites in New Hampshire. Now, this is real mountains, right? M- Mm-hmm ... Mount

[00:44:54] **Rand:** Washington,

[00:44:55] **Howard:** Yeah

[00:44:56] **Rand:** 6,600 and

[00:44:57] **Rand:** some feet.

[00:44:58] **Rand:** Highest winds ever [00:45:00] recorded

[00:45:00] **Rand:** North America, like 244 miles an hour I

[00:45:03] **Rand:** think it is.

[00:45:04] **Rand:** Mm-hmm. We got to Mount Washington, and it was closed 'cause of a snow storm

[00:45:09] **Rand:** in

[00:45:10] **Rand:** July or whatever it was. August, I guess. Oh, wow. So we jumped up. We did Moosilauke, which is a really tough mountain, and we did Wolf. And then we went back to do Washington, which was gonna be a three-dayer where we were gonna have to climb with a full pack.

[00:45:28] **Rand:** The whole nine yards, right? Mm-hmm. Not just the

[00:45:31] **Rand:** day pack.

[00:45:32] **Rand:** We walked in,

[00:45:34] **Rand:** started up.

[00:45:35] **Rand:** There's a picture in

[00:45:36] **Rand:** the book of me-

[00:45:38] **Rand:** And I turned around and I started crying. Oh.

[00:45:42] **Rand:** My brother, I don't

[00:45:42] **Rand:** think he'd ever seen me cry my whole life, and I just said, "I can't do it anymore." The pain

[00:45:46] **Rand:** was so bad I couldn't sleep anymore,

[00:45:48] **Rand:** know?

[00:45:48] **Rand:** Yeah. We both

[00:45:49] **Rand:** lost

[00:45:51] **Rand:** pounds.

[00:45:52] **Howard:** Yeah.

[00:45:53] **Rand:** I look like an Auschwitz... You look at some of the pictures in the book, I look like an Auschwitz

[00:45:57] **Rand:** survivor. I-

[00:45:58] **Rand:** Not to downplay them or [00:46:00] anything, but- Yeah ... we're not- we're, we're physically at the limit pretty much, and I just couldn't do it anymore. The pain was so bad.

[00:46:08] **Rand:** So- Okay ... long story short, I ended up having a hip replacement, and Ronnie and Rick, he finished it with his oldest son, Rick.

[00:46:16] **Howard 3:** Okay.

[00:46:18] **Rand:** Good. And I have pictures of that in the book, too, and they, they went

[00:46:20] **Rand:** over Washington and

[00:46:23] **Rand:** made

[00:46:23] **Rand:** it to

[00:46:23] **Rand:** They didn't, they weren't allowed to go up to Katahdin because

[00:46:26] **Rand:** it was the beginning of the COVID.

[00:46:29] **Howard:** Oh, okay

[00:46:30] **Rand:** Yeah, it was 2020 when they got

[00:46:32] **Rand:** there, but

[00:46:34] **Rand:** What- So, but I did the best

[00:46:37] **Rand:** I could

[00:46:38] **Howard:** Okay.

[00:46:39] **Howard:** Was there a

[00:46:41] **Howard:** aha

[00:46:42] **Howard:** moment for you just on this journey? I mean, you,

[00:46:46] **Howard:** you've,

[00:46:46] **Howard:** you went through a lot. I

[00:46:48] **Howard:** it's,

[00:46:48] **Howard:** physically taxing, emotionally taxing. and, you, you, you got to part of it and you had to stop, and then you went back, you had to stop. So there, there's [00:47:00] emotion involved here. So what was, what was... but some inside this thread of this journey, there's, what was your aha moment? Like, I did this. In fact, and again, I'm envious you did it with your brother, okay? I mean, I don't have a brother, and I, uh, I would love to think if I had one, we would do something like this together. So what was your aha

[00:47:21] **Howard:** moment?

[00:47:23] **Rand:** Probably one of the best ones was when Ron had, So he's struggling

[00:47:27] **Rand:** with the grief of

[00:47:28] **Rand:** wife's death- Right ... and all that. And he had a, a aha moment

[00:47:32] **Rand:** where

[00:47:34] **Rand:** one day

[00:47:34] **Rand:** he

[00:47:35] **Rand:** de- it was Father's Day of

[00:47:36] **Rand:** 2018, and saw a huge halo in the forest. It was

[00:47:40] **Rand:** very dark day. That was the only sunlight

[00:47:41] **Rand:** that day. And there's a picture of a similar effect in

[00:47:45] **Rand:** book that I took,

[00:47:47] **Rand:** where you had the rays of

[00:47:48] **Rand:** sun coming down through the clouds and everything,

[00:47:50] **Rand:** and it just shows this big halo,

[00:47:53] **Rand:** And then the rest of the day it's all cloudy, so you

[00:47:55] **Rand:** don't

[00:47:55] **Rand:** any light at all, right? And Ronnie had a

[00:47:59] **Rand:** conversation [00:48:00] with Edie,

[00:48:00] **Rand:** basically telling- he thought, there was something in that halo.

[00:48:04] **Rand:** It could be Jesus, it could be Buddha, it could be Hindu, I don't know, Hindu god, whatever. It could

[00:48:08] **Rand:** be whatever you want it

[00:48:09] **Rand:** be. But he thought,

[00:48:10] **Rand:** felt like it was God's

[00:48:14] **Rand:** giving him a channel

[00:48:15] **Rand:** to speak with,

[00:48:16] **Rand:** with Edie, and that she was telling him, "It's okay. I'm here with Dad. We're fine. You're doing the right thing.

[00:48:22] **Rand:** Keep going. I'm proud of

[00:48:24] **Rand:** of you."

[00:48:25] **Howard 3:** Mm. You

[00:48:25] **Rand:** know, "And you'll be here with us, but not now. Right now, you keep doing what you're

[00:48:29] **Rand:** doing." And,

[00:48:30] **Rand:** and, uh, that was a very spiritual moment for him. And then he had another, uh, situation where he was having nightmares. We both had horrific nightmares from the war- Mm ... for years.

[00:48:43] **Rand:** And I used alcohol to help me with some of that stuff. Sure. Not a good medicine, but it kinda helped

[00:48:48] **Rand:** a little bit

[00:48:49] **Rand:** for a while. Mm-hmm. And Ronnie, of course, didn't have that outlet or whatever, and I don't think

[00:48:55] **Rand:** he had any desire

[00:48:56] **Rand:** either.

[00:48:56] **Rand:** But, um, he, he just, [00:49:00] uh,

[00:49:00] **Rand:** up screaming, and I

[00:49:03] **Rand:** got out of the tent and helped him out, and

[00:49:08] **Rand:** was crying. He

[00:49:09] **Rand:** said,

[00:49:09] **Rand:** can't do

[00:49:09] **Rand:** this anymore.

[00:49:10] **Rand:** We're

[00:49:11] **Rand:** gonna go home," blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:49:13] **Rand:** It started to get light and

[00:49:15] **Rand:** said, "Look, bro, this is not a good..." I

[00:49:18] **Rand:** held his hands, did a little prayer. "This is not a good way to make

[00:49:22] **Rand:** decision like this. You've been doing this, you've been doing it so long now, and we're,

[00:49:27] **Rand:** you

[00:49:27] **Rand:** we're more

[00:49:27] **Rand:** than halfway there.

[00:49:29] **Rand:** it's not good to make a decision in the middle of the night when you're having a nightmare. Let's just do our regular routine today, and then if you decide you don't wanna do it, you can tell me when

[00:49:38] **Rand:** we meet at

[00:49:39] **Rand:** or whatever, and

[00:49:41] **Rand:** we'll go home." He said, "Okay." And

[00:49:45] **Rand:** I'm think- I mean, I'm in a world of

[00:49:46] **Rand:** of hurt, Howard.

[00:49:47] **Rand:** I

[00:49:48] **Rand:** mean, I'm, it- my knees are

[00:49:49] **Rand:** killing me.

[00:49:50] **Rand:** I'm exhausted, and I'm still kind of enjoying it, but it's harder and harder. And I

[00:49:56] **Rand:** met Ronnie at noon that day, and

[00:49:58] **Rand:** kinda gives me a little [00:50:00] smile and sits down. Never says a word.

[00:50:03] **Howard:** Hmm.

[00:50:04] **Rand:** True. And we just kept going. I think that wa- in that stretch, we did 33 days in a

[00:50:09] **Rand:** row,

[00:50:10] **Rand:** averaging 11 miles a day, which is

[00:50:12] **Rand:** incredible.

[00:50:13] **Howard:** Yeah, very

[00:50:15] **Rand:** It's incredible. Try to go out

[00:50:16] **Rand:** and do, uh, 30 miles in a weekend,

[00:50:19] **Rand:** Friday, Saturday, Sunday, in the Appalachian Trail, and

[00:50:22] **Rand:** tell me what you

[00:50:22] **Rand:** think.

[00:50:23] **Howard:** Yeah. I

[00:50:24] **Rand:** Y-

[00:50:25] **Rand:** Yeah. It was amazing. Ronnie

[00:50:27] **Rand:** and I talk about it all the time, like,

[00:50:28] **Rand:** did we do that? I don't

[00:50:31] **Rand:** know.

[00:50:32] **Rand:** I have no idea how we did that. I feel like it was a God thing, and that we were...

[00:50:37] **Rand:** It was just

[00:50:38] **Rand:** part of our

[00:50:39] **Rand:** spiritual journey.

[00:50:40] **Howard 3:** Mm-hmm.

[00:50:41] **Rand:** That's

[00:50:42] **Rand:** I

[00:50:42] **Rand:** called it a

[00:50:42] **Rand:** passage. Mm-hmm. It helped me in my

[00:50:45] **Rand:** recovery program. It helped me

[00:50:47] **Rand:** help other men recover- Mm-hmm ... 'cause men work with

[00:50:50] **Rand:** men, and I'm in a

[00:50:52] **Rand:** alcohol recovery program where the members like to be anonymous.

[00:50:55] **Howard:** Sure.

[00:50:56] **Rand:** Sure. So, yep.

[00:50:57] **Rand:** yeah.

[00:50:58] **Howard:** I

[00:50:58] **Howard:** mean, it, you helped each [00:51:00] other.

[00:51:01] **Howard:** Again,

[00:51:01] **Howard:** you did it with each other, and I, again, that's th- that's wonderful. That is absolutely wonderful. And now you get to share the story, so you have a whole new career as a, as a, not only as a, as an accomplished author, uh,

[00:51:16] **Howard:** as,

[00:51:16] **Howard:** but also the s- the speaking and helping, and this all, this journey, continuing journey as a recovering alcoholic, helping others who are going through their own,

[00:51:26] **Howard:** own

[00:51:26] **Howard:** journey, and this, that's making a difference in other people's lives as well.

[00:51:30] **Howard:** That's

[00:51:30] **Howard:** wonderful

[00:51:32] **Rand:** Yep. My second

[00:51:33] **Rand:** book just came out. It was

[00:51:35] **Rand:** Syracuse Hitman

[00:51:36] **Rand:** versus

[00:51:36] **Rand:** Shoe Repairman- Mm-hmm ... based on a guy I

[00:51:39] **Rand:** knew in, uh, my recovery program. He's gone now, but... So yeah, I'm still writing books,

[00:51:44] **Rand:** about s- I've got several I'm working

[00:51:46] **Rand:** on about my career as an attorney, which

[00:51:50] **Rand:** was just

[00:51:51] **Rand:** amazing. Some of

[00:51:52] **Rand:** the things- Yeah ... I had a client try to kill me, uh,

[00:51:56] **Rand:** and he killed three other

[00:51:57] **Rand:** the

[00:51:57] **Rand:** next day.

[00:51:59] **Rand:** Oh, yeah. That... [00:52:00] Oh,

[00:52:00] **Rand:** yeah, that ended up

[00:52:01] **Rand:** to being... So anyway, I got a

[00:52:02] **Rand:** a lot of

[00:52:03] **Rand:** stories.

[00:52:04] **Howard:** I ca- I can, I can imagine. I

[00:52:06] **Howard:** imagine.

[00:52:06] **Howard:** And you, as you were sharing earlier, you still get out there and walk a couple miles a day

[00:52:13] **Rand:** Yeah,

[00:52:13] **Rand:** I'm averaging 40

[00:52:14] **Rand:** miles a week.

[00:52:15] **Rand:** I, I- I mean, I don't wanna ever lose this. I, I go to my meetings, I help guys, I walk,

[00:52:21] **Rand:** I write, I do publishing stuff, and, uh,

[00:52:25] **Rand:** I have more joy in my life now than I've ever

[00:52:26] **Rand:** had,

[00:52:28] **Rand:** and I'm 80 years old.

[00:52:29] **Rand:** Go figure

[00:52:31] **Howard:** I hope I am like you when I'm 80 years old. there's not gonna be another book in me. I will probably have a, maybe I'll, I'll have 2,000 podcasts in my library instead of whatever the number is today. But

[00:52:43] **Howard:** it's...

[00:52:44] **Howard:** you

[00:52:45] **Howard:** it- you-

[00:52:45] **Howard:** we, we have to get out there and enjoy, get out there in nature.

[00:52:50] **Rand:** you're helping a lot of people with your coaching thing,

[00:52:53] **Rand:** Yeah ... for sure.

[00:52:54] **Rand:** So I think you're doing some really good

[00:52:57] **Rand:** service

[00:52:57] **Rand:** there,

[00:52:58] **Rand:** for

[00:52:58] **Rand:** Even if you're getting paid for it, [00:53:00] however that works. But you're still-

[00:53:01] **Rand:** putting yourself out there and that's good

[00:53:03] **Howard:** Thank you.

[00:53:04] **Howard:** Thank you. Rand, it's been a pleasure to have you on the podcast, and, and, when I was reading the...

[00:53:09] **Howard:** And,

[00:53:10] **Howard:** and I forgot to mention that, you and I met each other through our friends at Podmatch, which is a, a source for being a guest on a podcast or being a ho- for a host on a podcast, uh, looking for a guest.

[00:53:23] **Howard:** And a great site, and it was a pleasure to, to, uh, meet you through the site, so thank you, Podmatch. And it's been great to get to know you and hear some of your stories, and just I... And again, I d- I know I keep repeating this like a broken record. The fact that you were out there with your brother is just, to me, is just I, I wish I was able to have that in my life.

[00:53:46] **Howard:** But my sister and... If we went out on a trail together, one of us was not gonna return,

[00:53:53] **Rand:** I hear you. But, but- I actually hike with my sister

[00:53:56] **Rand:** sometimes. I have to put,

[00:53:57] **Rand:** earplugs in. [00:54:00] I-

[00:54:00] **Howard:** enough said. I get that. I

[00:54:01] **Howard:** get that. I...

[00:54:01] **Howard:** that.

[00:54:03] **Howard:** Which is also- However-

[00:54:04] **Howard:** probably why I'm single,

[00:54:05] **Howard:** but, it's just

[00:54:06] **Howard:** like... 'Cause I just walk away. But, and okay, I digress. I'm gonna have to cut that one out. But listen, Rand it's been a pleasure to have you on the podcast, and the website, uh, that we wanna send our listeners to so they can learn about you and the book, and I know they can a- order the book on your podcast, where's

[00:54:24] **Howard:** best

[00:54:25] **Howard:** place to go?

[00:54:26] **Rand:** randtimmerman.com. Very simple. Just

[00:54:28] **Rand:** name all

[00:54:29] **Rand:** run together,

[00:54:30] **Rand:** a lowercase. R-A-N-D-T-I-M-M-E-R-M-A-N.com. That's it. It's very

[00:54:36] **Rand:** simple. Or they can just Google H- they can just Google h- Spiritual Passage or my name. it'll pop up.

[00:54:41] **Howard:** something?

[00:54:42] **Howard:** That's pret-

[00:54:43] **Howard:** wh- when you're able to do that and you just pop up like that, you know you've made it. You know you've made it. Rand, I wish you the very best and good health, and stay happy, and, uh,

[00:54:55] **Howard:** you know-

[00:54:56] **Howard:** g- good, the emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being, uh, [00:55:00] and getting out there in nature, and just, take care of yourselves and the people around you.

[00:55:04] **Howard:** And we really appreciate you spending time with us today

[00:55:07] **Rand:** Thank you, Howard. I really appreciate the opportunity

[00:55:10] **Howard:** Excellent. Listen, stay on the line. We're

[00:55:12] **Howard:** do a

[00:55:12] **Howard:** quick close, and then you and I can have a final chat.

[00:55:15] **Howard:** Okay? Sure.

[00:55:16] **Howard:** All right, folks, we have just chatted

[00:55:18] **Howard:** Rand

[00:55:19] **Howard:** Timmerman. He is the author of A Spiritual Passage. Rand

[00:55:23] **Howard:** is a, uh, retired attorney. and this, this conversation today really a- about the, the...

[00:55:29] **Howard:** well, a lot about this, the background and what led up to this amazing journey with his brother. Two, uh, 70s, uh, y- something, uh, brothers who set out to hike the Appalachian Trail. And the book, uh, is just, it's wonderful. It's just a, it's a thick book, so I wouldn't recommend hiking with the book because if you're hiking, the weight is everything.

[00:55:53] **Howard:** But if you get a chance, pick up a copy of the book. the great stories every day. There's

[00:55:59] **Howard:** the, [00:56:00] you

[00:56:00] **Howard:** know, it's kind of the here's the journey, here's the photos. And really, what an amazing story and an amazing journey, and we certainly,

[00:56:08] **Howard:** wish

[00:56:08] **Howard:** Rand the very best. Do go out to his website, randtimmerman.com.

[00:56:13] **Howard:** We're gonna provide the back link to it as well. hopefully Rand will, grace us with a, a few photos we can keep in our show notes and our, and, uh, put on our banners. but again, and I,

[00:56:24] **Howard:** I've

[00:56:24] **Howard:** interviewed a, a number of folks who have hiked the Appalachian Trail, and, you

[00:56:29] **Howard:** it's

[00:56:29] **Howard:** not for the faint of heart, not for the faint of heart.

[00:56:32] **Howard:** I hope you enjoyed this episode. It's up, uh, it's gonna be on our website, outdooradventureseries.com. It'll be on LinkedIn and,Facebook. There will be links there. Just search for Outdoor Adventure Series. We'll also have the, the show up on our YouTube channel. And of course, folks, you can listen to this podcast wherever you get your podcasts from.

[00:56:52] **Howard:** Until next time, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, go out there, have a fantastic day, and we look forward to having you join us on a [00:57:00] future episode of the Outdoor Adventure Series podcast. Take care now.