The legendary long-distance trekker Nimblewill Nomad will turn 85 in a few weeks. In March he was run over by a 5,000-pound Cadilac Escalade, breaking his “good” leg in three places. Monday, he is having surgery on a bad kidney.
He is one of only two to have through hiked all 11 National Scenic Trails. The southern Appalachian Benton MacKaye Trail is set to soon become the nation’s 12th. “I want to be the first to hike all 12,” he tells me in a text today. “I had no home, was living out of my backpack when you and Shawna first met me (in 2017), energetic, happy- moving. So, what next? Ah, so Benton MacKaye here I come.”
We met in the Texas Panhandle on a brutally hot late summer day. He was hiking Route 66, from Chicago to Santa Monica. He was 79 years old and sleeping along the nation’s Mother Road in ditches. We bought him a steak dinner in Shamrock, TX and put him up in a cheap motel. https://rollingdownhwy83.blogspot.com/.../redemption-one...
We dropped him off the next morning at the spot we had picked him up the night before and we watched him shoulder his backpack and head west. We have been friends since.
Last year at 84 years of age, Nomad became the oldest man to through hike the 2400-mile Appalachian Trail. The newly minted Benson MacKaye Trail is a pedestrian 300 miles.
The first thing I noticed that day six years ago were his eyes, which are a clear blue. As we exchanged greetings on that steaming tarmac, he was always glancing over my shoulder, a man constantly scanning the horizon for shapes and shadows that he told me only he can see. “For the first 60 years I lived a superficial life. Then I started to walk, and I found God. When that happens, you do not see life the same anymore. I saw possibilities I had never dreamed of."
I asked him six years ago for a good quote to sum up his amazing life’s journey. “I don't know any answers,” he said. “I don't give answers. I hope our meeting will stimulate your thinking, to present alternatives. Then you choose.”
“Ask your friends and readers to keep me in their prayers,” today's text concluded.
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