Searching for an Epiphany on the Appalachian Trail: An Interview with WPC Author Rand R. Timmerman, Esq.

 In a memoir-turned-spiritual-enlightenment-and-healing-journey, author Rand Timmerman has redefined the meaning of perseverance after facing the worst that humanity has had to offer. Born in Adams, New York, Rand relocated to Syracuse, New York, and carved his path as an attorney and author.  

On this life-changing hike on the Appalachian Trail, brothers Rand and Ron Timmerman, both combat veterans during the Vietnam War, took this once-in-a-lifetime chance to reach the epiphany that would change their lives forever. Both brothers experienced spiritual and physical suffering and healing on the Appalachian Trail that would irrevocably give them the strength to go “one step at a time,” Rand’s mantra as an author and self-advocate. 

Through 500 photographs taken on the trail with recorded logs of their travels, both Timmerman brothers have attested to the resilience it takes to trek the Appalachian Trail. A warrior in his own right, Rand has been sober from alcohol for 11 years. During Rand’s sobriety, he has been able to connect with others who are also recovering from substance abuse. While speaking with veteran groups and other warriors like him, Rand found his writer’s voice: “When I broke the barrier about talking about some of these things with other guys, then I could write.”

Timmerman’s Wildebeest-published novel A Spiritual Passage was published in July of last year. The subtitle of this book is The True Story of Two Brothers in Their 70s Tackling the Appalachian Trail While Facing Personal Demons and Strengthening Their Faith Along the Way. Ever since publication, Timmerman has given speeches at events such as HGS in Knoxville, Tennessee, and an Author’s Round Table with Wildebeest Publishing to continue his “journey into recovery to inspire other people.” Timmerman also had the opportunity to travel to the Los Angeles Convention Center with Wildebeest Publishing’s founder and co-founder, Laura Thorne and Jess Neiding, specifically in the AWP (The Association of Writing and Writing Programs) Conference and Bookfair, which is an annual gathering of literary minds and imaginative wordsmiths from around the world. 

Rand Timmerman has also had an extensive career as an attorney with the Timmerman Law Firm in Watertown, New York. With an attorney career centered around family law and pro-bono work for juveniles, Rand was able to reach those experiencing the struggles of life that he could relate to himself, such as an unlikely friendship with a mobster in Syracuse, New York. “He’s no longer with us, but I ended up spending a lot of time with him because he was in the same recovery program I am. I took some of his experiences and wrote books about him.” Timmerman says that his law career was very successful: “I had a great career, I never got into any trouble in a 40-year career.”  

Rand’s brother, Ron Timmerman, experienced grief through the loss of his wife in November of 2017. Like Rand, Ron has a deep empathy for his family and took care of his wife, Edie, until she passed. In January of 2018, Ron Timmerman came to a realization while working on grappling with the loss of his wife. Rand speaks of his brother’s initial inspiration for the journey on the Appalachian Trail: “‘He says, ‘I’m going to go hike the Appalachian Trail!’ I thought, that’s nuts. I didn’t think it was possible. I told him that. I said, ‘When are you planning on doing this?’ He said, ‘March 22nd.’ 

“‘This year?’

“‘Yeah, this year.’

“‘Well, how are you going to do that?’

“He goes, ‘Well, I’m going to take a bus down to Springer Mountain, Georgia, and hike to Katahdin Mountain in Maine, and I don’t know how I’m going to do it.’ So, I said, ‘Well, you’re not going alone.’” 

With that, Rand and Ron Timmerman trekked to Springer Mountain, Georgia, on March 22nd, 2018. Rand was very concerned that this journey would be all for nought due to physical impairments: “We both have injuries, and I limp. The right leg is shorter than my left at that time, and it still is, of course. I have an artificial knee, I have nothing left in my right knee—bone on bone. So, it was hard. It was the hardest thing I ever did in my whole life, except nobody was shooting at me. I kept telling myself, Nobody’s shooting at you, what the hell’s the problem?”

Due to Rand’s initial skepticism of the trek on the Appalachian Trail, he and his brother had different intentions on the trail at first: “Ronnie’s thing was get up in the morning, go,’right? Kinda head down, trudge trudge trudge. I took a different way about it. My thought was, you’re never gonna come here again.” Rand took it easy for a time, whereas Ron kept trucking away. However, both brothers kept journals and recorded trail names, names of people they met, how many miles they traveled, what they saw, and the weather.  

Initially, A Spiritual Passage was meant for their family. Rand’s brother was very spiritual, and Rand felt that he was reformed as well: “I’m a recovered alcoholic. Late in my life, alcohol got the best of me by far for sure—my late 50s, early 60s. So, I ended up going into a program that was very spiritual in nature. That changed my whole life. So, in the book, every third chapter, I write about how that happened—what happened to me, because it wasn’t easy. It was very hard. I relapsed a lot for a while. I will have 11 years on May 5th.” Recovery is never easy, but Rand took that path and has thrived ever since. 

While the Appalachian Trail is an extremely tough challenge to take on—with only “17% of the people who try it, make it,” brothers Rand and Ron have experienced physical challenges throughout their lives: “We were kind of used to hardship—doing hard things. In my life, I had a logging business cutting down trees. So, we’re kinda tough guys physically. We’re both banged up somewhat. I found out I was hiking every day, and when I found out we were probably going to do this, I had a base—I walked every day, between seven and eight miles, not all at once.” Rand also found out that his brother had hiked all over Utah for a long time, so this was nothing new to him!                 

While some physical suffering caught up to Rand with a bad infection, his brother inspired him to keep going. This inspiration led me to curiosity about their relationship, in which Rand replied, “We definitely reconnected. We were cordial for a few hours once a year, and that was about it. I used to think my brother was so—I knew he was serene and peaceful and a very spiritual man, that he had been a bishop in a church with 400 people for years. But, I would kinda mock him in my head, that he was so boring! He’s just so serene, so calm, he’s no fun at all!”However, the journey on the Appalachian Trail changed Rand’s mindset towards his brother and what it means to be reformed.  

Rand was very satisfied with the writing process for A Spiritual Passage; he wrote the book for a year. A Spiritual Passage contains the pictures Rand took on the trail, his brother Ron’s journal, and his own journal. Briefly, Ron’s son Rick hiked with them in the beginning. However, the pain became unbearable again for Rand: “I broke my hip—I actually walked 300 miles after I fell down a rockslide, but the pain got so bad I couldn’t sleep.” Even while experiencing this pain, Rand still finished the Appalachian Trail with Ron!

As an author published with Wildebeest Publishing, Rand understands the power in editing: “Jess was amazing at the editing part, Laura was good about the pictures, and it was a huge upgrade. So, I’m proud of what they did. We started in April, and it was published at the end of July. I believe it was last year. So, I mean Jess and I worked together every day for weeks.” 

Rand has definitely worked hard with this dream team to make A Spiritual Passage come to life! 

A major part of the publishing journey is to create a solid promotional base. As a retired man who is now 80 years old, Rand has found that becoming an author was a seamless transition for him: “I joined several author groups, and people (they’re almost all published authors) are working on books, and they will be [published] shortly. I typically write a couple hours a day—two thousand words. You gotta write.” Rand also describes that his life has been one large adventure show: “ I enjoy the hell out of it—my whole life has just been one almost adventure show. Motorcycles, I had a client try to kill me (he got killed by the police). I mean, all kinds of stories!”

Rand also has many experiences as a combat veteran from Vietnam, and plans to write a book on these experiences. He has also opened himself to criticism for his book from veterans who “read it and critique me on it.” He has also accepted professional type-editing from three literature professors from Syracuse University, who helped him enhance A Spiritual Passage.  

Rand notes that research and being involved with different writing groups are extremely helpful. Connecting with your readers is essential, and Rand noticed he was “in my own little world and space.” This was partly due to his experiences in Vietnam, so he got himself to join a veteran’s writing group at Syracuse University, Veterans Writing Workshop. After this, Rand has also networked with other authors and maintains 20 friendships with authors he says, “I did not have a year ago.”      

Being a new author is exhilarating, but also equally terrifying sometimes. For Rand, He notes “how hard it is to be successful.” You have to work on marketing and promotions daily. Rand always gets his inspiration from the notebooks he made that he gives out during author signings that say his mantra, “one step at a time.”       

Rand has learned that giving free merchandise is one of the many ways to help spread awareness of his book. He mentions that he “found an empty book holder and stuck it in there (a notebook) and left it. I write free on there and leave it.” Part of author success for Rand is a little progress at a time, “I try to do something every day, if someone will learn about my book that didn’t know about it the day before.”   

Rand has many future plans for short stories, memoirs about his experiences in the Vietnam War, and a historical fiction trilogy about the Civil War. Rand has written 12 short stories about the Vietnam War so far. According to him, they are not “shoot-em-up” stories. In fact, Rand would rather focus on stories from Vietnam that were more interesting, such as Rand’s story about a three-step snake that made its way into a precarious place.

During Rand’s law practice, he experienced a client who struggled with mental health problems and was involved with murder: “He tried to kill me, and it didn’t work out for him. Then the next day, he shot the mother of his child, her new boyfriend, and another relative. A week later, he was killed at a roadblock by the Louis County Sheriff’s Department in Louis County, New York—upstate, very rural county.” Rand wrote a book detailing this experience. 

Rand has written several stories about his law career, and moved into “mostly Supreme Court work and family court.” Rand also made sure to record the experiences of the mobster he was friends with in Syracuse, New York. These made it into books as well.     

Rand also spoke about the inspiration behind the historical trilogy he had written about the Civil War: “We’re hiking the trail, we’re in, I believe, the Shenandoah Mountain area of Tennessee, North Carolina—right on the border. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was in Madison County, North Carolina. I find this grave (every once in a while, you come across peculiar things). I found this old graveyard. So I ended up wandering around in it, and it was pretty well-maintained, but it was older than hell. Well, the reason was because there were families of people who died in the Civil War.” 

Rand finds a tombstone of a Confederate soldier named Sheldon—who was killed by Confederate soldiers in a massacre. Rand was dumbfounded by this revelation: “I go, what the heck? Why are Confederate soldiers killing each other?” Rand was intrigued, and so after the hike on the Appalachian Trail, he did research on the Confederate soldiers who fought each other in Madison County, North Carolina.   

What was planned as one book ended up being a trilogy! Rand says he’s made a lot of progress: “The first two books are pretty much done, except now that I know what I’m doing, I have to have super editing done. But, the third one, the text is drafted out—I have illustrations for it. So, it’s a heck of a story.” Rand went through the synopsis of this historical-fiction trilogy as three young men who come from different backgrounds: “One is a preacher’s son, one was abandoned by his family, and basically a hunter-trapper. The other boy was a farm boy and had no clue what the world was like. They end up being together, and then they end up splitting up—one stays in the Confederate Army, two go to the Union Army, and then they all end up meeting together at a big battle at Chattanooga, Tennessee.” This is definitely deserving of three books! 

Rand expressed his gratitude to both Laura Thorne and Jess Neiding for their guidance on digital marketing and publishing: “I’m getting way better.” He also mentioned how it’s better to take the time to write and sell his books at times, but he has improved greatly. 

Rand Timmerman works on public speaking about his journey to sobriety, his travels on the Appalachian Trail, and his law career: “I’m a pretty good speaker, I love doing speaking, I do a lot of speaking in my recovery group—not about the books or anything, but my journey into recovery to inspire other people, and that’s why we did the book.” With a compassionate flair, Rand has given away 100 books to people either struggling with addiction, faith, or to people dealing with the curveballs of life. 

Rand refuses to ever give up, no matter how hard life gets: “As you get older, in the 60s and 70s, all my friends are either sitting on the couch waiting to die or someone would die. I’m not doing that. I’m hoping to inspire people that you can do a lot more than you think. You just gotta try. You gotta get off the couch, and go do something.” Rand explained that the main goal behind his books is to inspire people to be better, and that he does it in a heartbeat. 

Leading on the thread of inspiration, Rand spoke about what he saw when he and Ron got to Harper’s Ferry: “By the time we got to Harper’s Ferry, it had thinned out amazingly. I mean, we had two vehicles.” Rand said that in the beginning, there are tons of people who start the Appalachian Trail, but usually don’t make it halfway.  

Rand spoke with me about the process and what it took to hike the Appalachian Trail: “The way we did this was—and we parked every night on the Appalachian Trail—there are roads across the Appalachian Trail every 10 to 15 miles for most of it. So, what we were doing was—I like to brag that I slept in a tent every night on the Appalachian Trail—well, I did, but my truck was like 20 feet away.” Rand recalled that his brother would go south, and Rand went north on the trail, which meant that Ron got to see more people—many who were in their 60s.

Rand also noticed that many people who trekked the trail were women in their 30s: “In the beginning, half of the people were women—a lot of tough women doing this deal, it was amazing.” Due to the sheer number of people who didn’t complete the Appalachian Trail, Rand made sure to record everything in the logbooks in case anyone was skeptical about his and his brother’s journey.    

Rand had noticed that the people still on the Appalachian Trail after Harper Ferry “really thinned out.” This didn’t stop him, even after seeing people in their 40s and 50s who had “done it before.” It was “very rare” for two men in their 70s to take on the Appalachian Trail and finish it. That is why Rand believes that some suffering to complete goals is necessary: “I think that in itself could be inspirational. I didn’t think we could do it.” 

Rand mentioned how he “fell down every day” because “in the middle of the afternoon, I‘ll be so—the fatigue would be like—it would feel like somebody had taken a horse blanket, wool horse blanket, filled it with water, put it in an oven of 125 degrees, and then threw it on top of me.” Even after this excruciating pain, Rand kept going. Both he and Ron knew that the completion of the Appalachian Trail would give them the answers they needed for enlightenment. 

So, Rand accepted the pain, even when it was very difficult: “The fatigue would be unbelievable. Then, by the time we got done, I would sit down and we could eat and stuff like that—I couldn’t get up, could not move. I literally could not move. Then I’d get in the tent, lay down—I had a little chair and I would get in there and do some prayers and things like that—kinda chill out for about an hour. Then, I would roll off the chair onto the mat. It’s a one-pound chair, just a little fold-up chair I had. Then, I would fall asleep pretty quickly, and I’d wake up in the morning, and I would be okay.” This process allowed Rand to continue through this journey. 

When reflecting on how Rand got into writing, he explained that he hadn’t realized it until after he got sober and retired that he had always been a writer: “What I didn’t realize until afterwards was that I was writing from the day I became an attorney. You have to write complaints, you have to write affidavits, you have to write briefs, you have to write all kinds of documents. So, I was writing every day.” 

Rand explained the kind of writing that he focused on as an attorney, such as how he went to his office “at 6:00 in the morning, and I would write, and I did a lot of dictating.” Rand also had his own law firm, in which he had a staff of up to “25 people working for me at one time.” He typed documents, would edit files after “being in court all day long,” and readied the cases to be filed. Little did he know that writing would change his life, and A Spiritual Passage would be born. 

Rand is currently working on lots of short stories about his experiences during the Vietnam War. He said that he “came out of my shell” so that he could find a way back to himself again. In “hanging out with other veterans,” he was able to open up and discuss some of the terrors that he had faced, particularly a battle he remembers to this day: “I was in a battle. We had no support, no air support, no nothing. The monsoon was bad, and it was really bad weather. There was nothing—we were on our own, and we ran out of ammo. I had to use my bayonet. I ran and managed to survive (took a couple of days). I had like a running battle going on there for a while.” Like many veterans struggling with the aftermath of war, Rand struggled with nightmares for a long time, and these still persist “once in a while.”  

Rand details these conversations with other veterans as the moment when he “broke the barrier.” Now, he feels more and more comfortable sharing his memoir and non-fiction stories with the world. One aspect that has helped Rand reach more of his audience is through submitting his work to magazines: “I’ve had a few things published. I wrote a short story about writing the book—about our book. It was printed in Dynamic Aging 4 Life Magazine.”    

Rand also understands that not everyone will hike the Appalachian Trail, but the goal of his work is to “look at what you can do if you just try, just do something.” The Dynamic Aging 4 Life Magazine has helped seniors like Rand publish work about “things that you can do—they have authors every week that they take their stories.”

Getting published in magazines is hard work, but Rand never gives up, no matter what: “I’m still walking seven to eight miles a day, every day. I get up before daylight, do my prayer and meditation because I don’t want to drink, and then I go and I walk three miles in the dark usually, and then I go to a meeting, and then I help other men. Then I come back and I do editing, send out emails. You gotta do. Don’t think about doing and just do.”     

Rand has a great debt of gratitude for founder Laura Thorne and co-founder Jess Neiding in the process of getting A Spiritual Passage published: “They were very supportive. Jess was amazing—they taught me a lot. They did a great job. We have a beautiful book. We got it on Amazon. They are first-rate. You know, I’ve talked to some other hybrid publishers too, and there’s some really good ones out there, but I put Wildebeest right up there.” He went on to say that the time spent working on A Spiritual Passage was “very productive.” 

As the inspirational author that he is, Rand’s comment to authors and other writers like him is to not be afraid: “I think people probably make too hard a thing of it. Like, ‘oh, I can never write a book’ or ‘I can never hike a mile.’ Smash through the fear; don’t be afraid.” Thinking about doing something causes us to not want to do that initially scary thing anymore. 

If you were wondering what Rand’s Animal Spirit might be, his would be a wild tiger! This wild tiger is the fire that can never be extinguished: “I believe that every one of us, especially when we were children, had a wild tiger in us, like a little wild tiger. But then, as we get older, and we, you know, we suffer, we have hardships, we have failures—we learn from our failures usually more than our successes—I feel like I’m still in tune with my wild tiger. It’s still there. So, grab onto your wild tiger and go.” This sentiment rings true through all of Rand Timmerman’s philanthropic work, livelihood, and spiritual identity.    

Author Rand Timmerman continues to shine light in the darkest of corners in humanity. You always have choices, and it has been worthwhile for Rand to keep moving forward. Through every facet of his life and as a published author, Rand Timmerman has seen the beauty of community through others—by taking “one step at a time.” 

If you would like to purchase Rand Timmerman’s book A Spiritual Passage on Amazon, click here!   

Rand Timmerman’s book is also available on Bookshop. If you would like to purchase A Spiritual Passage on Bookshop, click here!

You can access Rand Timmerman’s author website here, where you can view his HGS live presentation in Knoxville, Tennessee, and the Author’s Round Table with Wildebeest Publishing. 

Here is where you can access Rand Timmerman’s publication in the Dynamic Aging 4 Life Magazine, called Hiking the Appalachian Trail in my Early 70s! 

To see more about the services provided by Wildebeest Publishing, including “Publishing Treks,” click here! 

Kinsey Krachinski is an English graduate student who will be starting at Indiana University South Bend this year! She has extensive publishing experience that ranges from articles to children's books, essays, and poetry. Kinsey's dedication to mental health support initiatives, non-profit organizations, and community outreach allows her to reach several diverse communities. Just like the wolf, her spirit animal, she leads with fierce passion in her journey to support marginalized voices in publishing.