Steve Wright, The Last Hiker, Part 2

This is the second part of my interview with Steve Wright.  In this episode Steve talks about his 2,200 mile hike from Georgia to Maine on the Appalachian Trail. Enjoy.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

Welcome to Locals, the podcast in which we talk to people who are, well, local. Today we have part two of my interview with the indomitable Steve Wright. When last we left our hero, he had had both hands, both ankles, and several ribs broken by a gang of school kids. He had flunked two grades, been arrested for burning down a lot full of trees and stealing turtles. More on those crimes in this episode. He had also met the love of his life, Sandy. And that's the easy part of his story. As I said, Steve is indomitable. In this episode, Steve will tell you about his 2200-mile hike along the Appalachian Trail, which included more broken bones, two broken teeth, as well as bouts with the norovirus and COVID. Did I mention Indomitable? You get the easy part of Steve's journey. You just sit back and listen. It is a truly fascinating story. Here's Steve Wright, the last hiker, part two. Alright, welcome back. When we left, you had returned to Pennsylvania. What grade were you in at that point?

SPEAKER_00 1:22

I was going into sixth. I started sixth grade, but on probation. I had flunk school, and then they would not leave me pass, you know, and my mom was like, Well, his dad was dying, and you know, she was trying to make excuses for me. I just sucked at school, okay, and I didn't care. Anyway, I burnt uh woods down. Now, not on purpose. I was trying to kill bees, but I I made a gas bomb and I got stung. A whole bunch of us dead, a bunch of kids, and I I thought I was a brilliant, you know. I just said, Yeah, you know, get a little quart of gas and put a wick in it and throw it. Well, it worked too.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

I was gonna ask whether you got rid of the bees or not.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Oh, yeah, I did. Underground hornets, you know. So I burnt the whole woods down, and this is right in Providence, and they don't got no, you know, firefighting things for woods, and it was a fairly big wood. So I got into a lot of trouble, and my dad ended up uh reporting me. He was like, that was my son. And then I got caught stealing. I would steal cigarettes, I would steal turtles. I got caught stealing turtles and cigarettes, and I would sell the cigarettes and I would sell my turtles. I was on probation three different ways when I went back, so I had to get past the six weeks before I was clear in school, and then I was able to finish sixth grade. And you're about to meet Sandy? Yeah, so I go into seventh grade and no, I didn't meet Sandy until I was in ninth grade. Okay. So just the beginning of ninth grade, and Sandy was in seventh grade, and Melville doesn't have it's such a small school, they don't have a middle school. It goes from first to sixth and seventh to twelfth, no middle school. So you're with all these kids, you know. Man, she was about the prettiest thing I ever seen. You know, everybody was going crazy about this beautiful seventh grader, and I thought, how pretty can a seventh grader be? You know, they're not developed and so I was just like, come on. And I saw her walk down the hall and I was like, wow, she is something. And my buddy was like, I'm gonna go over and ask her out, you know. I just pushed him right out of the day. And there was a play.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

Burns down trees, deals but shows initiative.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

I mean, I go up there. I was nervous as hell because I'm trying to beat my friend to ask her out. And there was a play, and it was Bill Van Horn. It was called Grin and Barret. So my wife always makes this smart comment. It's been that way ever since. Yeah, it was funny. Anyway, she agreed to go with me. She said I never actually asked her out, I asked the floor out. Oh, that's funny. Yeah, so that was in seventh grade, and I had a terrible reputation. It didn't go away. I did the same stuff when I came back, and I did not believe in God. So I was like, yeah, this is how I see the world. The world is not fair. I'm gonna level the playing field. That's how I looked at it, you know. So I had a problem with any kind of law or order. I gotta say, teachers, good teachers, definitely softened my heart. And Bill Van Horn was one of them. Bill was wonderful, yeah. Bill looked at me like a challenge. Bill was like, it not just me, but you could tell that he had a burden for kids that got in trouble. And I was a kid that got in trouble.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

I still couldn't read, and now I'm in ninth grade or Steve, when you say couldn't read, you mean like really could not read after that? No, I read on the third grade level. So read number.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

I could read. But I read so bad that it affected all my other subjects. It would, yeah. Yeah, especially spelling. Oh my goodness. So I get this in this class, and Mr. Van Horn meets me at the door, and he said, Stephen, I got a book for you. You're gonna love it. I was like, Mr. Van Horn, love and books are not in the same sentence, okay? You're gonna love this one. It's on hiking. And well, he knew me. That's all I did was if I wasn't working, I was hiking. And I would see him up around World's End all the time because that's why I loved the hike. That area, World's End, Canyon Vistna, High Knob, and the Loyal Sock Trail. I did the Loyal Sock Trail, it was my first through hike in 1978. Anyway, Mr. Van Horn he says, I got you this book. You're the only one in class that's gonna read it. Everybody else is reading something else, but you're gonna read this one. And it was about hiking the Appalachian Trail, it was the first guy that ever hiked it. So I got this book, and I was like, Well, I'll read it, but I'm not gonna like it. So I thought, I'll go, I'll go. This was a Friday night. I went home, I started reading it, and oh my goodness, I just loved it. You know, it was so interesting because it was something that I liked. Yeah. He sure was a good teacher, and I had all kinds of good teachers. So anyway, I read the book and I was like, it I've read all night. And my mom, she was there's a big story about it in the book, but she keeps on checking on me and checking on me. And I didn't finish it until 9:30 the next day. I read without stopping, but I read the whole book, and then Sandy and I were already dating. I said, You ought to read this book I just read. It's incredible. I'm gonna hike the Appalachian Trail. This was in 1973, and in 2023 is when I did it, 50 years later. Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, and then you know, Sandy said, Well, let me read it. And well, she read it and she wanted to do the Appalachian Trail then. She said, Well, you're gonna have to wait on me. So you have to do some other hike for the first couple of years until I graduate. And then as soon as I graduate, we'll do it. But you know, one thing led to another, and we just didn't we had kids and you bought a house, and your dream ends, and a little of you dies with it when your dream dies. And those words came back to haunt me, by the way. I said that to my wife when I realized that we weren't gonna get the mic Dapalace trail because we decided to buy this house. I said, if we buy this house, we'll never do the trail. And I said, I think something in us is gonna die if we don't. Because it's our dream, but it didn't have we bought the house and that was it, you know? And on her deathbed, six days before she died, she said, Okay, Steven, she can still talk. She says, We gotta have this conversation. She said, I want you to get married, you know. And I said, I don't want to hear this. And she said, and another thing, I think you ought to hike the Appalachian Trail. She had all these girls picked out for me already. Oh yeah, that this I love this this she loves you. And her mother loves you. And my wife was trying to pick all these girls out for me. It was a crazy, crazy time. And then she said, This is another thing. You should hike the Appalachian Trail. Because as you told me, if you let your dream die, a little of you dies with it. And I saw that it some of you died back then, and maybe you'll meet your next wife on the Appalachian Trail. I did not think anymore about that until 18 months later, I had a nervous breakdown and I tried to kill myself. I just was at the end, I was like, I can't get better, I can't get over this. Now I'm supposed to be this big strong Christian, you know. I counseled people that were in my shoes for years. I I went to the hospital, prayed with over 300 people, and trying to help people get through death and dying, and if they had a nervous breakdown, I the pastor would call me because Brad Spangenberg, and he was an awesome man. I kind of picked up the slack where he couldn't get to. He getting me these people to pray with. I couldn't handle her death. It just crushed me, and I got bitter, and I got bitter towards God. Anything that I believed in, I threw right out the window because I was like, didn't you see her fucking suffering? Didn't you see her choking to death? What kind of God are you? You know? And we prayed and prayed and prayed, and she just choked to death, and you didn't give a shit. You know, I'm just pissed as hell at God and I'm bitching and swearing at him, you know. Anyway, I have this breakdown. I say, this life ain't worth it. It's too tough. It hurts too much. And, you know, I tried to swerve in front of a tractor trailer. Anyway, that it was an unsuccessful. And I just had left the hospital because earlier I was at my friend's funeral. He was a great man, Stephen Smith. He was a man. The reason why his death affected me so much is Sandy and I looked at Stephen Phyllis like we wanted to be like them. We wanted to model our marriage. Because they got married when we were in high school, and they were this nice young couple, and he looked at her like I looked at Sandy. I said, I want to be like Steven. When he died, I was thinking, oh my god, Phyllis is gonna be like me. It's gonna crush her. Because they were so in love with each other, you know. That's the trouble with being deeply in love, buddy. Because you know, when you gotta say goodbye, it's a killer. It wrecked me. And then to see the way she died, nobody else died. I I prayed, like I said, over 300 dying people in my life. 17 people held their hand where they went from this life to the next life, and nobody died like her. It was cruel and brutal. Now I know that people had it rougher than me. But when it happened to me, I turned on God. I had this nervous breakdown and I went to the hospital. When I realized that I couldn't get out of there, I escaped. I I just ran when the door went open, and I just burst through the door, right? And you know, somebody trying to open it. I'm boom, you know, I don't even know what happened to them. I'm out of there, you know. My doctor calls me and where are you at, Steven? I said, I I'm done. I'm not, I'm I can't do it. I'm sorry. She said, You gotta get back here. She had me on these drugs that calmed me down or did something to me, some kind of a narcotic. But I, six days later or earlier, I had this awful nightmare about Sandy dying. Now, this is 18 months later after Sandy died, but it was real. I mean, you couldn't tell me it wasn't real. My wife was laying dead down there at the bottom of the stairs, and I'm laying up here in bed. What the fuck am I doing up here? I'm gonna go down there and hold my wife's hand. Well, I go down there, and there's no hospital bed. They had taken that away, obviously, the day she died. But it was so real, I flushed everything down the toilet. So I had been no drugs. I was on these drugs for months, and then a boom, I'm off of them. But she said, Stephen, that's dangerous. The biggest side effect of what you just did is suicide. And I was like, Well, I did just try to kill myself. That was a rough one. That was a real rough one. Anyway, I imagine people praying for me. I'm I'm on a this massive thunderstorm happened. So I'm there and and all this stuff is going on, and I'm fighting with myself in this. I was like, well, I called her back and I said, I'll come back, but I'm not staying. What happened was I kept going back every day to this ward, but I didn't have to stay. When I went in, the psychiatrist said, What makes you unhappy? I said, The news. She said, Sell all your TVs. And I did. Long story short, I did. The next week, my big assignment was, What makes you happy? Because I don't know if you're gonna make it from week to week, Steven. You are bad. You won't let me put you on any narcotics, and you need to be on one. And I said, I'll never take one of them again. And and uh if you saw what I saw, you would never take one. Anyway, what makes you happy? I said, hiking. She said, This is simple, go on a hike. She said, Maybe you ought to take a week off and just go somewhere. And as soon as she said that, I thought, Sandy told me to hike the Appalachian Trail. Yeah. Yep. So that's how the Appalachian Trail ended up. I next week I come in and she was said, What's your assignment? Did you get your your homework done? I said, I did. I can't wait to tell you. And this lady is from Africa. So she has no idea what the Appalachian Trail is. You know, I said, I'm gonna hike the Appalachian Trail. She said, Oh, that's nice. Overnight thing, I hope. And I said, Oh, there's a lot of overnight things.

SPEAKER_01 15:52

Just a few.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

She says, Well, how long is it? And I said, Well, it starts in Georgia and it ends in Maine, right next to Cannon. And oh no. It was funny. And then I started planning my hike then.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

So that was a four, three and a half year process. You said you started hiking five years after Sandy's death? Yes, am I right?

SPEAKER_00 16:14

So it was, yeah, in 2023 is when I actually got to hike it. And it was March the 12th. The day she died in 2018, and it was 2023, March the 12th, when I started my trail. And did you start in south or north? I started at actually Springer Mountains, the official start. I started 15 miles below that, below Ammonicola Falls, because that's where the guy started it in the book. Okay. Because that was in 1948. He started. He had PTSD. Did he? Yeah. So I had a connection with him, this guy. And then I had a connection with my father because it took me a long time to realize that this man must have gone through frickin' hell. And then to see the family fall apart, he had to feel some responsibility to that, you know. And with that comes guilt. This guy had a lot on his shoulders, and he tried really hard with me. Like I think I had it better than any other of my brothers because I went fishing with him and he took me fishing all the time. And I love fishing. And then I wanted to be a mountain man, you know, because I figured out the hell I ain't gonna be any good at school. I figured I'd either be a carpenter or a mountain man. That's what I I wanted to be. Yeah. Well, you made them both, right? Yeah, there you go.

SPEAKER_01 17:49

You did. You did. So now when you went, you did it to do the trail as a dream you'd had for 50 years. Yeah. And and you did it to walk through grief as well. Is that so?

SPEAKER_00 18:05

Yeah, so I decided that I wasn't gonna do this just to get better. I would try to make a difference. So I started a fundraiser. You know, all this terrible stuff kept happening to me. You know, I broke my foot, I got noravirus, I got COVID, I lost 28 pounds. It made me like my heart weak. And how do you get COVID on the trail outdoors? When you go in to resupply, you go into town and didn't I get it? And I got norovirus from another hiker. At least that's how I think I got it. Yeah, you know, yeah. It was a crazy time, but I got them back to back. And the norovirus story I can't really tell you. It's disgusting. Now it's in the book, okay? But um, and sometimes I do go over. Hiker Trash Radio made me tell them they're into that. Yeah, they're into the gore. And then all these accidents happened. I ended up breaking a total of five bones by the time I was done, and I had another concussion. I went through three hurricanes. It was the wettest record on the whole time of the Appalachian Trail. They've been keeping on track of how much rain gained like a ridiculous amount of inches. And then when we were in Maine, it rained almost every day. It was just incredible. And the mud in Maine was absolutely amazing. And that's when my daughter, Jocelyn, went through. So all this stuff kept happening to me, and all I could think of it was I knew that God wanted me to do this because I put a fleece out for him, and it came true. So I thought, well, God wants me to do this, but all this bad stuff kept happening. And I was like, Well, why don't you protect me a little bit, God? I said, I figure it's gotta be Satan. So anyway, I said, a little help, okay? You know, I'm bitching at God. We got an amazing relationship, me and God. I complain all the time, and he listens. But um, I'm bitching, and now I'm all alone, and I'm alone for a couple of months. And at the time I'm thinking, this is the biggest curse ever. I thought I was going to be able to do this trail, possibly in three months. And I mean there are nine months and nine days. I went back too early, or you know, I was so weak I could only go a couple miles in a day. I'd rather be here than sitting at home anyway, you know. It just amazing stuff happened, you know, busted two teeth. Just incredible stuff. But in that, I became the last hiker, right? All these other hikers start to follow you because you're the only one left. Everybody wants to hear about the Appalachian Trail, especially the people who are going to win.

SPEAKER_01 21:13

Were you doing a blog? Yes. Okay. So I thought they meant geographically follow, but no, they're starting to pay attention to you.

SPEAKER_00 21:21

Yeah, yeah, they're following me. And then my daughter has a GPS at home, and she sees where I'm at. Exactly. She posts this every day, and then pretty soon everybody's like, wow, he's really flying now, or what happened here? He stalled for a couple of days, you know. Oh my, that's it. And and I had to take zeros, and and then my family got involved. They were like, You're gonna kill yourself. How many more bones are you gonna break? And then I got in a blizzard. I camped in below zero six times. And the blizzard was fourteen inches of snow, and that was in Shenandoah National Park, believe it or not.

SPEAKER_01 21:58

We got Georgia to Maine, what month did you start in? So the nine months were what nine months?

SPEAKER_00 22:03

So I started March the 12th. March. Okay. And then I only got to hike a month and I broke my foot. So I'm off for two months. I come back and I'm hiking good. I'm hiking real good. Then I get about, I don't know, like up through North Carolina. I'm way above the smokies. And I'm just I just entered into Virginia. I got noravirus and I get a COVID thing a couple of days later. Now I'm off the trail again. And then I'm hiking, I'm still hiking north, but I realize, well, I'm not going to be able to finish. They shut Mount Catawin down in Maine on October the 10th. I do the math and I say, I'm going to be at least a month short of being able to finish. So I was like, I gotta go to Maine. So I left the 900-mile mark in Shenandoah National Park. My daughter goes with me to the 100-mile wilderness. We hike to Mount Katain, because that's how you have to do it.

SPEAKER_01 23:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:07

You do the 100-mile mill, you go north, but it's only for 100, well, 110, 120. Then I go back to that spot and then hike south the whole rest of the way down to the Shenandoah National Park. Okay. Yeah. That's how my hike had to be. So I'm called a flip-flop. If you're going northbound, it's called Novo. If you're going south, it's Sobo. But I'm a flip-flop. I flip-flopped a couple of times to tell you the truth.

SPEAKER_01 23:39

You mentioned the Loyal Soccer hiked part of that, like 13 miles. A friend and I, whit McLaughlin and I hiked a few days, and I did like about two days on my own. Yeah. And I do remember coming back and seeing no one for a full day. Yeah. And it was a glorious feeling. And I was so energetic and aerobicized. I mean, hiking, so my muscles were carrying that pack. But I I remember I had a terrible storm overnight with lightning. And the next morning I woke up and it had passed. So I was right up at World's End. Yeah. Look at the overlook. Yeah. And when I hiked out there for breakfast and I looked out, and the fog was in the valleys, and it was a fall, so the leaves were colored. Yeah. In full as I remember it, it's like full color. And the fog rose and fell. And I felt like God was imagining the world. I think maybe this, no, maybe this a little bit. It was an image I will never forget. Yeah. So what are the images you will never forget from your journey?

SPEAKER_00 24:39

Yeah. The images, the things that go into my head are the relationships that I formed on the trail. And I know that that sounds funny, but you bond with these people like crazy. When you suffer and sweat with somebody, it's different than having a great time. You know, because you just went through hell. You went through a hurricane. It about killed you, it about killed them, and you made it through. It's a bonding thing, like something, wartime stories. Those kind of the relationships. There is a couple of views that I gotta tell you about. My daughter and I were in the hundred mile wilderness, okay? And this is towards the end, we're all we're getting close to Mount Katain. This stunning, stunning view of this. There's not too many hills on the 100 mile wilderness. You're in a flat now. Mount Catain's big, real big, but it shoots up almost sea level, you know. It's only like 250 feet, but then it shoots up to 5,800 feet. Right off of the flat. You might as well be in Florida. Right off of the flat. It's humongous mountain. It just looks massive. It's tough too. This pond where I'm at, my daughter and I would take a bath every single night. It was easy to do in Maine. And it was summertime. So if you don't take a bath, you're a dumbass. Okay. You you literally are. Why would somebody crawl in their sleeping bag just stinking like shit? Yeah. And you know, when you got all this fresh water everywhere. Now, the water in Maine is cold. But anyway, it's super refreshing. And I had just made some of this chaga tea. So I boiled this tea and the sunset that I never saw before like this. It's just spectacular. I felt God so close. I felt like my wife was with me, and my daughter's sitting here next to me. I just start crying. And all my daughter does is hands me this chaga. She just puts her arms around me. We don't say one word all night. She watched me cry and she hugged me. And I am telling you, you talk about a bonding moment. Oh my God. But we're looking at this beautiful lake, and then these amazing colors that are coming down. And the lake is now on fire because of the sunset is in the water, you know. Oh my, and there wasn't a breeze. It's beautiful. I got my little girl with me, you know. Oh, that's amazing. Oh my goodness, it was incredible. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:33

Now it was a journey of grief as well. So, what was that journey? You said you got what you needed on the last day, the next to last day. Yeah. What was that journey with or through grief, whichever it was?

SPEAKER_00 27:46

Now, this was amazingly caught by my author, Tara Shoemaker Holder. Anyway, she's really the author, but she captured me. Everybody that reads it said, Oh my god, I felt like I just was talking to you. Because she writes just like you talk, and she does. But I would fight with myself like I'm living my dream, right? So I should be happy. I am. But I am like an emotional roller coaster, brother. I'll be sky high, and I'm like, I got to do this dream. You know, nobody would give for a little bit. Like it was a fundraiser, right? Well, nobody was giving. And I was stuck at like$1,600 forever. As the hike went on, I got to like$3,000, but then everybody quit supporting me. And so I was like this, and I said, I'm out here, nobody cares, nobody gives a shit, and I'm trying to raise money. I'm just this emotional roller coaster. As the hike went on, when I became the last hiker, the donations went crazy because I'm the new ticket in town. You know, I'm the only ticket, you know. So everybody starts following me. I ended up raising$26,000 freaking dollars.

SPEAKER_01 29:10

Way to go. That's great.

SPEAKER_00 29:12

It's amazing how God's doing this shit. How the hell? The biggest curse I thought turned into the biggest blessing. Because they wouldn't have given that money if I wasn't. Now a lot of them didn't even know me. And then all these strangers started following me and giving 20 bucks. It was just the credit production, 26,000 bucks. I mean, it's way more than that now because they still, some people still keep giving, you know.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

And that was because of a broken ankle, COVID, norovirus, and the delays that five more broken bones, and yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:50

It's amazing how things happen, and you don't see any sense, rhyme, or reason. This doesn't make any sense. But as you reflect, you can see it couldn't have happened any other way. You know, and you can see divineness, you can see something divine working here, and all those injuries and things were part of my healing. Like I can plow through anything. I've been blessed with this amazing body. 67 years old, I'm still roofer. All this bad shit's happened to me, but yet my body doesn't quit, you know? And I was like, I'm gonna be able to do this trail in no time at all, or I'm gonna do, you know, but then yeah, now now slow down, Stephen, right? My biggest kind of lesson to be learned was even like the Bible verses that I memorized when I was a kid, like I can do all things through Christ Jesus who strengtheneth me. That became a curse. Because I couldn't do this one. I couldn't do it, I couldn't handle my wife's death. Why can't I? It says it right here in the Bible, but I can't do it, you know? And I I tried to kill myself. I ended up having this wrestling match within myself, and at the end, after all my bones were broken and all the noravirus and shit going on, it was like I finally got it. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I was putting I first instead of him first. That was a very big lesson for me because I had a body that could do anything. If we needed more money to go on a vacation, I just worked harder. And boom, it happened. And I would say, oh, praise God. But it was me. I wasn't giving God a chance to do anything. I was always I even made my wife's tombstone. You could see my wife's tombstone from right here. Anyway, you know, all this stuff I did by me, that was a big lesson, a big lesson learned. But uh you asked me about my biggest spiritual thing that happened. Two great big things, but the last one was I didn't forgive myself. I would knew I was forgiven about my dad. I knew God forgave me, but I never forgave me. Like Stephen Wright never forgave himself. I would okay, okay. Well, that's God's job. He died for me, you know, he forgive me. But how could you do that, Stephen Wright? It blew my mind that I could be so cruel and I could say something so vicious and so ugly. I just couldn't forgive myself. And you know, Satan's pretty good at pointing fingers. Yeah, you suck. You suck, Steve Wright. You're a piece of shit. That kind of that kind of stuff. He just throws at you. And after a while, you start believing it. And I did think I was a piece of shit. So I was on the trail going like this. I'm so happy one second, and then something'll happen and I'll I'll just hit rock bottom. And I was like, I wish a tree would fall on me, you know. I mean, I really did, and a tree does fall, and it almost killed me. More or less I discover when that tree fell and it didn't hit me. I was like, wait a minute, I want to live. You know, it shocked me. I was like, wait a second, I want to live. I don't want to die. God was like, You got two beautiful kids. Why would you want to die? You got a lot to do yet, you know. Those two things that happened in the book were were my spiritual cleansing. I don't know what it would be equivalent to. When that tree fell, when that thing with my dad, when I forgave myself, was better than getting married, it was better than when my kids were born. It was that good. And when I say kids are born, a lot of women are like, you're crazy. It was because I had no hope. I found hope on the Appalachian Trail. I had no hope at all. In the Bible, it says faith, hope, and love are the three great things, but the greatest is love. Well, for me, that made no sense at all because I had no hope. If you lose hope, it doesn't matter whatever else, because if you lose your hope, there is no hope. And I had no hope. And I found it on the Appalachian fucking trail. Well, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 34:55

Well, see, that's an amazing story and an amazing lie. So thank you so much. It has been truly wonderful talking to you or listening to you. Oh, and please talk about your book because it's important that people know that there's a book about this journey.

SPEAKER_00 35:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:12

And you that you've written. What is it and where can they find it?

SPEAKER_00 35:17

It's the weight I carried, and you could get it on Amazon. It's sold out at Indie Pubs right now, and actually it's sold out at Amazon too. It just sold out like yesterday. But I already got 1,500 copies coming. So it's going to be available, I think, on the 15th. Now I got copies, but the ones that people that don't know me and don't know how to get a hold of me, there's some books down at Bloomsburg Library and at the Phillips Euporium and you know, different places around. That's wonderful.

SPEAKER_01 35:53

It's wonderful to go down to Phillips where Helen is.

SPEAKER_00 35:55

Yeah, yeah, there you go. Some sales, yeah. Yep, and uh uh The Weight I Carried, Hiking Through Grief and Healing on the Appalachian Trail. Stephen C. Wright is what you'll have to, and it's with Tara Shoemaker Holder. Oh, and there's another thing on the second to the last page. If you do that QR code, you'll be able to get into my website, which downloads those pictures that I'm saying. I climbed 75 trees to get pictures nobody else got ever. Because I climb trees.

SPEAKER_01 36:29

That's great. Well, wonderful. Steve, again, thank you so much. This is amazing. Hope to that's it for this week's locals, the podcast in which we talk to people who are local. Join us next week for a conversation with Cardi Purcell, Bloomsburg native, retired lawyer, and font of knowledge about Bloomsburg in years gone by. We'll see you then. Have a nice week.