FLAME with Brad Hook
Led by a Wolverine to Water: Adventures on the Trail with Wing Williams
What if you could make a treaty with mosquitoes — and they actually stopped biting you? Adventurer Wing Williams shares stories from thru-hiking America's great trails, and the darker road that followed.
Wing's 'howling twenties' were spent thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail and Pacific Crest Trail, learning to move through forests without bug spray or fear of poison ivy, and — in the story that gives the episode its name — following a wolverine to a mountain spring no map showed. His relationship with the wild is unlike anything we've had on the show.
Then the trail ended and the harder journey began: addiction, spiritual torment and a brutal near-death experience, all recounted in his raw, poetic memoir CINEREAL — and finally, the surrender and faith that brought him out. At 40, living within the constraints of a traumatic brain injury, Wing carries a joy and clarity that's hard to argue with. An episode about wildness, darkness and what's on the other side.
In this episode
- Life on the Appalachian and Pacific Crest Trails
- A different relationship with the wild — treaties, not repellents
- The wolverine and the unseen spring
- Addiction, spiritual struggle and a near-death experience
- Finding freedom and faith after surrender
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