Ep. 815: Iraq War Veteran Finds Peace Hiking the Triple Crown - Revisited - Will “Akuna” Robinson
Adventure Sports Podcast
Curt Linville
4.6 • 579 Ratings
🗓️ 17 March 2022
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Originally aired September 23, 2019
Enlisting in the Army at the age of 22, Will Robinson had no idea how impactful an experience it would be. Although honored and proud to serve his country, he returned 5 years later a broken man. Mentally, physically, and emotionally, the next 12 years of his life would be a stumbling progression of surgeries and therapy, with the constant companions of depression and anxiety.
That is until one day while flipping through channels, he saw the movie, Wild. Two weeks later, Will was at the southern terminus of the PCT.
The rest is well, now history. Will finished his last step of the Triple Crown just over a week ago, becoming the first Black man to complete the journey.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, folks, welcome to the Adventure Sports podcast. |
| 0:24.2 | We had Will on the show, gosh, back in 2019, originally aired on episode 573, so this is a throwback. |
| 0:34.6 | I host this one. |
| 0:35.7 | My editing skills, probably not as good as they are now, but I don't |
| 0:39.1 | think it's too bad. Doesn't matter. Will is an incredible storyteller. Amazing story here about |
| 0:45.3 | being a war veteran, not knowing what to do with your life, triple crown through hiking the |
| 0:51.2 | triple crown trails, Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, and Continental |
| 0:55.4 | Divide Trail. And Will is the first black man to do that. So we talked to him originally |
| 1:02.4 | like a week after he got up the trail. So it was brand new, fresh. He's up to a lot since then. So |
| 1:09.0 | definitely checking with him. We'll have to do an updated episode on some of his other adventures since we last spoke. |
| 1:14.5 | But enjoy the episode, and yeah, you'll hear from us on Monday. |
| 1:31.3 | Where are you recovering? Are's, are you at home? |
| 1:36.0 | Yes, I'm at home in Louisiana. Okay. And that's, is that where you're from and where you grew up? |
| 1:45.6 | I grew up in Louisiana, but I was military brat. I was actually born in Germany. So moved around a lot in my early years, but Louisiana is home for me. |
| 1:53.1 | Okay. Awesome. So what kind of things did you grow up doing? What was some of the interests that you had and some of the interests your family had? Growing up, you know, most of the stuff that I did was just like more |
| 2:00.4 | traditional sports, basketball, football, baseball. |
| 2:03.6 | Being born in Germany, soccer was a big thing when I was really young. |
| 2:07.6 | Oh, yeah. |
| 2:08.6 | My family used to do league bowling and things, but never really anything, say outdoorsy. |
| 2:13.6 | Okay, so did you excel at any of those other sports? Oh, yes. Basketball, I was usually |
| 2:20.3 | one of the top players in the state so that I lived in. In football, I was pretty decent in. But I had |
| 2:27.7 | some opportunities to possibly go to smaller schools to play basketball as a youth. Okay. And did you do |
... |
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