Mighty Blue on the Appalachian Trail, the ultimate midlife crisis, joined Stephen his guests every week as he staggers from Georgia to Maine.

Welcome back. We're on to show number six and back to the class of 2014. I've been

busily lining up other episodes and I'm now getting to know a few new people with whom I'll

be speaking soon. This week though, I really wanted to introduce Gris, or the Grizzly Bear from Maine.

Gris was one of the great characters I met.

In fact, I met him on the approach trail up from Amacola Falls.

If you listen to last week's episode, then hung around for chapter 5 of my book,

it'll have been introduced to him,

so he'll have an idea of the kind of presence that he was in those early days.

This is a fairly long interview, but it fits in well with the show as there is quite a short

chapter of my book at the end. Before we get to Gris, I just wanted to say something about

starting this podcast. Since I finished at the top of Catardin

on the 29th of September two years ago, and that's 2014, if you're listening sometime in the future,

I've been constantly engaged with the trail. Before I went, I'd never hiked yet since I've

finished. I don't think I've stopped. I came home to a wonderful

reception from, of course, my wife and family, but also from my community. We held a fundraising

evening where I gave a speech for a local charity I'm involved with, and with that and prior

sponsorship, we raised about $10,000. That felt great. And I coasted along in the warmth of that for the rest about $10,000. That felt great and I coasted along in the warmth of

that for the rest of 2014. I knew I wanted to write about my adventures so I got stuck into the

writing during 2015. I revisited my blog and used those entries as the background research.

This immersed me once more in my own story. Once I got going in my writing, I just couldn't stop. I'd expected to be able to write about

70,000 words, yet I kept going and going and going until I ended up with 150,000. In the end,

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