Selfless Acts
Out There
Willow Belden
4.6 • 608 Ratings
🗓️ 20 September 2018
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Bill Appel has devoted his retirement years to helping strangers.
He’s a “trail angel,” providing support to hikers and mountain bikers on several long-distance trails. He offers food and beverages to travelers, gives them rides into town to resupply, and cheers them on at some of the most demoralizing points in their journeys.
It’s a year-round operation. Appel angels along the Appalachian Trail, the Continental Divide Trail, the Colorado Trail, and the Florida Trail — and he does it all for free.
On this episode, we pay a visit to one of his aid stations, and we explore why people are sometimes so selfless. Where does altruism come from? What makes a person commit repeated acts of kindness?
FYI: the answer is not what you’d expect.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Willow Belden and you're listening to Out There, the podcast that explores |
| 0:10.8 | big questions through intimate stories outdoors. |
| 0:17.0 | I'm willing to bet that at some point in your life, you've experienced an act of altruism. |
| 0:22.9 | Maybe it was the sweet older couple who picked up your entire bill at a fancy restaurant. |
| 0:28.1 | Or the stranger who fixed your car when you broke down in the middle of nowhere. |
| 0:31.8 | Or the person who invited you to stay at their home when you were on the road and had no place to go. |
| 0:37.2 | You know what I'm talking about, those acts of kindness that seem over the top. |
| 0:42.6 | Today's story is about that, about generosity taken to the extreme. |
| 0:47.6 | And it's about what prompts someone to be that generous. |
| 1:09.8 | The story starts four years ago, on a hot day in July. |
| 1:12.5 | I was through hiking the Colorado Trail, |
| 1:17.3 | which is this long-distance hiking trail through the Rocky Mountains. I'd been out for several weeks by this point, and I was in the middle of cattle country, basically just miles upon miles of |
| 1:22.8 | dry, dusty brown fields. No shade, no place to fill up my water bottles. The last stream I had passed |
| 1:30.2 | was basically just a muddy trickle full of cow manure. I was totally out of water and my mouth was so |
| 1:36.8 | dry it felt like I was chewing on cotton balls. It was starting to make me nervous. What if I got |
| 1:42.5 | dehydrated? Like severely dehydrated? |
| 1:45.5 | How would I handle that all alone in the middle of nowhere? |
| 1:49.5 | And then, way in the distance, I saw the glint of something silver. |
| 1:57.1 | As I got closer, I realized it was a vehicle. |
| 2:01.5 | Next to it was some sort of homemade storm shelter, shaped like a dome. |
| 2:06.9 | I had heard rumors that there was a trail angel out here somewhere, a man who gave out |
| 2:11.4 | free food and drinks to hikers. |
... |
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