Life: at Two Miles an Hour: A Journey of Hope on Crutches

By Steve Wahlquist

Steve Wahlquist lost his right leg to cancer just days after he was born. Half a century later, he embarked on a journey few thought he would finish365 miles on crutchesto raise money for kids who, like Steve, had lost limbs and needed help.

This is the story of a journey filled with pain, fear, warmth, and triumph, which make this tale as memorable as it is inspiring.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524641795

Steve Wahlquist

Steve Wahlquist has been a personal/business development coach and mentor for the past 15 years and has worked with clients from North America, Asia, Europe, and Australia. Steve and his wife Kara won a fellowship with the LT Jordan Institute For International Awareness at Texas A&M researching the Maori culture in New Zealand. Steve has been an educator, singer/songwriter, technician, entrepreneur, investor, real estate professional, and author. He currently lives in Pleasant Grove, Utah.

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© 2016 Steve Wahlquist. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 11/16/2016

ISBN: 978-1-5246-4180-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5246-4179-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016915929

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Prologue

Chapter 1 Waking Up

Chapter 2 An Inauspicious Beginning

Chapter 3 Making The Change

Chapter 4 Taking A Beating

Chapter 5 Changes

Chapter 6 100 Days

Chapter 7 Stepping Out In Faith

Chapter 8 Launch

Chapter 9 When Push Comes To Shove

Chapter 10 Unexpected Encounters

Chapter 11 The Other Side Of The Mountain

Chapter 12 The Sirens Of Sanpete County

Chapter 13 Into The Wind

Chapter 14 The Heart Of Utah

Chapter 15 Dancing With Hoodoos

Chapter 16 Over The Top

Chapter 17 Welcome To Zion

Chapter 18 St. George And The Dragon

Epilogue

For

Kara, always and all ways…

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book has been a long time in the making, and would not have been possible without the contributions of time, insight, wisdom, experience and love of so many people. While words fall short of expressing my gratitude for those that helped this dream become a reality, I will do my best to give credit where credit is due.

First, I give my deepest apologies to everyone I have inadvertently omitted from this list that should have been included. I will never forget you…. unless, of course, I do. While I am comforted by the thought that relatively few people ever read the acknowledgements page, there are those few who expect to find their own name here somewhere, and so will diligently search to find it, but who will ultimately be disappointed. This is for you. Oh, and thank you!

I would like to thank those who took the time to read this work throughout the writing process and provided feedback and corrections as needed - which was plenty and often. Kathy Reeves, BrookeAnn Beesley, Anthony Ellis, Paul McFate, David Forbes, Moira Elliott, Liz Saban, Linda Shingleton, and Linda Threlfall.

I was given expert advice from Helen Chang, Katherine Serio, and the folks at Author Bridge Media. Their writing retreats gave me time, space and focus to get this book done. This experience was doubly enhanced by their valuable insights, professionalism, encouragement, analysis and feedback in an exciting and nurturing environment. Thank you all.

This book would not have been possible if not for the many people who made the walk possible. To them I owe a debt of gratitude I could never repay; John Whittaker, Brandon Bickmore, Paul McFate, Ali Kruger, Elyse Jones, Jeannie Halverson, Carl and Jeannie Timm, Liz and Orson Huntsman, Joni and Gene Hatch, Kevin Ainsworth, Brock Rigdon, Greg McCluskey, Dallin Wall, Irene Bozitch, Clay and Maridee Killian, Dave and Susan Arbon, Rick and Kari Wahlquist, Brian and Michelle Muir, Ron and Sandy Pippin, David and Stella Wahlquist, Maurene Wahlquist, David and Kathy Reeves, Hans and Dani Johnson, the DJC community, and many sponsors, donors, and contributors. If your name is missing, please see paragraph two.

I will forever be blessed for having met Kevin and his family; Marisa, Kawi, MaKayla, Mona and Dave. Their love and inspiration carried me through some difficult times and made this whole project worthwhile.

And finally to my family - my loving wife, Kara, without whom none of this ever would have happened. She was my greatest cheerleader, my voice of reason, my source of courage, my truest love, my best friend. I was also blessed with the love and support of our family - Elise, who put up with crowded quarters, long walks with her dad, and being the chief water carrier, and Mike and Jenna - though they lived far away, they were, and still are a part of this journey.

INTRODUCTION

Much of this book was created in real time, in journal entries, blog posts and Facebook messages, recorded as events unfolded.

It began as a dream to walk across America, guided by the inspiration of such amazing leaders as Terry Fox and Bob Weiland. Ultimately it would end in a 365 mile walk through Utah, to raise funds and awareness for kids that need prothetics. This book is a chronicle of that journey and the events leading up to it.

As I walked through Utah, often the sights I saw reminded me of experiences from my past that I have woven throughout the narrative, sometimes to illustrate a point, and at other times, just to throw some humor into the story. I have tried to make it easier to separate the stories of the past from what was currently happening on my walk by separating the paragraphs with extra spacing.

I also have included direct quotes from my journal entries, blog posts, emails and Facebook messages. These I have placed in quotation marks and bold type to make it easier for the reader to identify them. Because they are quotes from original sources I have not corrected spelling or grammar.

Most of the people in this book can be found through Facebook and other public sources. Where participants have requested anonymity I have honored those requests.

PROLOGUE

I dragged my aching foot across the asphalt. One more step. Then one more step. My chest was heaving as I tried to gulp more oxygen into my tortured lungs. Great drops of perspiration poured down my face and stung my eyes. I had been in saunas that didn’t make me sweat this hard. My hands were slippery with the stuff. Another lunge - another step. Searing pain shot through my shoulders, arms and hands. Somehow the pain in my arms and hands didn’t make me forget the pain in my lungs, back, thigh, calf, foot… How can you hurt in so many places at once?

Come on baby, you are almost there, the soft voice behind me urged. That voice had been my greatest source of encouragement for the past 21 years. My wife Kara was unquestionably my biggest fan and promoter. She made me believe things about myself I would never have imagined without her. I took another step.

I could see it now. An iron bench - its cool green paint glistening with splashes of sunlight that danced through the thick canopy of cottonwoods growing along the stream my trail followed. I fixed my gaze on the bench and pushed through the pain and distance that separated me from the relief I desperately needed. My mind flashed to Zeno’s Paradox, where - if you cover half the distance from point A to point B, and then half the distance again, and so on, you could continue covering half the remaining distance forever, but never actually get there because there are an infinite number of halves to cover. Maybe so, but at least at some point you could stop moving. I pushed these thoughts aside and took another step - halfway to the bench.

At last, despite Zeno’s pessimism, I crumpled in a heap on the bench.

Way to go, hun! How do you feel?

Like I’ve been hit by a truck, I moaned between gasps. I leaned back on the bench and closed my eyes, waiting for my heart to slow and for the light breeze to cool me down.

You are doing it! We need to do this again this afternoon, she said casually.

I squinted through the slits in my all-but-closed eyes to see if she was joking. She was not. I gave her a noncommittal grunt in response. I wasn’t exactly encouraged at the moment.

I was going to do the impossible! I was going to walk across America on crutches and this was my first training exercise. I had walked a quarter of a mile. I wasn’t all that sure I could make it home, let alone cross a continent. A quarter of a mile and I felt like I was going to die. What was I thinking?

CHAPTER 1

WAKING UP

May 24, 2008 - Journal entry:

"A week and a day past my 49th birthday. I am so out of shape, watching someone exercise exhausts me. For nearly my entire adult life I have led a sedentary existence, earning my living sitting on the phone - and consequently my behind - spending less and less time in active entertainments. On the verge of half a century old, I am tired, out of breath, and I punish the bathroom scale every time I step on it - lately to the tune of 355 pounds… give or take.

Today I decided to walk across America, from San Diego to New York City. Crazy? Oh yeah. Certifiable!"

While a walk across America may be crazy, it’s hardly unique. There have been perhaps, by one account, 206 others that have traversed the continent on foot since they started tracking this sort of thing in 1909. Some were old. At least one, by his own reckoning, was even very overweight. A few, in particular, became my inspiration.

Terry Fox made it from St. John’s, Newfoundland to Thunder Bay, on the shores of Lake Michigan, in 143 days. He had run 3,339 miles, averaging 23.3 miles per day, and he did it on a prosthetic leg, his own right leg having already been lost to cancer well above the knee. Now he was running to raise money to fund the search for a cure for this horrific disease.

Sadly, Terry’s heroic journey to run across Canada was cut short; cancer put an end to his Marathon of Hope. When his run came to its abrupt and tragic end, others took up his standard and raised millions of dollars before his untimely death a short nine months later - a month to the day short of his 23rd birthday.

Terry Fox made his run more than 25 years ago, but his legacy still lives on, and in his name, more than 400 million dollars have been raised in support of finding a cure for cancer. One man who made a difference - not only for those who could benefit from a cure, but also for those whose lives were changed by taking up the banner and becoming part of realizing Terry’s dream.

Not long after Terry Fox ran his Marathon of Hope, Bob Wieland left Independence Hall at Knott’s Berry Farm, California, in September of 1984. His journey ended in Washington, D.C., three years, eight months and six days later at the foot of the memorial honoring those who had sacrificed their lives in Vietnam. Etched in the polished granite face were names of friends and comrades he had served with and left behind.

It took a long time for Bob Wieland to cross the continent. That he had made the journey at all is astounding. He left more than friends behind in Vietnam - he also left both of his legs, lost to a mortar in his effort to rescue a fallen soldier. He made the entire journey, 2784 miles, on his hands.

So, no, my dream to cross America isn’t unique, nor is it close to being the most courageous. But, I would venture, this journey has never been done by a middle- aged, overweight, geezer on crutches! Ah, there’s the twist.

Like Terry Fox, I too lost a leg to cancer. I was born with a visible carcinoma on my upper right thigh. My leg was removed the following day. It would take me years to figure out I was missing something.

Like Bob Weiland, I had childhood dreams of becoming a professional baseball player. Some of the greatest accomplishments in this world are made by people who simply don’t have the sense to know they can’t do what they set out to do. After learning that Monty Stratton won 18 major league baseball games in 1946 pitching on one leg, I was blissfully optimistic about my professional career, right up through my last all-star game in Little League.

In my younger years, I spent a lot of effort proving I could do anything. In the beginning I did a lot of things simply because I didn’t know any better. After all, why shouldn’t I be roller skating with my friends? As I got older, I chose to do some things simply because I wasn’t expected to do them. I played sports, rappelled, hiked up mountains, skied, water skied, skate boarded, and delivered papers on my 10-speed to list a few. Whatever my friends were doing, I was there. I also walked a lot.

I can recall, almost like it was yesterday, working with my dad in his workshop. I was a Cub Scout, and while my dad worked on building one of his machines in his workshop, I sat nearby sanding the body of what was to be my only entry in a Pine Wood Derby (no, I did not win). We were listening to the University of Utah football game over the radio when an ad came on about helping the handicapped. I had heard the word before, even at times, in reference to myself. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but it seemed to me that handicapped was something you didn’t want to be. So I asked.

My dad took a little time before answering, but then carefully explained that handicapped people were people who couldn’t do some things because of problems with their bodies. I was so relieved!

Well, I announced, I guess I’m not handicapped then, am I? And that was the end of it. Or so I thought. Years later, my dad related that story in church the Sunday before I left home to be a missionary. He was choked up and had to fight back tears as he spoke. I had no idea, until then, what an impact that exchange had on my father. Nor did I understand for years how much that attitude had already shaped my life.

I think that part of my optimism about humanity grew out of how I was treated as a child. My parents cut me no slack, so it was a surprise to me when others thought I deserved some special consideration. I guess I was something of a novelty. People would come up to me, pat me on the head and give me candy. My older brother, Dave, was jealous. I just figured people were nice.

As I grew older and was no longer cute, as my brother would say, things weren’t always so rosy. I learned kids could be mean, but not most of them. I knew what it was like to be picked last, but not by my friends at home. And older ladies looking for something to say, seemed to focus more on my flaming red hair than on my missing leg, and it seemed I was more self-conscious about my strange hair than I was about having one leg.

In my teen years, I brushed off most of the negative opinions and limited thinking I encountered from other people. Or, if I did acknowledge them, I would meet them head on and go out of my way to show how foolishly wrong they were. I thrived on it.

Then I got old. I’m not quite sure how it happened. I’m still a little unsure that the old goat staring back at me in the mirror is really me. It’s just not how I think about myself.

It wasn’t the years really. Sure my body had aged, but it was more the case that my soul felt old. The fierce independence I clung to in my youth had been replaced. I was tired. There seemed to be so much I felt I could no longer do - or even worse, I felt I no longer had the energy or desire to do. That spark of youth and the yearning for adventure was missing.

For most of my adult life, I have had to come to terms with other people’s ideas about my limitations. It is mind-boggling how a perceived limitation in one area seems to bleed over into perceptions of limitations in other areas which are totally unrelated - like the way some people talk louder to a blind person, or to someone who doesn’t speak their language well. As I began to experience failures in the adult world, I bought into the nonsense that I had so deftly evaded in my youth. I began to believe in my own limitations. As it turns out, I really do have just one leg, and that means something. It shouldn’t, but it does.

It was expected that I would be a teacher. I was told I had a gift and should use it. Perhaps because it was expected, I had little interest in teaching as a profession. Teachers aren’t paid much. I could do better! What I was interested in was political science and history. It didn’t take long for me to figure out that most careers in political science and history were in teaching. So instead I dropped out of college and became a musician, playing a one-man guitar and vocal act. Not your regular gig for guys with one leg. Even so, I had some regular bookings at restaurants and nightclubs, as well as bookings for parties and weddings, and I loved it. But I felt my life wasn’t going anywhere. There was no long-term future in what I was doing. Someday the carefree life I was living would come to an end - then what?

I had slowly created an existence where I was in a lot of unacknowledged pain. I had always been the happy-go-lucky guy, the eternal optimist, the guy who had all the fun. The truth was that I was becoming an emotional wreck, which was great for my music as I would pour my emotions into my performances, but outside of that a quiet desperation was growing. The clock was ticking and I was not meeting expectations.

I was not a bad guy. It was worse than that. Bad guys at least have direction and ambition. No, worse than a bad guy, I was a case of lost potential. I was nothing.

One bitterly cold January night I stood in the parking lot outside of my apartment building and stared into a perfectly clear night sky. The glittery stars, like so many delicately strewn diamonds, were perfectly set off against the velvety depths - and I wished I too could get sucked up into the blackness of space somehow. I had recently been devastated by experiencing the loss of what until then had been my most meaningful relationship, and I filtered everything through the lens of loss and pain. I had alienated my parents. I wasn’t even really connected with my friends. I didn’t see a future and I didn’t want one. I felt I had hit bottom.

I didn’t really want to die. I had no thoughts of ending it all. It was simply that life was painful, hollow and held absolutely no allure. Death meant moving on, and I didn’t want that either. I just wanted to cease to exist. I tried to think about who would care if I wasn’t there or hadn’t ever even existed. Blank. Nothing. No one. I wasn’t going to find Zuzu’s petals in my pocket and snap back to reality. I was a zero.

I sucked in the frigid air, and with it, the truth that I was stuck with continuing to exist. I am sad for those who have been in this place and don’t make it out. It is hard to see or understand, staring up from the bottom of a well that deep, that this is not the best place to find the light - for in that place there is no light. But for those of us lucky enough to find a way out, it is scary to think about all you couldn’t see in that place and how far from the truth your perspective can become.

Self-pity is a self-indulgent killer. It blinds you from anything that would threaten the false reality it sucks you into. The truth was, there were people who cared - lots of them. I was so down on myself I couldn’t see it. In the end it was other people that pulled me out of this place. They didn’t know they were doing anything special - they were just being themselves. My parents, my family, my friends, and even people I didn’t know, were my lifeline back into the sunlight.

I can’t explain why, but I chose to believe there was more to life than what I was experiencing. Deep down I knew better - there were people who cared, even if I couldn’t feel it - even if I didn’t deserve it. I was not done with life - even