LYNNWOOD — REI is known for its great return policy, and Rob Hammond proves it.
He recently took a pair of khaki hiking pants he’d worn since January to the Alderwood REI.
“I said, ‘I’ve been hiking and these show the dirt a lot and I really wanted green,’ ” Hammond said. “They said, ‘Go get another pair.’ ”
He’d worn the pants for more than six months straight, while pretty much walking for six months straight. He left Arizona in January and arrived in Washington in late July.
He took it one step at a time.
“I like walking, so why not walk to Seattle?” said Hammond, 58, interviewed last week at his daughter Lauren Hammond’s Lynnwood home wearing his new green pants.
He took byways, highways, trails, random detours and “shortcuts that weren’t such a shortcut,” he said. “It adds up to about 3,000 miles.”
He left Arizona on a two-fold mission.
One: So he wouldn’t commit suicide, he said.
And two: To make it to Lauren’s wedding in Seattle by September.
The hike was Hammond’s extreme attempt to cope with depression and anxiety. He’d dealt with mental illness for years, he said, but never sought treatment. Hiking was his way of keeping it at bay before it ultimately took him down.
His inspiration: Robin Williams.
“Because Robin Williams died, I get to live,” he said. “Had he not done that, I don’t know … I could relate completely with his illness.”
Hammond was on a downward spiral of his own Aug. 11 last year when Williams took his life. It made him realize the devastating impact suicide has on survivors.
“I said, ‘I have to live and don’t want to,’ ” said Hammond, who had an insurance business in Arizona. “I went to work and said, ‘I’m done.’?”
He took his starched white shirts and salesman ties to Goodwill and got rid of most everything he owned.
On Jan. 15, after a few rounds of beers at a saloon in the desert town of New River, Arizona, he hit the road with a 50-pound backpack. As he tells it, he spent 80 miles bushwhacking, 310 miles on secondary roads then about 25 miles on the interstate before starting the Pacific Crest Trail in Campo, California, on Feb. 20. He strayed far from the trail at intervals, such as a 200-mile walk along the Pacific Coast Highway and hitchhiking back to Arizona for two weeks to see his 18-year-old son, Dillon, graduate from high school.
Along the trek, he endured shin splints, blistered feet, body odor, heat and cold. He arrived in Washington a leaner version of his former self.
He has what he calls “Popeye” calves to show for it under those zip-off REI pants.
“I was 210 when I started and I’m 175 now, and that’s what I weighed when I got out of boot camp,” Hammond said. He served a two-year stint in the Coast Guard.
The half-year hike was the boot camp for the war that raged within him.
Lauren Hammond said she worried about her father’s plans to walk to Washington, but she didn’t discourage him.
“He talked about making a change and not wanting to do what he was doing anymore,” she said. “He was better off out there than at home, isolated and depressed. It was a legitimate fear of mine that he would eventually kill himself.”
But walk it off?
“A lot of it sounded pretty crazy,” she said. “At first I thought he was joking.”
It sure sounded like he was.
“Originally I was going to do it with a pack mule and name it ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’ to bring awareness to depression,” Hammond said, “but the logistics were impossible.”
So he became the pack mule, bearing the weight of his mental illness through the multi-state odyssey.
“I had a lot of time to think,” he said. “You get on that trail and it goes somewhere. Just like life there’s obstacles in the way. As long as you stay on that trail you’re going to get there. The goal is reached, no matter how miserable it is. Same thing with life.”
Life was often a “living hell,” said Hammond, a successful insurance broker who had two daughters by two different women during his 15 years in Seattle after moving here in 1977. They stayed here when he moved back to Arizona in 1992.
“At that time, I was hitting the cocaine pretty heavy so I had to make a change and get away from that crowd,” he said. “I’ve battled it all my life. Like a lot of people with anxiety and depression, they cover it up. They get lonely. They get frustrated. By doing drugs or alcohol, what it did for me is I could forget. For a bit there is no pain, then the pain is 10 times worse afterwards.”
Hiking was a positive vice.
“I would hike on weekends and it would kind of relax me,” he said. “When Lauren was a little baby I would put her in a backpack and we’d walk all over the place.”
The outdoor ventures continued whenever Lauren, now 33, visited him in Arizona. “I have fond memories of learning about nature from him,” she said.
On his half-year hike Lauren tracked his progress on social media and insisted he regularly check in with her.
Hammond packed the essentials: A tent. One shirt. One pair of underwear. Four pairs of socks. One pair of pants, in khaki, because the REI in Arizona didn’t have green in his size when he left.
“Every couple days you find a creek and wash your clothes,” he said.
Hammond, a talkative guy, made friends on the walk, including some who were far away, supporting him through his GoFundMe account, which raised $1,400. As he wrote in a post: “The sights, the people, the kindness and generosity has overwhelmed me. These experiences have transformed me from an unhealthy, callous and miserable ‘ghost of a man’ into a healthy, positive and caring man.”
He didn’t walk to Lynnwood, as planned. Instead, Lauren picked him up near Auburn to shave off a couple days of walking.
Hammond arrived two days after his third grandchild was born to his younger daughter, Caige Mullen, 28, who lives in Lake Stevens. In recent years, other family members moved here from the Southwest, including his mom, Waldtraut “Wally” Hammond, of Marysville.
He plans to stick around this area.
“I’ve never been closer to anybody. Especially Mom. She was my biggest fan,” Hammond said.
The last few weeks have been spent doing odd jobs for family members and praising Lauren’s cooking. “Every meal I’m still like, ‘This is delicious.’ ”
Lauren said her dad now talks openly about depression, which he never did before. He made an appointment to see a mental health therapist at the VA clinic.
“Depression was my buddy. I’ve lived with it so long I was used to it. Now I know what life is like without it. I get anxious, but I’m not depressed,” he said. “The hike made me want to do stuff again. I’m more excited about things. I’m starting over. Completely over.”
New pants and all.
Andrea Brown: 425-339-3443; abrown@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @reporterbrown.
Help is available
To reach Care Crisis Response Services, available 24 hours a day through Volunteers of America Western Washington, call 800-584-3578.
To reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, call 800-273-8255 (800-273-TALK)
Care Crisis Chat is an anonymous, secure way of getting help online: www.carecrisischat.org
Learn more about how to help at: www.suicideispreventable.org
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
