Students around the country are packing up all their belongings into minivans or trucks and moving to where they will start fall classes in just a few weeks. Nigel Knutzen, 30, is not one of those students.
When the St. Louis native found out he had been accepted into , he had a dilemma of how to get there. With no car and $30 in his pocket he realized “walking is free.”
Knutzen decided to walk from — from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville to Naropa — over 900 miles.
“I admit, it was a bad idea,” Knutzen said. “I thought I would just take the chance and the opportunity that was right in front of me and go for it.”
Knutzen left the comfort of his home on July 26 and set off toward his goal of reaching Boulder by Aug. 20, just in time for the start of his Masters in Fine Arts program.
“I packed my bag, grabbed my last 30 bucks and didn’t tell anyone except my mom that I was leaving,” he said. “I got up early and I just started going.”
His pack, weighing about 50 pounds to start, was filled with only the essentials: tent, clothing, first aid kit, solar charger, duct tape, hammock, laptop, five water bottles, dry foods, a water purifier, Gold Bond, sunscreen, a towel and, of course, a hacky sack.
At first, he was walking up to 40 miles a day.
“Going into it, I felt great,” he said. “The first day was fine. Then, the blisters started setting in. My feet were basically a hodge podge of bandages every day.”
Despite the sore muscles, Knutzen was perfectly fine with walking the entire distance. He never hitchhiked, but he was offered many unsolicited rides, one of which shortened his trip by hundreds of miles.
Teri Cohorst and her husband were passing through Marysville, Kansas, when they met Knutzen, who was .
“We were eavesdropping on his conversation with somebody else,” Cohorst said. “And it just so happened we were leaving for Colorado the next day. My husband and I just looked at each other and knew we had to take him with us.”
The next day, the couple drove Nigel, a stranger, about five hours to Limon. By the end of the journey, Cohorst said “it felt like dropping off one of my own children.”
Cohorst and her husband weren’t the only people who helped Knutzen on his journey. There were people along the entire route that offered rides, bought him coffee or paid for his meals, Knutzen said.
“It was really touching along the way to have all those little moments with strangers,” he said.
The trek took him a total of 13 days. And resulted in a lot of blisters. Now, Knutzen is trying to find housing and a job in Boulder before his Naropa orientation on Aug. 24. Friends and family have even started pitching in to help him pay for permanent housing by starting a .
The whole experience was extremely rewarding, he said. While many people fear taking a risk like he did, Knutzen said he had to bet on himself and his goal.
“I had 30 dollars and a backpack,” he said. “And I thought ‘What if I can do it?’”
