Brandon Weis describes himself as a hiker, backpacker, adventurer, weightlifter, movie buff, drinker, Buckeyes fan, runner, hard rocker, partier, binge eater, reader, football guy, and the biggest Lil’ Wayne fan you'll ever meet, among many other things.
Writer is also on his list after he published This is Gonna Hurt: Thru-Hiking the Appalachia Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, Continental Divide Trail, and Arizona Trail in a Calendar Year following an epic adventure in 2021, during which he hiked approximately 8,300 miles.
Weis will kick off the 2025 Fogle Author Series when he appears at Rodman Public Library on Monday, August 11 at 6:30 p.m. He will have copies of his book for sale and will sign them following his presentation.
Registration is required to attend his talk.
From Ottawa, Ohio, Weis graduated from The Ohio State University with a degree in finance and history.
Weis went on his first backpacking trip as a sophomore in college in 2018 in the High Sierra after somewhat accidentally signing up for the trip. After that, he went on three section hikes on the Appalachian Trail over school breaks before tackling the calendar year triple crown in 2021 after his plans of hiking the PCT in 2020 were canceled.
He now works as the CFO of a property management and development company.
Ahead of his visit to Alliance, Weis answered some questions via email. Here’s what he had to say:
Q: Based on your bio, you are a man of many interests. Even your college degrees are in two very different areas. What is it about hiking that drove you to even attempt what you achieved and what keeps you hitting those trails?
I love hiking because it is one of the most natural things we can do. As humans, we are meant to be outside and we are meant to move. Walking in the outdoors and immersing one’s self in nature seems like one of the most human things a person can do. Especially with thru-hiking, I think it is extremely satisfying at the end of the day and look at the 20-30 miles you covered on that day. On the longer term, it’s incredible to pull out a map and look at the thousands of miles you have traveled in foot over the past several months. Even looking at it after the fact, it still seems hard to believe.
I will never get tired of seeing gradual progress on a trail from hiking over days, weeks, or months.
Q: You added writer to your list even though you never thought you would write a book until you started to do so accidentally without knowing it. Can you explain how that happened?
A: Being a history major in college, I did write a lot, but I never expected it to go anywhere or be anything. On my year of hiking, I knew it would be a major event in my life, so I committed to journaling every night to capture the transformative experience.
Those journals ended up being the foundation of my story when I first had the thought of writing a book half way through the year of adventure.
Q: Can you explain your writing process and did you find it easy to write about your experience or was it challenging?
A: Given that I was writing about something that actually happened and I was not having to be creative, get writer’s block, or running into walls, I found the writing process extraordinarily easy. I wrote the book in 90 days exactly, and then I completely despised the editing and revising process. That took over 18 months (albeit I was out hiking nine of those months making no progress).
For me, writing was easy because I was just reliving my experiences and trying to get someone else to see them through my eyes. Revision was hard because I had to alter my language and lens a bit just to ensure that every person could understand the story as good as I could internally.
Q: Do you have any favorite authors or books?
A: Steinbeck and Hemingway are my favorite authors. I think their prose is some of the most beautiful things humanity has ever created. They both can have a paragraph where you are literally laughing out loud (which is hard for a book to do) and then the next sentence is so deep, you have to sit there and ponder on it for five minutes. Some of my favorite books are East of Eden, The Sun Also Rises, Moby Dick, and Catch 22.
Q: What do you hope readers will take away with them after reading your book?
A: I hope my book can accomplish two things with a reader.
First, I want it to help them realize that we live in a big, beautiful world that everyone should go out and explore. The natural landscapes of the earth are awe-inspiring and have been for all of time. It’s important to get out there appreciate them, experience them, respect them, and preserve them for future generations.
Secondly, I want my book to make every reader realize that every person is capable of so much more. We often go through life thinking we are a normal or average person and we have no business achieving “greatness” in any certain aspect of our life. But that does not have to be the case. It is truly incredible what a person can achieve when their mind is fully set in one singular thing. I had no business being able to complete this 8,000-mile hike in one year, but I was 100% committed to it, and I thought about nothing else for 18 months, which gave me the ability to achieve it.
Q: Do you plan to continue writing?
A: I would like to continue writing. I have a second book I’d really like to write, but now I am back to working full time, so it’s tough to find the time to write while working 50 to 60 hours a week, getting my hiking fix in on the weekends, and still having some semblance of a social life. I will write another book someday. I’m just not sure when that day will be.
Q: What can our patrons expect from you talk at Rodman Public Library?
A: My presentation will be an entertaining recount of my 8,000-mile hike across the country three times in 2021. Listeners will learn a lot about the challenges of a journey like this, details about the most beautiful parts of our country, the physical limits of the human body, and how often a person showers while living outside for a year.
Q: Are there any comments you would like to make?
A: Get outside!