“Those guys showed me a path toward a much larger life and they walked that trail with me until I became more than I dreamed possible.” – Jeremiah Johnson

Jeremiah’s Path of Possibility

I’ll never forget the morning I met the large, well-built, at ease with himself, Jeremiah Johnson.  It was a cool, crisp, not too cold morning when we met at the glass doors of a small office building, at nearly the same time. I tugged on the door. It was locked.

“You must be Lynn,” Jeremiah said in an open, gregarious manner.

The friend who had invited us hadn’t arrived yet. So, we stood there talking, getting to know each other, as we waited for his arrival.

Our initial meeting went so well that, toward the end of our friend-led agenda, Jeremiah invited me to come with him for short drive, skirting the edge of the Ozark Plateau until we reached a beautiful, hardwood covered, lake side retreat about a half hour into the time-forgotten Ozark Mountains. Where his generationally stewarded homestead, with flourishing strawberries, apple trees and native blackberries thrive.

“I thought this was the whole world when I was a child,” he explained as we walked the ground where his grandparents had taught him about their centuries-perpetuated lifestyle. “Then I got a scholarship to a college of arts in Denver. That was a mind-boggling experience for me!”

It was unimaginable, because the sights, sounds and people were otherworldly for a young man from a very different place. And, while he succeeded in school, the tug of his home continued to grasp his heart until he graduated and came back home. But home wasn’t the same for him, because he had changed. He had acquired a taste for views of a broader world.

“I decided to move to the gulf shores on the beach in Texas,” he recounted. “It was a new, magical place and I loved it and its people; who wrapped me in their arms and made me one of them.”

That’s where a group of police officers befriended him, changing his view of what possible was.

“Those guys showed me a path toward a much larger life and they walked that trail with me until I became more than I dreamed possible,” Jeremiah explained. “I became a police officer, a part of a larger fraternity.”

Even though he is retired from law enforcement, he hasn’t withdrawn from public service nor his connection to his family’s stewarded farmstead. He came back to his beginning place, not long ago, to care for his aging parents, as well as to walk the path of unimaginable possibilities with special needs children as their teacher and mentor.

After all, Jeremiah has walked an inspiring path of unimagined possibilities with giving personal guides his entire life.

“I tell my students and family that we’re stewards of life. We walk together with others, who have experience on paths we haven’t yet discovered, right up to the time we become giving-trail-guides ourselves.”

Watch my latest American Dream TV Segment

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fQmn4Fhlr7ftMqEjb64VFw1eCCK-YAZx/view?usp=drive_link