Nutrition and near-death accompany a trek from Florida to Cali by foot.

It was Friday when a man named Stephen Hnilica walked from Florida to sleep on my couch. OK, he walked from Big Sur. But still. By the time he got there – pulling an ice chest and a backpack on a 100-pound sled he fashioned from PVC pipe and a dolly – he needed a shower.

A lot of discoveries surface over the course of 13 months walking 3,600 miles, maybe even more than there are people asking you, “Are you Forrest Gump?”

But I wanted to know about the food.

He told me peanut butter is a beautiful thing, particularly when you prioritize things like high calories and low weight.

“It’s also cheap, with lots of protein and fat,” he says. “Besides, it tastes delicious. What’s not to love?”

Next we talked rice.

“You cannot live on rice alone,” he said. “I’ve tried.” But he does highly recommend it, properly seasoned, because it’s super thrifty, healthy, calorie-dense and mild on the palate without weighing too much. Tortillas too, because you need the fat and calories and salt, particularly in deserts like the punishing Imperial Sand Dunes of deep southwestern California.

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One night in Texas’ Guadalupe Mountains, where the wind speed averages nearly 50 miles per hour, Hnilica, 22, found a lull and set up camp.

In the deepening black of night, the winds returned. They threw the tent on its side and pounded it like calamari.

The sand hitting the rain fly came so hard and fast it triggered static charges between the fly and tent, dozens a second.

“It’s lightning around me,” he says. “With little thunder claps. Outside it sounds like a train is passing nonstop.”

Inside, three things happened: 1) He spread arms and legs in a desperate, partially successful attempt to hold things down; 2) He tried not to hyperventilate; 3) He realized he would soon perish.

“I’m going to die right here,” he remembers, “picked up by a tornado.”

That raced his heart rate more. Then, in the noise and thrashing, his head became quiet and still.

He thought about all the horrible ways to die and realized this wouldn’t be too bad: thrown off a mountain while doing something mind-boggling is better than getting plowed by a bus.

“OK, if tonight’s my night, it’s OK,” he says. “Stuff happens.”

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At one point, while helping me weed my garden, Hnilica says, “The reason you start something isn’t always the same reason you finish it.”

He started from Tampa Bay, Florida, took a left at Tallahassee and didn’t turn right until San Diego. He’s heading for Seattle, 4,600 miles or so later, because that was the most distant place he had a best pal. There are other reasons he’s covering so much terrain, rarely with the luxury of highway directness: because he loves backpacking, because he never really got to travel before now, because he realized he wasn’t happy with jobs in SEO optimization and the like. They helped him and his friends support what he calls “a lifestyle,” but didn’t help much else.

He also knew how much he liked seeing kids he tutored brighten at new ideas.

“I just loved it,” he says. “To see how much the education was changing their life and perspective. I wanted to be able to bring that to people who had no other way of getting exposed to it.”

He did some homework and found India’s functional illiteracy rate is 26 percent. (It’s actually higher.) That means means some 300 million can’t read.

“There’s no place I’ve found like that where the tiniest bit of education changes somebody’s life so much,” he says.

The most inspiring nonprofit he found getting after that ignorance: Ekal Foundation. He’s hoping to meet and move enough people to raise $100,000 and educate 10,000 kids.

But just like he can’t cross the U.S. without help – Couchsurfing.org has been a godsend among many – he can’t rally those resources alone. But he is patiently gathering forces, and blogging about his adventures, at Marchforkids.com.

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There are things the wanderer didn’t know 13 months ago, beyond what it’s like to no longer fear death. (Thank you, Guadalupe Mountains.) Like sleep in a jail cell because it’s the only bed available in a swamp-surrounded southern town. Or fight off a pack of snarling dogs with trekking poles. Or having both legs collapse near the end of a 53-mile hike. Or going without food for five days.

He knows his pain threshold more intimately, and what little help whining provides. Or as he puts it, with a proverbial flourish, why his favorite guitar teacher tells her students, “We know your fingers are going to hurt, so we don’t spend practice time talking about it.”

But when asked to pick the most powerful truths that come after eight pairs of running shoes, a pair each of snow boots and flip flops and hundreds of sled repairs, he seizes upon two immediately.

One: We create our own purpose.

“It’s not something we’re born with,” he says. “We create it through persistence and tenacity.”

Two: No matter what is happening to you, you can always choose to smile.

Both emphasize the power of choice. He chooses to keep going, an unyielding spirit alive in the constant flux of travel, rediscovering his reasons for being.

~ QUICKBITES ~

• We’ve lost one of those personalities that couldn’t be contained, and one of those guys who was glue for a close-knit community, with the passing of Sal Poma. He owned and operated Bottles ‘n Bins by theHyatt forever and then some (34 years). But he didn’t leave before he got to meet little angel Stella.

• The dynastic duo of Thamin Saleh and Jeffrey Weiss, who run jeninni kitchen + wine bar in P.G. (920-2662), just visited the James Beard House in N.Y. Now they have a brand new menu coming out this week. Yes/yum.

• El Jefe Tequila from Ryan Sanchez of Carmel celebrates a coming-out weekend at Laguna Seca this weekend: two margarita booths with signature drinks at the AMA Superbike races, El Jefe mujeres – plus the cactus juice is now available at Surf N Sand Liquors, 10th Street Liquors, Grapevine Liquors, Baja Cantina, Turn 12, Vesuvio, 1833, CRBC and Montrio Bistro.

• Bakery Station on Monterey Street in Salinas (783-1140) now serves ACME coffee with the bells and whistles.

• There will be Ocean Sushi and Firestone beer (and other treats), and even more flavor on stage at the debut Anostraca at Henry Miller (check it on Facebook): NVO, Lily Zobler, Todd Hannigan and more, plus the real star, the Burning Man art car-glorymobile.

• Jacks Restaurant & Lounge and Peter B’s Brewpub (649-2699) now have a loyalty club. If it’s as remotely rocking as PBBP’s Mug Club – which allows a 24-ouncer of craft beer for around $4 – that’ll be a very good thing.

• Happy 100th, Mr. George Tanimura. Get more on one of the area’s ag founding fathers with Face to Face on p. 8.

• And happy 20th, French Laundry. Check out my Q&A with Thomas Keller on the blog.

• Big Sur landmark Nepenthe makes top 10 outdoor restaurants in the country, according to Gayot.

• Win a turtle race at Carbone’s and get tickets to midget wrestling this Sunday. Been waiting to write that sentence my whole career. More on the blog.

• Albert Ellis: “The art of love is largely the art of persistence.”