What began as a day hike 35 years ago forever changed the path of Jim Stoltz's life n transforming him into a troubadour for the Earth.

Musician and songwriter Stoltz brings his award-winning show of songs, slides and storytelling -- "Forever Wild" -- to the Myrna Loy Center Friday at 7:30 p.m. as part of the Spring Art Walk.

His rich bass voice is stunning and distinctive. The Wall Street Journal compared it to the sound of "a distant rapid in a canyon stream."

It all began one fateful day in Shenandoah National Park, said Stoltz during a phone interview Thursday from Thief River Falls, Minn. That day, Stoltz took a walk down the Appalachian Trail, and along the way, he met a backpacker heading from Georgia to Maine. After grilling the hiker for a half hour, Stoltz decided to follow in his footsteps.

And so he did, the following year. And it turns out, the rest of his life.

Stoltz was 21 years old that summer, and the hike was his coming-of-age journey of discovery.

"It totally changed my life. It's an experience I never wanted to end," he said. "It altered the way I look at the world and myself. It gave me self-confidence. It made me realize I could do anything I wanted. When I finished that hike, I had a penny in my backpack, but I felt like a millionaire. I describe my life as a rich man's life -- without the money."

Since then, Stoltz has logged 27,000 miles in his hiking boots and is still counting.

"When I did that first long hike, I never thought I'd still be doing it more than 25 years later."

His life's work has also benefited the Earth.

Stoltz's efforts to raise public awareness about wilderness and nature earned him the Environmental Protection Agency's Outstanding Achievement Award.

Friday will be a homecoming of sorts for Stoltz, who moved to Helena a year and a half ago.

He's been on a concert tour since Feb. 3. And although this interview should have been done on a mountain top, a cell phone interview from his van (which, he notes, runs on used vegetable oil) had to suffice.

Stoltz first stepped foot in Montana in 1975, as part of a year-and-a-half hike from coast to coast.

"I resupplied in Helena on that trip. It was the first city I experienced in Montana."

By 1980, he had moved West.

Over the years, he would hike from Yellowstone to the Yukon, and on three separate occasions walk from Mexico to Canada.

On one of these Mexico to Canada trips in 1979, he decided to carry a guitar with him.

"I started writing songs about things I was seeing and feeling about nature."

A guitar, it turns out, not only enriched his life, but actually saved it.

He had a little, beat-up guitar (sans case) tied upside down to his backpack, he recalled. "I was coming off a mountain and had to traverse this ice field." Below him were cliffs, with drop-offs of hundreds of feet. Suddenly, he began to slide. "I couldn't stop. I was clawing at the ice. It was ripping the skin from my fingers. I realized I was a goner. I rolled on my back to see where I was falling and the neck of the guitar jammed into the ice."

Expect to hear more such tales of wild adventure, Friday night.

"I've had a lot of adventures," he admitted. "They're when things go wrong and you live to tell about it."

You'll also see photos of some of the breathtaking scenery and wildlife he's photographed on his hikes through the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, the Northern Rockies, the Utah canyon country and from Yellowstone to Yukon.

Of all these miles and all these beautiful places, what stands out?

"Last year I did a walk that was very special to me," he replied, "from Nez Perce Pass to the Canadian border. I'd just gone through three months of chemotherapy for cancer in my throat. I needed some wilderness therapy. It was a real walk of thanksgiving. I was so aware of how fragile life is, how everything can change so quickly, how each moment is so special."

When he was strapped to a table getting his radiation treatments, he would envision the beautiful places he had been.

"One place I pictured was a place I had never been. It was an open ridge with wild flowers. I realized that I was walking in that place I had imagined during my radiation treatments. I just started crying. It was an incredible spectrum of emotions. It was one of the most incredible moments of my walking."

Stoltz's calling to celebrate the Earth takes him across the country for months at a time, performing in schools and concert venues. It will also take him back into the wilderness this year, somewhere in northeast Nevada.

"I feel so fortunate. I love what I do. The art, photos and songs are sharing nature's beauty with people and getting them to think about the planet they live on."

If you go

Walkin' Jim Stoltz performs "Forever Wild"-- a multimedia celebration of nature as part of downtown Helena's Spring Art Walk

- When: 7:30 p.m., Friday, May 15

- Where: Myrna Loy Center

- Tickets: $16 adults, $12 students, $8 children

- Contact: For tickets and information, call 443-0287

For information and to listen to music by Stoltz, visit www.walkinjim.com

Show sponsored by Big Sky Unitarian Universalist Fellowship