Nine months after a tanker truck rear-ended his horse-drawn wagon, killing two of his horses and leaving him critically injured, a former Deerfield man is resuming his travels across America this week.

And Doc, one of his surviving horses, will be leading the way.

Bob Skelding moved to Indiana in April; it's a more central location from which to launch his trip, he said in a telephone interview last week. He's eager to get back on the road.

"It's pure joy," he said. "I get to travel around and do it at my own pace. My expenses are very small, and I get to see the better half of America."

By that he means the portion that doesn't end up in the headlines, he explained. "America is you and me and everybody else. We're just living our lives, having a good time and enjoying ourselves with our friends and family. That's real America."

Bob Skelding's horse Doc leads the team pulling Skelding's wagon. (COURTESY)

After setting out from Deerfield in August, 2008, Skelding and his four-horse team had logged 1,800 miles by last Feb. 10. That's the day a fully loaded tanker truck hit them from behind on a Mississippi highway.

Skelding remembers "absolutely nothing" from just before the accident to about nine days later, when he woke up in a hospital with head injuries and multiple broken bones.

His homemade wagon had been demolished, and two of his Percheron mares, Dolly and Deedee, had been killed. His other two horses, Doc and Joyce, were hurt.

Only Clementine, his 17-year-old black teacup poodle, was unscathed; she was rescued by a caring passer-by.

Skelding had kept a blog about his travels on his wagonteamster.com Web site. After the accident and the loss of his two teammates, he received more than 1,000 cards and letters from friends and strangers alike; thousands more sent

e-mails and posted well wishes in his online guest book.

Doc back in the harness

Now Skelding, 50, has self-published a book, "Wagonteamster," which he said captures the "comedy and tragedy" of life on the road.

His sister, Cathy Fagan, who nursed Skelding back to health at her North Carolina home for nearly three months after the accident, says her younger brother was "destined to do what he was doing."

"When you have that kind of energy and spirit, there's nothing that can stop you," she said.

Indeed, determined to get back on the road, Skelding took two shorter trips with his new wagon and two-horse team over the summer.

Returning from a visit with his folks in Michigan, Skelding stopped to visit Doc at his new home in Indiana. (His surviving mare, Joyce, was adopted by a woman in Illinois.)

Doc had been "pretty severely injured" in the accident. And while a Mississippi vet had patched him up, Skelding said, "I didn't think he would recover enough so he could be used for pulling."

But it turned out Doc was a bit too much horse for his new owner, who asked Skelding if he wanted the big guy back.

He sure did.

Doc and the two new members of the team, Belgian half-brothers Bill and Bob, quickly settled in like old pals. And Doc was eager to resume his spot at the front of what is now a three-horse "unicorn" hitch.

"He's a lead horse and he likes to step off," Skelding said.

The team will step out on the next leg of their adventure at the end of this week.

And, now 18, Clementine -- "the incredible flying poodle" -- will again be at Skelding's side. "I have to have somebody to fend off those trucks," he joked.

He plans to head west, then southwest, and expects to be on the road for about a year.

Faith in humanity

Skelding will stick to slower side roads whenever possible, for the safety of his team as well as the public, he said. But, he said, he has no lingering fears despite the horrific crash.

►Bob Skelding's Web site

"It was just another day," he said. "A bad day, but another day."

He's never heard from the truck driver who hit him.

Still, the people he's met along the way, and the overwhelming response after the accident, reaffirmed his faith in humanity, Skelding said.

Bob Skelding's horse Doc leads the team pulling Skelding's wagon. (COURTESY)

"There are kind people wherever you go," he said. "Yeah, there's evil, and there's always been evil in the world, but it's such a very small fraction of our existence."

Losing two of his teammates still hurts. But he takes comfort from the vet's assessment that the mares were killed instantly.

"They died not knowing what hit them, and they died doing what they loved to do," he said. "If we could all be so lucky ..."

Skelding thinks many people who have avidly followed his travels on his Web site are living vicariously through his trips.

"We all want to be able to have our own sense of freedom, and be able to go out and touch people, and travel and do what we like," he said.

"It doesn't necessarily have to be a horse and wagon trip, but everybody would like to do something where they could exist on that level."

Skelding, who has two college-age children, Daniel and Lisa, said he's sure he'll settle down again someday.

"Sometime I'll get too old for this, or something else will strike my fancy. Everybody who says, 'This is what my future's going to be,' it always ends up completely different."

And for those who wonder how he could give up a well-paying job -- he was an electrical maintenance instructor at the Seabrook power plant for 15 years -- to live a life of such uncertainty, it's easy, he says. "Because to me, vacation is every day."

Too many people are caught in "an endless 'do' loop," Skelding said: "The harder they work, the more bills they pay."

Life on the road transcends all that, he said. "When I wake up in the morning, I know the day's going to be completely different from the day before.

"It's like opening a Christmas present every day."

.

On the Web: To follow Skelding's travels, read musings from "Bob the horse," and sign a guest book, visit wagonteamster.com. Skelding's self-published book also is for sale on his site.