Homeless and virtually penniless, he dodged bears and mountains lions as he backpacked 925 miles through America to a new university.
He survived to tell the tale, and Nigel Knutzen has many more weird, wacky and wonderful stories up his sleeve.
His resume reads like a fantasy novel – circus ring master, actor, director, playwright, set designer, anthropologist, art trail coordinator, forensic professional – you couldn’t make it up.
Nigel’s latest enterprise? A theatre project focused on Scottish identity, with months of research, including a massive walk across Scotland, culminating in a play at The Byre Theatre in St Andrews.
The 35-year-old, who moved from the USA to Scotland in September, believes he himself has Scots ancestry, and is digging deep to find out what makes people uniquely “Scottish”.
“My goal is to get more people to share stories – ones that make them feel uniquely Scottish,” muses Nigel.
“Maybe they had a moment in their life that they can say, ‘yeah, that was a very Scottish moment’.”
To date, Nigel has had contributions from treasure hunters and tourists who identify as Scottish, and he’s hoping his walk across Scotland will introduce him to many more fascinating folk, keen to share stories.
His plan, then, is to run a focus group themed around Scottish identity, and finally to perform his play, along with volunteer actors, at the Byre.
He’s determined to connect with those at the heart of his research, and not to make it some academic, unreachable concept.
“I often find in anthropological work there’s this antiquated ideology where people go to these far-off Amazon tribal communities, and that’s how they gain prestigious accolades,” he reflects.
“They return from these communities with a paper for other academics that the people they did research on will probably never read or understand.
“So part of my motivation is to try to break down that barrier. I want the people researched – Scottish people – to have an opportunity to see the work, so they can judge it, instead of other academics.”
Nigel Knutzen’s crazy stories
Cupar-based Nigel is more than happy to share a snapshot of his crazy stories, wild adventures and eye-opening experiences when we catch up.
Sure, I’m interested in his Scots project, but I’m desperate to know more about his near-1000 mile backpacking expedition, bears, raccoon, lions and all.
So we agree to come back to the Scottish stuff later. So Nigel, what happened?
“It was a hot day when I set out in July 2018 from my home in Illinois with the ambition of backpacking to Naropa University, in Boulder, Colorado, more than 900 miles away,” he tells me.
“I was struggling financially, and in and out of homelessness in my senior year of undergrad. I’d auditioned for theatre grad school, and enrolled in a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) theatre programme at Naropa.
“I only had $30, but I thought, ‘you never know until you try’. A lot of people thought I was crazy, that it was a huge distance. But I just decided I was going to walk.”
Not only was Nigel determined he would make it, but he wanted to prove something – that people are generally good; they’re not always out to get you. He also wanted to show that chasing a dream is a simple as packing a bag and hitting the road.
But could he do it without money, no job lined up, and no place to stay once he arrived at his destination?
His bag, weighing about 50 pounds, was packed with his tent, hammock, clothing, first aid kit, solar charger, duct tape, laptop, water bottles, dried foods, water purifier, sunscreen, and a towel.
After a few days, the dreaded blisters set in; he had to bandage his feet to enable him to carry on.
His goal was not to ask for help – he never hitchhiked. But, if help was offered, he wouldn’t decline. That sometimes meant getting a lift for miles – and in one case, a couple drove him for five hours.
“I wanted to challenge the idea that the world was a mean place,” he muses.
“And from the minute I started walking, I started meeting incredible people. I didn’t hitch. I’d just walk and along the way, people would sometimes pull over. I had this big 80L red backpack so it stuck out.”
His diet, in the early stages, largely consisted of beef jerky, apples, and trail mix.
He started blogging on Facebook to keep friends and family up to date with his progress, and soon acquired an army of online followers.
People would then sometimes donate money for his lunch or coffee. “But honestly, a lot of it came from strangers,” says Nigel.
“Often I’d go to pay for my meal and someone had already paid for it. I didn’t even know who they were. Even when I went to stores, or somewhere like Subway, people would offer to buy the food for me, or they’d already have paid.”
In Marysville, where he hung out for two days, resting his aching feet, a stranger bought him a pass to the outdoor pool and a movie ticket, plus several dinners.
Fighting off cuddly raccoons
As he ventured through America, his bed for the night was either a tent or hammock. Wasn’t that a bit risky, perhaps, in Colorado?
Nigel laughs: “No, it’s not the wisest place to sleep outside because you do see mountain lions and bears, with Boulder being close to the Rockies.
“When the sun started to dip, I’d walk out into the woods and find a nice spot to hang the hammock or pitch the tent.
“While I was there, a runner was attacked by a mountain lion. He fought it off with his bare hands, got it into a choke hold, and suffocated and killed it. He was lucky. And so was I – in avoiding them.”
Nigel says his “biggest fight” was with “massive” raccoons.
“They wanted to cuddle with me a lot. They’re very curious. I’d wake up and find them next to me, messing with my bag or fiddling with my emergency heat blanket.”
His nights were often sleepless, as he was constantly on edge, wondering whether the snap of a twig was a deer, raccoon, bear, lion or confrontational farmer.
After 16 days of walking (and accepting the odd lift) when Nigel arrived in Boulder with nowhere to stay, people jumped in to help.
He was weary, having walked an average of 30 or 40 miles a day, and some days clocking up as many as 60.
“There are so many examples of huge generosity,” he reflects. “Here’s one. A stranger left me a gift card with $100 dollars and a note welcoming me to Colorado.”
Within a week Nigel had a job – as the patron services associate at the Dairy Center for the Arts – and a place to live.
He started a theatre company called The Royal Players’ Guild, but when Covid-19 hit, the arts industry took a battering, so he shut up shop.
He had graduated with an MFA in theatre performance in Colorado in 2020, and was a “double major”, having already studied anthropology.
“I’d specialised in biological archaeology, which is close to forensics,” he explains.
“So when Covid happened, and theatre stopped, I was delighted when an old professor asked me to work on a mass fatality team in New York.”
Life as a New York mortuary worker
Nigel worked as part of the team during the height of the pandemic in 2021.
It became the second longest running mass fatality unit of its kind since September 11.
The emergency morgue was his “office”, although he was all over the city, retrieving bodies and transporting them for autopsy.
“There were so many fatalities that people couldn’t keep up,” he laments.
“I was part of an emergency response team. We’d pick up bodies from hospitals, crime scenes, or wherever.
“If anyone passed away, for any reason, we’d respond. It could be that someone had jumped off a roof, thrown themselves in the river, or been murdered. It might be a kid had been hit by a car. Or someone had a heart attack in a gas station.
“It was hard to comprehend death on such a huge scale. It really put life into perspective.”
On a lighter note, Nigel worked as ring master for Circus Flora in St Louis, Missouri, in 2018.
“That was fun!” he says. “I was in charge of hiring the crew, raising the tent, building the seating – and then in charge of everything that happened inside the tent, and backstage.”
His knowledge of “dirt”, thanks to a childhood spent hanging out in it, and a love of archaeology (and digging), meant he was able to save the day when torrential rain threatened to wash away the circus’s surface.
Living in Cupar
It was while Nigel was working in the mass fatality unit that he heard about an opportunity at St Andrews University – an anthropology degree focused on art and perception. It seemed a perfect fit.
“I’d already been working professionally as a playwright in the USA, bringing science into my work,” he says.
“When I saw there were more ways to study theatre audiences, I took a chance and applied.”
He landed in Fife in September and found a place to rent in Cupar.
His project on Scottish identity forms part of his Masters of Research Anthropology: Art and Perception dissertation.
Nigel Knutzen’s walk across Scotland
“My big dream is to walk across Scotland, collecting personal stories, and turning them into an ethnographic play about Scottish identity for my dissertation,” he reiterates.
“I’d walk the coast from St Andrews up to Caithness, then over to Thurso. I’d head west for Durness, then south to see the west coast until I reached Skye.
“I’d cut back through Inverness and down to St Andrews. The route would be like a funny shaped balloon. I’d camp along the way, much like I did in the US.”
Nigel has built a website – thescotsproject.wixsite.com/thescotsproject – in the hope that people will add more stories.
“It’s been interesting to ask – when do you become Scottish?” he muses. “I’ve spoken to people who feel very Scottish, because they’ve lived here many years – even though they were born in England.
“Can you only be Scottish if you were born in Scotland? Can you have a dual identity, where culturally you’re very Scottish?”
Scots all over the globe
Nigel also picks up on the fact that Scotland has one of the largest diasporas in the world, “with more people who identify as Scots outside Scotland than you have in Scotland”.
He adds: “If you’re from Scotland, how is that identity different from those who’ve never been to Scotland? I really want to see how Scottish people define identity. Let’s give the people a voice.”
While his mother’s maiden name is Gunn, and he’s been told he has Scottish ancestry, anyone wondering about his Scots credentials can take heart – Nigel is one Scotland’s four ‘Saltire Scholars’, having been awarded an £8,000 scholarship for his postgraduate study.
“The scholarship says it makes you an ambassador to Scotland, but I haven’t been asked to do much ambassador work yet!” he laughs.
“My application was about the work I do combining anthropology and theatre and my desire to further my knowledge in this niche.
“Really though, the idea of being able to say I’m an ‘ambassador to Scotland’ sounded pretty cool!”
For his 35th birthday, his partner Erin Thibodaux gifted Nigel a small plot of land in the Borders, meaning he could be a ‘Lord’. In fact, if you check out his Facebook page, he bills himself as ‘Lord Nigel Knutzen’.
He laughs: “I guess I can say I’m a Scottish Lord and an ambassador to Scotland! I find the silly semantics of it all rather amusing.
“Erin did this through Established Titles, a charity established to protect Scotland’s woodlands. It gives you one square foot of land on a private estate in Eddleston, which is cared for by them in your honour, but establishes you as a landowner. It’s all in good fun and for an environmental cause.”
Scotties by the sea
As if there wasn’t enough Scottishness in Nigel’s life, he also works with (fake) Scottie dogs in his role as production coordinator for business organisation BID St Andrews, which is running the Scotties by the Sea Project.
This will see 30 giant Scottie dog sculptures dotted around St Andrews and north-east Fife in the autumn, with the 10 week art trail aiming to raise £150,000 for Maggie’s Cancer Care.
It’s certainly a busy time for Nigel, who also has four plays premiering in the USA this summer.
One thing niggling away at him, however, is his health. Having felt unusually tired, he headed to Kirkcaldy’s Victoria Hospital where he was told his gallbladder may need to be removed.
Despite this, he still jokes. “I guess you could say my life has always been a bit against the odds. I’m really focused on giving something back to Scotland with this play. I want people to embrace it, and to embrace stories of being Scottish.”
To contribute to Nigel’s project, see thescotsproject.wixsite.com/thescotsproject
