Mark E. Johnson
AUTHOR

Mark E. Johnson

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Mark E. Johnson has been a writer since he began penning poetry at the age of six. Over the years he has worked as a road musician and Nashville songwriter, graphic artist, journalist, freelance magazine writer, and humorist — usually writing about fatherhood, adventure, and the absurdity of middle age.

In 2017, Johnson and his wife, Holly, launched Hobnail Trekking Company after a chance meeting with an Everest region Sherpa in a Nashville Lyft developed into a friendship and, eventually, an unlikely business partnership. What started as a Nepal-only operation has grown into one of the few full-service adventure travel companies headquartered in the Southeast United States, arranging fully guided expeditions across more than a dozen countries for first-time international travelers who want to do something extraordinary.

That partnership also produced Johnson's first book — Doofus Dad Does Everest Base Camp (2018) — a firsthand account of Hobnail's inaugural trek to Everest Base Camp that has become one of the best-selling and most-reviewed books on Amazon about the trek.

His second book, Blow the Man Down (2019), chronicles his Forrest Gump-like journey from the Appalachian mountains to the streets of Nashville to the beaches of St. Croix and back again — a road musician's memoir with more detours than destinations.

In 2023, Johnson released his first novel under the pen name M. Ernest Johnson: Mr. Ledbetter's Boots, a work of historical adventure fiction following Raymond Ulysses Ledbetter — a 95-year-old Tuskegee Airman and WWII hero who, at an impossible age, intends to become the oldest known person to complete the trek to Everest Base Camp. Accompanying him is Joe Vogler, a hotshot North Carolina journalist, and Maya Sherpa, a trekking guide from the village of Phortse whose own connection to the mountains runs deeper than either man knows. Both are drawn to Ray's weathered old hiking boots — and the historical secret hidden inside them.

Johnson lives in Middle Tennessee with his wife and co-adventurer, Holly.
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