Six months ago, Trevor Moore was in a coma and couldn’t walk – now, he’s almost 100km into his hīkoi/walk to give something back to his rescuers.

Trevor, who broke every bone in his face when he was knocked out by a tree branch in May, started a 250km walk from Dannevirke to Wellington Hospital’s ICU on Saturday to raise funds for the Grassroots Trust Rescue Helicopter, which helped to get him back on his feet.

He was helping his friend fell some trees in Pahīatua when he was struck by a tree limb, leaving him unconscious with critical head injuries.

As he lay in his bed after waking from a coma, he was told his recovery hinged on his ability to learn to walk again.

“My brain wasn’t talking to my legs, so I couldn’t walk. It was just scary trying to take that first step.”

But this sparked his resolve to walk from his home town to the hospital that saved his life to raise $15,000 for the helicopter crew that gave him a second chance.

“I’ve got a second chance and not a lot of people get that. I want to do something big, and I’ve never done anything like this before.

“But I’ve got a stubborn personality, and my bloodwork is B positive, so I’m going to do this walk.”

Christened Trev’s Walk for Recovery, Trevor is covering 50km a day down the coast with his son, niece, a support vehicle and a campervan, making every effort he can to save every cent for the trust, and not get in the way of drivers.

“I want to do this and show them, ‘Hey, this is the one you have saved’,” he says.

In the first two days, Trevor says he was clipped by a campervan that crossed the centreline, hurting his arm.

Rather than that putting a damper on the occasion, it provided a few jokes questioning whether or not the man can be killed.

As he walked through Ashhurst on Sunday, the Grassroots Trust Rescue Helicopter base manager and crewman Graeme Spiers pulled up beside him to cheer him on.

At the time of the incident, Spiers said Moore had sustained severe head trauma, splitting his skull and breaking every bone in his face, including both eye sockets.

The crew had significant concerns about his ability to breathe, so they sedated him, inserted a tube down his airway and connected him to a mechanical ventilator.

Although it could be complex, the crew knew it was necessary to ensure Moore's survival and get him to the hospital as quickly as possible, Spiers said.

After multiple surgeries, Moore was moved to ABI Rehabilitation for a month, where he began to learn how to walk again.

Moore had walked through the Manawatū Gorge and Ashhurst, and was heading towards Te Marae o Hine/The Square in Palmerston North, and up to Tokonui on Sunday.

His goal is to reach Wellington’s ICU by 3pm Thursday, where he hopes to thank the people who saved him.

So far, he has raised almost $7000, and urged anyone who could to donate to his cause.

-Maxine Moore/Stuff.