Currently being printed "Dead Men Walk No Trails" by Rick Mckinney. A self told story of his adventures on the AT in 04 (I think that was the year) On the AT he was known as Jester and has since taken the trail name of Peregrine Jack. You can hit his website to order a signed copy - jigglebox.com
Some of you may remember him from that year and his postcard that he sent to almost all the hostels of him and his art car Lord Duke. Check it out, I enjoyed reading bits during its pre-published days
:jump :jump :jump
Below, an email I recieved from Rick - A wonderful feeling seeing his hard work finally in print.......
From the Author:
Cool! Here are some descriptives you can sling around, stuff I had to come
up with: a 40 word summation for Ingram (Amazon, etc), and below the line the backcover text.
Lending levity to tragedy, author McKinney loads readers into his
backpack for a 2000-mile Appalachian Trail odyssey, dealing a passionate, endorphin-fueled gonzo blow to suicidal thinking. Dead Men is a deeply empathic, unorthodox prescription for a nation depressed.
------------
"Following a friend's suicide in 2003, I faced my own suicidal
depression and a choice. Dwell at grief Ground Zero or run Gonzo Crazy and free in the opposite direction, blazing bright and deep in the jungles of America, hiking and writing until my feet and fingers bled with pure honest screeching love for life."
McKinney escaped to the Appalachian Mountains and launched a 2000-mile odyssey on foot. Writing on route, he paints a heartbreaking, beautiful portrait of trail life full of days of physical pain, moonshine evenings with new friends, firefly bedazzled nights, wilderness survival, laughter and love on the long walk from Georgia to Maine.
Read this book and you'll cry until you laugh until you cry again with
tears of joy. McKinney is Sylvia Plath in remission, his writing candid, sexy, and by turns poetic and journalistic, dead serious and witty. No one has ever scoured the dark skull of suicidal depression with such empathy and open-hearted enthusiasm for life while doing Monty Python impressions for other hikers and climbing ten score mountains in six months.
Dead Men delivers an endorphin-charged blow to a nation depressed.
walkin' wally
01-13-2006, 08:11
We met Rick Mckinney at the Caratunk Whiteblaze gathering in 2004. Nice guy.