The Long Walk Home

Hey there!  My name is Matthew Linden King. I am an artist and photographer from Savannah, GA setting out to southbound thru hike the Appalachian Trail starting July 3, 2024.  To help finance my hike, I created and successfully funded a Kickstarter campaign.  I was so humbled and encouraged by the response I received during this process, that I thought for my first post here on The Trek I would share what I wrote for the Kickstarter project description.  Launching this campaign created space for me to contemplate exactly why I would undertake something as daunting–and honestly irrational–as an A.T. thru hike.  The following is what I shared with supporters:

I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. I currently live in Savannah, and minus a three year stint of being born and mastering toddlerhood in Reno, Nevada, I have been in Georgia my whole life. I had a good childhood.  In many ways, it was the best childhood.  I feel very fortunate to have lived the one I did.  So many days were spent with my brothers and friends running barefoot through the neighborhood, building pine straw forts in the woods, whizzing down the backyard zip line, telling mom we would be across the street while actually miles away on our bikes, exploring nearby creek beds and dodging snapping turtles, lighting things on fire for no reason but to watch them burn, chasing lightning bugs on muggy summer nights, wearing whiffle ball base paths into dad’s meticulously manicured lawn, and not coming home until the street lights turned on. Not a smartphone in sight. We would call those kids feral today, but I look back on those days with such deep fondness. In fact, if I dwell on the goodness and purity of those moments for too long, my heart aches. Somewhere in the midst of those carefree days, I discovered a wildness within me that has never really been tamed.

Along the complex and meandering path of life, I somehow lost some of that spirit and wonder. Difficult circumstances and normal life responsibilities chipped away at the earnestness and adventurous spirit I felt as a kid, sometimes reducing these sentiments to semi-recognizable piles of fragmented memories. Unmet expectations and broken dreams further calloused over the longing for freedom and adventure and were replaced with simple modes of survival.  My inner critical voices laid claim to the barefoot land I conquered as a child and on it built high rises of doubt, uncertainty, and adult responsibility.  It’s all really tragic, actually. And as I enter into middle age, I have finally learned to accept that nobody gets a free pass from suffering.  It has taken me a long time to accept this truth, and at times it has been a tough pill to swallow. No matter how good, pure, and adventurous the past, life comes for us all.

A long time ago I very consciously planted an impossible seed in my imagination: hiking the Appalachian Trail. What a pipe dream, what a beacon of irresponsibility and foolishness, what a waste of perfectly earned sick leave and 401k matched earnings. My mature and responsible adult self lectures the wild child buried within me with admonitions of realistic expectations and bills past due. He gives no regard to the stirring of soul or of calls to risk and adventure. Maybe that’s why Jesus, while talking about profound understanding and insight to a gaggle of grown adults, prayed, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children” (Matthew 11:25). It makes me wonder what lies hidden in my own heart and what forces of goodness and beauty I have squandered in the name of being wise and understanding.

I have decided to attempt a thru hike of the Appalachian Trail because I realize that I have lost a part of who I am. I lost that little boy who was perfectly content never wearing shoes and whose parents once threatened to take his bed away because he always slept in a sleeping bag under his desk. Take the bed, fine by me, more room for imagination. I am going to hike the trail because it doesn’t make sense, and there is no logical reason why a man would quit his job, turn in his keys, and disappear for six months into the woods, not even certain what he will return to. I am going to hike the trail because I am finally starting to come awake to the urgency of depth and meaning in my life, and I understand that this impossible seed that has been germinating in my subconscious is finally sprouting.

I hope you can join with me in some small way in this grand experiment to resist the wisdom of adulthood—if even for a short amount of time—and fight to recover the childlike wonder you once had.  I fully understand and acknowledge that many peoples’ childhoods were tragic and broken. I have friends who can attest to this. It hurts my heart to think of those realities, and if anything, the realization strengthens my resolve to follow through—to show that horrible things can be redeemed with beautiful pursuits and pain can be mended with transcendence.

I will be photographing my experience along the way and plan to make a book complete with images and writings (essays, poems, general thoughts and reflections on my journey).  You can see the donation tiers to get an idea of how and if you would like to participate. I deeply appreciate your willingness to hear and share in my story, and I hope that I can somehow hear and bear yours, too, as I walk the 2,200 miles from Maine to Georgia—my long walk home.

for social media updates, please follow me on Instagram @the_long_walk_home_