For anyone interested, here's the press release going out to everywhere and anywhere, to anyone who will listen. It is prefaced here by a letter to a Canadian foundation set up by the family of suicide-victim Kelty Patrick Dennehy dedicated to raising awareness of the epidemic of teen suicide.

Dear Kelty Foundation,

I came across your site in a search for everyone and anyone out there working to reduce suicide. As I am an American, I have focused on American statistics, but of course the problem is not limited to the United States. I am sorry for the death of your son. I was touched and impressed with your site, with your willingness to tell your son's story in hopes of helping others.

I am undertaking an endeavor that I hope will have a similar positive effect. If I save just one life with what I am doing, I will have accomplished something.

As the success of my campaign relies entirely on getting the word out (for it is not a fund raiser but an "awareness raiser,") I need all the help I can elicit in making the public aware of my hike. Though I don't know what we could do to help one another in our efforts, I hope that you will give the press release beneath my signature a read.

Any ideas, support, or perhaps help in distributing my press release to Canadian media would be supremely appreciated and may help save a few lives.

All the best,
Rick McKinney
Journalist/Long-distance hiker
Jigglebox.com

PRESS RELEASE:

On Independence Day of this year, a hiker by the "trail name" of Peregrine Jack & a partner will launch a 1000-mile hike of the Continental Divide in Wyoming and Colorado. His goal: to raise awareness of depression as a disease, one that claims nearly half as many lives in the U.S. annually as diabetes. His halfway target: suicide-victim Hunter Thompson's funeral outside Aspen in late August, just a few miles from the trail.

"As Thompson was to Hemingway, so am I to Hunter, a student and a friend, alas one he never knew. When Hunter Thompson died in February, I dove into death statistics and found out that suicide is the 8th leading cause of death in the U.S., (and there's almost no such thing as a non-depressive suicide). I cried my eyes out, mostly for Hunter, but for all of us. That's one person every 17 minutes! That's bigger than AIDS, the disease I was told in college would kill us all."

In 2004, the 38-year-old freelance journalist and author Rick McKinney (Peregrine Jack's real name) became one of less than 8,000 people to hike the Appalachian Trail from end-to-end in one continuous walk since the trail's creation in 1937.

While not on par with the summits of Mt. Everest, McKinney's successful "thruhike" of the A.T. was a triumph on several levels, and one with parallels, even, to Mt. Everest. Not only was it a great personal triumph, but also statistically, an A.T. "2000-Miler" hikes Mt. Everest in equivalent elevation 17 times.

McKinney is no stranger to suicidal depression. Once a regular reporter and stringer for the NY Daily News, chronic depression cost him his journalism career, his home, and his girlfriend of 5 years, all in late 2001. As McKinney struggled to rebuild his life, tragedy struck in 2003 when he lost four acquaintances to suicide including close friend Luciano Lenchantin, 27-year old platinum recording artist and brother of former Perfect Circle bassist Paz. In desperation, McKinney took a long walk. The resultant tale is a passionate trip through the woods & down the rabbit hole of one man's inspiring imagination.

"Hiking 2000 miles last year saved my life. Now I intend to return the favor, save a few more lives if I can by my example and by encouraging others to get out and get moving." Committed to the idea of getting people walking toward health and impressed by McKinney's passion, Merrell shoes are providing McKinney with top-quality footwear. Otherwise he is funding his hike with his own scant savings and whatever donations come in via his website, Jigglebox.com.

McKinney certainly doesn't need the exercise. Readers of Bill Bryon's "A Walk In The Woods" know that 2000 miles is more than many Americans will walk in their lifetime.

"I want to give back something, that's all. I want to take the onus out of depression while increasing public awareness that most prolonged depression is a chemical imbalance in the brain. Untreated, it often results in death. Most depressives don't want to die. When suicidal, however, logic is lost to emotion. Friends and family go into denial at this stage.

"If you had a diabetic in the family who failed to take their insulin, would you simply sit back and watch them die? No. But depression carries a stigma. As wrong as that is, it's true. And why? Because unlike diabetes, to which one can simply say, "Take your medicine," depression requires that we step outside our selfish concerns and interact directly with the mentally ill, asking "How are you REALLY feeling?" Any mention of thoughts of death should trigger a phone call to a psychiatrist or hospital. No exceptions."

This past holiday season, McKinney answered the call of one suicidal friend, jumping a flight overnight half way across the country. "Three days before Christmas, I had to help commit my best friend to a psychiatric hospital. It was terrible. But perhaps I helped saved his life. I have personally called out for such help in the past and received little if any. I hope, through media awareness, to save others like myself who aren't taken seriously when they say, "I just wanna die."

Along the Appalachians, McKinney carried a Palm Pilot & keyboard and wrote and posted 150,000 words to his website, Jigglebox.com, with rave results and a daily audience of a thousand readers. From those writings have grown a book titled "Dead Men Hike No Trails." Busy planning his Continental Divide hike, McKinney has yet to seek a publisher for the book, but assures that it will be available (if only on Amazon.com!) in October of 2005.

McKinney has written two novels, four novel-length memoirs, three feature film scripts and over 350 poems, but depression has hampered past efforts at publication. "I have a stack of manuscripts tall enough to sit on at a bar," he jokes. "Maybe someday I'll have an agent and a lawyer. Wouldn't that be something!"

For now, McKinney will endure blistered feet, weeks without showers, and lightning storms at 14,000 feet, all in the hopes that others with depression will be inspired to follow his lead (starting with the A.T.!) and that families of the suicidally-depressed will stop ignoring cries for help and come to the aide of their loved ones before it's too late.

Contact: Rick McKinney by phone at (781) 248-4672 or via his assistant Mary at 281-804-0966 and he will return your call. Or email duke@jigglebox.com. USPS shipping must be sent Priority (lest it need be forwarded on down the trail) to McKinney, c/o General Delivery, Leadville CO 80461-9999. UPS, DHL or FED-X can be shipped to McKinney, c/o Treinish, 130 E 7th St Leadville, CO 80461.