Neil King Jr., a former Wall Street Journal reporter and the author of American Ramble: A Walk of Memory and Renewal, died on September 17, the Washington Post reported. He was 65.
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King loved to travel from an early age, becoming a journalist in his early 30s "after years of following his wanderlust curiosity across the world," the Post wrote. "He picked up jobs such as hauling nets on a fishing boat in Alaska and spent several weeks in a Buddhist monastery in Sri Lanka."
He spent more than 20 years at the Wall Street Journal in a variety of positions, including as a chief correspondent in Brussels; in the Washington, D.C., office, where some reporting he worked on about the 9/11 attacks received a Pulitzer; a national political reporter; and editor of the paper's economic coverage. He left the paper in 2016.
He had thought about taking his long walk for decades. Then, "on March 29, 2021, Mr. King slipped on his gray-and-green backpack, put on his tweed cap, gave one last stretch to his lanky 6-foot-5 frame and walked down the front steps of his Capitol Hill townhouse," the Post wrote. "Over the next 26 days and 330 miles, he followed the back roads through Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and finally over the Bayonne Bridge into Staten Island. There, he was joined for a few miles by a local man who surprised Mr. King with literary references to the 14th-century wayfarers in The Canterbury Tales." His route skipped cities and larger towns, and when he arrived in Midtown Manhattan, "he celebrated with a Negroni at a Fifth Avenue sidewalk bar."
That trip became the basis for American Ramble: A Walk of Memory and Renewal, published last year by Mariner Books. In Shelf Awareness, we wrote in part: "American Ramble is the wise, warmhearted account of a journey that was pedestrian in its execution, but miles from that in the depth of King's experience and his ability to share it in a clear and affecting way…he generously shares his sense of discovery and delight on every page." A paperback edition was released in March.