Kyndal Edwards has long dreamed of walking across the United States. He just didn’t plan for the dream to unfold the way it has. At 31 years old, he’s already done a whole lot of living, and a lot of it has been unpleasant. On his Facebook page, entitled “A Walking Testimony,” he talks openly about his struggles with addiction.
“As somebody who has tried to take my life twice, who has overdosed, been in county jail 11 times, in prison twice. I’m a firm believer that my past does not define me and there’s always hope,” he writes.
Today, Edwards is approaching six years of sobriety and flashes his bright smile in virtually every picture on his Facebook page where 61,000 people follow his journey to all four corners of the lower 48 states to raise awareness and remember those who have lost their lives to mental health and/or recovery issues. It might be the smile, but maybe his trip is getting all that attention because he’s walking the entire way. On Jan. 1, 2022, he departed on foot from Jacksonville Beach Pier in Florida and traveled 3292 miles across 13 states to the Pacific Ocean in Long Beach, Washington where he arrived in 2023. Last September he started the second coast-to-coast part of his voyage.
On his Facebook page, someone asked which of the states he has visited has been the best so far. He said it was a tie between Utah, Oregon, Washington and New Mexico. He says the Navajo tacos helped us make the list.
“New Mexico has just been too good to be crazy weird for me. I haven’t seen any UFOs or skinwalkers or anything,” he says.
About a week into 2025, Edwards is powering through the cold, following the state’s highways and traveling east to Texas. The Paper. spoke to Edwards via phone at his temporary home at a hotel room at the Isleta Casino Resort. While paused for a couple of days to rest up and do laundry, he discussed his next leg of the trip, which will cover the distance from Isleta to Belen. He had just finished visiting Albuquerque.
“Everybody warned me about going through Downtown Albuquerque. I didn’t have any issues or anything like that. I didn’t even really see anything crazy,” Edwards says. “I had a dude from the warzone comment on a post. It was like, ‘Bro, I’m out in the warzone. We got hot coffee, you’re more than welcome out here. It is a rough area, but we need love out here too.’ I thought, ‘Dang, I got invited to the warzone,’ you know?”
As he travels, Edwards wears a shirt that says “A Walking Testimony.” The shirts, which he sells online, also display 180 names — 90 on the front and 90 on the back — of individuals who have died due to mental health and recovery issues. Edwards says the “180” represents taking a 180° turn from things that have ended the lives of “beautiful souls who lost the battle with depression and addiction.” The first featured post under his bio on the Facebook page is dedicated to taking names to add to the next edition of the shirt. Even though some of Edwards’ loved ones are gone, he wants to give them the journey of a lifetime and remember them in a very special way.
“I walk as somebody who has struggled with certain things before that a lot of people are struggling with now,” Edwards says. “I want to let people know that there is hope, that we do recover, that our paths do not define us, that no matter how deep of a hole we dig ourselves in, we can get out if we put our heart and minds in the right spot and put in the work to get out. I just want to spread love and hope and positivity while living my dream in the process.”
From Belen, he plans to continue walking east to Mountainair. He’s spoken with the mayor and says they’re trying to hook him up with some lodging when he gets there. According to his calculations, Texas will be about 256 miles away, and he knows he’s got a chilly week ahead of him as he travels through the eastern part of New Mexico. If he can’t find a place to stay indoors, he might just have to do some camping.
Edwards has already traveled in bad weather, including temperatures below zero. He says he’s walked some of the most dangerous stretches of highway in the United States. He’s had to tow broken carts and lost five or six tents due to tears and flooding — he says he even had a fire inside his tent once. He got a hernia in Alabama and walked to Colorado with it, where he had hernia surgery. That caused him to put the trip on pause for two months while he healed up. He says meeting amazing people along the way keeps him motivated.
“I have met so many incredible angels that have stopped on the side of the road to see how I am doing, make sure I’m OK and make sure I have supplies,” he says. “Cops do stop occasionally, but they have never given me a hard time. They have been nothing but nice and kind to me. Almost every single day I get tons of honks and waves. Sometimes it’s not safe for people to stop. But every single one that does [stop], I try to get a picture.”
Edwards is employed as a digital creator and sells merchandise through his website and Facebook page to finance his travels. He says right now he’s blessed to be in a financial position that allows him to walk without having to do side work, but there have been plenty of times when he has had to put the trip on pause when he needed extra money.
“I’m not saying that I won’t have a hard time,” he says. “But doing what I’m doing gives me the opportunity to go into crazier situations and receive less of a hard time because these are people that are struggling too. They need to know that they’re loved and cared about as well. A lot of times in those situations, people are happy to see me.”
Edwards says there are reminders of drug addiction across the entire country, which is exactly what he is trying to bring attention to. Part of his mission is to interact face-to-face with people who suffer from mental health issues, especially people who are actively addicted to alcohol and other drugs. He has seen, firsthand, the effect drugs have had on communities across the country and since 2022, he has seen a shift in popularity from drugs such as methamphetamine to fentanyl. The level of addiction Edwards has seen in New Mexico isn’t any worse than what he’s seen in other states.
“Every town I went to, everybody said, ‘The meth here is worse than it is anywhere in America.’ I hear that about a lot of different drugs: ‘It’s worse here than a lot of other places,’ which just shows me that it’s a really bad problem everywhere.”
Although he hasn’t encountered imminent danger walking the streets of Albuquerque, he says one thing about his trek through New Mexico has stood out in a “heartbreaking” way: the high number of memorials on the side of the highways.
“Walking Highway 550 there’s just been an incredible amount, and I’ve heard that a lot of it is from drinking and driving. It’s just super sad,” he says. “I’m walking this super dangerous highway that so many people have lost their lives on, speaking about things that are so important that revolve around the reason why a lot of these people have lost their lives — whether they were the person using or not.”
After Edwards is done walking the United States, he’d like to walk 100 miles on every continent – maybe set a record or two. He doesn’t plan on moving back to Florida and says the Pacific Northwest is “definitely a highlighted option” for places to settle down. He says no matter what he does in the future, he wants to spread a positive message about mental health and recovery.
“As of right now, I plan on putting my feet back in the Atlantic Ocean. My goal is April 12, which would be my six-year drug-free day,” he says.
You can follow Edwards’ journey through New Mexico and beyond on facebook.com/AWalkingTestimony2022. The official A Walking Testimony shirts are available for purchase at Kyndalray.com.