A former Mainer who set out to walk barefoot across the country to raise awareness of climate change while raising money to oppose natural gas drilling was struck and killed by an SUV in Florida over the weekend.

Mark Baumer, 33, of Providence, Rhode Island, had spent most of his life in Maine, growing up in Durham and graduating from Durham Elementary School and Greely High School in Cumberland.

Baumer died at the scene where he was stuck Saturday shortly after noon on U.S. Highway 90 in Walton County in northwestern Florida. He had been walking along the shoulder of the road, facing traffic, dressed in reflective clothing. It was the 100th day of his trek. Criminal charges are expected to be lodged against the driver, according to published reports.

Baumer began his journey in October at his home in Providence. He encountered foul weather in Ohio two months later, preventing him from continuing in bare feet. After waiting a few days for more favorable conditions, he boarded a Greyhound bus to Jacksonville, Florida, shortly before Christmas, where he would chart a more southern route to the West Coast, his father, Jim Baumer said Monday.

This wasn’t Baumer’s first foray into cross-county campaigns. In 2010, he departed from a small island off the Georgia coast, setting foot on Santa Monica Beach just 81 days later. He averaged more than 30 miles a day by foot and wrote a book about the experience: “I Am a Road.”

That time, he wore shoes; this time, his feet were bare.

Baumer, who worked as senior library specialist in digital technologies at the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Library at Brown University, where he earned an MFA in creative writing, made the 2010 trip as a summer project after his first year at the school.

This time, Baumer documented his trip in detail, making use of all available social networking platforms, shooting videos of his journey and uploading them through YouTube to his website: http://thebaumer.com as well as posting updates and photos on Facebook and Instagram.

Baumer had hoped to raise $10,000 from his trek to aid Fight Against Natural Gas, or FANG, a nonprofit environmental organization in Providence that he championed. As of Monday evening, the quickly rising total had exceeded $18,000.

Proceeds from a poetry fellowship financed the trip. All of the money donated to his cause went to FANG, his father said.

Jim Baumer, who had recently moved with his wife from Durham to Brunswick, said his phone rang shortly after 10 o’clock Saturday night; it was the Maine State Police. A trooper came to his home about 15 minutes later to deliver the news about Baumer’s son.

“It was devastating to get that news,” Baumer said.

An English major at Wheaton College, Mark Baumer had excelled at baseball as a power hitter. He was named first-team All New England his junior year. In his senior year, his team went to the Divison III College World Series, finishing the season as runners up, his father said.

Baumer’s coach told him early on that he likely wouldn’t play much on the team having batted little his first year. Instead of quitting, Baumer redoubled his efforts and proved his coach wrong, working his way onto the team’s lineup as a key hitter, a trait of tenacity repeatedly demonstrated by Baumer during his short life, Jim Baumer said.

“Whatever Mark decided that he wanted to do, he embraced it with his whole being,” he said. Having achieved his goal in baseball, he moved on to furthering his education, his father said.

Rather than settling for a lesser school to pursue a masters in fine arts, Mark Baumer set his sights high and was accepted at the Ivy League school in Providence.

“I was so proud,” Jim Baumer remembers after learning of his son’s achievement. “Baumers don’t go to Brown. And (yet), he was.”

That’s when and where Mark Baumer’s many literary pursuits, social media and performance art began to coalesce around his personal missions.

“Over the last seven or eight years of his life, he was on this amazing trajectory,” Jim Baumer said.

Although he and his wife always supported their son’s many endeavors, the treks were worrisome.

“As a parent, you always were concerned about him being out by himself on the road,” Jim Baumer said. “I guess there was always a part of me that was thinking that, you know, Mark might go out on this journey and never come back. I guess my worst fears were realized on Saturday night,” he said. The driver of the SUV “took away a wonderful young man from us.”

As scores of condolences continue to pour in, Jim Baumer and his wife are just beginning to grasp the broad reach of their son’s following.

“As hard as this is, people have just been really, really wonderful,’ he said. “They can in some way imagine how crushed we are by this because they (also) are. They’ve been sharing stories of Mark and I read them and I just want to burst into tears because they so capture who Mark is. He’s kind of a big, goofy kid, and yet there’s this tremendous passion (and) compassion.”

He told his family, friends and supporters he was making the trek to save the Earth from ruination, recognizing the hyperbole in his lofty goal, his father said. Walking in bare feet, he sought to protect them from injury by staying overnight in motels. As that expense proved too costly, he began camping out in a so-called bivouac bag behind churches or sheds along his route to save money.

His last blog posting on Saturday featured in yellow spray paint an arrow on pavement above the word “Killed.” The toes of his bare feet can be seen at the bottom of the photo. His father believes the seemingly prophetic image likely was the markings of a utility worker, possibly pointing to a natural gas line. For Mark Baumer, the posting likely was intended as a statement about man’s destruction of nature.

“It’s eerie, isn’t it?” Jim Baumer said.

Baffling him still is why the woman driving the SUV on a flat, straight road in the middle of the day struck Mark Baumer, his father said. A Florida officer told him the woman said she saw Baumer on the road’s shoulder along the straightaway. He was doing everything legally, the officer told Baumer’s father. When the woman saw the pedestrian, she swerved to the center of the road. The officer said the driver may have over-corrected, swerved back and hit him. He was killed on impact.

Jim Baumer said he doesn’t know how the driver could have struck his son without having been distracted in some way and hopes an accident report might help shed some light on the incident.

“It’s hard to know that you’ll never really know why this woman took his life because she killed him,” Jim Baumer said. “Mark wasn’t in the middle of the road. Pedestrians have a right to a place on the roadway and he was legal. She did something that took his life. So, you know, yeah, I’m probably a little angry about that.”

A triathlete who runs and bikes regularly on the road, Jim Baumer said he’s had many close calls with drivers who “seem to think that driving a 6,000-pound lethal projectile gives them the right to the entire road. And it doesn’t.”

Mark Baumer’s parents are expecting to host in Providence a celebration of their son’s life, likely early next month. They first thought they would hold a small, private service, but realize now they need to accommodate their son’s many friends and followers.

Jim Baumer and his son often engaged in discussions about capitalism and economic justice. Mark Baumer had been thinking lately about sustainable, clean energy and hoped to embark on a plan to address that when he had completed his cross-county mission and was back in Providence. Jim Baumer, who once worked for a power company, was excited by the prospect of brainstorming with his son on the subject. Father and son had collaborated on several book projects before.

“I loved my son, but I so respected what he did and I’m so proud of who he was as a young man,” Jim Baumer said. “I think he accomplished more in 33 years than most of us accomplish in a lifetime. And it’s so hard to see him go because I can’t imagine what he would have accomplished in the next 10 years.”

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