For a week after Jadin’s death, Joe Bell lay in bed, beating himself up, wondering what he could – should – have done differently to help his son.

In the face of relentless bullying at high school, the openly gay 15-year-old had confessed to his parents six months earlier he’d been having suicidal thoughts. Bell and his wife got their son into counseling, and Jadin appeared to be doing well.

Then he hanged himself.

Racked with guilt, Bell chided himself about scolding Jadin for smoking a few days before the hanging. The Oregon man worried that he couldn’t survive this grief. He knew he had to do something. Then it came to him: He’d walk across the country, sharing Jadin’s story.

At any given time, as many as 20 people are attempting to cross the United States on foot, Nate Damm figures. The website he started after his own transcontinental trek has become a must-read for walkers, full of advice, tracking information and a running debate about the “why” of such journeys.

That last part can get complicated. Many walk for a cause. Some do it, well, just because. Even for those who articulate a cause – something they’re raising awareness about or money for – there’s often more behind these grueling undertakings.

Jonathon Stalls walked under the auspices of Kiva, a group that helps connect small investors with entrepreneurs in developing countries. In the end, though, he says he simply was answering a “personal call to engage in quieter, slower and more intentional experiences with less.”

Ultimately, the reasons for walking are deeply personal. As Joe Bell put it to one newspaper reporter he met along his route, “It was either lie in bed like I was and die or fight back.”

And so he set out, traveling the land, talking about Jadin and hoping it might save lives – maybe even his own.

H H H–––

On Jan. 19, a passer-by found Jadin hanging from a piece of elementary school playground equipment in La Grande, Ore. The high school cheerleader and budding artist died Feb. 3 without ever regaining consciousness.

When he emerged from the fog of his own despair, Bell was seized by a desperate need to help others see what he could not.

He took a leave from his job of 17 years at a Boise Cascade plywood mill and began mapping out his route to New York City – a place Jadin had visited on an eighth-grade field trip and where he had dreamed of someday living. Friends helped Bell launch a Facebook page.

On April 20, Bell said goodbye to his wife, Lola Lathrop, and their 13-year-old son, Joseph, and set out, pushing a loaded three-wheeled cart.

With two artificial knees, the 48-year-old’s gait was brisk but awkward. Barely a week out, angry red sores erupted on his feet; the skin beneath his toes cracked open and bled.

As he walked, Bell stopped at schools, libraries, community centers, bars – anyplace where he could share his son’s story. On June 4, Bell posted a “letter” from Jadin.

“Today I’m celebrating my 16th birthday in Heaven,” it said. “My presents are flowers, rainbows and angel food cake. ... Yes, birthdays in Heaven are wonderful and gay.”

Bell’s way was paved with a thousand kindnesses. A sporting goods store owner reading of Bell’s blisters helped doctor his feet and fitted him with proper shoes. When his cart was stolen, someone replaced it with a better one. He received gifts of safety glasses, granola bars and bottled water. He even picked up a whole new support system.

Amy Maple, founder of the nonprofit Excuse Me While I Change the World, had asked him to give a talk in Salt Lake City. Moved by his passion, she and Ann Clark, who’d met Bell along the road, helped him incorporate his own group, Joe’s Walk For Change, and coordinated speaking engagements for him along his route. Maple also arranged for Bell to get some training about how to help parents recognize warning signs in suicidal youths. Through it, he gradually let go of any lingering feelings of guilt about Jadin’s death.

By late July, Bell had made it to Steamboat Springs. He decided to stay a few days. He needed the rest. And he wanted to give a fellow traveler who’d contacted him time to catch up.

H H H–––

For as long as he can remember, Australian Benjamin Lee has dreamed of visiting every country. With nearly 40 stamps in his passport by age 24, he was well on his way. In late 2012, Lee graduated with a degree in environmental science from Melbourne’s Deakin University. He knew he soon would “need to settle down and get a full-time job” but craved one more grand adventure. “Something I can tell my grandchildren about,” he said.

He knew it had to be in America. Like others, he looked to Damm for advice – such as including bear spray in your pack and always walking “so you can face the vehicles that are coming at you.”

As he trudged eastward, Lee kept hearing stories about another walker who’d just passed through. Google searches connected him with the man, Joe Bell, and they met in Steamboat Springs on July 31. Despite the age difference, they hit it off immediately and agreed to travel together as far as Boulder.

During the next three weeks, Bell posted many photos of Lee, including standing along the banks of the Colorado River as well as trying on a Smokey Bear hat in a mountain gift shop. When they went to the movies, Bell would place a piece of Red Vines licorice on the seat beside him, in remembrance of the son with whom he used to share the candy.

On Aug. 18, they gathered with friends and family at a Boulder brewery for a farewell dinner. Bell’s wife and younger son were there, as were Damm and Stalls. As a gay man, Stalls had followed news of Jadin Bell’s suicide. When he learned of the father’s walk, he embraced and encouraged it.

The group of transcontinental walkers swapped stories of near misses and of vehicles swerving to give them a scare. When Bell said he preferred walking after sunset, Stalls was taken aback.

“Oh, man,” he said. “You’ve got to stop walking at night. Especially when you get into these flatter, high-traffic states.”

When dinner was over, the group posed for a photo. Lee posted it on his Facebook page. “It was great to share our stories because they are some of the very few people who truly know what Joe and I are experiencing,” he wrote.

On Oct. 10, Stalls logged onto Bell’s website to check his progress. That’s how he learned the shocking news: Bell would not finish his trek.

He was walking along two-lane U.S. Highway 40 about 20 miles northwest of Kit Carson around dusk Oct. 9 when the driver of a tractor-trailer hauling Idaho potatoes to Texas apparently fell asleep at the wheel. According to the Colorado State Patrol, Bell was walking with the flow of traffic and was struck from behind and killed.

Stalls was devastated. “I just had a lot of really deep connections with his experience,” he says. “It was a much bigger space of loss than just the cross-America walk.”

In a video posted the day before his death, Bell was upbeat, despite an obvious limp: “I’m not a spring chicken anymore, that’s for sure,” he said with a chuckle. Still, even though he could feel winter coming, he was undaunted. “This is what I’m out here for,” he said, “is to make change.”

H H H–––

As Lee neared the end of his own journey, he certainly felt his fallen friend’s presence. Around midday Nov. 30, the Australian crested the pine-studded dunes at the upper end of Cape Henlopen State Park in Delaware and reached the Atlantic. He had walked 3,432 miles.

Several times in the days leading up to this one, Lee’s eyes had welled with tears as he thought about this moment. Now, staring out into the ocean, he felt joy but also relief.

Lee took off his shoes and socks and walked into the icy surf, savoring the squish of sand between his toes. Then he reached into his bag and pulled out a package of Red Vines licorice.

He stuck two pieces into the sand – one each for Joe and Jadin.

He said a few words, just to himself, then watched until the waves carried the candy away.

On the Net

http://joeswalkforchange.org

www.natedamm.com

www.walk2connect.com

www.facebook.com/10MillionSteps