Mark Baumer Dies at 33

This week we've been reading obituaries for Mark Baumer, whose tragic death came on the 100th day of his barefoot walk across the country when he was struck by an SUV in Florida. He intended the cross-country walk to raise awareness of climate change. Baumer's talents spanned numerous genres, as a poet, fiction writer, and as a prolific creator on a variety of social media platforms. At the New Yorker, Anna Heyward opens her obituary with these words:

The writer and activist Mark Baumer, who died this week, at the age of thirty-three, was a compulsive social-media diarist. He produced tens of entries each day on a mess of online platforms, posting poems, photographs, videos of prank calls, minutes-long collages of his daily activities. On his Web site, he published lists of everything he read—in the first twenty days of 2017, his list included “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up,” by Marie Kondo, and “The Pale King,” by David Foster Wallace—and excerpts from the fifty-odd books of prose and poetry he produced, the majority of which he self-published. He also used the Internet, cannily, to document his environmental activism. In 2010, he kept a blog as he walked across America, in eighty-one days, generating as little waste as possible. For his latest protest, begun in October, 2016, he set out walking across the country again, this time barefoot, from the East Coast to the West, to build awareness of climate change and water shortages, and to raise funds for a Providence-based environmental group. At about 1:15 p.m. last Saturday, Baumer was walking westward along the shoulder of Highway 90 in Walton County, Florida, when he was struck by an S.U.V. and killed. He was wearing a high-visibility vest at the time, and walking against the traffic, in accordance with safety conventions. (The Florida Highway Patrol has said that the driver will face charges.)

Earlier this week, Jacket Copy posted an obituary that gathered reactions to Baumer's death from friends through social media:

On social media, friends and admirers of Baumer mourned the death of the poet. On Twitter, the author Blake Butler posted a list of things Baumer said to him in a phone conversation two days before he was killed, which included "Live simply as possible" and “(responding to person who pulled over to offer him shoes, which happened daily, none of which he ever accepted, in going barefoot) ‘thanks for your kindness.’” "RIP to a huge spirit, an unprecedented voice, an inspiration, a friend," Butler wrote.

Writer and publisher Ken Baumann also posted about Baumer on Twitter, writing, “my friend died while walking across america barefoot” and “he was an artist and activist, walking and talking to folks about climate change. i'd published his work before. he was a great person.”

The FANG Collective said in a Facebook post they were "shocked and devastated" by Baumer's death. "Mark was an amazingly compassionate, empathic, humble, joyful, generous, mindful and caring person," the post reads. "He was a talented poet and artist with an ability to tap into the human experience with his work."

Spend time today with some of Baumer's writing, found here.