Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
Steve Fugate trudges along in the rain, a little west of Lavina.
It was pouring rain Tuesday morning near Slayton Junction, where the railroad bridge crosses over Highway 12, six or seven miles west of Lavina.
I was coming up on the bridge about 8 a.m. when I saw, through the rain and gray mist, somebody walking along the side of the road, heading east. He was pulling a two-wheeled cart and a sign over his head read, “Love Life.”
How could I resist? I turned around when it was safe, got out and introduced myself. We didn’t have long to talk — we were both going places, though I was going a lot faster than he — but here’s what I learned while he sat in my car for a while.
His name is Steve Fugate. Originally from Vero Beach, Fla., he has walked across the country six times since 2001, on a one-man crusade to persuade people not to commit suicide.
“You don’t have the right to take your own life,” he said. “It doesn’t belong just to you. It belongs to your loved ones.”
Fugate said he was hiking the Appalachian Trail when his only son committed suicide in 1999.
On the day of his son’s funeral, Fugate says on his Facebook page, his daughter flew into a rage and demanded to know why he hadn’t taught his son his love of life. That was the start of it. In 2001, he walked across the country with a “Love Life” sign.
That year he also lost his daughter, who was suffering from muscular dystrophy, to what was ruled an accidental drug overdose.
It was horrible to lose the only child he had left, but it propelled him to keep walking, to spread his message, to give other people hope.
Fugate, momentarily out of the rain.
“If you lose a child and you don’t take your own life and you’re not in an institution, you’re doing all right,” he said.
Fugate said he keeps walking because he’d heard on multiple occasions that people who read or heard about his crusade decided not to commit suicide.
“I didn’t want any other parent to go through the absolute horror I was going through,” he said.
That’s the big picture. The small picture is getting through each day. He spends the night in a motel when he can, but on Monday night he pitched his tent just off Highway 12 near the railroad bridge mentioned above. It started raining as he was pitching the tent and it was still raining when he ran into me Tuesday morning.
“This is the first time on this walk that I’ve been this drenched,” he said.
He said this was his third time walking through Montana — as far as he could remember — and the rain was getting a little too familiar.
“It’s nailed me every time,” he said. “One time it was a hail storm. Even people who lived there said they’d never seen anything like it.”
When I asked him how old he was, Fugate said, “Sixty-eight.” After a slight pause, he added: “I’m 68 today!” Yep, it was his birthday. He knew it was coming, he said, but this was the first time on his birthday he’d thought of it.
I also asked him how much gear he was carrying. He said it must weigh at least 100 pounds.
“I won’t weigh it,” he said. “Psychological ploy. I don’t want to know.”
And though he is “absolutely committed to no one making a cent off this,” he is sponsored by Danner, the Portland bootmaker.
“Best company in the world, man,” he said. “The great thing about wearing ’em right now? They don’t leak.”
Fugate will keep walking. All he asks from you is that you read about his travels on his website, and take his message to heart.
