They’ve had a lot of strange stares and curious glances. They’ve been offered money, clothes, food and shelter like vagrants. But Jodi Harrington and Josh Howell are the Boy Scouts of bums, and they are not homeless. Unlike Forrest Gump who “just felt like running,” they are backpacking across America for a cause.

“I already went out west to Utah and Nevada and buried some water. The towns are so sparse out there, so we wanted to be prepared,” Harrington said.

Their journey started March 1 in Delaware. Three months later, they passed through Iowa en route to Point Reyes National Seashore in California. So far, their journey has taken them through nine states and a dozen pairs of shoes. They have trudged, staggered and stumbled more than 2,000 miles carrying everything they need for survival in 30-pound packs on their backs. They call it “healthy, peaceful, simple living.”

“It’s about living at the needs level not the wants level,” Howell said.

“When you’re carrying everything you need on your back, it teaches you to simplify life,” Harrington added. “Having little really makes you a happier person. Possessions just make life complicated.”

That’s why they quit their jobs and started on a 4,834-mile trek across America. Harrington, 27, left behind a career in real estate in Toledo, Ohio. Howell, 34, was an operations manager for a food vending business in Gettysburg, Penn. They were both sick of being defined by their jobs.

“Out here we’re just Jodi and Josh. We’re not labeled by our jobs or anything else… except maybe as ‘the hikers,’” Howell said — or rather, as “Bamboo” and “Ladybug,” the signatures they give at the bottom of their respective online blogs, where they are posting a play-by-play of the different people and experiences each day brings. They may not be working the 9-to-5 grind anymore, but hiking an average 25 miles per day across 11 states is a full-time job.

“There is more to life. Even when I do return home, I may or may not return to the real estate business. This is my passion, and I believe we are meant to do what we are passionate about. That’s why we’re out here,” Harrington said.

Although they enjoy the hike and the adventures that come with it, the real reason they are out here is to raise awareness and funds for humanitarian causes. Howell is passionate about Alzheimer’s disease after early onset dementia took his own mother as a victim. Harrington is walking for Neurofibromatosis, a genetic disease of the nervous system affecting one in 2,500 Americans, one of whom is Jeremy Eby, a close friend of Harrington’s now rendered to a wheelchair. So, the two strangers formed parallel plans that started at the Delmarva Peninsula in Delaware — the tip of the American Discovery Trail.

“I had a group of friends who were planning to come on this journey with me, but as the planning continued, it turned out I was the only one really doing all the preparing. Then, when I was all ready to go, they all flaked out on me at the last minute. I didn’t want to go on this journey by myself, so I was trying to figure out what I should do,” Harrington said. “Then, I remembered seeing Josh on trailjournals.com planning a similar trip. So, I e-mailed him and asked him if he was serious.”

A few days later, they met for the first time in the breeze of the cold Atlantic Ocean. From there, they followed the American Discovery Trail — the only coast-to-coast recreational trail in the country — to begin their journey. Though they are each walking to raise funding and awareness for two different diseases, they have both become umbrella-ed by Howell’s “Hugs for Humanity” banner.

“My mom was always a big hugger. She hugged everyone,” Howell said. “I will not lie; it has been very hard to watch a woman with so much life slowly be taken from you. She used to be the CEO of Lutheran Home Health Care and vice president at Lutheran Social Services for south central Pennsylvania after being a nurse for 30 years. Now, she’s living at Walden Inn, a dementia unit at the Mennohaven Retirement Village.

“She’s always been known as a hugger, and even now, when you hug her, she smiles from ear to ear. So, I’m carrying my mom’s hug across the states to give away one million hugs for humanity. That’s where the idea came from.”

Their goal is to give one million hugs and raise $1 million for the Alzheimer’s Association and Neurofibromatosis, Inc. They left westward out of Central Iowa around June 2 with 3,741 hugs… and counting. Now, as they pass through Nebraska, they have received nearly 4,000 hugs, and they’ve raised more than $17,000. And no one they’ve met along the journey has escaped their presence without a warm embrace — not even each other.

It wasn’t long before shoulder-to-shoulder became hand-in-hand as the couple made their way through New England back in March.

“We spent the whole first month flirting. Every conversation we had was comfortable and agreeable. We just clicked,” Harrington said. “Our personalities were so compatible; our spirituality; even our views on life and goals for the future. We just connected.

“You can believe in coincidences if you want, but God is too great and life is too exciting to think that way,” Harrington said. “It’s amazing how much you can get to know a person by spending every moment together for three months. Neither one of us has showered in days. We’re stinky, sweaty and we’re not out here trying to be attractive for each other. So, it’s kind of a beautiful thing to know somebody appreciates you for who you are.”

Harrington said she knew she was in love with Howell about one month and three states into their journey. He said he knew within the first week. By Ohio, he was ready to make a bold move.

“He mailed his tent home, because he said it was getting too heavy,” Harrington said. “It was no big deal, though. I didn’t really think anything of it, because in Ohio we were going to be staying with people, and he said he was going to get a new one.”

But, one night they were not housed by the locals, and they still had another day of walking before they made it to the next point where Howell would be able to get his new, sprier tent. So, they eked into Harrington’s single-sized tent and spooned through a cold, windy March night.

“From then on we were more than friends,” Harrington said.

Despite the new romance, by the time the couple came stepping across the Rock Island Bridge into Iowa, they decided to go separate ways.

“We wanted to experiment a little bit, so we split up just to do it — just to experience what it would be like to hike alone. Josh had originally planned his trip alone, so we thought we’d try it out,” Harrington said.

Even in the notoriously friendly state of corn-fed farmers and simple small-town Joes, the differences between how the locals treated a single woman on the side of the road were starkly different from the way a lone man was regarded. Harrington had little to experience compared to Howell, who had to hoof it the entire way, while Harrington was forced to actually turn down rides in order to not get too far ahead.

They separated for four days, traveling 100 miles each. She traveled due west, and stopped to attend a humble church service in Muscatine. He headed north toward Cedar Rapids dodging thunderstorms, ducking tornadoes and staying ahead of rising floodwaters.

“The tornadoes come out of nowhere around here. I was camping out by myself just west of Cedar Rapids when tornadoes ripped through Parkersburg. Folks I talked to thought I was crazy for sleeping outside during the two straight weeks of storms. Really, I think I might be crazy, too,” Howell said. “It’s a weird thought to know seven people died from a tornado just miles from where I had been camping. It was intense.”

A few days later, their paths crossed, and they couldn’t have been more relieved to have the companionship back. They were back-packing through South Amana, swapping stories of each other’s survival, when they were met by more eyes staring oddly.

“I was standing in the living room around dinner time, looking out the window when I saw young people walking by — which is very rare in this town,” John Thomas said. He and his wife, Heather, are among only a few people who reside there.

“We went outside and asked them if they needed water and where they were going. They said they were heading toward South Amana. I said, ‘This is South Amana.’ We invited them to stay with us. We really hit it off with them,” Thomas said. “I couldn’t believe they had been walking from Delaware to Iowa in the past two months. I was blown away.”

After a hearty, home-cooked supper, Harrington and Howell accepted Thomas’ offer to let them sleep in a building in their backyard. Like many homesteads they encroached along the way, they ate breakfast with the Thomas family the next morning and followed the sun westward to their next destination.

After a few days, the path led them to Des Moines. In an Urbandale neighborhood, they encountered the couple’s first potentially unpleasant experience with the locals as Howell finally got a harmless and hilariously ironic taste of the experiences he’d craved.

He was strolling down Douglas Parkway when he felt the urge — you know, “the urge.” It was a good day for Howell, because as he passed by Des Moines Christian School, he noticed a port-a-john used for such urges, and he was relieved to not have to squat in the bushes somewhere until his legs were too numb to walk.

He dropped his laborious pack on the curb and discretely checked into the can. Outside the door marked “occupied” he heard the sound of kids snickering, giggling and rummaging. He remembered seeing the kids coming out of a nearby baseball field, but he assumed they were making their way toward him for a hug — he did advertise Hugs for Humanity with a snappy, bright banner, after all. He was right about one thing: they had seen the banner, and it did draw their attention, but the Christian school boys hadn’t come for a hug.

“When I stepped out of the john, I saw the kids running down the street. They stole my flag,” Howell said.

He pursued in the direction the thieves fled, following the echoing sounds of their laughter. Eventually, he lost sight of the boys, but he did find his banner abandoned in a muddy ditch along the side of the road — no longer the proud flag it once was.

Throughout their entire journey up to that point, Howell and Harrington agreed that was the only semi-negative experience either of them had with the people they had met.

“Everyone else has just been awesome to us. We want to keep in touch with everyone who took us in or helped us out — at least send them a postcard from California,” Harrington said. “It restores your faith in humanity. We’ve met such nice people here. The thing that is different about people here compared to other states we’ve been through is Iowans talk nicely about other Iowans.”

“Complete strangers feed us, house us and want to hear our story. It’s been an awesome welcome,” Howell said.

However, the Iowa weather has not been so hospitable. They admit there have been a few occasions when they packed into a dry, cozy hotel room rather than sleeping in a rattling tent bending beneath a tumultuous thunderstorm. They feverishly made their way through the wrath of an old fashioned spring season in Central Iowa in hopes to be at the Nebraska border by June 6.

“It continued to downpour for over half the day. We were absolutely drenched. I love when people ask us what we do when it rains. ‘We walk,’ is our reply,” Harrington said.

“It’s not so much the rain — that, I can handle; the tent is waterproof, too, and I have no fear of it leaking — it’s just the mental stress of being caught in a tornado while we are sleeping unprotected. The mental stress out here beats you down more than anything else,” said Howell, who wrote in his online blog: “Shell shocked! Our cages got rattled, to say the least, after yet another night of pounding storms. All night we kept popping our heads out of the tent to look for signs of a twister. We have been getting hammered out here in tornado alley. We slowly crawled out of our small shelter and began to put ourselves back together. Neither of us slept well because of the storm, and we had a 20-plus mile day’s walk ahead of us” — a walk that took them into a warm hotel room in Atlantic.

At the A-FORD-O Motel in Atlantic, owners Rita and Dave Ford offered the hikers a room for the night to give them some much needed relief from the weather. They considered it their contribution to Hugs for Humanity.

“We’re just so happy when people come through here doing something they really believe in. It’s good to see somebody out there trying to make a difference,” Rita said. “You have to help your fellow people when they’re out there doing good and spreading the word about real things in the world that none of us even think about or know about.” CV

Want to help?

To follow Harrington and Howell along their journey, log onto http://www.trailjournals.com/adt4nf or www.trailjournals.com/hugs.
They are both keeping the site current with daily journal entries outlining their adventures. Check to see what the couple had to say about the numerous Iowa towns they passed through this month. Anyone interested in “Hugs for Humanity” can find details on how to help at www.hugsforhumanity.com or www.justgiving.com/adt.

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