Big, small, it didn’t matter—I was terrified of every terrier, bloodhound, and indistinguishable mutt that ran in my direction. To make matters worse, I saw one woman stand at her window and smile as her two pit bulls growled, barked, and prepared to pounce.
When I arrived at the highway without being mauled, I breathed a sigh of relief. I had made it to the road, and soon Heather would be here to take me to her house. But then I remembered that Heather had said there would be a parking area here, and a sign . . . but there was nothing of the sort.
This wasn’t our meeting spot!
How could this have happened? I’d followed the white blazes here, but I must have taken the wrong trail—or the old trail.
I knew that the Appalachian Trail was slightly rerouted from year to year. Sometimes it was altered because of natural forces such as floods or rockslides, other times because of property rights and land easements, and occasionally trail maintainers decide to relocate the path for better views or easier climbs. I could see why the rerouting was necessary, but I didn’t know that the old blazes still existed and could lead hikers astray!
Without any clue where I was or which direction I should walk, I pulled out my cell phone to call Heather. It was dead.
I started to walk along the roadside, hoping she would drive by or that I would come across the official Appalachian Trail. But after five minutes, I hadn’t seen a single car, let alone Heather’s, and I feared that I was heading in the wrong direction.
Standing there dumbfounded, I saw a white pickup truck approaching. I took several steps away from the road and stood aside as it passed. But as it roared by, the loud vehicle began to slow down, and a few dozen yards in front of me, it stopped completely. I wasn’t sure if it had stopped for me or not, and if it had, I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.
A sturdy man with blond hair stuck his head out the driver’s side window and yelled out, “You need a ride?”
I wasn’t crazy about the idea of climbing into a truck with a man I didn’t know, but I thought maybe he could point me in the right direction.
“Um . . . I’m trying to get to the Appalachian Trail on 19E to meet some friends.”
“Well, that’s a good ways from here, and you’re walking in the wrong direction. But I can take you just up the road to where you can call your friends.”
I knew that I had said no hitchhiking—or rather, my mom had said no hitchhiking—but someone offering me a ride was different than me soliciting one. Right?
Hesitantly, I nodded. “Okay . . . th-that would be great.” I placed my pack in the truck bed and started to climb in the back.
“It’s illegal to ride in the back,” he said. “I won’t bite, I promise.”
I approached the side of the truck and cautiously climbed inside the cab.
Butch, the driver, seemed friendly. He smiled and asked me about the trail, which helped to ease my nerves. However, when he insisted on taking me back to “his place,” I began to second-guess my decision.
“It’s just up the road,” he said. “you can use the phone there for free.”
“Oh, no, really you can just drop me off at a gas station or restaurant or something.”
“Nah, don’t worry about it,” he said. “My place is closer than the nearest gas station, and it should be pretty quiet this morning.”
Quiet? I nervously checked to make sure the passenger door was still unlocked.
Butch continued, “You see, on a Friday or Saturday night there can be a lot of commotion there, a lot of drunk locals with nothing better to do. But today it will just be you and me.”
I slowly moved my hand toward the door handle in case I needed to jump out at a moment’s notice.
When we pulled up to Butch’s Beer Wash, everything made sense. It would have helped put me at ease if Butch had told me from the beginning that he owned a bar.
At Butch’s beer Wash I called Heather, and in the thirty minutes it took her to arrive, Butch fed me breakfast and told me stories from the summer that he had hitchhiked from Tennessee to Alaska.
“So many people were good to me that summer and went out of their way to help me out. Now it’s my turn to help others. I know you have friends near here, but if you need any more help or a ride back to the trail, here’s my number. Just call me and I’ll be happy to help you.”
I felt embarrassed for having been so apprehensive during the car ride. Sure, Butch looked worn and tough, like he was from the remote mountains of Tennessee. But that was who he was: a third-generation Appalachian mountaineer, hardworking, decent, and kind.
The Smiths were lifelong family friends who lived a few miles from the trail in neighboring Banner Elk. Heather was my mom’s friend, and I was better acquainted with her grown children, but I had known the family my whole life and had been looking forward to this visit since I started the trail. And while I had felt a little bit guilty getting off the trail and going home after the Smokies, I had no qualms about spending time with the smiths in Banner Elk.
Before I started the Appalachian Trail, I had decided that this trip was about more than just hiking. Granted, a lot of it was about hiking, but I also wanted to invest in the people and places along the way. Experiencing the towns and cultures en route was just as important to me as my time spent on the trail.
The day I spent in Banner Elk was wonderfully ordinary. It was Sunday, so we went to church, where Heather’s husband, Jeff, was the minister. We spent the afternoon watching their youngest daughter play soccer, and that evening, we enjoyed a family dinner together. But throughout the everyday events that filled our time, I never had an agenda other than to be present, share, and listen. I didn’t have anywhere I needed to go or anybody else that I needed to see; I didn’t have work or school to think about. I could focus entirely on our visit.
That night, I stayed up several hours past my trail bedtime, sitting in the kitchen and talking with Heather. At one point, she even ordered me to take off my shoes so she could massage my sore and swollen feet.
“So what do you think you’ll do when your daughter graduates high school and you have an empty nest?” I asked.
“A lot,” she laughed. “I never really got to put my master’s in architecture to use after we had our first child. I think that maybe I’d like to get back to design. If I could combine that with my love of photography, it would make me happy.”
“I never knew you had an architecture degree,” I said with surprise.
“Ahh, yes,” she smiled. “That’s because by the time you came around, my kids had become my job. I’ve been driving carpools, going to after-school sports, and hosting sleepovers for so long that it’s strange to think about it coming to an end.”
I started to think about my own mother and the years she gave over to me and my brothers. I honestly had never thought that she might prefer to be doing something else.
“So, um . . . well, do you regret not working?” Part of me felt like the question was too personal and that I shouldn’t have asked, but I really wanted to know the answer.
“No, no, not at all. Some women want to work or have to work, and I appreciate that, but I consider myself very fortunate to have been able to spend all those years with my children.”
I give my mom a lot of grief, a lot of the time, but talking with Heather made me see my own mother in a new light. I loved my mom, I had always loved my mom, but now I was starting to appreciate her too.
Being on the trail had given me time to reflect on the people closest to me, and even though I was geographically separated from all of them, I had started to feel closer to them and more thankful for their presence in my life.
The trail had also taught me that everyone has a story. Before my visit in Banner Elk, I had viewed Heather simply as a loving mom, but now I also saw her as an avid photographer, a supportive wife, an architect, an outdoors enthusiast, and a terrific hostess.
After my visit with the Smiths, I returned to the trail—the current t
rail—feeling strong and rested. I had missed the woods and was happy to return. It was a beautiful spring day, with mild temperatures and a blue sky, the kind of day that draws everyone outdoors.
I wished that some of those people had stayed inside.
I could have done without the man in the white tank-top and cutoff jean shorts driving his ATV madly down the trail and running me off the path. ATV—I didn’t even know what that stood for. I just knew that the loud, noisy four-wheelers tore up the path and were prohibited on the trail. Maybe the skinny man with the mullet was unaware of the restriction. Perhaps he thought that ATV stood for Appalachian Trail Vehicle, but my new interpretation was Asshole Traveling Violently!
A moment after he recklessly sped by, hollering and spraying mud on my legs, his two dogs—two familiar-looking pit bulls—cornered me at the base of a poplar tree. They barked, growled, frothed at the mouth, and fed off my fear until their owner called and they raced down the trail after him.
A few miles later, the trail came out of the woods at a rural cemetery and then crossed a paved road in front of a small brick church. Forty yards down the road, by the edge of a field, a pack of eighteen- and nineteen-year-old boys stood next to a pickup truck. Several were smoking cigarettes (I think they were cigarettes), and one was drinking from a flask.
Walk fast, I told myself.
But it was too late. They had seen me, and the catcalls ensued: “Hey, sweetheart, what’s your name?” “Don’t you want to come see us?” “C’mon, baby, what’s the rush? You scared?” They all laughed, and a couple of them started moving in my direction.
My heart rate began to speed up as they started jogging toward me. I could handle the heckling, but this felt threatening. I was a few steps from the forest, so I pretended not to hear them and tried not to speed up until I passed behind the trees, then I started to sprint. I ran at least a quarter mile before I slowed down to a very, very fast walk.
“Harmless,” I told myself. “Those boys were probably absolutely harmless; they were just teenagers with nothing to do.” But despite my attempts to reassure myself, my stomach felt uneasy and I was filled with anxiety for the next few hours.
As the afternoon wore on, my distance from civilization grew and I slowed to a deliberate walk. Eventually I stopped replaying the day’s earlier encounters in my head, and I became lost in thought, which I very much enjoyed.
In society, I never felt like I was able to follow a thought to completion. Instead, one thought would lead to another thought, which would lead to another thought, and then I would be distracted by a loud noise, a bright light, or a prior commitment and never finish my thinking. On the trail, however, I would have an idea, and that would lead to another, followed by a contrary opinion that would bring up a totally different concept, and at the end of exploring that concept there would be quiet and my brain would feel still. Not still as if it were empty or without intelligence, but just the opposite—still as if it were full and at peace.
Sometimes I would challenge myself to think and think and think, to see how long I could think and put off the peace, but no matter how long my thoughts lasted, the end was always the same. There was peace, the world was silent, and I was by myself.
I was at just such a place of peace when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the black stick beside my foot move and then race to the side of the trail. I jumped to the opposite side of the path and squealed with fright.
A snake!
This was the first snake that I had seen on the Appalachian Trail. I hate snakes. I don’t know why I hate snakes, but I do. That said, I knew that black snakes weren’t poisonous, so I stood several feet away and watched to see what it would do next. For the most part, it just laid still, sunning itself on the trail, but when it did slightly adjust or wiggle its forked tongue in the air, I cringed in disgust.
I was amazed that the snake hadn’t bitten me. My foot had landed within a few inches of its head, and it easily could have sunk its fangs into my exposed ankle, but instead it had just slithered in the opposite direction.
I was shaken up after coming so close to the legless reptile, and I promised myself I would be more careful and perhaps less “thoughtless” in the future.
Thirty minutes later I almost stepped on another snake. I hadn’t seen a snake in four hundred miles and now I had come across two within an hour?
Once again, it was a long, thin, black snake that I had taken for a fallen branch. When I stepped within a foot of its body, it quickly moved away and actually started retreating up the bark of a nearby locust tree. As much as I despised snakes, it was neat to see this one climb up a tree. He used the grooved bark for support and wove his way up the trunk in an S-shaped pattern. He was already six feet off the ground when I decided to continue hiking.
Even though I still don’t like snakes, looking back on the day, I decided that they had been my favorite unpleasant encounter.
I had forgotten how much I didn’t miss the rain until I woke up the next morning to a cold drizzle. I had enjoyed two beautiful trail days since the last downpour, and I was not thrilled to once again take down a dripping tent and shove it into my soaking pack. I even preferred snow over a thirty-five-degree rain. At least with snow I could still stay relatively dry, unlike the piercing wind and pouring rain that chilled my core and numbed my extremities.
By now, I had also noticed a direct correlation between the weather and my appetite. At this point on the trail, I was experiencing ravenous hunger every few hours regardless of the weather, but when the temperatures dropped and the rain started to fall, my appetite became insatiable all day long. I now wished that I hadn’t eaten three Snickers bars to end my lunch yesterday, and had saved one or two more for today.
My logic yesterday was that I had five Snickers, so I could eat three for dessert, which would make my pack noticeably lighter, and then I would enjoy one a day until I reached Damascus. At the time, I couldn’t believe I was eating three candy bars at once, but they tasted so good and went down so easily that I probably could have eaten all five.
I was amazed at how much I could eat now. At the past three food resupplies, I thought I had bought enough rations that I could feast on the trail and still have leftovers when I reached the next town. Instead, my food continued to disappear far more quickly than I expected, and by the end of each section I would stumble into town starving and with an empty food bag. At lunch today, I realized that, once again, I would have to measure my food intake carefully until my next resupply.
The one upside to the cold rain is that I became highly efficient. When I could see my breath but not feel my fingers, all I wanted to do was put in my miles for the day and then curl up in my sleeping bag. Aside from a brief stop for lunch, I hiked continuously for twenty miles and was able to reach Vandeventer Shelter at 4:00 PM.
I was the only person there, and the first thing I did inside the empty building was strip naked. I peeled off my wet clothes as quickly as possible and changed into my warm, dry ones before anyone else arrived. Next, I unpacked my warm sleeping bag and wrapped it around my shivering body. I was very hungry, but I was worried that if I started eating, I would eat the rest of the food in my pack and have nothing left for the next day and a half.
After warming up for a few minutes, I decided to look around the shelter for the register, and that’s when I spotted the trash in the corner. At least, I thought it was trash, and apparently somebody else had thought so too, which is why it had been left here. But as I investigated, I found an open bag of tortellini.
This wasn’t the type of pasta that is hard and comes in a box. This was the type you find in the refrigerator section of the grocery store that’s already soft before you cook it. If I still had a camp stove, I would have boiled water and cooked the pasta, but instead I just stuck the cold cheese-filled shells in my mouth one by one. I had no idea how long this pasta had been here, who had been eating it, or whether mice had already gotten into it, but I was really hungry,
and the pasta was helping. I felt both ashamed and thankful, and I finished the entire package.
Eventually other hikers, none of whom I had met before, began arriving at the shelter. I was joined by two men in their mid-twenties, then three boys just out of high school. I was amazed that three kids who weren’t even in college yet were out here hiking the trail together. Their youth and enthusiasm were infectious. Their stories about their countless mishaps and poor decisions on the trail made me realize that they were even more naïve and reckless than I was.
Just before dark, one of the boys became a little too bold and out-spoken for my liking.
“Did you guys know that someone was murdered at this shelter?” asked the grinning seventeen-year-old.
I thought he was kidding, and so did the men in their twenties, because one of them said, “Yeah, right.”
“No, seriously,” another kid confirmed. “One of the first AT murders happened here. This twenty-two-year-old girl hiking by herself got hatcheted with an axe. And I hear some people think this shelter has been haunted since then.”
Then the third kid chimed in with a ghostly moan followed by a rendition of The Twilight Zone theme song.
I was mad that they were joking about a murder, and completely ticked off that they had mentioned it in the first place. I knew there had been homicides on the Appalachian Trail, but I didn’t want to know anything about them—especially the ones that had happened to young women hiking alone.
I thought it would take another day and a half to reach Damascus, but after covering twenty miles before 2:00 PM, I was faced with a decision. Stopping yesterday at 4:00 PM had been hard. I didn’t like waiting around for the sun to go down. And if I stopped now, I wouldn’t have anything to do for the next six hours.
Becoming Odyssa Page 10
