I didn’t know if I was ready to have permanent hiking partners, because that’s what they would be. It was an unwritten rule that you don’t start hiking with people in Hanover and leave them somewhere in the middle of Maine. This was the last and the hardest part of the trail, and hikers either teamed up and finished as a pack or continued solo to the end.
I didn’t sleep well that night, partly because the twenty-year-old couch smelled like mold and partly because drunk college students walked past the house all night long, but mostly because I was nervous. I wished Nightwalker had never called me, because if we had happened to meet up on the trail it would have felt natural. Now it was a decision that I didn’t want to make. When dawn broke, I pulled out my journal, sat up on the couch, and started writing. I felt like if I wrote out my feelings then maybe the solution would reveal itself, like on a Ouija board. But the answer didn’t come. I went back and forth, I made columns listing the pros and cons, but I still didn’t come to a decision.
This journal had been my hiking partner, and every day, every rainstorm, every person I had met, it was all inside. In ten years, if I wanted to remember my hike on the Appalachian Trail, I could pull it out, look inside, and read about my adventures. I would be the only one who understood, the only one who could relate, and probably the only one who could read my handwriting.
But I wanted more than that. I wanted to share my journey. I wanted to call someone on the phone in ten years and talk about how much fun we had hiking through New Hampshire and Maine together. I wanted to store memories in people, not pages. I wanted friends, and I wanted hiking partners.
When I met Mooch and Nightwalker at the post office, Mooch gave me a hug and Nightwalker gave me an extra-long hug. They made me feel warm, wanted, and welcome, and that was important, because I was trading in my solo-hiker status for these two.
After a brief town resupply, the boys were ready to leave, and together we walked out of Hanover and back to the trail. It was raining so hard when we left that the trail resembled a creek. When the trail was this wet, you could either try to rock-hop, and place your feet on top of large slick stones rising above the current, or you could submerge your feet in four inches of water with every step. Usually, I would try to rock-hop until one foot slipped and my shoe and sock became soaked, then I would hike in the stream for the rest of the day. The boys called this the “freedom step,” because once your feet were that wet and muddy, you were free to step wherever you liked without further consequence.
I had already been liberated and was wading through ankle-deep water behind Mooch, when I looked up and started laughing. I hadn’t noticed it before, but I could now clearly see a tear in the backside of his shorts. Every time he stepped with his right foot, I could see his pale white butt cheek.
“What’s so funny?” he demanded.
I was laughing so hard that I couldn’t talk, but I could point, and that’s when Nightwalker erupted in laughter as well.
Mooch tried to look over his left shoulder, then his right, but he still couldn’t see the tear. He reached back and felt near his shorts pocket. His finger slid through the hole, and a look of shock came over his face.
Nightwalker and I doubled over. I was laughing so hard I cried.
For the rest of the day, Mooch hiked behind us.
At Smarts Mountain Cabin Shelter that evening, I sewed up Mooch’s shorts with the needle and thread that he carried in his pack. I thought it was ironic that he carried a needle and thread but didn’t know how to sew, or at least said that he didn’t. Either way, I felt like I owed him after laughing at him for most of the day. Also I didn’t want to see his butt anymore, so I was happy to do it.
The next day, we set out and all started hiking separately. I liked that. I liked that we could be hiking together, yet spend the majority of the day walking on our own, at our own pace.
It wasn’t rainy, but the trail had become so saturated with spring snowmelt and rainfall that it was a legitimate mud pit. Twice during the day I stepped in the brown sludge, only to lift up my foot without my shoe. That meant I had to hop around on one foot with a pack on my back, trying to dislodge my sneaker from the muck without getting my sock any messier than it already was.
And as if the mud weren’t enough of an obstacle, any pause allowed the bugs to attack. In Massachusetts and Vermont, there had been plenty of mosquitoes, but in New Hampshire, they had reinforcements.
Black flies, although not as large as mosquitoes, were now just as prevalent. Unlike the bites of their larger, blood-sucking cousins, black fly bites did not leave itching, burning welts. But a black fly bite was more painful initially, and it left a small dot of blood on my skin, as if I had been pricked by a needle. Plus, the black flies’ minute size allowed them easy access under my clothing and through my hair. If I kept moving, the black flies were tolerable, but whenever I stopped, I was assaulted.
I was trying to keep my pace up through the soupy mud and swat mosquitoes away from my face at the same time when my thumb caught my necklace and ripped it off my throat. I watched the silver chain launch off my neck and sink into the murky depths.
I immediately squatted near the surface and began feeling in the sludge for my lost jewelry. I stayed there for five minutes, feeling and groping for it. The necklace had been a present from my best friend, a reminder of her support and encouragement while I was on the trail, and now it was gone, lost in the mud of New Hampshire.
I dug around until the black flies became overwhelming. I had tears in my eyes and mud all over my body from smacking the black flies with brown gloppy hands. Finally I stood up and left the necklace behind.
After losing my necklace, my expensive, uncomfortable new pack came apart. A stabilizing strap that helped balance the pack weight fell off. I couldn’t figure out how to replace the strap, and although I tied it on where I thought it should go, it remained ineffective. As a result, my sternum strap, which was supposed to ride across my breastplate, now more closely resembled a choker and caused the pack to pull back on my collarbone instead of my chest.
In its new form, the pack was even more cumbersome than before, and I decided to take it off for a moment to rest my neck and hips. As I removed the pack, a clasp from my pack caught my watch and pulled the face away from the wristband. It fell on semi-solid ground, and when I picked it up, it was in two pieces. I put it in my pack and kept hiking.
Apparently, all my gear was only built for eighteen hundred miles.
I was in a sour mood when I rejoined Nightwalker and Mooch at Jeffers Brook Shelter that evening. Mooch tried to make things better by building a small fire and putting our shoes beside it so that they could dry out. We sat in silence as we ate dinner. At the end of our meal, Mooch returned to the flames, and as he bent down to inspect our sneakers, he looked up from them, directly at me.
“What?” I called from the shelter. “What is it?”
He didn’t say anything, just stared at me apologetically, as if he had run over my pet. Then he slowly picked up one of my shoes and turned it so I could see the side that had been facing the fire. It had melted!
The back half of my shoe was brown, and a quarter of my sole had melted away. Mooch expected me to explode in anger and frustration, but after I sat silently for a minute, I surprised everyone—even myself—when I started to laugh. I rolled over on the floorboards of the shelter, stared at the ceiling, and guffawed. The boys looked at each other for confirmation, and when they felt it was safe, they began laughing as well.
I was falling apart. What else could I do?
New Hampshire is rumored to be the toughest state on the trail, and after a hard climb up Mount Moosilauke, and an even more difficult descent that involved ladders, metal bars, and wooden steps, I understood why.
But my shoe had held up. Even missing a quarter of its original foam cushion, it saw me safely down the ladders. My legs were worn out from the jarring descent, my arms were tired from clinging to branches, and my nerves
were unsettled by the imposing heights, but my shoe was fine.
I had made it up and down Mount Moosilauke with only one good shoe and a broken pack, and I had covered a third of New Hampshire in just two and a half days. Everyone had told me how hard New Hampshire would be, and I had spent twelve states terrified of it. But standing at the base of Moosilauke, I was no longer intimidated. New Hampshire might be the toughest state on the trail, but I could do this.
What I didn’t realize was that Mount Moosilauke was a gateway, a portal to the hardest, most strenuous climbs on the trail. After scaling it, I faced an even more difficult and technical climb up Mount Kinsman. It is an understatement to say that the mountain caught me off guard. Mount Moosilauke was one of the most difficult climbs on the trail, and now I had an even harder climb to end the day. Up until Mount Kinsman, new Hampshire had been challenging, but now it seemed impossible.
I had not been this demoralized or felt this weak since hiking up Mount Unaka in Tennessee. I thought back to how hard that day had been, how miserable I had felt, and then I remembered something I had said that helped me up that mountain.
Every step I take is a step closer to Maine.
I said it aloud: “Every step I take is a step closer to Maine.”
I smiled. “Every step I take really is a step closer to Maine.”
That’s what I had said in Tennessee. That’s what got me to the top of Mount Unaka on that dismal, wretched, rainy day. I forced myself to believe it then, but now it seemed impossible to deny. I was in New Hampshire, and every step I took, no matter how small, truly was one step closer to Maine.
When I reached the top of Mount Kinsman, the boys were waiting for me. The sun was setting, and the blue sky met the purple mountains in an interlocking puzzle piece. Mooch and Nightwalker were focused on how pretty it was, but I was focused on how the mountains ahead were increasingly taller than Mount Kinsman. I could see them lined up, one after another, taunting me with their jagged profiles.
The boys left the summit and hiked ahead to reach the next shelter before nightfall, but I stayed behind.
Nightwalker had a theory that when the trail got hard, or when there were difficult climbs, it helped to talk trash to the trail. You know, tell it who was boss.
I decided to tell the mountains how it was going to be.
“You don’t scare me,” I said. “I’ve come a long way, and you are not going to stop me from making it to Maine! You don’t even look that big. Ya ever heard of Clingmans Dome, huh? Yeah, well Clingmans Dome is the tallest mountain on this trail. That means it’s taller than you guys . . . and I’ve already climbed it. You call yourself mountains? You barely even look like hills! I’ll be through you in five days, tops. Just wait, you’ll see.”
Nightwalker was right. I felt better already.
I started to hike down the mountain, and about thirty seconds after my tirade, my mop stick broke in two, and I slid three feet down the trail on my hands and knees.
The mountains—they had done this to me!
I had been hiking with my yellow mop stick for over twelve hundred miles. It had offered me support, it had protected me from dogs and rocks, and it had set a daring new fashion trend on the trail.
I could handle the necklace, the watch, the pack, and the shoe, but the mop stick? It was my friend, my calling card, the object of my right hand, and it was gone.
I sat down and cried.
I loved my mop stick. I felt like a child who had just had her favorite toy taken away, or a teenager who had to turn in her keys after breaking curfew. I had been prideful, and now I was paying for it. I looked back over my shoulder at the towering mountains.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean it.”
Then I stumbled to Kinsman Pond Campsite in the dark, with a dim headlamp and a broken plastic shaft in each hand.
At the point when I felt completely broken, things started to get better.
The next day, we hiked up and over Franconia Ridge, and although I missed my yellow pole, I realized that, more and more, hiking in New Hampshire required using both hands. And the climbing was a lot simpler now that I didn’t have to boulder uphill with my mop stick or javelin it off the side of the mountain as I scrambled down.
The climbing that afternoon was really hard, but I tried not to look up, and that kept me from becoming too discouraged. And since I no longer wore a watch, I didn’t know how long it was taking, so that helped too.
The boys were great. Now that the terrain was so difficult, we ended up hiking together for most of the day. There was no longer a “fast” or “slow” pace; we had all been reduced to a crawl.
Nightwalker and I spent much of the day talking. We talked about our families, our friends, high school, college, childhood memories; we talked about what we wanted to do and where we wanted to go after the trail. We would talk until we were talked out, and then there would be a long silence until one of us thought of something else, and then we would talk some more. Hiking with Nightwalker made the climbs seem less steep and the trail seem less difficult.
Unlike Nightwalker, Mooch actually made the mountains seem bigger and the climbs feel harder. It’s very difficult to hike when you’re doubled over laughing. No matter how dire the circumstances, Mooch could always make me laugh. He had an endless supply of jokes and self-deprecating stories.
When my stomach muscles ached from laughing and my face was sore from smiling, I would ask Mooch to sing a song. My musical taste consisted of whatever pop songs were overplayed on the radio, but Mooch didn’t sing those. He sang folk songs. I didn’t recognize most of the tunes or artists, except for occasional ballads by James Taylor or Bob Dylan, but that made the words even more magical.
Mooch’s voice was beautiful, pure, and earthy. For someone who constantly told very crude jokes, I was amazed at how sweet and innocent his melodies sounded. Mooch would sing me over mountains, along ridgelines, beside lakes, and at night he would always have one last tune to share before we went to bed.
I was missing proper support in my shoe, on my pack, and in my hand. But now I had two other hikers to lean on, and that was more important than having the right gear.
When the boys and I reached the top of the stair-stepper climb up to Franconia Ridge, the unprotected ridgeline provided spectacular views of New Hampshire. There were tall mountains in every direction, and although they were called the White Mountains, they appeared in dark shades of blue, green, and purple. The sky was cloudless, and the rocky outcroppings of the ridge made everything feel rugged and primitive.
There were several day- and section-hikers on top of the mountain as well. They seemed to be enjoying the view too, but something about coming all the way from Georgia gave me a sense of ownership. I felt connected to these mountains in a way that the other tourists could not understand. They were looking out over the same vista that I was, but I was certain that it struck me with a beauty and significance that they were unable to appreciate. I had worked really hard for these views, and the feeling of accomplishment I had on top of Franconia Ridge was more stunning than the scenery.
That night, at our campsite beneath Franconia Ridge, Nightwalker asked me on a date. I knew that our feelings were mounting, but I didn’t realize they would come to such a formal head. I said yes, and together we left Mooch in Garfield Ridge Shelter and walked to a nearby boulder, climbed on top, and watched the full moon light up the distant mountains.
I was still uncertain about my feelings for Nightwalker. I knew that I liked him, but I didn’t know how much. I wondered how starting a relationship now, toward the end of the trail, would impact our lives off the trail. I worried about the perception of being like most female thru-hikers, who couldn’t stay out of relationships along the trail. I thought I had come out here to be independent, not to find a boyfriend.
Despite my indecision and mixed emotions, the one thing I was sure of was that sitting on the boulder with Nightwalker was the best date I had ever been on
. I didn’t have to dress up, I didn’t have to worry about appearance or impressions. The air was filled with the songs of crickets and insects, and we were in the one of the most beautiful places I had ever been, under a full moon, on a warm summer night. In the end I gave in to the setting and my feelings, and confirmed what my heart felt with my lips.
I thought the kiss would make things different the next day, but it didn’t. For Nightwalker and me, there was no awkwardness, no expectations, no change in demeanor, just the same respect and conversation that we had always shared. But I wanted to make sure that things hadn’t changed with Mooch either.
While Nightwalker was up ahead and I was hiking at a crawl behind Mooch, listening to him bemoan the current mountain, I decided to broach the subject.
“I couldn’t hike up this mountain any slower if I were a hobbit,” said Mooch.
“Hehe . . . Um, Mooch?”
“My trail name should be Bilbo Baggins.”
“Okay, whatever, but Mooch?”
“Yes, my precious?”
“Um, we kissed.”
“What?”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t mean to. I mean, I didn’t not mean to . . . but the moon was out, and we could see the mountains, and there were crickets. Well, it just happened. And I’m sorry!”
“You mean you and Nightwalker kissed?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Haha. First of all, that’s gross, because you stink and Nightwalker stinks, but you smell worse, and anyone who would kiss either one of you when you smell that bad is just gross. Secondly, it’s none of my business what you and Nightwalker do. And thirdly, if you guys are happy, then I’m happy for you.”
“So you’re not mad?”
“Odyssa, why would I be mad?”
“Well, you guys kinda had this thing going. You’ve been partners since Georgia, and it’s just been guys, and now, well, I’m kind of a third wheel.”
Becoming Odyssa Page 25
