Barefoot Sisters: Southbound

by Lucy Letcher;Susan Letcher

  "I'm not sure they'll let nee in," he said.

  "I'm not sure they'll let any of us in," said jackrabbit, fingering the frayed hens of her one clean tank top.

  "Of course they will, it's my birthday," I retorted, with more confidence than I felt. I pretended to myself that my black Gore-Tex rain pants were made of satin and my Coolmax tank some drapey knit silk. I lifted my chin and breezed into the restaurant, gesturing for jackrabbit and Highlander to follow.

  "A table for three, please," I said to the maitre X. He led us into the dining room without a backward glance.

  As we opened our menus, jackrabbit leaned over and asked ine, "How did you do that? You looked like you were dressed in silk."

  "Something I learned from the lady in gray," I answered. "The one who welcomed us to Kent "

  jackrabbit

  n an overcast day, we stopped for lunch at the Ten Mile River Shelter. It was a beautiful new shelter, open and spacious, still smelling of the pine logs it was made from, and it opened out onto a meadow. The river gurgled nearby behind a fringe of trees.

  Isis was enchanted. "A meadow," she breathed. "This whole trail, I've been waiting for a shelter with a meadow. Oh, it's so perfect! There's even a river here. We could swim if the sun cones out" This didn't look likely-the sky was a uniform gray and had been darkening steadily all afternoon. "Let's stay here!"

  "No," I said flatly. I knew Conpai ero was close behind us, and I wanted to spend more time with him. I didn't think he would be willing to stop so early in the day, even for such a beautiful place. I was also eager to cross from Connecticut into New York, putting another state line behind us.

  "Why not? You never want to stop and enjoy anything. All that matters to you is your damn mileage, and you can't even-" Isis stopped as the sound of many voices came up the trail. In a moment, a scout troop filled the space in front of the shelter. The boys caught sight of us and fell silent, too.

  "Hi," I said. "Where are you guys from?"

  One of the older scouts stepped forward. "We're from Wingdale, in New York."

  "Troop 421 !" one of the younger kids shouted.

  This seemed to break the ice. While the scoutmasters stood off to the side, looking bemused, the scouts quizzed us on every aspect of our hike. "Where do you sleep? What do you eat? Do you carry a gun? A knife? Have you seen a bear? What's the most beautiful place on the Trail?"

  We tried to field the questions graciously. One of the smallest scouts edged forward through the crowd but stopped when he got within a certain distance. He wrinkled his nose. "1 )o you ever take a bath?"

  After the scouts left, I convinced Isis to go on. "If it makes you happy," she said with a certain edge to her words. And it didn't make nee happy to walk on under the overcast sky; I hadn't been happy for a while. The sense of failure and defeat that had caught up with me in my time off the Trail still clung to me like an invisible cloud. It was September already. I knew that no matter how fast I hiked we wouldn't stay ahead of winter. And no matter how long I stayed on the Trail, I wouldn't be a real thru-hiker, given the section I'd missed. 10), am I here? I thought, and the question weighed on me like a stone at the bottom of my pack.

  Wiley Shelter was only four miles away, but it took all afternoon to reach it. We forced our way through brush that looked like it hadn't been cleared in several years. Webs of grapevines and thorny rose sterns crisscrossed the trail. The blazing for southbounders was poor; several times, we had to look over our shoulders for northbound blazes to make sure we were on the right path. The air grew colder and it began to drizzle. I took a perverse pleasure in the dismal weather and the difficulty of the trail-it matched my mood.

  The shelter was nothing like the spacious, lovely one we had left. A small enclosure built of particle board and brown-painted planks, it was set on a hill in a welter of vines and dark thickets, close to the road. There were stacks of newspapers and magazines along one edge of the sleeping platform, obviously intended for entertainment, but so mildewed they qualified as culpritude in nay book. The rain picked up, drumming on the fiberglass roof, as we laid out our sleeping bags.

  Companero appeared as dusk fell, humming to himself as he came up the trail. "Oh, hi, jackrabbit, Isis. Good to see you. You know, I almost didn't come here tonight. That last shelter was so beautiful."

  Some large rodent, perhaps a porcupine, gnawed on the particle hoard under my head all night long, and I hardly got any sleep.

  We camped with Companero for a few days. I loved to watch him hike; his lean frame moved with such grace and precision that he seemed to float etTortlessly over the trail. He had a quiet, reassuring presence, and when he spoke he considered the weight of his words. True to his name, he was a good companion.

  One evening, we tented together on the shore of a suspect place called Nuclear Lake. There were wide green meadows along the shore, but the water was dark and brackish-looking, reeking of rotten fish. It looked as though a dani had recently gone out. Mudflats with half-dead vegetation extended out into the water. Luckily, the wind blew offshore from where we tented and the stench was not overpowering.

  "I wonder how it got that name;' Isis said, eyeing the murky water.

  "The Companion says there used to be a nuclear research station here," Companero said. "They cleaned it up in the seventies."

  Isis looked skeptical. "Do you think it's safe to camp here I hoped it would be-the trail here ran along a gravel road, and my feet felt sore from walking on it. I needed a rest. These fields were the nicest tent site I'd seen all day.

  "Should be safe as long as we don't drink the water." Companero reached into his pack and took out a spare bottle full of water. "This ought to tide us over for tonight"

  "Thanks so much!"

  He grinned wryly. "You saved me from drinking privy water at Plateau. Figured I should return the favor."

  I excavated a small firepit in the gravel road while Isis and Companero gathered dead branches in the woods. Clouds wrapped the sun as it fell, and the chill of evening came down. After supper, we took the last of the extra water and made a pot of tea from the wild bee-balm in the field.

  Companero took a tentative sip and then smiled. "You'll have to show use which plant this is. It's really good"

  "Thanks" Isis threw another branch on the fire. "I started making tea every night when I was solo. I like the ritual of it. It gives me time to reflect"

  I watched her as I sipped my tea. She was staring into the coals of the fire, and I wondered what she was thinking. She hadn't told me much about her time on the Trail without me. I felt jealous, almost resentful, for an instant: why had she been able to stay on the Trail while I was forced to leave?

  "I feel like a hobo, stealth camping and building a fire right in the middle of the Trail," Conlpanero said.

  I grinned. "I know. Isn't it great?"

  As the coals died down, we sang all the songs we knew and parts of some we didn't. The wind changed, bringing the rank stench of the lake onshore, and we turned in for the night.

  In the morning, a steady cold rain was falling. I could hear it hitting the tent and see the trails it made on the fabric, each drop sliding down in the cold, diffuse light. I cursed under my breath; the tent had to be stowed in the bottom of my pack. How would I keep the rest of my gear dry while I packed up? For a moment I was tempted to roll over and go back to sleep. The undertow of depression tugged at nme. But Isis was awake, rubbing her eyes, rolling out of her sleeping bag and pulling on her rain gear. She nudged nte. "Looks like another beautiful day. Rise and shine.

  I fought back the inertia and hopelessness and put my energy into solving the problem at hand. I packed up all the gear inside the tent, stuffing our sleeping bags into their sacks and rolling up our mattress pads, while Isis took our food bags down from the tree where we had hung them the night before. I threw our gear into a spare garbage hag, and then, still muttering curses, I took down the tent and squeezed some of the water out of it. The purple nylon bund
le in its stuff sack, still dark and slick with water, filled the bottom of my pack. Isis returned with the dripping food bags. We brushed some of the water off,, wrapped them in plastic, and transferred the rest of our gear out of the garbage bag, working last in the cold rain. Perhaps this strategy kept thing drier than they would have been, but my pack still felt like a ton of rocks when I hefted it into place and buckled the straps. "Notch this wet tent!"

  Cornpa►iero's eyes twinkled. "It's been a while since I heard that one!" He was still packing his tent when we left, and we wished him luck. Before we started down the gravel woods road, we scuffed out the traces of the firepit, burying the drowned ashes under the gravel. When we were done, it was impossible to tell where it had been. We ate granola bars for breakfast with the last sips of water, and we only stopped to filter more when we were far from the watershed of Nuclear Lake.

  Near midday, we crossed a two-lane road with traffic whizzing through. The skies were clearing, but the cars' wheels still kicked up a gritty spray. Just beyond the road, we found a railroad bed. This was not so unusual-we had crossed many of them before. But this set of tracks had a small platform, with a blue and white sign reading "Appalachian Trail Station''

  "This is so surreal;" Isis said. "1 wonder if trains really stop here."

  "We could go into New York City!"

  "Right, just hop a train like real hobos"

  "Hey, we are lobos, after all "

  At the platform, we found a schedule posted. Trains did indeed stop there, but only on weekends.

  "What day is this, anyway?" Isis asked.

  "How should I know? Wednesday, Thursday. It's not a weekend, because the Trail's not mobbed with Boy Scouts."

  We ate lunch on the platform, thinking of New York City. I had visited the place a handful of times. The fast-paced bustle of humanity that I remembered from the city seemed the antithesis of the slow, peaceful life we were leading in the woods. It was hard to believe two worlds so different could exist so close together.

  Isis spread out the bags of crackers and dried fruit and carefully rationed the last of our cheese. In a few minutes, Companero arrived, floating over the road with his long graceful strides.

  "Hello, ladies''

  "Hey, Compauero."

  "You know, it's funny we were just talking about hobos last night and here we are by the tracks. I should get a picture."

  "Wait for a train to show up" I laughed. "Then we'd really look like hobos"Just then we heard a moaning wail, far off down the tracks.

  "Speak of the devil." He shook his head. The headlight of the train was visible now, rocketing down the track. This was no slow-moving freight train-the thing was barreling along at probably sixty miles an hour. We watched it getting larger, alarmingly fast, and after a few seconds I realized that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to be so close to the tracks. I grabbed a few bags of food and scooted to the back of the platform. When I looked up, Companero was standing right by the tracks, holding his camera. He snapped a picture, and then all hell broke loose. The wind of the train's passing hit us, tossing plastic bags skyward and knocking over Isis's half-full water bottle. The shock of it threw me backwards against the far wall of the platform. Companero! I thought, but when I looked up, he was still standing by the tracks, cool and unperturbed, while the train vanished in the distance.

  "Wow. That took some nerve" I said.

  He smiled. "Clang"

  "What's that?"

  "Oh, it's Highlander's expression. `To have clang."' He looked a little sheepish. "It's the sound you would make if you had balls of steel."

  A few nights later, after a day of cold driving rain, we camped at the RPH Shelter. It was a strange building, right by the road, and much larger than a typical shelter; it almost looked as if someone had cut away one side of a cabin. There were three sturdy walls of cinderblocks, but the front was totally open. It looked out on a concrete patio with a picnic table, and beyond it a wide green lawn down to the road. After the day-long rain, puddles in the grass sent back dull reflections of the last gray light. Out back, an iron well pump stood in a block of cement. Inside the shelter, heavy-duty wooden bunks and a table with magazines and old spiral-bound registers stood against the walls. I could see someone's gear spread across one of the bunks-another sobo?

  "A shelter with a patio" Isis looked a little skeptical. "Weird."

  Companero chuckled. "Hardly suitable for hobos."

  Highlander came around the corner. "My fellow Mount Everett conquerors! Glad you made it!"

  "Highlander! I thought you were hiking fast to get ahead." I knew that had been his plan when we parted ways in Kent.

  He made a face. "I was. I have to get off for a few days to go to a wedding. I was trying to put some mileage behind me before I left the Trail, but I just thought, well ... I wanted to see all of you again."

  While we were unpacking, laying out our mattresses and sleeping bags on the sturdy wooden bunks, another hiker came in. He was built like a bear, broad-shouldered and stout-legged. His shaggy blond hair had curled into ringlets in the dampness.

  "Hi. I'm Yogi" He had the longest eyelashes I had ever seen and a charming little-boy smile that hardly matched his bulky, muscular body.

  We introduced ourselves. "Southbounder?" I asked.

  "Yep"

  "I didn't think there were any more of us out there. Good to meet you"

  Yogi laughed. "Didn't mean to be out this late in the season. I'm still gonna finish by Christmas, though. Got it all worked out" He had a faint Southern accent.

  Companero looked interested. "How much do you have to average to do that%"

  "About fifteen"

  His plan didn't sound all that good to me. "But that's fifteen miles every day, with no zeros."

  "Right. Or you take a zero, then you pull a few twenties." He draped his sopping rain jacket over the end of a bunk. "It's do-able"

  "Yeah," Companero said. "I think I might do that"

  I looked at Isis. Fifteen miles was still a long day for us; we had never hiked more than seventeen. Twenty was a number that seemed beyond the realm of possibilities, and we were planning to take quite a few zeros in the next week. In Kent, I had gotten an e-mail from Around the Bend, the nobo we had met in Hanover. We planned to meet him in Greenwood Lake, just over the border in New Jersey, and go to the Gathering down in West Virginia. Considering the travel time, we would probably spend at least five days off the Trail.

  While we deliberated, a jovial laugh came from the open front of the shelter. "Oho! Lots of hikers here tonight!" It was a rotund nian in a plaid wool jacket. "How goes it? I'm John, the caretaker. Big John, some call me. So, anyone in a mood for pizza this fine evening?"

  There was a hearty chorus of assent.

  "Well, you're in luck. I like to do something for the people crazy enough to hike on a day like this. There's a pizza place in the next town over that's pretty good. Here's a menu. Let me take your orders"

  "Wahoo!" Yogi made a wild sound of joy. "This place is too good to be true!"

  Big John returned in half an hour with a carload of pizzas and our change, and we settled in around the picnic table. "You might be wondering why the shelter looks like a cabin with one wall cut otf," he said as we opened the boxes and began devouring the hot slices. "Matter of fact, that's kind of what happened. See, this place used to be a regular cabin, but when the Forest Service took it over, they had to make it conform to shelter guidelines. Said it had to be a three-sided structure. My uncle was the caretaker then. He basically just knocked a wall out ... Oh, I could go on and on about this place. But don't let me keep you from your supper."

  We thanked him again for his kindness, and he drove off into the drippy night. I could see my breath in the blue light of Isis's headlamp. The temperature was dropping and the damp chill seemed to seep into my bones. We made a fire, combing the nearby woods for standing dead trees. Companero and I found a buckthorn snag that was barely dry enough to burn. We coaxed th
e flames into life with remnants of our pizza boxes-and a smidgen of Highlander's white gas. Compafiero volunteered to light the pile. We stepped back. He touched a lighter flame to the wood with a flick of his wrist, and with a ivhoornp! a circle of blue flames appeared, writhing over the cardboard and the wet bark of the buckthorn. He had pulled his hand back fast, but the hair on his fingers was slightly singed.

  "Now that's clang," Highlander commented from the shadows, and we all agreed.

  We stood around the small fire and sang a few songs. Highlander's clear tenor and Yogi's gruff, smoke-stained bass lifted into the low clouds. Mostly, we were quiet. We didn't talk much about the next day, when we'd all be parting ways, but it came across in the songs we chose: you'll take the hii'h road, and I'll take the lou, and I'll be in Scotland afore ye ...

  By the light of our headlamps and flashlights, we read a few articles from the old copies of Natio►al Geographic on the table in the shelter. Highlander was fascinated by an article on "The Gliders of Borneo": mammals, insects, frogs, lizards, and even snakes that have evolved ways to glide through the air like the flying squirrels of our northern forests. "I think that's what heaven is like," he said. "You can do anything you want there, the way I picture it. Even if you're a snake, you can fly though the air. Maybe all the snakes fly in heaven"

  Isis

  t was a good thing we'd celebrated my birthday with Highlander in Kent, because neither of us felt much like celebrating the day after we parted from hint and Companero. I knew I'd miss our friends, but it was the loss of their company for jackrabbit that really worried me. When we were around other people, she tended to confront setbacks with humor, trying not to discourage our companions-and in doing so, she usually managed to cheer herself up. Alone, I knew I couldn't distract her from her pain and fear of failure.

  We hiked up the ridge from RPH in tense, gloomy silence. Jackrabbit walked ahead, her shoulders hunched in the pack straps. After a long, slow climb, we crossed a cedar clearing, open toward the valley beside us. Out of a sea of swirling mist, the far ridge rose like the spine of a distant island, crested with morning sunlight.