Barefoot Sisters: Southbound

by Lucy Letcher;Susan Letcher

  "September 25, baby. Most glorious day a man could hope for: clear, calm, nice and warm. There were about forty thru-hikers on Katahdin and these two Austrian tourists. International relations were good until we started taking our naked summit photos"

  We went out for pizza in town before we began the long drive. Isis and I split a plate of onion rings, a Greek salad, and a large veggie pizza, wolfing down the hot grease. Brian contented himself with one slice of cheese pizza. Eye watched us somewhat mournfully. "I've been off the Trail too long. I've lost my superpowers.

  On the long drive, Brian regaled us with stories of his hike, and we related some of our more outrageous experiences. Despite my navigation ("oh, we were supposed to go west?") and Brian's driving (twice, he pulled illegal U-turns on tour-lane highways), we arrived safely at the Appalachian Folklife Center in Pipestenn, West Virginia. We tumbled out of the station wagon and staggered around-sitting in a cramped car for two days had not done anything to help our hiker hobble.

  'The wide field was marked off into parking areas and tent sites. We had arrived early, apparently-there were only a few other cars on the grass and a few tents up in the far corner of the field. At one edge of the open expanse, several modest wooden buildings stood by a small patch of woods. Signs by the doors identified them: Kitdien, Library, Bathrooms.

  Brian got out and stretched luxuriously, unfolding his lanky frame. "Hey, ladies. Listen, I had a great time driving down with the two of you, but if you call find another ride back, I'd appreciate it. I'm gonna take this hunk of junk down to Tennessee, visit some friends of mine there" He patted the silver car's bumper, and I noticed patches of duct tape holding it together in places. "Don't know if this baby's got it in her to go back up the coast.

  I looked around the field. We didn't know anybody else there. The prospect of getting stranded in West Virginia was a little scary. I started to say soinething, but Isis was nodding. "I'm sure we can find a ride;' she said.

  As we set up the tent, I asked her where exactly our ride was supposed to come from. She shrugged. "We'll ask around. Somebody's bound to be going back that way.'' I wished I could have her confidence.

  The main events of the Gathering took place at Concorde College, a small Baptist school a few minutes' drive from the Folklife Center. Brian drove us over there in the evening, and we registered at the tables in the glass atrium of the student union, receiving name tags and information packets. It felt a little surreal to be attending a conference in the middle of the Trail. Everyone else there was well-dressed and clean.

  We walked into the auditorium next door, where the opening ceremony would be held. The red velvet of the seats and the curtain seemed far too luxurious for our ragged clothes and none-too-clean bodies. As we walked through the crowd, though, a whisper seemed to follow us: Real hikers! They're actually on the Trail right nou,! I stood up straighter and smiled at the people near me. For once, our scruffiness was a mark of honor.

  A man in his niid-fifties took the podium at the front, and the crowd quieted after several calls to attention. "Welcome to the 2000 Gathering of the Appalachian Long Distance Hikers Association!" There was a deafening cheer from the audience. "I want to welcome everybody here tonight. How many of you have hiked the Appalachian Trail?" Almost half the audience stood up, and there was another loud whoop. "And how many of you are dreaming of hiking the Trail?" The other half of the crowd rose with an even louder cheer. "Welcome, all of you. This Gathering is for the hikers, but most especially for the dreamers ... We've got a great program this weekend. If its your first time here, I urge you to try a lot of different things. Go to a slide show, watch a demonstration, visit our vendors. But whatever you do, make sure you spend some time with your friends. Meet some new friends. That's why we're here. The A.T. has been called 'a pathway for those who seek fellowship in the wilderness.' Well, this is our chance to have some fun and fellowship."

  Several people came up to the stage to speak about the importance of hiking in their lives or to tell funny stories from the Trail. A man with thinning white hair sang a song with a verse about every state on the Trail, and perhaps a third of the audience joined in.

  The MC took the microphone again, and announced, "Now for the moment we've all been waiting for: class years!" Isis and I exchanged a puzzled glance, but the rest of the audience buzzed with excitement.

  "How many of you hiked in '99?" A large contingent in the back of the auditorium stood up, shouting and pumping their fists in the air.

  "Ninety-eight!" A smaller, but no less vocal, group. I understood what was happening now. "Ninety-seven!" The MC counted down through the years, and with each passing decade fewer people stood up. There were a number of hikers from various years in the eighties, and a handful from the seventies. In the sixties and fifties, years rolled by and no one stood up.

  "Fifty! Forty-nine!" An expectant hush came over the crowd. "Fortyeight," he said with great solemnity. A solitary man in the third row stood up and turned to face the crowd. His face was thin and wasted, but his dark eyes glowed with enormous intensity under shaggy brows. "Earl Shaffer!" the MC said, and the crowd gave him the largest cheer yet.

  Even with my utter lack of preparation for the Trail, I recognized the name: he was the first thru-hiker. Before his hike, no one had even thought it would he possible to hike the Trail in one season. It had been designed for weekend outings. But Earl Shaffer returned from the battlefields of the South Pacific with a lot of demons to exorcise and a dream of walking in the mountains. He had finished his hike, and in 1998, fifty years later, he had hiked again at age seventy-nice. In the auditorium of Concord College, the cheering went on and on; here was the person responsible for all of this.

  The MC called us to order again. "There are still a few classes I haven't called. A.T. class of 2000!" Another group rose up shouting. I saw Brian down near the front, hugging a thin blond woman and grinning like a maniac.

  "Current northbounders!" A few hikers stood up.

  "Last but certainly not least.... current southbounders!" With a loud whoop, my sister and I rose to our feet. It felt like graduation, or the induction into a secret club; all of a sudden we were a part of something larger than ourselves. I looked around the auditorium. There were perhaps twenty of us standing and only a few I knew. I )own in front, I saw Solid with two men I didn't know, a wide smile on his handsome face. We turned around to see who else we might recognize, and there in the back was Waterfall! She jumped up and down when she spotted us, and we ran toward each other through the crowd as soon as the ceremony finished.

  "I just knew y'all would come! Oh, I'm so happy!"

  "Waterfall!" I threw my arms around her and picked her up off the floor. "There's nobody else quite like you out there."

  "There's nobody like y'all, either"

  "Oh, we missed you so much!" Isis said. We drew aside to let the rest of the crowd pass. "Who are you hiking with? Where are you on the Trail? You have to tell us all the gossip ..

  "Well, I'm in Harpers Ferry right now. I'm kinda hikin' with Matt, but .. "she made a face. "Well, I don't have to get into that right now. Oh, gossip. Let's see ... well, Blue Skies and Tenbrooks are officially a couple ..:'

  Isis laughed. "I should have figured."

  "It's so funny how they got together. I think they both kind of liked each other, but neither one wanted to admit it. So one day, I finally asked her if there was anything goin' on between them. She just blushed, and she said, `Well, he's awfully cute. And we are sharin' a tent: "

  I shook my head and smiled. "That counts as 'something going on' in my book! So what else is new? How's Matt?"

  Waterfall sighed. "Matt got Lyme disease"

  "Oh. Is he still on the Trail?" I didn't know much about the tick-borne disease, except that it could cause chronic pain and arthritis.

  She sighed again. "Yes. But I swear, y'all, the first thing Lyme disease does to a person is to make 'em hell to live with. He didn't get it diagnosed for a long
time, and before he did he was just so negative and weal"

  I could picture Matt becoming negative, but mean? I remembered the evenings we'd spent with him around campfires in Maine. I couldn't imagine his placid profundity giving way to meanness.

  "I hope it gets better."

  "Oh, he's on antibiotics right now. He says he's feelin' better, but its takin' a while ... That's one reason I got off for the Gathering," she continued. "Besides seein' y'all, of course. I wanted to take a little time off and get with a different crowd of hikers."

  "Who's behind you? 1)o you know?" It was always easy to tell who was just ahead, because of the registers, but knowing who followed you on the Trail was a matter of rumor and guesswork.

  "I'm not sure. I think Blade's a couple days back, and there's a young couple, Firebreather and Fall Girl. I hiked with them in Vermont. Other than them, I don't know. I'll take my chances"

  "So Blade's still on the Trail?" I asked. He seldom wrote in registers, and we hadn't seen him since the night of the Stompers in Gorham.

  Waterfall laughed. "Can you actually picture him quittin'?"

  "What about O.D. and Bugbiter? I haven't seen anything from them in registers for ages," Isis said.

  "They got off in Hanover, a couple days before we got there. I thought y'all knew."

  "No. That's too bad"

  "Yeah" Waterfall said. "From what I heard, Bugbiter wanted to go faster and faster, and O.1). just wasn't up for it"

  "So the fellowship is broken, but the Quest continues," I said.

  Waterfall nudged inc. "You sound just like Blade!"

  At lunch the next day in the Concorde College cafeteria, the hikers and Gathering attendees were easy to pick out from the crowd of well-groomed students. Isis and Waterfall sat down with Solid and his new friends, and I went hack for drinks. As I filled a glass with grape juice, I heard footsteps coming tip behind me.

  "Jackrabbit?" 1 turned. It was a tall blond man with a scruffy beard and bright blue eyes. From his ragged clothes and muscular legs, I could tell right away that he was on the Trail. "It's so good to meet you! I wanted to meet you in Hanover, but I didn't know where you were staying .. " There was something very compelling in his earnest manner, and he was certainly pleasing to the eye. I was flattered that he recognized me.

  "Good to meet you;' I said, and glanced at his name tag. He had drawn a goofy smiley-face, and written support the arts! 7iiha players have great lips. "Tuba Man!"

  He nodded, grinning.

  "I've been wanting to meet you for a long time. I want to hear all about your hike. Can you join mte for lunch?" I said.

  "Looks like our friends are all at the same table," he said. Waterfall, Isis, and Solid were waving to us from across the room, along with a blond man I didn't recognize. A grungy magenta pack leaned against the edge of the table, and sure enough, I could see the golden bell of a tuba protruding from the top. ()lie side of it was strangely crushed in, as though it had hit the rocks pretty hard. I wanted to ask about it, but I waited for the introductions first.

  "I guess you know Solid. This is Playfoot;" Tuba Man said, indicating the hiker beside Waterfall. He had a round face and wore tiny glasses, and he looked up with a slightly mischievous grin.

  'I'layfoot% How'd you get a name like that?'' I asked.

  Iie finished chewing and took a sip of water. "Well, when I hiked seven years ago, I got a stress fracture in my toot." (1 was surprised-he hardly looked old enough to have hiked seven years before.) "When I got back on the Trail after it Healed, I decided to go by Clayfoot, you know, feet of clay. But somebody misheard it as Playfoot, and I decided that's a better nanie ,Ii) s hoss."

  Solid gave an impish smile. "What about your other name, PlayfootF'

  "Oh, yeah." Playfoot rolled his eyes. "Well, when I hike, I sweat a whole lot. Even when its cold I have to go shirtless. So these guys, well, they started calling me Streaker." He shrugged with a slightly embarrassed smile.

  "Streaker!" Tuba Man shouted, and half the cafeteria looked up in alarm. Tuba Man looked around with an innocent smile, as if trying to figure out who had yelled.

  I decided it was time to change the subject. "You're probably sick of telling this story, but I want to know what happened to that tuba of yours"

  He seemed eager to tell the story-his eyes glowed. Solid and Playfoot exchanged a glance: here we go again.

  "Poor Charisma," Tuba Man said.

  "Your tuba has a name?" Waterfall asked.

  He looked hurt. "Of course she's got a name. Charisma's my best buddy." He continued the story. "There's a ridge in Pennsylvania called the Knife Edge. It's a stack of bare rocks about a quarter mile long, all piled up, and they all tip when you step on them. Kind of like the rest of Pennsylvania, actually, except for the drop-off. Solid and I hiked across the Knife Edge in a thunderstorm. We were going as fast as we could. Those rocks were pretty slick, and I took a bad fall."

  "He must've fallen twenty feet," Solid said. "I thought he was a goner."

  "I could see my life flash before my eyes, you know? And then I heard this whump! and a sort of crumpling sound, and I hit the ground. I got some cuts on my hand and a pretty bad one on my leg." He showed us the healing scars, angry purple against his tanned skin. I resisted the urge to reach across and touch his leg. "I was okay, though. I could move, I could walk ... You know what happened?" He waited.

  "The tuba:' l said.

  "Right! Charisma took the hit. She saved my life." He patted the battered bell of the tuba. "If her bell hadn't been sticking out of my pack, over my head, I would've died right there." He looked around the table with utter seriousness.

  "You could argue that he wouldn't have fallen in the first place without that top-heavy seventy-pound load." Solid said dryly.

  Tuba Man shook his head. "It could have happened to anyone. I'm just a lucky guy."

  "I don't know if I'd call that lucky," I said. "I mean, sure its lucky that you had the tuba, but that fall doesn't sound like a lucky thing at all."

  He considered for a moment. "Accident-prone, but lucky."

  "I got down to him as quick as I could," Solid said, "and I bandaged up the cuts and stuff. He was bleeding quite a bit. We managed to walk another six miles off the ridge, and then we tried to hitch to a hospital."

  "Nobody would pick us up," Tuba Man said. "Can you imagine? There I am, wrapped in bloody bandages, and Solid's ripped up half his t-shirt to help tie them on. We looked like hell. No wonder nobody stopped"

  "So we finally walked into town, like, four miles," Solid said, "and we knocked on doors until we found an old lady who drove us to the hospital. They were really good to us. He got stitched up, and they gave nle some sterile syringes for my insulin."

  "You're taking insulin now?"

  He gave a sad smile. "Yeah. I just couldn't get along without it any more ... We stayed the night there, and one of the nurses drove us back to the Trail in the morning"

  "And guess how far they hiked that day," Playfoot said. He had obviously been waiting to deliver his line in the story. We all shook our heads. "Twentyseven miles!"

  The rest of the Gathering passed way too fast. I was amazed by the kindness of strangers; many trail angels stopped us in the halls of the college and offered their assistance.

  "Are you southbound% I'd love to have you visit. Give nie a call when you get to Boiling Springs. Here's my card"

  "If you need any help between Troutville and Pearisburg, here's our number."

  "Y'all have got to come see me in Erwin, Tennessee!"

  We spent every spare moment with Waterfall, reminiscing about our time together and telling stories of our recent adventures. One afternoon, we found our way into the band room and played blues on the piano. Tuba Man arrived shortly afterwards. We played some jazz standards and I taught him a few ditties I had written, including "1)ig a Hole." I had never really heard the sound of a tuba up close. It was a more mellow and beautiful tone than I had expected; something like a de
ep, rich, French horn. As the afternoon light from the windows faded, Isis and Waterfall found excuses to disappear. Tuba Man played sweet songs to me and flashed his devastating smile. I he t1irting with mc? I wondered.

  We spent the evenings in the kitchen and common rooni of the Folklife Center with the other younger hikers. Playfoot, Solid, and Tuba Man cooked up hot chocolate and passed around some homemade cookies from their mail drops. We shared jokes and stories, and flirtatious banter flew around the room. I hadn't realized how much I missed the company of people illy age. Anonymous Badger, who we had met in New Hampshire, came in on the second night, and after a long talk about barefoot hiking, dreams, philosophy, and religion, Isis convinced him to come hike with us in January, if we were still on the Trail by then.

  We lit a fire in the woodstove and sang songs. One night, a large group of hikers and dreamers gathered in the common room. We ended up singing "Dig a Hole" with tuba accompaniment. The crowd joined in exuberantly on the chorus. We had a few more verses now:

  As we sang the last chorus, I noticed an elderly man in a plaid shirt sitting in the back of the crowd, smiling and singing along. His powerful gaze was unmistakable. I felt a surge of pride: Earl Sltaf ,r likes our song!

  Each day of the Gathering, the weather grew colder. Thick frost coated the grass around our tent in the mornings, and even this far south, the leaves were dropping rapidly from the trees. We bought polar fleece jackets and long underwear from a booth at the hiker fair. On Sunday night, I was very glad we had. We sat around the fire in the common room at the Folklife (:enter, singing. Someone burst though the door with a rush of cold air. "It's snowing!"

  At first I didn't believe it. I stepped outside, and there it was; thick white flakes swirled down in the columns of light streaming from the windows.

  "It's the eighth of October!" I said to Isis.

  "I know. And we're not even halfway done with the Trail."

  There was a bonfire outside on the field that night. Tuba Man wandered over, playing Christmas carols. I followed, feeling like a child captured by the pied piper, and stood in the outskirts of the crowd around the fire, jumping from foot to foot in an effort to stay warm. Tuba Man stood in the firelight with his eyes closed, playing songs I wouldn't have imagined a tuba could handle: everything from "Linus and Lucy" to "Fur Elise." The clear sound rang out across the snow-muffled landscape. Little drifts of snowflakes collected in his hair and beard and in the crumpled bell of his tuba. He was the focus of the crowd, and he knew it. Charisma-that's the word for what he has, I thought. He takes it lor,'ranted that everyone will love him, and so they do. He wasn't Nirtinc. with me. It's just his way of dcalinq with the world.