Barefoot Sisters: Southbound

by Lucy Letcher;Susan Letcher

  My fingers felt clumsy at first, as though cobwebs covered my memory. I closed illy eyes and let the music flow through uie. Gradually it returnedChopin, Bach Debussy; the pieces I'd worked so hard to polish for my senior recital just six months earlier. It seemed like another lifetime. My memory drifted back to college, all the friends I'd known, the classes and practice sessions, the Tar Kwon I )o tournaments, the late-night talks and endless discus- sions..9ad now 1 walk, I thought. Dawn to dusk, I walk, and the thou 'hts 1 bare are mine alone. The music flowed on through my hands, moving from memory to improvisation. I tried to fill the echoing space of the church, my loneliness, with rich and unrelenting sound.

  When I opened my eyes, Joy was standing beside me. The candlelight glowed golden on her fine hair and her tiny solemn face.

  "Did you ever go to church?" Her voice was little more than a whisper, swallowed up in the giant room.

  "I never have."

  "Paul took us once when I was little. There was a man there that said things, and Paul said they was lies. We never did go again:" She was silent for a nionient. "You play nice music:'

  "Thank von, Joy."

  I started playing again, a slow lament. She stood watching in the outskirts of the candlelight, with a respectful silence I'd never seen in a child her age. I turned my attention to the keyboard, clutching at the memory of notes to catch them before they faded. When I looked up again joy was gone.

  The Family decided to take a zero day at the hostel. I didn't blame them-it was another day of cold rain. PA Mule took us back to the trailhead at Fox Gap, where we had slacked from the day before, and wished us luck. "Youse want some extra water? I got a couple of liters in the back there. Go ahead. The springs are iffy on this ridge."

  "Maybe we'd better. Thanks, Mule." Isis grabbed two Gatorade bottles, full of clean water, from the back of his truck. We stowed them in our packs, made a few last-minute adjustments. Each of us was carrying three liters of water now. I could feel the extra weight dragging against my hips and shoulders. It was only twenty miles from Fox Gap to Palmerton, though, so we weren't carrying much food.

  "Oh, one other thing I mention," Mule said. "Up at the other end of this ridge, maybe three, four miles out of Palmerton, that's the Superfund site. There was a zinc smelter in the valley there. Heavy metals just about stripped all the plants off the ridge. Still a wasteland. You'll know it when you see it. Whatever you do, don't drink out of the puddles up there" He winked.

  "Thanks for everything, Mule. We really appreciate it. Take it easy," I said. He waved and pulled hack onto the road. We headed into the woods. Maples, oaks, and hickory glowed with fiery colors, red, orange, school-bus yellow, intense and bright in the foreground and muted in the distance by rain and fog. Like yesterday, the leaf-covered rocks made for difficult walking.

  As the day wore on, the air began to clear and a wind blew the bright leaves swirling down out of the trees, fluttering between the gray trunks like exotic butterflies. It was amazing how fast the leaves fell; the day before, the forest canopy had been bright with color, and by noon today the color was all on the ground. The ridges were narrow, and between the suddenly bare branches, we could see all the way to the valley floor on both sides. Orderly farms and small towns made a patchwork of gold, green, and brown behind the vertical gray stripes of tree trunks. The ridges here had a totally different shape than other mountains I had known; flat-topped, skinny, and sinuous, they stretched across the landscape like wrinkles in a piece of fabric, interrupted only by the gaps where rivers had cut through them.

  We stopped for lunch at the Leroy Smith Shelter, a somewhat run-down wooden lean-to in a clearing among oak trees. The sun came through the clouds, and we basked in the warm rays for a long time, savoring our cheese, crackers, and dried pineapple.

  "Should we get water here?" I asked.

  Isis consulted the neap. "The spring's a long ways down. I think we can hold out till we get to the next one.

  "Okay." I took a small sip of illy water and chewed my last slice of pineapple, watching hawks and vultures soar in the thermals beginning to form above the valley.

  "I've got a surprise," Isis said. She reached into her food bag and drew out a pomegranate. Isis knew that the smooth-skinned red fruit, with its hundreds of tiny seeds, was one of my favorites. "I picked it up in Stroudsburg yesterday, while you were getting our dinners."

  "Excellent!" Fresh fruit of any kind was a welcome change out here, and my mouth watered at the thought of a pomegranate. But as I peeled back the tough outer skin, I felt a few misgivings. "Isis, you remember the legend of Persephone, don't you? She would have been able to escape the Underworld, except that she ate those six pomegranate seeds. That's why we have six months of winter ..

  "Of course I remember."

  "Well, doesn't it, I mean, don't you worry ..

  She shrugged and smiled, already digging into her half of the pomegranate. "Maybe we'll just have to spend a few extra months on the Trail."

  We had planned to camp that night at help's Spring, six miles down the trail from Leroy Smith, but night caught tip with us on the ridge. I set the tent up in a tiny stealth site, overhung with branches. We mixed up our instant potato flakes with very little water, trying to save some for breakfast, and as I drifted off to sleep, I thought about Persephone.

  In the morning, we found the trail down to Kelp's Spring after maybe a quarter mile. A sign ❑ailed to a tree trunk proclaimed the name, and a register box below it held a tiny notebook labeled Floe' Report. I didn't bother reading it, thinking that after such a rainy summer we would be guaranteed at least a trickle. Our last bottle of water, perhaps three-quarters full, sloshed in Isis's hip holster.

  "I'll go down," I said, unshouldering my pack and letting it fall in the dry oak leaves. I took out my fleece against the morning chill, put on Illy camp shoes, and took off at an easy jog down the trail to the spring with our empty water bottles and the filter. A few leaves still clung to the maples and sassafras, bright yellow in the horizontal early light, but the woods were mostly brown and gray, a monochromatic vista of dead leaves, dead grasses, naked tree trunks. Everything looked dry and dormant. The cool air whipped past as I descended, trotting down switchbacks and leaping over stone steps, down toward the distant valley floor.

  Suddenly the trail came to an end. The stone steps ran out in a tangle of brambles and tawny grass. I stopped on the bottom step and waited for my breath to calm down, straining my ears for a hint of water-sound. I stood there listening until my heart rate slowed again, but the only sound was the soft rustle of dead oak leaves. Then I looked around. Under the last stone step there was a small space of gravel. A metal pipe protruded from the hillside above, its spout blocked by cobwebs. I grabbed a stick and dug down among the stones, but the gravel was bone-dry. Only a powdery dust rose out of the old spring.

  As I climbed back up the trail, going slowly now to conserve energy and sweat, I considered what I would say to Isis. We were still ten miles out from Palmerton-ten slow and painstaking miles, if the rest of Pennsylvania was anything to go by-with less than half a liter of water between us. The morning air was chilly, but I knew that the temperature would rise with the sun. And somewhere ahead of us on this ridge was the Superfund site. I tried to come up with some heroic turn of phrase to sum up our situation. "We will need our reserves of strength and fortitude to get through this day ... no, that sounds like a spoof of Blade ... maybe something more like this: we're facing a big challenge . .

  Isis was waiting at the top of the trail, her face set in a grim smile. Before I could bring out one of my bon mots, she supplied her own: "We're screwed, aren't we." It wasn't a question. She held out the Flow Report notebook. "Pretty entertaining reading. 10/5: this is supposed to he a spring? ... 9/15: Delp'c gravel pit is more like it ... 8/27: RIP Delp's sprit~E" The last record of any water coming out (a slow drip. Bring a Tolstoy novel fir entertainment while you wait) was in March-of 1999.

  She divided ou
r remaining water into two bottles, taking care not to spill a drop, and each of us poured out a little into our cups for breakfast. We mixed up dry milk, dumped in granola from a Ziploc, and ate fast. The sun was higher in the sky now, the air warming rapidly. We licked out our cups and set off, making our way slowly along the leaf-strewn trail.

  Around midday the vegetation began to look strange. The trees became stunted, twisted shapes that clung together in groups, and the ground between them was bare except for sparse hummocks of pale grass. The gravel trail felt warm and sharp underfoot. As the forest thinned out on either side, we could see down into the valley below, where clusters of houses and occasional water towers spread out from a snaking roadway. At the tar end of the valley the shimmer of a river seas just visible, and beside it, the squat gray rectangles of factories and warehouses sprawled over several acres. Probably the i'cry smelter that did this, I thought.

  Farther along the ridge, the trees gave way to blasted stumps and the rocks took on a blackened cast. The trail, a yellowish-gray gravel, was the only hint of color in the funereal landscape. It curved along the top of the ridge ahead, vanishing into mirages before it touched the horizon. The wind had died, leaving the air still and hot. Thirst clutched at my throat.

  I )istant pools shimmered in the mirages. As we came closer to one of them, I gave a shout; it truly was a pool of water. It was all I could do not to plunge my hands in and dip it out to drink, but I remembered PA Mule's warning-"whatever you do, don't drink out of the puddles tip there." I looked around at the scarred ridge, the gray stumps that were the only remnants of the lost trees. Whatever had done this to the forest, zinc, cadniiuni, lead, sulfates, nitrates, it was still here in the water. With a great of}ort, I walked past the poisoned pools. It's in the c roiutd, too, I thought, probably seepirrA' up throiui'h the soles ol-my feet.

  We walked for what seemed like hours through the desolation, stopping twice for a sip of water. The sound of the last few mouthfuls sloshing around in the bottle as I walked was maddening. I could feel hunger coining on as well, gnawing at my belly. I didn't want to stop in the middle of this wasteland, but I knew I had to keep my energy up.

  "I've got to eat something," I said, and Isis agreed. We stopped beside a semicircle of dead trees, their trunks snapped off perhaps eight feet above the ground. They of}tired little shade, with the sun heating down from overhead, but at least there was the illusion of protection. Isis took out some dried fruit and granola bars. Something in the still air above our heads caught her attention, and I followed her gaze. High up on a thermal, but riding lower with each passing moment, five or six vultures hung in the air on their great black wings. Their naked heads pointed toward us, and I imagined their heady eyes gleaming in anticipation.

  We scarfed down the rest of the granola bars fast and staggered to our feet. The Hock dispersed, but they followed us over the rest of the ridge at a discreet distance, wheeling around us in lazy circles. Lines from "Tile Wasteland," half-remembered from lit classes in another age of the world, crept into my mind. I had seen it that morning, fear in a handful of dust. A handful of smooth, cold gravel that should have held water. What if something happened to one of us up here, in this wasteland? My mind conjured up images of setting up the tent to ward off vultures, running down to the valley for help. How long can the body survive without water? Several days, I thought. Time enough, surely. We staggered onward through the miles of scarred and blighted rock.

  Looking down into the gap at the far end of the ridge, I saw a jumble of boulders, sonic the size of my head and some the size of a small car, stacked haphazardly at a steep angle. The trail zigzagged down the slope before vanishing among the broken stones. Thirst was weakening me. Things at the edge of my vision shimmered and wavered as I watched; I felt utter weariness creeping into my legs. I vowed to save my last mouthful of water for the valley floor. I knew I needed strength, but I also needed some incentive to get me down safely. I focused my mind around water, getting down to the valley floor so I could have water. I curled my right foot around the contour of a stone, planted my sticks against another boulder, and started down.

  I have little memory of the climb down Lehigh Gap. All I can recall are fragments, images of broken stone and stacked-up boulders, sonic smooth and some sharp underfoot. In one place we had to lower ourselves down a rock face with our hands, reaching for invisible toeholds below. Sounds of traffic rose up out of the gap. Sometimes we could look straight down on the highway and the gray-green river. The ground seemed to wobble and sway unpredictably. I narrowed my concentration into balance and movement, thinking only of the mouthful of water waiting for me at the bottom of the trail.

  At last we stood in the parking lot under a grove of still-yellow sassafras trees, looking up at the wall of crumbling stone. I unscrewed the cap of my water bottle with trembling hands and drank the sweetest water I had ever tasted.

  "Here," Isis said. "Drink some of mine"

  I refused. "If you're feeling anywhere near as bad as I do right now, you've gotta drink that"

  Her forehead wrinkled with concern. "How bad are you feeling?"

  I told her about the way the ground had lurched on the way down, and how even now the edges of my vision shimmered and threatened to go dark.

  "Good Lord! Drink it all, then"

  "You mean you don't feel it, too?"

  "Well, ['m not exactly feeling great right now, but I haven't been hallucinating or anything. Go on, drink it"

  After swallowing her last water and sitting down for a few minutes, I felt good enough to get up and begin the long walk into town. I was amazed at my sister's endurance. When we started this hike, I had secretly thought to myself how well-suited I would be for Trail life. I was an athlete who spent long hours in the gym, training mind and body to conquer any obstacle. My sister's main form of exercise was a walk in the woods every few days. And yet it turned out that she showed up stronger and more resilient at every turn. I was the one who was forced off the Trail by injuries, I was the one unable to stop my despair at being constantly left behind, and now I was the one almost overcome by dehydration. Isis had enormous reserves of strength that she was just beginning to discover, while I felt that the Trail so far had only served to show vie the limits of my strength.

  We stayed in the borough hall that night. It was a stocky yellow brick building in the center of town, with window boxes of red geraniums halfwilted from frost. Tuba Man had told us about the place at the Gathering: the town of Palmerton lets hikers stay for free in the basement, which used to be the county jail. He said it was a standard hiker joke to call your parents from Palmerton and tell them you were in jail somewhere in Pennsylvania.

  The front door was locked when we got there, but a small sign in the window read, Hikers: Please si'n in u'itli the Police Department (back of bnildint). The officer on duty, a portly, balding nian in his fifties, had us sign our navies in a spiral-bound notebook. He scrutinized our drivers' licenses for a moment and directed us to the basement side door.

  I had expected the place to look more jail-like, but the cells had been torn out long ago, and now it had the ambience of a typical municipal-hall basement, aside from the rows of bunks along the back wall. The blue-painted walls and floor exuded a faint odor of sweat and mildew. Old issues of Readers UiP'st and National Geographic cascaded over a plywood table in the center of the room. Padlocked storage cupboards in one corner were plastered with handwritten posters of Cub Scout mottos and badge requirements.

  "Evening" The sudden, gravelly voice made me jump. An old man with glittering blue eyes and a short beard stood in the doorway across the room, leaning on a broom. He wore a plaid shirt and paint-spattered jeans. I was still wobbly and disoriented from water loss, and it seemed that he had appeared out of the woodwork. "I'm Bill, Bill the janitor they call me. And you are ..

  We offered our trail names and Bill nodded his head, unsmiling, as though weighing the information.

  "Is there a water
fountain here?" I asked.

  "There is," he said solemnly, leading us to the top of the stairs. I filled my water bottle and drained it twice, the cold pulsing through me. Isis did the same. Bill watched without comment.

  "Let me show you around the place," Bill said when we put our bottles down at last. He indicated the hallway leading off to the left beside the water fountain. "The gym's down that way, if you want to play some basketball. Showers are off to the left, in the locker rooms. Nicest showers on the Trail, many hikers tell me. Best watch out for the alligators, though." He said all of this in the same quiet, deadpan tone, not smiling even for the alligators, and it was hard to know whether to laugh or not. The floor seemed to sway beneath me; I wondered if Bill was another figment of my imagination.

  Bill showed us where the stairs led up to the second floor. I felt a little better as the water coursed into my veins. Bill stayed just as strange. I decided he wasn't a hallucination after all. "Ladies' room is up there, on the left," he said. "And don't worry if you hear funny noises in the conference rooms across the hall. Bunch of ghosts play poker up there every Friday. Don't mind 'em."

  He led us back downstairs. "Now, this is the room where the hikers stay, unless you get too noisy. Then we lock you in the cupboards over there," he said matter-of-factly. "Now when George Washington crossed the Delaware and built this place, back when I was a little boy-" he winked, the first outward sign that he was laughing at his own jokes "-he forgot to put a light switch in that outer room there, so the lights always stay on. Should be dark enough to sleep back where the bunks are. Never had any complaints. 'Course, if they did complain I would've locked 'em in the cupboards anyway. Have a nice night now. Bill's got to get back to work"

  We thanked him for the tour. As he receded up the stairwell, we heard his gruff voice call out once more: "Watch out for the alligators!"

  We decided to stay in Palmerton for a day to recover our strength. It was our first zero in a long time. We ate breakfast at an unapologetically 1950s diner across from the borough hall, washed our already-grimy clothes, ate a leisurely lunch at a pizza place down the street, and resupplied. Isis had heard that the next town, Port Clinton, had almost nothing in the way of groceries, so we shipped a box of food there. We spent the afternoon writing letters in the park, where yellow leaves still clung to the maples and hawthorns. The light gilded the tops of the ridges as it slanted toward evening. We could see the blasted, bare surface of the ridge we had crossed the day before, a black smudge that spread upwards from the buildings of the erstwhile smelting plant. I thought of the bulletin board downstairs in the borough hall, with its faded posters: "Fifty Uses for Zinc, the Miracle Metal!"