Barefoot Sisters: Southbound

by Lucy Letcher;Susan Letcher

  The weather held clear, and in spite of a series of short, rough climbs, the sixteen miles into Damascus felt like easy hiking. After the first few miles, we stripped down to our wool shirts and shorts; by afternoon, red-brown leaves showed through the snow on the southern slopes of hills. From the top of one small mountain, we could look back to see the wrinkled white balds of the Grayson Highlands shining against the sky.

  "God, it's beautiful," whispered jackrabbit, coming to a halt beside me.

  "When it's not trying to kill us," I said.

  "No," she said. "It was beautiful even then."

  "So you want to go on?"

  "That's not what I meant. But yes, I do want to stay on the Trail."

  "Good," I said with a fierce grin. "So do I."

  When we got back to the Lazy Fox, we were greeted by two familiar but unexpected faces: Playfoot and Anonymous Badger. Both of them had been following jackrabbit's e-mail updates, so they knew where to find us. Playfoot, who lived a couple hours' drive away, had just read jackrabbit's account of our harrowing day on Grayson. Deciding that we needed some support and encouragement, he'd gotten in his jeep after work and driven straight to Damascus. Anonymous Badger hadn't read the Grayson e-mail yet. He had just quit a job in Pennsylvania, and he wanted to spend a month hiking with us before his new job started. He'd never been winter camping before.

  "That's okay," jackrabbit told him. "Isis and I had only done three days of winter camping before the A.T."

  With a start, I realized that she was right.

  jackrabbit

  e left Damascus in midmorning, with the sun glaring bright on the half-melted snow in the valley: me and Isis, the Family, Lash, and Anonymous Badger. Netta waved from the window of the outfitter's as we passed. I had the parting gift she had given me, a Hebrew blessing copied onto an index card, stowed in the top of my pack. I would carry it for the rest of my hike.

  Perhaps a mile out of town, a set of wooden steps marked the beginning of the A.T.'s ascent out of the valley. Six inches of snow clung to the ground, disturbed only by the footprints of Heald and Annie-they had left town several hours earlier. Rhododendrons grew thick around the trail, and their lower leaves, in shadow, were half-curled against the cold. Anonymous Badger ran ahead, moving lightly over the snow. Lash and Joel followed him, soon lost to sight. John and I walked together, followed by Paul and Joy, and Isis brought up the rear with Mary.

  The snow was deeper on top the ridge. In places the drifts beside the trail came to my knees, but the footsteps of the people ahead had packed down the treadway. It was only on the northern slopes, where the snow was still powdery, that the effort of plowing through it was a problem. The snowshoes we had bought in Blacksburg had arrived at the Damascus post office the day before we left, and mine were strapped to the outside of my pack. I thought about wearing them several times. I wanted to hike with John, though, and I didn't think he could keep up if I did.

  Three miles out of town, on the ridge top, we came to a small wooden sign tacked to a tree. "Welcome to Tennessee," it read. An outline of the state had been burned into the wood, with a sunburst in one corner. We stared at it for several seconds and broke into cheers.

  "The state line! The state line! We made it through Virginia!"

  After eight weeks and 546 miles, more than a quarter of the AT., we had finally reached the next state. I thought hack to crossing the West Virginia line, cooling into Harpers Ferry at night. At the time, I couldn't have imagined anything harder than that twenty-six-mile hike, ending up lost among shoulderless freeways and half-built bridges, hungry, in the dark. The danger we had faced on the Grayson Highlands made the memory almost comical.

  John hugged my waist. "We did it!"

  I hugged him back, and then I put illy gloved hand up against the sign and lowered illy head, silently thanking whatever power in the universe had helped us through that nightmare blizzard.

  John and I walked together all afternoon. With the hood of his green fleece pulled up around his pointed face, he looked like a woodland elf. He was surprisingly quiet for a child of his age. Occasionally he stopped to point out interesting things along the trail: vines twisted into a corkscrew pattern; the wing marks and drops of blood in the snow where an owl had caught a mouse.

  We stopped for a drink at the top of a small rise, brushing the snow from a fallen tree trunk so we could sit down. The sun was sliding toward evening, a filigree of slate-blue shadows lengthening on the snow.

  "What do you want to do when you grow up,.John%" I asked him.

  He considered for a moment, chewing on his lower lip. "I want to be free. What do you want to do, jackrabbit?"

  "I wish I knew."

  "Are you a grown-up?"

  "Yes. No. I'm kind of at an age where everyone expects nee to be a grown-up, but I don't feel like one, really."

  "Why not?"

  "Well, I used to think that when you became a grown-up, all of a sudden everything would make sense. You'd have some idea of what you were doing with your lice, some plan "

  "Why do you wanna have a plan? I wanna be like Paul." His voice was strong with conviction, and his eyes looked just like his father's for an instant. "He doesn't have no plans, or nobody telling him what to do. He just does things." John stood up and brushed the snow off his pants. "I think we oughta hike some more now."

  It was almost dark by the time we reached Abingdon Gap Shelter, a tiny, dingy building with cinderblock walls, a plywood sleeping platform, and a corrugated tin roof. Lash and Joel sat at the picnic table in front of the shelter. By the pattern of footsteps in the snow on the blue-blazed trail to the water source, I knew that Heald and Badger must still be at the spring.

  "Hey, guys. Where's the privy?" I said.

  Lash gave an enigmatic smile and pointed wordlessly to a shovel leaning against the outside wall of the shelter.

  "You've got to be kidding nie"

  He shrugged. "Welcome to Tennessee"

  I took my pack off and quickly emptied the essentials (food bag, warns clothing, sleeping bag, and foam pad) onto the platform. As I crawled to the back of the shelter, rolling out my sleeping bag, a placard on the wall caught my eye:

  ABINGDON GAP

  This shelter, built in 1952 by the Forest Service and maintained by the Tennessee Eastman Hikinc Club, will acco mnodate live people.

  I made a quick mental count: the Family, nee and Isis, Lash, Badger, and Heald. Twelve of us, plus a dog. Isis and I had shipped our tent home a few towns back, after we realized it was practically useless for winter camping. (The last time we had tented, the water in our breath had condensed on the nylon walls, and flakes of ice had drifted down on us all night.) I knew none of the others carried tents, either, so I consolidated my gear into the smallest possible space.

  Heald came up from the spring trail just as joy tramped into the clearing. Seeing him, she scooped up a handful of fresh snow. It wouldn't quite pack into a hall, but she tossed it at him anyway. It hit his legs in a soft puff of powder.

  "I hit Heald with a snowball! I got Heald!" She danced around in front of the shelter. It she was tired from a day of hiking through snow up to her waist, it didn't show.

  "I'n► gonna getcha," Heald said, grinning. He held up his hands like claws and roared, looking more bearlike than ever.

  joy gave a shriek and dove behind the shelter. She reappeared a moment later, peering cautiously around the corner. "Heald, what's on your fitce%"

  "My beard and n►v glasses, that's what."

  "No, you got soniethin' in your heard. Looks like icicles." Sure enough, Heald's breath had condensed on his reddish mustache as he hiked, leaving a fringe of ice around his upper lip.

  Heald wiped his face. "Snotsicles is more like it." He picked up a double handful of snow and lunged toward .Joy's side of the shelter, grinning again. "You're gonna have somethin' on your face in a minute!"

  Joy gave a screech that ended in a giggle, and she quickly ducked inside the shelte
r and tossed her pack down. "I'm safe in here, Heald," she told him fiercely. "Jackrabbit won't let anything happen to Inc."

  I picked her up and set her on the sleeping platform, trying to ignore the lump in my throat. She was right; I would do anything to protect her if she was in danger. I loved her; I loved all of the Family. But I knew we wouldn't hike with them forever, and I wondered if I would ever see her after the Trail. Most of our other friends had fixed addresses. The Family didn't even have a last nan►e.

  We did manage to fit all of us into the shelter, with the children sleeping end-to-end and the adults occupying spaces perhaps eighteen inches wide,,just big enough to lie on one side. Foam pads and sleeping bags covered every inch of the shelter floor. The mouse hangers dangling from the rafters bulged with brightly colored food bags, like inverted bunches of balloons for a child's birthday. It was impossible to move without bumping into someone. Tempers began to Hare.

  "I'nn not sharing this stupid foam pad with my stupid dumb sister!" Joy announced, crossing her arias.

  Hope glared back at her. "Oh yeah? Well, I don't even wanna sit next to vou

  "Hey, you guys got it easy," Joel said. "I'n► twice the size of you, and I still have to share iniue with stinky john!" He cuffed his brother hard on the shoulder. john said nothing, but his eves narrowed.

  "Hey, guys, that's enough." Mary spoke up wearily from the back of the shelter. "We all have to share our space. You don't hear Isis and jackrabbit complaining."

  It was a lot easier to behave well, I reflected, when I knew I was being used as an example for someone. I thought back to the crises Isis and I had faced alone: our short-supplied week in the Pennsylvania mountains, our night-hike into Harpers Ferry. I probably would have complained a lot less and helped a lot more if it hadn't been just the tivo of us, I thought, and I felt a little ashamed.

  "Hey, who wants to play Hangman%" I said. I knew the kids liked the game, and it was a good way to help them practice their spelling-as well as keep them from squabbling. I picked up the ratty spiral-bound register and opened it to the back page. Mary gave nee a grateful smile.

  "I want to play!" Hope scooted her sleeping bag to the back of the shelter beside me.

  "Me too, me too!"Joy snuggled in on my other side. The boys settled at the foot of my sleeping bag.

  "Who wants to start?" I asked the children.

  "Me,"Joy said instantly. Then she looked uncertain. "Jackrabbit, will you spell a word for nie?"

  "Okay, but I can't guess letters if I do"

  "All right." She leaned close and whispered, "How do you spell `snot- sicles'?"

  In the morning, I was eager to leave the crowded shelter. I wanted some time alone to reflect. I ate a granola bar for breakfast, packed up quickly, and strapped on my snowshoes. The rest of the hikers were stirring now, rolling over and wiping the sleep from their eyes. I left the shelter clearing just in time to hear Lash's outraged yelp.

  "A mouse chewed a hole in my jacket! Little bastard! What am I gonna do? It's not even mine-I borrowed it from my brother!"

  Other sounds drifted from the shelter as I began striding along the trail. "Mary, Joy kicked nie all night! I didn't sleep at all!"

  "Ow! Stop it, Joel!"

  I picked up my pace, and soon all I could hear was the soft shuffle of my snowshoes and my steady breathing. It was barely dawn. A rose-colored light came through the branches, draping itself over the tree trunks and the snowy ground.

  I had been hoping that solitude would give ►ne time to think, but I couldn't seem to focus my mind on anything in particular. Thoughts slipped through my head, drifting past like the wisps of snow that blew over the ground: recipes, song lyrics, Tae Kwon I )o movements, Spanish verb conjugations, parts of the periodic table. Memories from the Trail, from college, from my childhood. Back in Maine, at the beginning of our hike, I had imagined that the AT. would give me time to reflect and consider what I wanted to do with my life. I had started college intent on getting a biology degree, going straight on to graduate school, and becoming a professor before I reached the age of thirty. Somewhere in there, I'd gotten sidetracked. I had graduated with a double major in biology and music, much less certain of my path. And now I was on the Trail. I was dimly aware, even at that point, that the AT. was a stand-in for my larger life goals; if I could work toward a goal just by putting one foot in front of the other, I wouldn't have to think about the rest of it. We had planned to finish the Trail in December. Now it looked like we wouldn't reach Georgia until February-and even then, I would not have completed a thru-hike, given the section I'd missed. It 71), am I out here? I asked myself for the umpteen millionth time.

  The air warmed up as the sun climbed above the ridges, and I stopped to take off my jacket. The snow around threw back tiny rainbow sparks of light. I took a sip of cold water and put the bottle back under my shirt. i l l ! ) ' ant I n►it here? Because I have no idea what else I'r! be doing.

  I heard footsteps behind me. It was Anonymous Badger. His long, blueblack hair cascaded over his shoulder, and his dark eyes sparkled beneath the brim of his wool hat. "Isn't this a beautiful morning? I'm so glad I came out to hike with you guys. I wouldn't miss this for the world.'

  I looked around at the snowy ridge top: black trees, glittering snow; distant ridges visible between the branches, their outlines framed by woods. Up ahead, a white blaze beckoned from the broad trunk of a maple. I had seen similar scenes every day since the first snowfall, several hundred miles north of here, but now I saw it with new eyes. "Yeah, you're right. This is pretty awesome.

  Badger stepped past me, and his slim form soon disappeared around a bend in the trail. I smiled.

  A few nights later, we stayed at Vandeventer Shelter. It was a typical Tennessee shelter, built of plywood and cinderblocks, perched on the end of a long ridge. Once again, there was no privy, only a rusty, disreputable-looking shovel leaned against the outer wall. I found Lash behind the shelter, sitting on a rock, staring down through the trees at the valley 1,500 feet below. In the bottomlands, the slate-gray surface of Watauga Lake shivered with little breezes. The air had warmed slightly over the afternoon; a damp, chilly wind came up from the water. Heald was nowhere to be seen, and I realized that I hadn't seen Annie's tracks since the last road.

  I sat down next to Lash. "Hey, man. Where's Heald?"

  He looked up. "Oh, hey, jackrabbit. Heald hitched out on the last road. You know why?"

  "Looked like the snow was getting pretty deep for Annie again." I sat down next to him on the rock.

  Lash shook his head with a mysterious smile. "This shelter's haunted."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Dude, that's what he said. He told me there was a guy, a local, whose girlfriend was cheating on him. He brought her out here one night in the middle of winter and he killed her."

  "That's horrible." I knew that several murders had taken place along the Trail in its seventy-five-year history, but I had never heard about this one. I shivered a little, looking around the clearing and out over the lake.

  "Yeah. Heald said ever since then, weird shit has happened here. People hear a woman's voice coming down the trail, but when they go look, there's nobody there. And-" he leaned close, lowering his voice "-there's a bird with bright red eyes that lands in the firepit at midnight."

  I shrugged and tried to put some confidence back into my voice. "With any luck, we'll be asleep by then"

  "I don't know, jackrabbit." Lash shuddered. "I don't know if I can sleep, with ghosts around ..

  "Lash, you're too jumpy."

  The clearing filled up with voices as the rest of our party arrived. Mary sat down on the edge of the shelter platform and helped Faith climb out of her pack. Badger, Paul, and the children tossed their packs down and ran off to look for firewood. Isis took Hope and John on an expedition for water. The spring here was half a mile straight downhill, and my sister knew I was having trouble with my hip again. As they disappeared from sight, I heard Hope's eager v
oice: "What if there's a big fortress there? What if there's dragons guarding it?"

  I smiled. Trust Isis to make a routine trip for water into a quest. The nervous chill that had settled over me dissipated as I went to work on the normal camp chores, hanging food bags, stringing a tarp over the entrance in case of rain, laying out our sleeping bags and mattresses, and collecting firewood. I knew it was too cold for the filter to work, and we didn't have enough fuel for cooking and water purification. All of us, even the Family, would need to boil the next day's drinking water over a fire.

  The firepit, a square of cement with a recessed center, sat directly under the dripline of the roof. Chunks of wet snow slid into it as I watched.

  "Anybody seen any good rocks for a fire ring?" I said. With the official firepit out of commission, we would need some other way to balance our cooking pots above the Haines. Paul, Joy, Badger, Lash, and I kicked aside the snow, looking for good-sized stones. Aside from the boulder where Lash and I had sat, though, the stones around the campsite were no larger than pebbles. I had a flicker of nostalgia for something I'd thought I would never miss: the rock fields of Pennsylvania.

  There had to be a way ... Then my eyes fell on a maple log in the stack of firewood, perhaps as thick as my ankle. From the bark, I could tell it hadn't been dead for very long. Maybe this ioill work, I thought. I took Isis's pocketknife from the outside pouch of her pack and used the little saw to cut two toot-long sections of the log.

  Lash looked doubtful. "What are you going to do with that? It's so green it won't burn anyway, even if we do get a fire going."

  "That's the idea," I said. "Watch"

  I used another branch like an adze, digging into the frozen ground across the clearing from the shelter. Soon I had excavated a pit perhaps a foot square. I sunk the green maple logs into the ground on either side of the pit, lengthwise, so a pot could rest on them. In the middle, I stacked small twigs and bits of dry inner bark around a scrap of waxed paper, part of a cereal bag I had saved from our last resupply.