Lash shook his head. "Man. You Mainers know a thing or two"
"Thanks" I stepped back, grinning. "You want to do the honors?"
Lash took his lighter and touched the flame to the edge of the paper, just as Isis and the kids returned with the water.
After supper, we held our usual discussion to plan the next day's mileage.
"Hopefully, we can put a good number of miles behind us tomorrow," Paul spoke up from the shadows. "It looks like it's almost all downhill to the Dennis Cove Road. Damascus Dave told nie there's a great hostel there. Kincora"
"How far is that?" Mary asked.
"It's eighteen from here. If we get an early start, we could do it."
"I guess so. I got some rest in Damascus. I guess I'm up for a long day."
"Kincora's wonderful," Anonymous Badger said. "I spent a lot of time there on my first thru-hike. Bob-the owner-is a pretty amazing guy."
Late that night, a strange sound woke me. It was coming from somewhere in the woods. A woman's voice, I thought sleepily. Somebody talking to herself on the trail . . . My eyes snapped open and adrenaline flooded through my body. I could feel my heartbeat pounding against the floorboards. I sat upright and stared out into the clearing in front of the shelter. I couldn't see much without my glasses: attenuated silver moonlight on the trees, patches of shadow dancing on the ground as the bare branches scraped together. I strained illy ears, listening ... the sound of mice scrabbling in the rafters, wind in the trees. Then it came again, closer: who-who ... who-who, coming through the moonlit woods. An owl, I thought, and took a deep breath, relaxing onto my foam pad. As I lay back, I saw a flicker of motion at the edge of the clearing. With a soundless rush of feathers, the bird landed on a low branch. Then it came closer, landing right in front of the shelter. Right in the old firepit.
I suppressed a shriek and pulled my mummy bag over my head, curling up tight. I didn't wait to see if the bird had red eyes. I lay there for a long time, shaking. Eventually I fell back asleep. By morning light, it seemed a little silly. Had I dreamed it? I surreptitiously checked the snow around the firepit for wing marks and found nothing.
As we packed up, a light rain began falling. No, it wasn't rain, I saw. It stuck to the twigs, the rhododendron branches, the ground, forming a hard casing of ice on every surface.
"Freezing rain," Isis said with resignation.
Paul finished cinching the top compartment of his pack and came to take a look. He sighed, looking suddenly older. "You're right. Guess we can't make it to Kincora tonight."
We took out the maps and had a short conference. "Watauga Lake Shelter's six and a half miles," Mary said. "I know we can make it that far."
"There's a road a couple miles beyond it. I'm gonna go there and hitch out to Kincora," Lash said.
Badger nodded. "I think I'll do that, too. I'm getting pretty bad blisters. Maybe we can get Bob to come meet you guys at the road tomorrow morning and slack you over to the hostel. He's always doing things like that for hikers." Badger shouldered his pack and started to walk away.
Hope was the first one to notice something strange. "Badger, why aren't you wearing your boots?" she asked in a tone of older-sisterly alarm. I took a closer look; sure enough, his boots were tied to the outside of his pack. He wasn't exactly barefoot, but his thin pair of neoprene socks gave his feet very little protection from the cold.
He shrugged. "I'm more comfortable without them. To each his own. Surely, after hiking with these fair ladies, you understand."
I almost protested-we never walked barefoot with six inches of snow on the ground!-but I remembered all the people who had called us crazy for hiking barefoot at all. Though Badger was taking it to an extreme that I would not have chosen, I had to trust that his approach would work for him. A saying that we had heard from many nobos came to mind: hike your own hike.
Joel stood up and fastened his pack. "Hey, can I go with you guys to Kincora? Can 1?" He looked more eager than I had seen him in a long time. Paul and Mary exchanged a glance, and Paul nodded. Joel drew himself up straighter and swaggered a little as he headed down the trail. Lash looked a bit discomfited but said nothing.
It took us most of the day, slipping and stumbling down the icy trail, to reach the valley. We followed Badger's almost-bare footprints through the snow and mud. True rain fell at the lowest elevations, a hard stinging rain that bounced off the asphalt of the road across Watauga l)am. Cliffs rose up behind and before us. On the right side, the concrete apron of the dam dropped off into the valley, the foot of it barely visible between sheets of rain. On the left side, the gray-green water stretched out, tossing in the wind and pockmarked with raindrops. It was strange, almost unsettling, to see so much open water among these mountains. Squinting at the flat expanse of it, I could imagine that it was a far-flung arm of the ocean. The smell was wrong, though; instead of the iodine tang of the sea, this lake had a raw scent of decaying leaves and dead fish.
We didn't stay very long by the water. The cold rain drove us back into the woods, where the trail meandered up and down small hills. Sodden brown vegetation poked up through the remaining patches of snow. The dead lake made a gray backdrop for the lifeless scene. I lave never seen a landscape so utterly devoid ofcharm, I thought.
The rain was changing back to ice when we reached the shelter. Badger had left a half full fuel bottle and several packets of Jell-O. The register was open to an otherwise empty page, with a note in his precise handwriting: 71iis is hypothermia weather. Get in your bags and make sonic hot Jell-O to warm up! See you tomorrow. He had signed it, as usual, with his initials and a sketch of a badger.
Paul fired up the stove as John and I trekked hack to the lake for water. We returned to find Paul presiding over a pot of steaming red Jell-O. Isis, Mary, and the rest of the children gathered around the pot with looks of horror on their faces. John and I exchanged a glance and elbowed our way through the crowd to get a better look.
There was something absolutely foul floating in the red liquid: a pink, mottled mass that resembled some kind of organ, perhaps a lung or a stomach.
John jumped back. "Eaugh! What is that?"
Paul looked almost apologetic. "Well, I thought to make it more nutritious, I might add some dry milk ..." He reached in with his spoon and prodded the mass. It seemed to contract. He sliced off part of it with his spoon and raised it to his lips.
"Oh, I can't watch!" Hope pretended to swoon backwards, and Isis caught her.
Paul chewed for a long time, his expression impossible to read. "I don't think that was such a good idea," he finally conceded.
Isis
wo level miles from Watauga Lake Shelter, Lash and Anonymous Badger met us at a road crossing. I gave each of them a hug, then turned around to find myself facing a small, wiry man in a baseball cap. With his merry brown eyes, red cheeks, and bushy gray mustache, he reminded me of a leprechaun.
"You must be Isis. Fin Bob Peoples. I run Kincora Hostel, over on the Dennis Cove Road." He grabbed my hand in both of his and gave it a hearty shake. Then he turned to the semicircle of hikers gathered around him. "I'd be glad to slack you over Pond Mountain, if you'll do me a favor"
I caught myself speculating about the sort of task a leprechaun might want us to do in return for his assistance. Spin strain into gold? Build a city in a day? Wear out dine pairs of iron shoes?
"Sounds great," said jackrabbit. "What can we do for you?"
"I maintain the next section of trail," Bob said. "I'd be obliged if you'd make note of any blowdowns you see, so that I can take my saw in tomorrow and clear them." He glanced around the circle. "Good. I'll see you tonight."
Paul and Lash both said that their packs felt light enough with only one day's worth of food in them, but the rest of us joyfully loaded our heavy gear into the back of Bob's truck, then headed across the road toward Pond Mountain. The prospect of sheltered bunks and readily available water put us all in a festive mood. Hope, Joy, John, and Joel scampered up t
he switchbacks, pausing in rhododendron thickets to ambush each other with snowballs. Jackrabbit, Lash, and I joined the children in a few skirmishes, and Mary sang verses of "Dig a Hole" to Faith as she walked. "Dig hole, Mama! Dig hole!" I heard Faith call out every time Mary stopped to catch her breath.
Pond Flats, as the map designated the mile-and-a half stretch of ridge at the top of the mountain, wasn't at all flat. As far as I could see, it didn't have any ponds, either. Like the rest of the nine miles we slacked, though, it was exceptionally well maintained. In the past few months, finding our way over, under, or around the blowdowns that littered the trail had become part of our daily routine. The ice and snow storms of this harsh winter had brought down many trees, both dead and living, and few trail maintainers had braved the had weather to remove them. No one expects hikers to be passim through in this season, I had to remind myself. 117ry shouldn't the maintainers wait until spring to clear the trail? But in Bobs section, fresh sawdust above the recent snow showed where he had been working in the past few days. Neatly cut arches through the rhododendron brakes, high enough that the tops of our hiking sticks didn't bump them and knock snow down our backs, provided further evidence of his industry.
Along with the delightfully obstacle-free trail, the day brought splendid scenery. Snow and ice on the trees made distant mountains glitter like pyramids of sugar where the sun touched them. Strips of blue sky peeked out between cottonball clouds. By the time we reached the Flats, the air had grown so warm-perhaps forty degrees-that I stripped down to my wool shirt, shorts, and gaiters for the first time in a month. Drops of water sparkled in the tassels of pines, and the cracks in the bark glowed a soft grayish red under trickles of meltwater.
As the last rays of the sun painted the eastern mountains orange, we shutfled up the icy driveway of Kincora. We found Bob's truck parked beside two rough-hewn log cabins connected by a covered porch. Wood smoke poured from the chimneys of both cabins. A low, wobbly baying, punctuated by a few even deeper barks, heralded our arrival. As we reached the porch steps, a chubby coonhound trotted up to a fence beside the buildings, her ears flapping. Close behind her strode an Irish wolfhound almost as tall as Joel, who gazed at us from dark, intelligent eyes. We all turned as the door of the lefthand building banged open. Bob stood on the porch, smiling and waving us forward.
"This is the hostel. Come on in. I've brought your gear in already. Paul, Mary, I've given you the private room-right across from the woodstove. The rest of you are upstairs. There's a friend of yours staying in the bunkroom behind the kitchen. Guy named Heald. He was hoping you'd catch up to him, but .."He looked at Hope and joy, who were bouncing up and down with excitement. "... I'd recommend that you greet him quietly. He's recovering from a bad bout of flu"
As he talked, Bob ushered us into a lamp-lit living room full of cushy, worn armchairs. Hundreds of photos covered the walls. Many showed northbounders standing behind the sign on Katahdin, in snow or rain or sunlight, their arms flung wide in a gesture of triumph. Others showed southbounders grinning as they posed beside a metal plaque on the wooded summit of Springer. A few showed hikers standing at other places along the Trail with the same grin and the same gesture of triumph: flip-floppers and section hikers who had reached their finishing points.
"That's my Wall of Heroes," said Bob, noticing the direction of my gaze. "I'll be expecting a copy of your summit photo to add to the Wall when you finish."
Finish. It had been months since I'd allowed myself to think about finishing the Trail. Each week, I thought only as far as the next resupply point. Even in Damascus, when we'd seen exactly how bad it could get and we had seriously considered quitting, I had thought of the argument in terms of staying on the Trail or getting off it, not in terms of reaching Springer Mountain. I tried to picture myself posing beside the plaque, reaching down to touch the last white blaze. And then-shopping for a used car, driving home. I imagined sitting by the fireplace with jackrabbit, taking turns recounting our adventure on the Grayson Highlands to a rapt audience of friends and neighbors. From that perspective, the blizzard seemed like a legend, something that had happened to someone else a long time ago. I shook myself out of my reverie. Four hundred miles to go, and its still January, I reminded myself. And our trek across the Grayson Highlands is no wiry tale. It's the reality we'll be u'alkinq back into tomorrow; or the day after.
We decided to take a zero the next day, in spite of the warm weather. After Damascus, even the most ambitious hikers in our group agreed that we should take every chance we got to rest, re-waterproof our boots, and gain back the few pounds of fat and water weight that we lost in each week's hiking. Hurrying down the trail, "making miles," seemed pointless now that we had lost all hope of outrunning winter. Bob drove us down the hairpin turns of the I)ennis Cove Road into Elizabethton, the nearest large town in the valley. Mary and I picked up a whole cartload of fresh food, including ten pounds of fruit, seven loaves of bread, and four gallons of ice cream.
We rose early in the morning to prepare our best approximation of one of Ginny's epic breakfasts: eggs, toast, pancakes with whipped cream and ice cream, cinnamon rolls, hot chocolate, and fruit salad. Bob came by just as we were finishing our third platefuls and getting out the lettuce, cheese, and tomatoes for the transition into lunch. He introduced us to his wife Pat, a gracious, soft-spoken woman with short blond hair and a wide smile. She took off her jacket in the warm room; underneath it, she wore a t-shirt that said Horses are like candy; you can't have just one. Hope's eyes lit up, and soon she had engaged Pat in an animated conversation about the horses that lived down the road from the Family's homestead in Maine.
"Isis and jackrabbit are gonna visit us when we get back, 'cause they live in Maine, too" I overheard her saying. "I'm gonna show them the horses, and our swimming hole, and our favorite tree"
Anonymous Badger kept the woodstove burning all day, chopping and carrying wood from the pile behind the cabin. Lash, Paul, and jackrabbit helped Bob chop the ice out of his driveway, while Mary and I packed our resupplies. The children practiced reading out of the pocket Bible they carried and the National Geo~raphics we found in a basket beside the couch. Every once in a while, the energy they usually spent in hiking would erupt, and they'd drop their books and race up and down the stairs in a spontaneous game of tag, until Mary reminded them to be quiet so that Heald could sleep. (He had yet to emerge from the back room of the hostel. When I went to check on him, he groaned and turned away from the light of the doorway.) We all took turns sitting by the stove, re-waterproofing our boots: rubbing beeswax into the leather, heating it up so that the wax would sink in, then adding another coat. In the afternoon Mary baked cookies, her special oatmeal recipe that she'd described to me way back in Pennsylvania.
I sat on the end of the couch, trying to write a letter home. Hoii' could I describe the Grayson Hii haands? Sooner or later, we'd have to tell our parents the whole story, but I didn't want to worry them while we were still so far from finished with our hike. So far from home. Beside me, Anonymous Badger was trying to teach Hope how to play cat's cradle. I watched his long, graceful fingers arrange the threads in her hands: a crown, a nest, a spider's web. He leaned forward, intent on a slipped strand, and his long black hair caught the light from the window behind him. I reached up, wanting to stroke his hair as I would a cat's, then drew my hand back quickly and returned to my letter. We miss you. The u'eatlter'c been terrible, but the are okay-we bought lots of new wintergear in Damascus. Pretty obvious that something went wrong. I scribbled out "lots of" and wrote "some" above it, but I couldn't come up with anything else to say. The lack of detail alone will tell them that I'm hiding something, I thought. I'm transparent. I set the letter down.
Hope had lost her patience with the intricacies of Badger's string patterns; she was trying to engage him in a wrestling match.
"You ought to pick on somebody your own size," he laughed, flicking his wrist out of her grip and spinning her in a circle without movin
g from his place on the couch. "Then maybe your enthusiasm would make up for your lack of technique."
Hope's eyes glinted. She balled up her fists and rained down a series of quick punches, which Badger easily deflected. "Mind if I turn my back?" he asked her. "I could use a massage."
"I'll give you a backrub," I offered, in the most ingenuous tone I could muster.
"Okay," he said, his dark eyes full of laughter. He glanced at Hope, who was trying to tie his right arm to the table with the cat's cradle thread. "Shall we go upstairs, where it's quieter?" he asked me.
The smell of Mary's cookies baking, sugar and nutmeg and cinnamon, filled the dark bedroom. I sat behind Badger, on an upper bunk, working the knots out of his shoulder muscles. We didn't speak. I leaned forward and let my cheek rest against his sleek hair. He turned in my arms and kissed me.
After a minute he leaned back. "It's not that simple," he said. "I love someone else."
"Someone you're dating?" I asked.
"No. A friend who I've had a crush on for eight years. She isn't interested. But no one I've been with, in all those years, has taken her place in my mind "
"I won't even try," I told him. "I just want a little comfort"
"I suppose that's possible." He laughed, gave me another quick kiss, then slid off the bunk and walked downstairs without looking back.
Some time in the night, I woke from a nightmare of falling. The planks of niy bunk lay solid beneath me, but my head pounded, and cold sweat made lily arms and legs stick to lily sleeping hag liner. A sudden wave of nausea sent me scrambling out of my damp sleeping bag. I didn't have time to dig out my headlamp; I felt my way downstairs to the toilet in the dark. Long after I had emptied my stomach of all that remained of supper, I huddled on the rough plank floor, retching. The sound of water dripping on the roof-was the snow still melting, or was rain Calling seemed inordinately loud; each drop echoed inside lily skull like the tick of an enormous clock. Eventually the nausea subsided, and I dragged myself back up the stairs to bed.
Barefoot Sisters: Southbound Page 45
