Girl in the Woods

by Aspen Matis

  I stepped out of the car. Trembling, I hugged him. His chest was warm. I clung to him, wanting him, wanting to stay. Longing to. Yet we needed to be at different trailheads. I knew I’d regret skipping, breaking my chain of continuous footsteps, wrecking my hike for this man I hardly knew. The trail without him would be lonely, but I had the torn corner of paper he’d left me with his number, back at the library. I’d smoothed the scrap of paper and pressed it into my mesh hip-belt pocket. I would walk at my own pace, knowing I would call him. I knew I’d see him again.

  “Slow down for me,” I whispered into his chest. “So I can catch you.”

  Then I let go of him.

  CHAPTER 18

  LOVE NOTES UNDER ROCKS

  I daydreamed about Dash. I missed him. Walking alone felt different now, sadder. For the first time in a thousand miles, I didn’t want to walk by myself.

  The path entered an open expanse of stones, the earth’s infinite volcanic carcass. I snaked unsteadily across white fields of brittle pumice rocks. Dash had been right; these miles were tedious, but I would walk them, despite the discomfort. I felt like the trail was the place I needed to be. I told myself that my separation from Dash was necessary. I couldn’t wreck my hike for anyone, not Dash, no one. I knew this now. I knew how powerfully it mattered to me. I’d preserve my walk’s integrity—complete the whole trail, and enjoy it. I felt the magnitude of my solitude. I was lonely, yes—but it was the healthy choice.

  I decided not to rush my pace to catch him. I had his number in my pocket; I would call it once I reached the next town. We would find our way to each other again. I was confident that he wanted to walk with me. I reached in to touch the torn paper with his number. Where it should have been I felt nothing.

  I tossed my pack off, checked everywhere—I was frantic. I smoothed my pack’s flat interior pocket searching for it, looking in every nook and crease of fabric. I couldn’t believe it. I had lost it. It was somehow gone.

  I was devastated. I wouldn’t be able to call him. My patient loneliness felt suddenly claustrophobic, the promise of the company and all the day’s happy dreams I was walking toward threatened.

  I walked faster now, jogging soft descents, only half-seeing the unending streak of silver pines as if looking through a scuffed car window, silently crying. I slipped north, fiercely missing what I thought I almost had. The woods were quiet.

  It was clear to me my feelings for him were more than only lust. I’d never felt such chemistry with anyone. I wanted to be with him in a way I never had with Icecap; already, I felt Dash fit with me. It had felt so easy to imagine walking with him. Already he was someone I wanted to share my time, my self, with after the trail ended. I sensed he was the one who might be able to see me clearly, the way I most wished to be seen.

  Everything about us had seemed destined. We were hiking in sync; we fit. And now, it seemed, fast as he’d appeared for me he would be gone.

  I wasn’t going to be able to hear his voice. I couldn’t feel his hands on me again.

  I’d just so briefly met this man that feeling this sad to lose him felt crazy. Yet I felt it. I realized I was so devastated because I liked him so much, because I was so attracted to him. I considered what that meant for me. I was ready to let myself be vulnerable with a man again—that was proof of healing. I craved it with him, in a way I hadn’t even with Icecap.

  As I strode faster, I replayed his voice: “Want to get a motel room?” Shockingly, now I did. I wanted to feel his breath on my cheek, I couldn’t stop conjuring his thick hands. I almost wished that in Bend I had said yes. I couldn’t believe I wanted that—but I did. I wanted both things: strength in my independence and also this new desire. This felt like the beginning of a new kind of love.

  I entered a petrified forest, all the pines were brown, their needles fallen, padding the footpath. I had expected northern Oregon to be coastal and pastel, smelling of sunbaked seaweed. But I was on volcanic rock; I was in dead trees. Black pumice crunched beneath my running shoes; I was passing through the wreckage of volcanoes that had erupted thousands of years ago. The path was a bright scar through the rubble. The woods were pale, then ebony; trees had burned down, they were charcoal: recent fire. I screamed and I could hear the echo forever.

  “Wild Chiiild,” I yelled. “Hello!”

  I heard a “hello” back but didn’t see a person.

  I felt my solitude like a frigid wind. I imagined us reunited, all the things that could happen. These were daydreams, crisper in my vision than the rocks and trees. Already I wanted to know what I had to do to make him keep walking beside me after the PCT ended.

  Walking north through still pines, my eye caught on a glint of white on the ground—a note. It was held in place by three petal-size rocks, dusty but surprisingly clean white. It was addressed to no one, but no one had taken it. I bent onto my knees to read it:

  IN CASE ANYONE CARES, STASH’S NUMBER IS 646-555-1126.

  He wrote he’d be in Hood River, and the dates. He had left this note for me. I was blissful, the confirmation of my importance to him in my hands. He wanted extra insurance in case I’d lost his folded, little slip. He was taking care of me even when he was not with me; passing these same trees, he was thinking of me, too.

  I’d thought I’d been unlucky—struck sick with MRSA, punished, sentenced to always have to walk alone—but with his note in my hand, that whole story was different. The place to which my trail was leading me began to take a more complex form than the woods of southern Canada, each step and setback I’d encountered filled with a small, warming new purpose. If I hadn’t gotten MRSA, Dash would never have caught me.

  I could see that I was terribly lucky. I realized what exactly I’d met the night before, I felt the weight of it—how important he was. The relief I felt was so tremendous that I laughed aloud.

  In the next trail-town, he’d made a date for us. He wanted me, too.

  I photographed his note. I kept walking through the forest, and felt strong, sure, consumptive want for the first time in my young life—he was different than any man before him. The sky broke into the longest, pinkest sunset of my life, a celestial painting the cosmos made me. Everything I passed became suddenly terribly beautiful, I knew I was sharing it with him, even if he wasn’t yet beside me. I was running again—no longer from men, but toward one.

  My excitement grew as I took steps; butterflies fluttered over each other within me, building uncertainties. Would I still like him as much? Would he still even like me? It was almost scarier now, it would be more real than when we’d stumbled upon each other and didn’t need to ask these questions at all. I didn’t want the one man I liked the most to have any reason to disregard me. I wanted him to see me: beautiful, a great writer, strong, able, autonomous—not damaged. I wanted him not only to adore me, but also to respect me.

  Dash’s note requested that I come join him in Hood River—a larger town, a long hitch from the trail. But I hadn’t planned to go there, I didn’t want to. If I diverged from my path and hitched there, it would be for him.

  In shadowed woods, excited and feeling lonely, I walked toward an old man, white-haired, walking south. I was startled by his sudden presence here. We met; he stopped. “Thru-hikin’?” he asked. Each breath he inhaled softly whistled. I remained some feet removed from him and said yes.

  He laughed, then coughed. I was eager to leave and keep on moving north, toward Dash. He told me he was walking south, from Canada. He had traveled 590 miles so far and had, he told me, 2,000-plus to go.

  “When you get to the Bridge of the Gods,” he said, “say ‘hi’ to the Berry Man. The Berry Man gives e’ry hiker somethin’.”

  I was three days’ walk north of Bend. I’d hardly seen a person: only a father and daughter out for the weekend; this man. No Dash. I walked north daydreaming about Dash’s bright gray eyes and scent. I wanted to show him that I was strong and worthy of respect, a talented poet; I wanted him to declare in shock how overlooked
and underestimated I had been ever since I was a child. How lucky he felt to be the one to have discovered me, to have me. I wanted him to look at me like maybe I was magic.

  I had planned to resupply in Cascade Locks, a tiny town directly on the trail on the border between Oregon and Washington. I’d call him there, and I was positive that he would come to me. When sun fell that night, I built my tent; I maintained my own comfortable pace. If he wanted to wait for me, he would wait for me. If he wanted me, he would appear for me again.

  I again recommitted to my decision to honor my own pace.

  It didn’t matter how much I liked him or how excited I was when he used our one inside joke—Stash—so I’d be sure his number was for me. In fact, because I liked him so badly, I needed to continue on my course. I was finally becoming the woman I wanted to be, and she was whom I needed to show Dash—and myself. Descending past smudging trees, strong, I decided I would not go to Hood River.

  Cascade Locks is Oregon’s northern-most town, green and misty, sitting still on the bank of the broad, slow Columbia River. As I hiked closer to it, trail magic resumed, making me happy. A burlap soccer-ball sack of fat furry peaches hung from a pine limb; Macintosh apples flooded a green bucket. A couple out camping to do trail magic gave me a gigantic chocolate-chip muffin—I devoured it—and, as I was leaving them, offered me a thin joint. I thanked them, but declined.

  The forest was gorgeous, stained with light. The terrain was no longer hostile but instead easy. I climbed gently to Timberline Lodge, a tourist resort high above pines, passed it and descended. I slipped behind a violent waterfall along a stone footbridge, the rocks wet, the crisp sheet of falling water gleaming, the hillside vibrantly green. Then the trail dropped abruptly down into the river valley, down toward Cascade Locks.

  It was early evening when I walked into town, the water of the Columbia a million tiny silver swells shimmering, blindingly bright.

  I got a hotel room on the river, convinced an old hiker named Billy Goat to buy me a bottle of vodka, and bought myself a bottle of Gatorade to mix it with. I shaved my legs smooth and soft in the tub in my little room with a view. In the bed I watched a bad ’90s movie—two kids making out on a haystack, the girl blond with boxy overalls. The river was silver in my window. I watched it glisten, then blacken with the night. I remembered The Breakfast Club tinting the dark of my new dorm room. I thought of Dash.

  I reshaved my legs until they were so smooth my open palms could hardly feel them. I texted Dash to tell him that I was in a hotel room in Cascade Locks, sipping vodka, naked, waiting. My text to him was bold, but not drunken. Drinking now and drinking four months ago, in the desert, felt different. I wasn’t masking sadness or shame, losing control of myself. I was telling him to come to me.

  He didn’t write back, “I told you Hood River.” Instead he responded, immediately, “Oh man.”

  I was euphoric.

  Not a minute later my phone screen lit up again: “Getting a cab.” He’d get a taxi all the way from Hood River to Cascade Locks, to me.

  I mixed more vodka with Gatorade, feeling nervous and a little buzzed, and excited. I dreamed of his fingers on my skin. I was ready, but the idea of sex still scared me, hurt me. It wasn’t what I wanted. I wanted the intimacy of him next to me here, naked skin, and trusted him to stop when I wanted him to stop. I didn’t know exactly what would happen that night, and I didn’t need to. The one thing I felt sure of was that I wouldn’t have sex with him yet.

  Around midnight there was a knock on my door.

  I answered in only a towel. I was bold and deliberate. I wanted him to see me. I felt my most beautiful. I had earned this beauty. He looked at me like I was treasure. He touched my nose gently with his fingertip. It was the second night he’d ever seen me. I felt a tremendous relief.

  He looked just as I remembered. His eyes were bright granite in the half-light, his thick lips parted. I lightly kissed them. “Hello,” he said. He traced my cheekbone with his finger, back and forth. I hardly knew him, yet he gave me an incredible sense that we were a tribe that extended back through my history, that he was finally back with me now, to stay. I wanted him to look at my naked body and naked face—without makeup, without heavy glasses—and see my potential, how beautiful I was.

  We kissed gently, without tongues, our chins bumping, we couldn’t straighten them.

  He placed his palm lightly on my cheek. It slid down to my neck as he led me onto the bed.

  We didn’t have sex. Intuitively, he knew I didn’t want to. Instead, he was doing something no other man had done—he began asking me questions. “Tell me who you are,” he told me, his lips tilting in a goofy smile. He wanted to know everything about me.

  We talked for hours. He didn’t want to go to sleep. He was so different than any other man I’d met. I felt such tremendous relief, I was at ease with him: we did fit. Everything in my mind was also real.

  He told me he’d been watching a movie with some hikers at a theater in Hood River when I’d texted. He was normally a cheap bastard, he said, but he’d called a midnight cab to get to me. He was so different from boys at college.

  He asked me how I’d decided to hike the PCT. He asked about my personal history. What kind of relationships had I had, and was I single?

  Dash asked questions the way I’d always wished a boy would, trying to see me—and yet I was afraid to let him. I couldn’t give him real answers to his questions. Everything he wanted to know was a truth that I wanted to leave behind. I felt panic at the thought of bringing my past into this moment. I didn’t want to ruin this chance at being seen without shame, as whom I had become in the miles since Mexico. When he asked if I was single, my mind flooded with the list of truths about what sex and love had looked like for me:

  I’d never had a boyfriend off the trail—Tyler, Never-Never, Icecap; the few boys I’d felt connected with all somehow related to the PCT. I hadn’t ever had a boyfriend at my own school in high school or college, someone to wander the campus and hold hands with. Nothing like my mother had with my father.

  I’d never had sex that felt good to me.

  I’d never had sex with the same man more than once.

  I’d never had an orgasm.

  I’d never been in love.

  I could still count on one hand the number of times I had had sex.

  I had been raped.

  I had been Debby Parker.

  His eyes were lit with intent curiosity as he waited for my words, as if he wanted to find in me someone worth loving.

  I didn’t want to tell him anything that would ever kill it.

  And so instead of answering, instead of telling him about my rape, I evaded his questions about my history and told him with enthusiasm that, more than anything, I loved to write. I was reading The Best American Short Stories 2008. I showed it to him. I told him I was walking because I just wanted to have an adventure.

  He asked if any of the stories were good. I said, “Most of them.”

  “What’s the best one?”

  “Galatea.” I told him about my favorite story. It was about a girl who went to Cornell in Ithaca, New York, to the same school Dash had gone to. She married a hermit who lived in the town but didn’t go to the school or work, though he called himself an inventor. She was devoted to him. Each time I read it, I wanted things to work out, for their weird intense hermit love to last forever. But it doesn’t. They end. I reread and reread and reread the ending, always in denial. I hoped that I could find where they could have salvaged it, the mistake she had made that caused him to leave and see how they could have saved their marriage, what tiny thing she could have done to make it last forever, as intensely as it was in the beginning. But one day the husband disappeared and went into the woods and didn’t come back.

  I must’ve fallen back asleep; I woke to Dash reading. He lay close to me, focused, the book propped open on his pillow. I watched morning sun rest on his hand as it turned a page. It felt impossibly natural wa
king to him next to me, so much safer than I’d felt even the night before. I parted my lips, wanting on that fresh morning to finally tell him about my mother dressing me and years of feeling ugly. About hating my body. About my rape and hating my body even more. I wanted him to tell me that my mother had reacted to my rape without compassion, that she was wrong that I was damaged, my school was wrong that it was my fault—Junior was wrong.

  He was still reading, he didn’t see I was awake. I said, “It makes me really happy you’re reading the stories that I like.”

  He looked up at me. He said, “And then, you can tell me why they’re good.”

  He was smart, charming. He wanted to know my opinions. He needed to know what I thought, wanted my ideas. We were impressed by each other.

  I realized we had so much in common—not only because we had literally physically lived our last four months covering the identical terrain—but by virtue of the fact that we had chosen to. We were caught up, could walk the last five hundred miles together. Miraculously both walking this trail, on the same mile, at the identical place.

  I wished I were able to remain entirely myself with him—to be fully honest, to expose my history and shame—for him to know, and to still want me with him.

  But I didn’t tell him.

  From my hotel window, I could see Washington. I wanted to enter the state ahead, together.

  I didn’t tell him.

  He turned the book to show me the story he was reading. “Galatea.”

  I didn’t tell him.

  We reawakened to hooting—a pack of voices, cheering. Magically, we stepped out in daylight into a celebration. Along the river people were setting up square green canopies, hammering support cords into the dirt. Thru-hikers of all appearances pitched their tents on the grass along the riverbank. I felt the energy—hikers flocking from all around, hitchhiking back south from all points north on the trail, hopping out at the Columbia’s banks for tonight’s party. We discovered that we were here in Cascade Locks on Trail Days, the annual celebration for all the hikers who had made it this far on their PCT journeys. Trail Days would be a giant hiker-party, much like Kickoff.