Barefoot Sisters: Southbound

by Lucy Letcher;Susan Letcher

  My brain didn't register the price at first. I focused on the word "shower," thinking of the layers of grime built up under my rain gear, and nodded enthusiastically.

  "Showers are a dollar. You can rent a towel for another dollar."

  Then the financial considerations made their way through my skull. I exchanged outraged glances with Isis and Waterfall.

  "Excuse us for a minute," Waterfall said. Of the three of us, she was the best at summoning tact in this sort of situation. We went back onto the porch for a furious whispered conversation. It was growing dark outside, and tendrils of mist curled out of the woods.

  "Twenty dollars!" I was incensed. "And two more for a shower and a dry towel. Notch this place! Notch this whole notching state! New Hampshire is one big notching notch after another!"

  "Well, what can we do?" Isis said. The damp grayness pressed in around us. The thought of hot showers and dry bunks was tantalizing, even if they did cost more than we had expected.

  "It's getting too dark to hitch," Waterfall said, and she was right. "We night as well stay here. The Companion's outdated on prices, sometimes .. "

  "We could get a hotel room for that much!"

  "-if there were any hotels around here ..

  "It's going to be, like, seventy dollars! I wonder how many people they cram into those cabins, anyway ..

  In the end, we decided to stay. We shared the cabin with nine other people, packed in like sardines. It was dank and chilly in the airless room, and the sound of traffic on the road kept me awake for a long time, wondering. I curled up on my left side to lessen the pain in my hip. We had another fifty miles of White Mountains to traverse, and if they ended up being as bad as the first half, I didn't think I would make it. I pictured an endless elevation profile map stretching out to the horizon, punctuated by bone jarring notches and huge climbs with no views but wet, gray mist. ,'b'otch, I thought, feeling my aching hip, my poor pulverized knees, my bruised foot. Notch, notch, notch.

  Isis

  oniewhere on the ridge of Garfield Mountain, the white blazes we'd been following for three hundred miles disappeared. We checked our maps. It didn't look like we could have taken a wrong turn; all the other trails in the vicinity led downhill, off the ridge. We hiked on, up small cliffs and through tangled mazes of roots. As the miles dragged by and still no blazes appeared, we began to worry.

  "Y'all? How long has it been since we saw a blaze?" Waterfall asked. "What if we got turned around in this fog and went out on that other mountain that we should've passed four miles ago?"

  "Maybe we did," I said, peering at the map. "According to the elevation profile, this ridge should be almost flat, but we've climbed up and down a half dozen two-hundred-foot lumps in the last hour."

  "According to the elevation profile, the trail should be flat?"Jackrabbit let out a snort of derisive laughter. "Isn't that kind of like saying, `according to my horoscope, I shouldn't get the flu this winter?"'

  "A fair analogy. But what else have we got to go by?"

  "Our instincts. Mine's telling me that I have no interest in hiking back two miles the way we came. Especially if we have to go over all those lumps again

  We decided to go on. A quarter mile farther we came upon a young man in the khaki uniform of the Forest Service, vigorously stacking brush beside the trail.

  "This may be a stupid question," I said, "but are we on the Appalachian Trail?"

  He nodded.

  "Any idea why this section is unblazed?"

  "Well, it goes along the ridge top. I guess they figured there was nothing else you could mistake it for"

  As he spoke, I noticed that he was building his brush pile on a patch of smooth ground about eight feet in diameter, which looked as if it would have made a lovely stealth site, minus the branches.

  "Know what I'm doing?" he asked. I thought I could make a pretty good guess, but I stayed silent. "I'm piling brush on this spot for the third time this week. People keep taking it off. It must be a lot of work, taking it off. Who would do something like that? Who could possibly want a tent site that badly? I just don't get it."

  The Forest Service man must have done a good job with his brush piling; we couldn't find any clear, flat ground near the trail that night. We ended up paying our $6 apiece to stay at the AMC's Garfield Ridge Campsite. We found the shelter and campsite full of thru-hikers: ten or twelve nobos and four southbounders whom we hadn't met yet. Waterfall introduced us to Companero, a tall, slender man whose deeply lined face wore a contemplative smile. We set up our tent, then brought our stove over to the shelter so we could trade stories with the other hikers while we cooked. We told them about Murphy and the meaning of "notch." eliciting a great deal of laughter and a few suggestions.

  "Does the converse of Murphy's Law hold?" asked Compaiiero. "If you're prepared for something bad, it won't happen? For instance, if you put on your pack cover when it's not raining, can you prevent a storm from starting?"

  "Wow, that opens up a whole new field of study," I said. "Practical Applications of Murphy's Law. If by some miracle it isn't raining in the morning, I'll put on my pack cover anyway and test your hypothesis."

  Another lobo, Orren, said, "Notch ought to have some kind of a symbol-how 'bout this?" He held up his hand in a sort of a truncated version of a peace sign, his first two fingers raised but bent over at the knuckles. "Notch," he snarled, shaking his notch-sign fist at the drizzle blowing past the shelter.

  After we all finished supper, we got down to business, trading information with the Hobos in the shelter. Jackrabbit and I discussed the relative merits of Mizpah and Madison, encouraged everyone present to moon the Cog, and warned them about the long unblazed stretch of ridge on Garfield Mountain.

  "Even if you don't like work-for-stay, you've gotta stop at Lonesome Lake," a northbounder told us when we'd finished talking. In the faint light of someone's candle lantern, I saw most of the other nobos nod their agreement.

  "You can swim in the lake; there's a dock and everything. And the hut crew is awesome!"

  "They don't get many thru-hikers who want to stay there, 'cause there are some primo stealth sites a quarter mile before the but-a quarter mile past it, for you guys-but they're real nice to the hikers who do stay."

  I thanked the nobos for the tip and headed back to my tent. The Madison crew iutiht have seemed perfectly mire, too, I thought, if only our health and safety hadn't depended on their judgment.

  I awoke in pitch darkness. It felt like only minutes had passed since I'd fallen asleep, but without stars, I had no way of knowing what time of night it was. I lay still, listening for what might have woken me. No sound but the wind in the treetops. And then I heard it: a thin, baleful voice howling in the distance. Was it a wildcat? I listened again. This time, I heard it clearly. It was a human voice, crying "help" I grabbed my flashlight and shone it into my pack to find my first aid kit.

  "Whuzzah?" jackrabbit muttered, turning away from the light.

  "Someone's calling for help," I told her. "I'm going to find out what's going on.

  I found Companero, Orren, and five northbounders already gathered in front of the shelter.

  -Did you hear that?"

  "A voice, calling for help .. "

  "It sounded like it was coming from the east, where the trail conies over the mountain.

  "Yeah, that way."

  "Then let's go! We'll take the trail as close as we can get and hope the person keeps on shouting"

  The whole line of us scrambled down the campsite trail, toward its junction with the A.T. As we passed the campsite caretaker's tent, he stuck his head out and shouted, "Wait a minute!"

  We stopped to wait for him, figuring that the rescue operation would be safer if we all went together. But instead of grabbing a jacket and joining us, he kept talking.

  "I've radioed to headquarters to tell them that there's a person out here calling for help .. "

  I nodded; it seemed like a good idea to tell someone oth
er than a halfasleep jackrabbit where we were going.

  "... and now I'm waiting for them to authorize a rescue"

  "You're calling to au hori ze a rescue? Notch authorization!" Although the caretaker couldn't understand him, Orren spoke for the rest of us; we all turned and hurried down the path.

  The voice grew stronger as we approached, and soon it sounded more irritated than desperate. After about five Minutes' steep uphill climb, I bounded around a corner to find a tall, pale young woman in a rain jacket, standing in the middle of the trail with one arn► thrown over her eyes to block the glare of our flashlights.

  "Are you hurt?" I asked her.

  "No;' she said, "I just forgot my flashlight. I'm in the hut crew at Greenleaf, and I was hiking over to visit a friend at Galehead. I didn't realize how late in the day it was"

  She peered over my shoulder, noticing the other hikers for the first time. "Who're those people? All of you came looking for me? Oh fuck, this is so emtharrassing.-

  The caretaker, who had apparently received his authorization, arrived just in time to spare her the further embarrassment of being escorted back to the campsite by her would-be rescuers.

  "Enuny," he greeted her, "great to see you! How're things going at Greenleaf?" He turned to us. "You can go back to your tents now. Everything's under control."

  "I don't know about the AMC's priorities," said jackrabbit. "Have you seen the lawn here?"

  She and Waterfall and I were sitting at a picnic bench on the shore of Lonesome Lake, and I had just repeated the story of the baleful voice of Garfield Ridge at her request.

  "The lawn?" I asked.

  "They're trying to reseed some of the grass, and they've got these cute little signs all over it that say Revegetation Project: Please Keep Off.' I wanted to ask them if they were restoring the native prairie ecosystem"

  We all laughed at the image of a prairie covering the White Mountains. Suddenly, Waterfall put both her hands to her lips and fell silent. I followed her gaze out over the lake. A nian who'd been swimming had just stood up, revealing a torso that Michelangelo could have used as a model for his David. His softly curling hair and strong, handsome profile contributed to my impression that the famous statue had come to life and arisen from Lonesome Lake before our eyes.

  "He can't be a hiker," jackrabbit sighed. "No one on the Trail has that much upper-body strength. Not even Solid."

  He started to walk toward shore, moving with the jolting, stiff-muscled gait of someone who's been carrying a pack all day.

  "He is a hiker," whispered Waterfall.

  Much to our delight, this vision of loveliness strode over to our bench and introduced himself as soon as he got out of the water. I'm not very good at remembering names under the best of circumstances, and I must admit that his slipped out of my mind the moment I heard it. I was concentrating on his pecs, not his words. However, this didn't prevent me from holding him in conversation for a good ten minutes, with the help of Waterfall and jackrabbit. I listened just enough to gather that he was a northbounder (hiking away from us, alas!) and that he was doing work-for-stay at the hut that evening.

  When he had walked up to the hut to help prepare supper, we had a serious two-minute discussion of the possibility of doing work-for-stay again.

  "The nobos said they're real nice here"

  "Even if they are nice, I don't like the feeling of my time being someone else's to play with."

  "Yeah, let's stealth. But first, ladies, our adieux. We can't let that young god vanish from our lives forever without bidding him a fond farewell."

  We took turns going into the hut to fill our water bottles. Mr. Statue of David was busy washing dishes, right next to our friend Solid. If the lovely stranger had been alone, I might have left without speaking to him, but seeing Solid there gave inc a good excuse to stroll over to the dish basins.

  "Bye, Solid," I said, then turned to the nobo. As I net his eyes, I remembered that I had no idea what his name was, even though he'd told it to me only fifteen minutes before. I racked my brains, all the while gazing deep into his warm brown eyes. After a minute or so, realizing that it was too late to salvage any dignity by coming up with his name, I smiled and said "bye" in a voice so low with confusion that it came out sounding like a bad attempt at sultry whisper. Then I spun around and made for the door, as fast as I could go without actually running.

  "How'd it go?" asked Waterfall. "Did the prince ask for your hand in marriage?"

  "No, I think he wants someone a bit more mature and experienced."

  "Then I'm just the woman for him" She picked up her water bottle, laughing. "But I don't want to get married. I want to be an old maid in a house full of books and cats. So I guess I'll have to break his heart, the poor darlin"'

  jackrabbit

  he omnipresent mist seemed to be thinning as we climbed up Kinsman Ridge. At first I hardly believed my eyes, but there it was-the pale disk of the sun was just visible behind the layers of gray. It was clearing. Soon I felt the warm rays on my shoulders, and my eyes struggled to adjust to the sudden brightness. The path behind us was still wreathed in clouds, but up ahead the stones and spruce branches glittered with a million tiny rainbows. We gave a ragged cheer.

  At the top of the ridge, we saw, for once, the splendid terrain around us. On one side, the sheer face of Franconia Ridge jutted up from the forested valley and disappeared into the cloud bank. On the other side, the flank of Moosilauke, the last of the White Mountains, loomed blue-dark and steep. Its bare summit, shining in the sunlight, looked so close we could almost reach out and touch it. Just ahead, Kinsman Ridge stretched out, with its lumps of pink granite visible between the dark trees. Everything gleamed from the moisture the clouds had left behind.

  The clouds closed in again in a short while, and the vision of the mountains around made the thick mist seem even more oppressive. I wondered what stunning views were hidden from us now. The trail through the Kinsmans felt like an exercise in pointlessness; we scrambled up and down steep rock faces, often looping around from one "viewpoint" to another, and the view was always the same: gray.

  "I hate the White Mountains, y'all," Waterfall said with perverse glee. "My ex-boyfriend said this was his favorite part of the Trail, so I feel extra justified in hatin' it"

  "I hate it, too," I said. "One of those nobos at the Barn told me that the Whites are so beautiful, you get up on top a ridge and you forget all about the pain of hiking up and down the notching notches. But when all you see is fog, there's nothing to distract you."

  "Yeah," Isis took a running start up a steep rock, her bare feet easily catching hold of the surface. "They don't call them the White Mountains for nothing."

  I will be so glad when we get to GlenclifE' I said. "Free shelters, no more notches. None of this sneaking around and stealthing. No more notchin' tourists poking our feet!"

  "Oh, I'm looking forward to Hanover;' Waterfall said. "It's a college town. They have bookstores there, and coffee shops ... I used to live in a coffee shop in college. I'm gonna take at least one zero, maybe two, and just sit in the coffee shop and write. They have a Thai restaurant there, too . .

  Thai food suddenly rose to the top on my list of desires, edging out even pizza and dry clothes. Haniover, I thought. ft' 'll get to Hanover and everything will be fine.

  "Where are we, anyway?" I had lost track of our progress along the bumpy spine of Kinsman Ridge. Dusk was beginning to thicken under the spruces.

  Isis took out her map. "I don't know. It's hard to say." We had followed a long uphill grade for the last half mile or so, punctuated by short drops. "I think we're coming up on Mount Wolf."

  "Mount Wolf? Then we're still five miles from Kinsman Notch!" Waterfall was dismayed. "That puts us fifteen miles from Glencliff. How're we gonna do it, y'all? I have to get there tomorrow night-I don't have enough food to stay out on the Trail again."

  We didn't either, but Isis set her face in a tight-lipped smile. "We'll manage somehow."
>
  it was cold on the shoulder of Mount Wolf, where we found a clearing just large enough to set up our tents for the night. A soft wind blew through the high limbs of the spruces. Water condensed on the branches and dripped down everywhere, leaving the ground damp and spongy.

  "This is gross, y'all! Look at this-somebody left a disgusting t-shirt here. And there's a bunch of cough drop wrappers and like three pounds of peanut shells!"

  "Nasty," I agreed, taking a fallen branch and helping Waterfall sweep out a space for her tent.

  "We really should pack it out;" Isis said. "At least the t-shirt and the wrappers "

  I groaned at the thought of extra, useless weight, but I knew she was right. Trash in the wilderness attracts more trash; if people see candy wrappers and clothing left in the bushes, they're less likely to think twice about leaving their own garbage.

  "Y'all, we ought to make a game out of it," Waterfall said, beginning to smile. "We can pretend we're looking for a criminal nmasterniind, and our only clues are the things we have to pack out of the woods"

  "Right!" I picked up the smelly t-shirt and wrung grayish water out of it to lessen the weight a little. "So what kind of culprit left this?"

  "Well, we're lookin' for a nian without a shirt," Waterfall said. She picked up one of the wrappers. "And he's got a cough. Prob'ly from goin' shirtless in this weather."

  "Some criminal mastermind!" I said. "What about the peanuts, though?"

  Waterfall thought for a moment. "An elephant!" She exclaimed triumphantly.

  "An elephant?"

  "They eat lots of peanuts, don't they?"

  "Right. So we're looking for a shirtless ntan, with a cold, riding an elephant. Should be pretty easy to spot:"

  Our jokes made the evening a little more bearable, but it was still a miserable campsite. Wet branches brushed us from all sides. The temperature dropped until we could see our breath condensing in the clammy air. It was hard to ignore the fact that at least fourteen miles of tough terrain still lay between us and our destination tomorrow.

  We squatted on our haunches, warming our hands around our stoves as dinner cooked. Waterfall headed down a side trail into the bushes and came back shortly, looking disgusted. "Y'all, there's toilet paper everywhere back there!"