Barefoot Sisters: Southbound

by Lucy Letcher;Susan Letcher

  "That's foul!" Isis said.

  "See, this is why they don't like people stealth camping," Waterfall said. "They dump all their trash in the campsites, and don't even know enough to bury their-"

  "We need a public education campaign," I said. "And I have a theme song for it already. Isis, do you remember that song we made up on the Machias Lakes trip, when we were digging a privy pit for the campsite?"

  "Yeah," she said in a tone of dread.

  "Oh, come on, it's not that bad! I mean, it's not really suited for polite company, or anything, but ..

  "If y'all are callin' nee polite company ..:' Waterfall pretended to take offense.

  "Not at all, my dear. D'you want to hear it?"

  Isis stifled a groan, but Waterfall nodded enthusiastically.

  "I've got to tweak the verses a bit, but the chorus goes like this" Isis joined me, singing to the time of a British march whose title I have forgotten, if I ever knew it:

  Our boisterous, loud voices filled the clearing and seemed to dispel the gloomy mist for a moment. As we finished dinner, I turned over the words in my head and assembled two verses. I taught Isis, in a whisper, and we sang them for Waterfall before our nightly chapter of Harry Potter:

  By the end, we were laughing so hard we could barely finish the song. Maybe I'll write a verse /or every State on the Trail, I thought, and immediately dismissed the idea. It 71o uaolld want to hear a /ourtcen-Terse son,E about sltittiu.~ in tile Il'oods?

  As we descended into Kinsman, our final notch, all of us felt a little bit on edge. We needed to get over Moosilauke before dark. It was almost midday, and we hadn't even reached the base of the mountain.

  "How is this notch going to notch us over?" I asked. "Besides the obvious, I mean" I grimaced as we descended a steep section of trail, and my knees creaked ominously.

  "You never know," Waterfall said. "Maybe something good will happen here "

  "In a notchin' notch? Don't count on it!" Isis said.

  The sound of tragic grew louder, an unsteady roar through the trees. The sun showed weakly through the clouds again, and the mist was breaking up over the valley. Between the trees, we could see the huge Hank of Moosilauke looming on the far side of the notch, looking almost vertical. Cliffs broke through the blue-green spruce forest here and there, and waterfalls cut pale traceries across the mossy rock. The top wasn't visible. This mountain was beautiful, I had to admit, but my body rebelled at the thought of climbing it.

  On the gravel shoulder of the road, we saw a tall woman in a t-shirt and black Spandex. "Waterfall?" she called as we came near. The wind ruffled her short brown hair, and her hazel eyes shone with warmth.

  I looked at Waterfall. She frowned for an instant, puzzled, as though trying to place the woman's face in her memory.

  "I'm Stitches. We met at the Gathering, remember? I was giving a workshop on lightweight backpacking. Anyway, I come up to the Whites every weekend. I was hoping to find you. Oh, and you must be the Barefoot Sisters! I've read so much about you in people's online journals ... I didn't know what to believe!"

  We introduced ourselves.

  "You guys must be starving-I know I was, when I came through here in '99, and I was northbound. I don't know how you sobos do it!" She led us to her car in the Forest Service lot at the base of the mountain and offered us a vast array of junk food: Oreos, chips, candy bars, and soda, as well as homemade brownies.

  Between bites, we thanked her heartily. "You're an angel, Stitches!"

  "It's no problem," she said. "So many people helped me out on my hike, I figure I might as well give something back. Say, would you guys be interested in slacking Moosilauke?"

  Slackest,, Moosilauke! I could have kissed her. "Definitely!"

  Isis nodded as well, grinning, but Waterfall looked a little uncomfortable. "I've never slacked before," she admitted.

  "Come on, Waterfall, slacking is awesome!" Isis said. "You go twice as fast, and save your knees .. "

  "We could be over that mountain before dark," I said.

  Stitches' eyes twinkled with humor. "Everybody's doing it."

  Waterfall sighed. "Okay, peer pressure wins out. I swear, y'all are corruptin' me"

  We threw the culprit's t-shirt and cough-drop wrappers into a garbage pail and put our packs in the backseat of Stitches' car. Stitches loaned us a daypack, which we filled with water bottles, the last of our granola bars, and some warm clothing. She drove off with a smile and a wave.

  When we started up the mountain, even Waterfall had to admit how wonderful it was to be slacking. "Y'all were right, this is worth it." We floated up the steep trail, flashing past dayhikers who glanced at us, astounded. We didn't even give them time to ask the obvious questions about our feet.

  I had heard some northbounders-and Blade-deride slacking as a way of cheating. At the other end of the spectrum, we had heard about a group of hikers doing the entire Trail with van support, effectively slacking the whole thing. I certainly wouldn't want to do that; I loved the independence that a full pack gave me, the ability to stay in the woods for a long time. But slacking occasionally was a welcome change and a chance to see how strong I had become. Accustomed to carrying another forty pounds, my legs felt like powerful pistons driving me effortlessly up the slope.

  The four-mile climb to the summit seemed to take no time at all. Above treeline, a brisk wind shook the low grasses. We sat on huge rectangular blocks of granite, the foundations of an old hotel, and looked out across the terrain we had crossed: jagged blue silhouettes of stone stretching back to the far horizon. Checking the map, we followed the Trail's turnings: the Kinsmans, Franconia Ridge, the Twins and Guyot, and far in the back, the Presidentials. A puff of black smoke marked Mount Washington. The AT. ran along each ridge, dropped into the intervening notch and doubled back, winding through the toughest parts of the forbidding territory.

  "Cruel and unusual," I said. "They just had to hit all the high points and all the notchin' notches in between."

  "Yeah," Waterfall said, but there was something wistful in her voice. "I wish we could have seen it. It must be so beautiful ... Maybe I'll come back here some day and hope for better weather"

  "Not me, nman," I said. "I've seen enough of the Whites to last me a lifetime. Good riddance, I say."

  Southwards, the terrain looked rolling and smooth, deliciously easy compared to the knife-edged ridges we had crossed. The highest mountains we could see ahead rose perhaps 1,500 feet out of the lake-studded lowlands. Suddenly, I could tell how far south we had come-evergreen trees appeared only on the highest slopes of the mountains; the lower regions were covered in the lighter green of oaks, birches, and maples. And somewhere out there in the valley of sunlit branches, the fabled town of Hanover waited.

  "We don't hit another 4,000-footer until we're halfway through Virginia," Waterfall said. I smiled-perhaps the worst was over.

  Going downhill should have been easy, with our light loads and our joyful spirits, but my hip ached and my foot began to throb in counterpoint. Ironically, the flatter and smoother the trail became, the more my foot hurt. In the rocky sections, I was able to balance most of my weight on the heel and the outside edge of the foot, protecting the tender bruise. On the level, soft trails on the south side of Moosilauke, I couldn't help slapping the ball of my foot down with each step. I set my teeth and tried to ignore the pain.

  The trail led us past open fields-how long had it been since I had seen a farm field full of cows? A golden light filled the valley and everything looked peaceful. It was hard to believe that just yesterday I had been clinging to the rocks, fighting my way against the wind-driven clouds.

  Just at dusk we reached the road. A van roared past us, then braked and backed up to where we stood. Stitches stuck her head out the window. "Pizza run," she said. "Care to join us%"

  We spent the night at the Hikers Welcome Hostel in Glencliff, perhaps a quarter mile down the road from the trailhead. It was an unprepossessing building, an old ba
rn with mattresses in the loft and an outside laundry room and shower covered with tarps. The kindness of the proprietors, Big John and his wife Ria, made up for the basic accommodations, and the price was right.

  "We just opened up a month ago," Big John explained. "Things are improving as we go along." He was a wiry, thin man, balding, with a shorttrimmed beard and kind brown eyes. "We've got a freezer full of Ben and Jerry's, though . . "

  "Excellent!" Isis and I picked out two pints of ice cream and headed for the fire circle. Half-built stone benches surrounded a sizeable bonfire. The flickering light revealed a crowd of northbounders talking and laughing. Big John brought out a guitar, and someone started singing country ballads.

  "Y'all should sing your song" Waterfall came up behind us with a pint of Cherry Garcia in her hands.

  "Which song?"

  "That one you sang last night, you know, about digging a hole ..

  "You really think we should?"

  "I'll sing with y'all."

  Big John introduced us with much fanfare. "Ladies and gentlemen!" (This was greeted with loud laughter-any pretense of being ladies and gentlemen fades after about a hundred miles on the Trail, we had found, and most of the people at the fire circle had covered more than 1,700 miles.) "I want to introduce the Barefoot Sisters! They have a song for us tonight."

  I was nervous, and a little embarrassed, but the audience was so appreciative that I forgot my shyness and belted the song with gusto. By the last chorus, half the nobos were singing along.

  "That was awesome, y'all!" a young man called from the far side of the firepit. He was slight and bearded, with his reddish hair pulled back in a ponytail. "Y'all got to do that for the talent show at Trail Days"

  "Trail Days? What's that?" Isis asked.

  "Man, these girls haven't heard of Trail Days? Come on" This was a railthin, dark-haired man barely out of his teens. "Best party on the Trail, man. Chicks like you ought to know about it" He winked and attempted a leer.

  I could sense my sister's ire rising, and I casually deflected the conversation away from us and back to the topic at hand. "So where is Trail Days? And when?"

  "Aw, y'all missed it this year," the red-bearded nobo said. "It's the end of May in Damascus. Little town in Virginia. Awesome place. Everybody gets together for, like, five days, and there's slide shows, and talks, and all that-"

  "Nobody goes to Trail Days for the freakin' slide shows," the skinny one said. "It's all about par-tay, all week long."

  "There's a talent show, too," the first hobo continued earnestly. "Y'all ought to go and sing that song. I bet y'all would win somethin'"

  Someone else picked up the guitar, and we sat on one of the stone benches finishing our ice cream. A few nobos came over to ask the usual questions about barefoot hiking: Why do you do it? Doesn't it hurt? I let Isis do most of the talking. I was tired of explanations, and right then, it did hurt for nte. Isis let a few people poke and prod her leathery soles, but I kept my feet on the ground; I didn't want anyone discovering that damn bruise. After almost 400 miles, it had become a point of pride that we could safely walk barefoot on almost any surface. I didn't want to show any evidence to the contrary.

  The young red-haired hobo had hung around the edges of the group for a while, silently observing. When he cane close to us, he shook his head with an appreciative smile. "Barefoot. I'd marry y'all!"

  Isis

  tier Glencliff, the terrain seemed so gentle and easy that it became the .subject of jokes between us. On the peak of 2,200-foot Mount Mist, Waterfall asked, "Do they call this Mount Missed because it's so small that most hikers walk over it without realizin' it's supposed to be a mountain?"

  Later that day, as we strolled along a level stream bank, I joked, "If the Trail goes on like this, I'll have to put shoes on, just to make it a bit more challenging"

  A balding, gray-haired man with a tiny pack came striding toward us. "More of you barefoot people!" he exclaimed. "I've been hiking with a kid, about your age, who walks barefoot half the time. Keep an eye out for himlong, black hair, usually hikes with no shirt on. He wears boots when he's in a hurry, so you won't necessarily recognize him by his feet. Calls himself Anonymous Badger. Real nice kid."

  When we met Anonymous Badger, he was wearing boots, but his smooth, waist-length black hair and his bare bronze chest certainly caught our attention. Waterfall and I later admitted to each other that we'd started talking to him just so that we could keep him there to look at, but we'd quickly become engrossed in the conversation. This was his second northbound thruhike. He offered us a brief inventory of Trail secrets, places we should be sure to visit: the Cookie Lady's blueberry farm in Massachusetts; the 501 shelter in Pennsylvania, where you could order pizza and get it delivered; the Mount Cammerer Firewarden's Tower in the Smokies, an octagonal stone tower on the end of a ridge that boasted a 360-degree view of the surrounding mountains. In spite of all we'd encountered on the Trail, these distant places seemed fantastical, the stuff of Narnian wardrobes and Roald Dahl's chocolate factory.

  Even with the smooth ground and good weather, jackrabbit's mood grew more and more somber over the following days. It was all Waterfall and I could do to make her crack a smile. She'd told me that the 600 mg ibuprofen she was taking didn't always suffice to numb the pain in her hip; I assumed this was the problem. She'd also mentioned that she'd bruised her foot on Wildcat, but since she hadn't said anything about it since the day it happened, I thought that injury had healed.

  A day and a half before we'd planned to reach Hanover, we were hiking through a marshy section of trail where slippery, rotten bog bridges made for treacherous footing. I heard jackrabbit fall; a moment later, I heard her scream "fuck" at the top of her lungs. I turned to find her lying across the trail, one leg bent under her at such a strange angle that I thought it was broken. Her face looked ghostly pale beneath her freckles.

  "What is it?" I asked, dropping to one knee beside her.

  "It's my foot," she answered. "The bruise. I just hit it again in the same place. I think it's really bad this time maybe broken."

  "There's a shelter in just a few miles," I told her. "Do you think you can make it that far?"

  "No," she answered. "No, I won't go to the shelter. This is going to get worse. Swell up. If I stop somewhere to sleep, I don't think I'll be able to put weight on my foot in the morning. We have to make it to Hanover tonight."

  "We've got twelve miles to go," I told her, "and it's almost noon already."

  "We have to get there," she repeated. "Tonight."

  She couldn't stand to have anything touch the bruise-a dark purple lump the diameter of a quarter that seemed to swell even as I looked at it-so I wrapped all the gauze, duct tape, and spare handkerchiefs I had on either side of it, trying to build up a cushion that would keep it from hitting the ground. Then we walked. Jackrabbit moved faster than I'd ever seen anyone limp; so fast that I had trouble keeping up with her. We reached Hanover by five o'clock, and as we staggered up the main street, she finally slowed down. I offered her my arm, but she shook it off-with one foot hare and the other swathed in an inch of bandages, her chin up and her fists clenched, she limped forward on her own, amid the stares and whispers of passersby.

  jackrabbit

  atertall left a few days after we reached Hanover. She had a schedule to keep, a job to go back to after her thru-hike. As much as we enjoyed her company, we knew she couldn't stay. The town, which had seemed like a promised land when we spoke of it in the cloud-wrapped White Mountains, quickly took on the dimensions of a prison. A few Dartmouth Prat houses uttered lodging to hikers. We divided our time between the dingy basement of 1'auarchy and the rec room of Alpha Theta. When one Prat threw a party and kicked the hikers out, we would move to the other. Isis cleaned their kitchens in exchange for our stay; she washed counters full of months-old dishes, wiped suspicious-looking stains from the floors and walls, and tackled the fuzzy leftovers in the backs of refrigerators. I think the frat ho
uses got the better end of the deal.

  As for nme, I tried to rest. The bruise on my foot had swelled up and turned ugly colors. I could barely walk. When we moved between trat houses, less than three blocks apart, Isis ferried both our packs over, and I followed behind, limping. On the fourth day, I caught a shuttle out to the I )artnmouth Medical Center. The X-rays revealed that the hones were intact, and the elderly, somewhat condescending podiatrist called for rest, ice, elevation. "Maybe after a few weeks you can walk on. I hope you'll see reason and wear some shoes!" I felt miserable, defeated. I knew I was holding my sister back.

  I )roves of northbounders moved through town, all confident, slim, tanned, and muscular. They scented to glow with health and good fortune, and I envied them all. One of the nobos, a lanky dark-haired man who introduced himself as Around the Bend, stayed in town for a few days. He tried to teach us to play pool on the battered table in the hack room at ('anarchy.

  "Your turn, jackrabbit. Are you guys going to the Gathering?"

  I hopped around the table on my good leg and lined up my shot. "What's the Gathering?"

  Around the Bend chuckled as the ball flew wide and caromed around the table. "You shoot like a girl."

  "Yeah, well, look who taught me!"

  He shrugged and smiled. "What can I say? The Gathering's a big hiker get-together in West Virginia, Columbus I)ay weekend. They've got slide shows and talks and stuff, but uwstly it's just a chance to meet other hikers. Your shot, Isis ... nice one!"

  "Thanks." She allowed herself a small smile of triumph as the red ball slipped into a corner pocket. "The Gathering sounds like fun. Waterfall told me she might be there. But I don't think we'll be anywhere near West Virginia in October unless jackrabbit's foot heals up"

  Around the Bend pursed his lips, considering something. "I'm going to buy a car in Maine when I finish my hike, and I'll be driving down to the Gathering. Maybe I could pick you guys up somewhere.' He tore the label from a beer bottle on the windowsill and scribbled something down. "Here's my e-mail. Stay in touch. It'll be fun."