Barefoot Sisters: Southbound

by Lucy Letcher;Susan Letcher

  I camped by myself on a tent platform that night, near the top of Killington Peak. From the sound of voices, I guessed that there were four or five late nobos sharing the converted stone cabin that served as a shelter, but the cloud of pot smoke pouring out the door discouraged me from socializing. It's just as well, I told myself. I'in in no mood to be regaled with horror stories about Pennsylvania.

  I slept badly, and the morning cold, at an altitude of almost four thousand feet, made it hard for me to drag myself out of my sleeping bag. At the privy, I discovered that I'd gotten my period, never an easy thing to deal with on the Trail. This time, it had arrived a week early, and I wasn't carrying pads. I dug a handkerchief out of my pack, folded it into a small rectangle, and pinned it to my underwear. Good for two or three hours, but what then? The next major road crossing, at Clarendon Gorge, was twelve miles away. I stuffed my tent into its sack and sat down to breakfast, thoroughly out of sorts.

  "Good morning! My name's Willie'." A ruddy-faced nobo in his midthirties had just stepped into the clearing. He smiled, eyes sparkling and white teeth flashing from behind his trimmed black beard.

  "Isis," I answered, reaching up to shake his hand. I hoped that the terseness of my reply would encourage him to hike on. In my current mood, I didn't think I could stomach his cheerfulness for long.

  He let go of my hand but held my gaze, his face still lit with a friendly, open smile. "Isis. Pleased to meet you. How are you doing this fine morning?"

  Head bent, he waited for me to answer. With a great effort of will, I resisted describing my predicament to him in gory detail. He'd hike on soon enough; I didn't need to waste my breath being rude to a stranger.

  "I'm doing okay," I replied.

  He waited for me to continue. His patience, his willingness to listen, disarmed me.

  "I just discovered, this morning, that I'm out of some supplies. Something I need soon. I mean, now." I could feel my face flushing. "I'm not fast enough to hike to Clarendon by nightfall. So, I'm not in a very good mood. I'm sorry."

  Willin' didn't seem the least hit discomposed or even surprised by my outburst.

  "Why don't you come with me?" he asked. "I've run out of a couple things myself, and I was planning to take the gondola down to Killington."

  "The gondola?"

  "It runs down the east side of the mountain, from the new ski lodge. I heard they let hikers ride for free"

  "That sounds great, but I don't want to keep you waiting. I'm not quite finished with breakfast."

  "No hurry. We've got all day."

  Half an hour later, the two of us floated high over the valley in a purple upholstered car, admiring the cloud-speckled hills and meadows below. At the foot of the mountain, though, the gondola disgorged us into a disconcerting wilderness of pavement, perfume boutiques, and high-rise hotels.

  "Is this Killington?" I asked.

  "No, this is the ski resort. The village is a mile or so down the road," Willin' replied. "I'm not sure which direction, though. We'd better ask"

  He headed for the nearest hotel, a tower of whitewashed adobe and plate glass. In the velvet-draped lobby, I skulked by the fireplace, hoping no one would notice my hiker smell. Willin' walked right up to the counter.

  "Good morning, ma'am," he said to the receptionist, a heavyset woman in her fifties. With her starched collar and octagonal bifocals, she reminded me of my tenth-grade math teacher-not someone I would have accosted lightly.

  She looked up from her hooks.

  "How are you doing?" Willin' asked her.

  A smile that reflected Willie's spread across her powdered face. "Not had. And yourself?"

  "Very well, thank you. I was hoping you could tell me the way to town."

  "Killington Village? It's just a mile or so down the hill. You want to go hack out to the road and head north. Don't blink or you'll miss it, though. It's only a couple of stores and a shopping null"

  "Thank you very much, ma'am. Have a good day."

  "You too, sir," she answered. She beamed at me. "And you, miss. I hope y'ou enjoy the village."

  "How did you do that?" I asked Willin', as we walked down the road toward town. "I would never have gotten up my nerve to go in there smelling like a hiker and ask for directions"

  "It doesn't matter what you smell like or how fancy a building looks," Willin' said slowly. "It's the human interaction. Saying hello to a person before you ask for anything. Asking how somebody is and actually waiting for their answer. I grew up in Jamaica. Down there, it's just common courtesy. In the States, I think there's this tendency for people to treat other people like machines. If you do that, it's no wonder if they don't want to help you "

  We spent the whole morning in Killington, first stopping at the Killington Market for Ben and ,Jerry's and our sundry resupply items, then heading to the bakery for coffee and donuts, sandwiches, and a whole apple pie. Willin' greeted everyone with a smile, asked them how they were doing, and listened to their answers as if nothing could interest him more. Everyone we met, from the dour shopkeeper to the man out walking his bulldog, smiled back. And more-the man with the bulldog directed us to the bakery; the baker came out of the kitchen and told us stories from his hike on the Pacific Crest Trail. Two old ladies offered to buy us the pie. At the end of his shift, the baker drove us up to the ski resort. By the time we got back on the gondola, helped aboard by an impeccably dressed attendant, I felt like a princess, or some beloved celebrity-someone who could make a stranger's day just by smiling at hill).

  Over the next few days, I saw more wildlife than human life on the Trail. Sparrows and warblers lighted in the branches around me, cheeping their onenote warning. Little red squirrels and fat gray ones joined in with their scolding trills. In the midday warmth, garter snakes uncoiled from stone ledges and flickered away into the underbrush. Once, picnicking at a place called White Rocks, I watched two goshawks fighting, swooping and screaming and tumbling claw to claw until they nearly hit the trees above my head.

  I met only two hikers: an ultralight southbounder who was guzzling water straight out of a stream and a fanatical old Hobo who admonished me on the evils of my heathen trail name. One afternoon, I passed a team of maintainers digging trenches to divert the fall rains. They stared at my dusty feet and offered me a handful of candy bars. For the most part, though, I had the trail to myself. In place of conversation, I read the registers cover to cover, practiced the poems that jackrabbit and I had memorized, and made up songs, sometimes singing theni out loud while I walked. Inspired by a visit to the Whistle Stop Cafe, a quarter mile off the trail at Clarendon Gorge, I canto up with a Vermont verse for -Dig a Hole":

  (Later, when jackrabbit and I performed the song for hobo audiences, the third line of the Vermont verse would invariably raise a few eyebrows. To hikers coming from New York and New Jersey, the Green Mountain State seemed remarkable for its dearth of Trailside delis. For me, though, places like the West Hartford General Store, the Inn at Long Trail, and the Whistle Stop (:ate provided a pleasant contrast to Maine and New Hampshire's weeklong stretches between resupply stops.)

  The first night I tented alone, next to an empty shelter, reminded nee of my first stealth-camping experience on Little Boardman Mountain in the Wilderness. Every sound in the darkness woke inc. I lay motionless, listening for the next footstep, the growling of bears drawn to the smell of my menstrual blood. Instead I heard a deer snorting, a heron croaking from a nearby swamp, a mouse scuttering among the leaves: the silence of the forest, made up of thousands of soft rustles and swift heartbeats.

  Reaching Big Branch Shelter on September first, I found it packed with nobos. After being alone for so long, I felt shy of people, unsettled by their loud voices and the chemical reek of their stoves. After talking with the crowd of Hobos for a few minutes, I walked upstream and found myself a tent site beside a deep amber pool. I cooked on the riverbank, listening to the night waking around inc. Owls hooted back and forth over the sound of rushing water.
A late frog chirped in the reeds. The sounds seemed comforting, now: nature going about her business, unperturbed by the intruder with the big green cocoon and the cupful of fire. In the morning, I rose before dawn and skinny-dipped in the pool, feeling every cell of my skin awaken and dance with cold.

  Unfortunately, I couldn't stay in the woods forever. I was running low on food, so I hitched into Manchester with a hobo whom I met in the trailhead parking lot. We caught a ride to the post office, where the hobo had to pick up a mail drop. While he sat on a bench outside the post office, transferring Ziplocs full of noodles and rice into his food bag, I walked into town to buy my ow-n resupply.

  Following the directions I'd gotten from the postmistress, I came to what must have been the center of Manchester. A row of storefronts painted in glossy dark purples and greens lined the broad boulevard. Behind them, vast parking lots shimmered in the heat. Families of tourists wandered past nee, the daughters in matching floral-print dresses and the sons in miniature suits. I looked around for an outfitter store, a grocery store, somewhere to have lunch, but none of the boutiques were selling anything I could use. Their display windows held little black dresses, clunky handbags emblazoned with faux graffiti, and diamond-studded watchbands. I glanced at the price tag on a dress and recoiled, thinking, I could live on the Trail /or tu'o months on that much money! Finally, I passed a young woman in jeans and a t-shirt, who looked like she might be a local. I asked her if she knew where I could find the outfitter store.

  "The Urban Outfitter?" she answered. "I don't think they have one here. There's, like, Gap, and Old Navy, and Abercrombie ..."

  Half an hour later, on the outskirts of the couture district, I stumbled across a strip mall with an EMS outlet and a supermarket. At the other end of the mall, a pink neon sign flashed PIZZA. I'd found the hiker quarter of town. Paying for my flashlight batteries, I asked the cashier at EMS whether there was a hostel nearby.

  "Nope. The hostel closed a couple years ago," he told me.

  "Is there anywhere for hikers to stay?"

  "Well, I've heard there's a guy who gives people bunk space and breakfast for thirty-five bucks. He lives a ways out of town, though. You have to call him."

  I ate a pizza and debated with myself. Breakfast sounded temptingbreakfasts were always my favorite town meals, with their fruit juices and fresh baked goods and eggs-hut $35 was more than jackrabbit and I together had ever paid for a night's lodging on the Trail, aside from the fiasco of the Crawford Notch Hostel. Was there any reason, beyond promise of a good breakfast, for nie to stay around town? I'd just rinsed off in a stream, so I didn't need a shower quite as badly as usual. I had meant to call jackrabbit, to see how she was doing, but I could always try from the next town.

  Deciding to leave Manchester proved to be much easier than actually finding my way out. The man who'd brought nie and the nobo into town had made a few more turns than I could follow, coming off the highway. After he dropped us off, I'd wandered around for a good forty-five minutes looking for the outfitter. I knew I was about ten miles west of the A.T. and a long ways downhill, but even if I got up my nerve to hitchhike alone, I had no idea where to start.

  I hoisted my pack, heavy with cheese, bagels, and, to make up for the lack of breakfast, a single orange. From the center of the parking lot, I could see the dip in the eastern mountains where the highway snaked through, a hit to the north of town. I took nay bearings, then started walking north and east, city block by block. Twenty minutes later, following the sidewalk along endless rows of pastel clapboard houses, I had to admit I was lost. I was getting pretty thirsty, too-I hadn't carried any water into the city. Although it was early September, the temperature must have been in the high eighties; heat mirages hovered over the pavement. My head ached, and I could feel the skin on my shoulders starting to burn.

  If I'd been in a business section of town, I could have put Willin's lessons to good use. Smile. Care about the person you're talking to. Most people want to help you, if you treat them like human beings. But I hadn't passed a store since I left the parking lot. Only houses, getting smaller as I headed toward the outskirts of town. I had a hard time imagining even Willin' walking up to a stranger's house to ask for directions.

  A small wooden sign hung from a post in front of a light blue ranch house: 'liitorin,i! Center. Once I'd gotten close enough to read it, I noticed the gravel path curving around the back of the building. It didn't look terribly public, but by that time, I didn't care. I followed the path around to the hack door and knocked. A Minute passed. No one home. Suddenly, tears of exhaustion spilled down my cheeks. I sat on the ramp in front of the door and rested my forehead against my hiking sticks.

  The door slid open. A strikingly handsome, silver-haired man stared out at Inc. his eyes on a level with mine. When I stood up, I realized that he was sitting in a wheelchair.

  "Come in," he told me. "You look like you could use a drink of water."

  I tried to stammer out thanks, but his kind voice seemed to have broken a dam inside nme-my tears had turned to sobs.

  "No need to talk," he said. "Sit down, rest a little, and then you can tell inc what's wrong„

  After five paper cups of water and a few Girl Scout cookies, I told him how I'd gotten lost, trying to find my way back to the Trail.

  "Appalachian Trail, eh?" His blue eyes sparked. "One of Illy students hiked it just last year. What a wonderful adventure"

  I smiled. "Yeah, it is. Thanks for reminding n)e."

  "You're welcome. Now, to get you back to the highway ..

  It turned out that I was only three blocks away. Following the tutor's directions, I headed out of town along the shoulder. I doubted that I could walk all the way by nightfall, and I was reluctant to hitch alone. For once, though, my lack of plans didn't worry me. The words of the crippled tutor kept running through my mind: what a ii'ondertiil adventure. If I could have planned my hike in perfect detail, and prepared for every contingency, it wouldn't have been an adventure. Not knowing where I would sleep that night or how I would get there seemed like a positive thing now-an element of chance that opened niy life to things I couldn't have planned.

  I'd barely walked a quarter mile when a dilapidated sedan crunched the gravel beside nie.

  "Need a ride somewhere?" asked a rough voice.

  I leaned down and looked through the window. The speaker, a heavily tattooed man with the build of a professional weight lifter, was busy scraping old soda cans and magazines off the passenger seat. Chalky dust coated his armn. With his shaved head and sleeveless t-shirt, he looked like the sort of man I might have crossed the street to avoid if I'd met him under any other circumstances.

  "I'm headed to the Appalachian Trail," I told him.

  "Where's that?" he asked, glancing up at me. With a start, I realized that he was younger than I was, perhaps only nineteen or twenty. His voice sounded like it belonged to a chain-smoking fifty-year old.

  "Ten miles up the highway, where it cuts through the mountains," I answered.

  "I can take you there. Throw your stuff in back"

  Against my better judgment-against any judgment, really-I put my pack in the backseat and climbed in beside hint.

  "Pull your door hard and lock it," he instructed me. "It flies open sometimes"

  I obeyed, and he gunned the engine, pulling back into traffic.

  "You smoke up?" he asked.

  "I-uh-no thank you"

  "Sorry. Just thought I'd ask. I do, sometimes. Just to have something to cut through the boredom. You know, same fucking job every day."

  "What do you do?" I asked him.

  "I'm a stonecutter. Industrial."

  "Is that where the white dust comes from?"

  "Yeah," he answered. "Shot my voice, breathing it. We're supposed to wear masks, but I was young when I started. Young and dumb" He paused, then asked, "What do you do?"

  "Well, last year I worked in a bakery and went to school part time. Right now I'm hiking for six mo
nths."

  "You must really like to walk."

  "Yeah," I answered, "I guess I do. But it's not just the walking. You're up in the mountains, hiking along, and all of a sudden this gorgeous view opens out in front of you, you see lakes sparkling in the distance or lightning along the horizon. Or you wake up at sunrise and watch the first light catch in the treetops. Stuff like that happens every day-you're in the right place at the right time, to see something amazingly beautiful. Plus there's a great community of people out there, people from all walks of life-you sit around the fire and tell stories at night, and you make friends with people you never would've met-" I broke off, embarrassed that I'd been bragging about my good fortune to someone who sounded like he'd had so few breaks in his life.

  "Sounds pretty cool," he said. "How much dough do you need for a hike like that?"

  "Three or four thousand dollars," I answered.

  "That's it? Hell, I could save that much in five months if I wanted to. Maybe I'll hike this trail of yours next year. Quit my fuckin'job."

  The road curved up into the mountains, longer than I remembered. There were hardly any other cars this late in the afternoon. No other roads branching off of it, either. Finally I spotted the trailhead parking sign.

  "That's it. On your left," I told the stonecutter. He swung into the empty lot. I thanked him for the ride and tried to open my door.

  "You gotta unlock it first," he reminded me.

  When I'd finally unloaded myself and all my gear, he waved goodbye and sped out of the parking lot, heading back down the mountain the way we'd come. I realized that he must have driven at least eight miles out of his way to drop nie off.

  I spent the night at Spruce Peak Shelter, just a mile past the road. The next morning was warmer than the past week's iniddays had been; I ate breakfast in my tank top, sitting on a cliff that overlooked Manchester. Not a breeze stirred; a smoggy haze obscured the mountains to the west. By the time I started hiking, the heat of the pavement seemed to have risen out of the valley and thrown its stranglehold around the hills. Just breathing was a challenge; hiking uphill seemed a Herculean feat. Sweat poured down my arms and legs, making my skin prickle. I began to regret nay decision to leave town without a shower, though I wasn't sure where I would have found one in that maze of malls and parking lots.