Barefoot Sisters: Southbound

by Lucy Letcher;Susan Letcher

  In the early afternoon, I reached the shore of Stratton Pond, seven miles from Spruce Peak Shelter. I hadn't planned to stay there-it was one of the few places where the Vermont trail maintaining organization, the Green Mountain Club, charged a fee for shelter use. A good long break seemed to be in order, though. First a swim, then lunch. I was just about to wade in for my second swim, when a short, burly man with a wild beard appeared at the edge of the clearing.

  "I'm Beavis," he said, trotting over to nle. "I'm the caretaker here. Are you staying at the shelter tonight?"

  "I'll probably hike on," I told him. "It's only midafternoon."

  "That's too had. The northbounders are really thinning out, and I haven't had much company lately." He looked down, and suddenly his face broke into a grin. "Say, are you barefoot because you're about to go swimming, or are you-are you-

  "Yeah, I'm one of the Barefoot Sisters. Isis." I held out my hand.

  "WOW! You're my hero!" Beavis cried, practically jumping up and down. "Can I kiss your feet?"

  "They're dirty," I answered, laughing. "In case you hadn't noticed."

  "Okay. Fair enough. Is there anything I can do for you, though? I mean, its great to finally meet one of you; I've heard about you for so long."

  "Well, actually, there is something you could help me with, if it isn't too much trouble. Do you have a bucket I could borrow, to carry water up from the pond and wash my hair?"

  "A bucket? That's easy. Hey, I even have a gray-water pit with curtains around it, if you want to take more of a shower."

  Beavis helped nie carry full buckets up to his "shower" and gave me a quart yogurt container to dip the water out with. Leaning over the foot-deep pit, I washed my hair, ny body, and finally the clothes I'd been wearing. I wrung them out, used them to dry myself off, then wrung there out again and got dressed. In the sweltering afternoon heat, wearing damp clothes felt almost as comfortable as swimming.

  I began to reconsider my plan to hike any farther that day. Storm clouds were building to the north and west; already I could hear thunder rattling around that corner of the sky. Beavis had gone to make the rounds of the campsites, so I sat down on the shore with my feet in the water and started writing a letter to jackrabbit.

  "Pardon me, Lady of the Lake," a voice asked from behind me. "Is this the water source or is there a spring around?" I looked up into a pair of laughing dark eyes, set in a face the color of polished oak.

  "The lake's it. I'll hold the intake valve of your filter between my toes," I told him. I poked one of my feet out of the water and wiggled it. ",Just kidding. The spring's over there." I pointed to a trail Beavis had shown ►ne earlier.

  Ten minutes later, the hiker returned. He sat down on a rock at the lake's edge and took a long swig from his water bottle, closing his eyes. He was young, perhaps my sister's age, with a slight build and fine, prominent bones. Longish, cinnamon-colored hair framed his aquiline face. Instead of a beard he wore a neatly trimmed goatee.

  He niet my eyes, a roguish smile playing about the corner of his lips. He knew I'd been watching hint.

  "Hello," he said. "My name's Big Guy. I suppose yours is something other than Lady of the Lake?"

  "I'm Isis," I answered, trying not to laugh. "Where on earth did you get the name `Big Guy'?"

  He shrugged. "I have a friend we call Little Guy. He's six five. How did you get your trail name?"

  "That's a longer story."

  "That's fine. I've only got seven more miles to go this afternoon"

  My heart sank. Northbound, with a Go-lite pack. Of course he wouldn't be stopping for the day at four in the afternoon.

  "My first backpacking trip was in the Andes, in Peru," I began. By the time I finished my story, raindrops were spattering down on the lake's surface, and treetops bent in a sudden wind.

  Big Guy glanced up at the sky. "Maybe I'll stay here after all."

  The two of us spent the rest of the day sitting at a picnic table in the front of the spacious, multi-level shelter, sharing stories and pots of tea. I found out that Big Guy was recovering from Lyme disease. He'd been off the Trail for almost three weeks.

  "Before I got sick, I was always thinking ahead to the next mountain, how fast I could get there, how fast I could put it behind me. Now I don't care whether I finish. It's the journey that matters"

  "Yeah, that's how I've felt all along," I told him. "I tend to stop and smell every flower in my path. The only trouble is, at the rate I'm going, I'll probably be out here till January."

  "Well, that'll be something to tell your grandkids about"

  We slept in the shelter's loft, with another nobo and a couple of section hikers. The lower part of the shelter was packed with college freshmen on an orientation trip. ("I hope you guys don't mind," Beavis had told us as lie ushered the dripping students inside. "Groups usually stay in the tent sites, but I just couldn't leave them there on a night like this.")

  Big Guy fell asleep much more quickly than I did. He lay curled on his side, facing away from me. I sat beside him and brushed my hair, watching the lightning throw his left cheekbone into relief. I felt a painful, almost maternal tenderness toward him; I wanted to pull up his sleeping bag to cover his shoulder and kiss him gently on the forehead good night. He'll be done tornor- roiv, I reminded myself. You'll never see biro aVin. I turned away from hinm, pulled up my own sleeping bag, and closed my eyes.

  The next day, I passed more nobos than I'd seen all week. Many of them stopped for a few minutes to chat or offer advice about the Trail ahead.

  "Pennsylvania's gonna suck big time," warned a young man who I met on my way up Stratton Mountain. "See all this duct tape I got on the toes of my boots? Pennsylvania."

  A young couple told me to be sure to stay at a hostel called Kincora when I got to Tennessee.

  "We were about to get off the Trail when we stopped there," the woman told me. "It had been raining for a week. The bottoms of my feet were solid blister. Bob, the guy who runs the Kincora, set me up on the couch with a cup of cocoa and told me Trail stories for a couple hours. By the end of the day, I couldn't believe I'd thought about quitting."

  `Bob's got the greatest attitude," the man added. "It's like he is the spirit of the Trail. I know that sounds kind of whacky, but you'll get what I mean when you meet him."

  A nephew and uncle team recommended a place to stay that was closer at hand, Upper Goose Pond Cabin in Massachusetts. It sounded idyllic-a little red cabin perched on a lake shore, with a kitchen and bookshelves and a canoe that hikers could borrow-until the uncle mentioned that it was run by the AMC.

  "How much does it cost to stay there?" I asked suspiciously.

  "I think it was three bucks a night, suggested donation."

  "Wow. Thanks for the recommendation" Trail maiic from the AMC, I thought to myself. I'll believe that when I see it.

  I sat down to lunch with two more nobos, an Iowa farm boy called Optimist and a movie stuntman named Hollywood. Optimist shared around a package of Archway hermits, and told us how the cookies he carried had almost brought him romance.

  "One night near the beginning of the Trail, I shared a shelter with a gorgeous woman. After supper, I got out a package of Archway cookies and offered her one. 'Archway cookies!' she said. 'My favorite! If those are her- iuits, I'll marry you"' His face fell. "I was carrying lemon cookies at the time. Now I always carry hermits, but she got ahead of me and I haven't seen her since"

  "Alas! I can sympathize all too well." I sighed melodramatically. "I met a charming young man just yesterday, but fate tore us asunder. He was northbound, you see"

  "So, you're a sobo" Hollywood squinted at nie, sizing nee up. "No wonder we haven't run into you before. You're really not had, for a southbounder."

  "Excuse me?"

  "You don't strike nie as a self-absorbed pot-head," explained Hollywood.

  "Not all of the lobos we met were obnoxious," Optimist added hurriedly. "It's just that the first ones gave us a pretty bad imp
ression. They came into the shelter at five AM and woke everybody tip asking for a joint. They said they'd hiked twenty-five miles that night and they really needed a smoke."

  "The early northbounders weren't exactly paragons, either," I said. I told them about Patagonia, the guy we niet at Little Bigelow, who'd laughed at our measly seventeen-mile day and told us that he'd just hiked a twenty-seven. "I used to think you guys were all braggarts and mile slaves."

  "Mile slaves? Hardly." Optimist laughed. "If I put as much time into hiking as I put into picnicking, I would have caught up with my true love and offered her a hermit by now."

  I camped that night at Story Spring Shelter along with a few more hobos, a couple who were hiking the Long Trail, and another college orientation group. While I was eating supper, a nobo with a long gray beard started a fire. I walked over and sat in front of it, watching the flames. Slowly, the other hikers gathered around.

  "Anyone have a good ghost story?" someone asked. The college orientation kids, sitting along the front of the shelter, leaned forward to listen.

  "I've got a good one for hikers," answered the woman who was doing the Long Trail. "Have you heard the tale of the scratch marks on the privy door?"

  When she finished, one of the college students told a story about a Ouija hoard, and another followed with an account of a Halloween prank gone dangerously awry.

  After an hour or so, the old man who had started the fire turned to nae. "You southbound?" he asked. I nodded. "You ever heard about the folks who disappeared? Right in the area you're hiking through tomorrow. Into those woods"

  I shook nay head. I hadn't heard any such thing; I wondered if he had just come up with it on the spot.

  "First one was a local guy, about a hundred years ago," the man continued. "Hunter, trapper. Folks said he knew these woods like the back of his hand. But one day he went out to check his trap line and never carne back" He paused and looked over his audience with narrowed, glittering eyes, as if gauging our abilities to take on his fabled ghosts.

  "In the seventies," he continued, "a Bennington College student got lost on her orientation trip. Search parties looked for her for two weeks, with dogs and everything. They never found so much as a scrap of her clothing." He glanced up at the kids in the shelter.

  "We heard about that," one of them offered, her voice trembling a little. "We're from Bennington."

  "Hmph. Well. You might want to stick close together, if you're headed south tomorrow."

  "We're not. We hiked from Goddard Shelter yesterday," answered another woman, one of the trip's leaders. She smiled at the younger students. "I'm pretty sure we're all accounted for."

  I slept well that night, but in the morning, hiking south alone, I couldn't help thinking of the old man's words. The weather had been cool and overcast since the thunderstorm. That day, the clouds had descended even farther; mist swirled among the tree trunks. Narrow waterfalls cascaded down mossy cliffs beside the trail. No birds called; no sound broke the stillness except for the steady drip and murmur of water. Perhaps it was the mist, perhaps the moss coating the trees and stones like a botanical form of fur-the forest seemed to have an energy of its own, a quiet, listening presence. I allowed myself a shiver. Here was a place where the line between life and story grew fine.

  It didn't feel threatening. Inviting was more like it. I imagined I could hear the call of this forest in the hypnotic drip of water from the trees. Leave the path. You will never have to ivalk on pavement aNain, never lose yourself in a crowd. Here are caves f>r your shelter, streams to bathe in, blackberries fir food. Walk in the water so the do's w'on't.find your tracks. I can make you immortal, like the hunter who came here at the turn of the century. One hundred years, and still he'c the talk of campfires.

  The sky cleared at dusk, just as I reached Goddard Shelter. A heavy band of gray hung across the horizon, followed by orange, yellow, and a blue as sharp as the lower edge of a flame. The wind began rising at sunset; by dark it howled straight into the shelter's open side. I wrapped myself up in my sleeping bag while I cooked. When I walked back to the grove of spruce trees where I'd set up niy tent, even the stars seemed to be tossing and swaying among the treetops.

  In the morning, the grass crackled with frost under foot. I hurried about my chores and ate breakfast pacing, jogging in place, trying to keep myself warm. I would have welcomed a steep uphill to start the day, but the trail curved steadily down along a ridge. In the hard morning light, the trees looked like ranks of gray soldiers standing at attention. No more mystery, no voice of water tempting me to stay. Already, before a single leaf had turned, the first frost of the winter was nipping at my heels. I had to go south, and quickly.

  I didn't stop until I reached Melville Nauheim Shelter, eight miles from Goddard, in the early afternoon. The sun fell straight down through the branches, forming a small island of warmth in the shelter's clearing. Someone had left a few chapters of Edward Abbey's The .%(onkey Wrench Gan,' in the register box; after lunch, I curled up in the sun to read them. What luxury to be both still and warm. Even when I'd finished reading, I lay there with nrv eyes closed, half dreaming, until the light moved away among the trees. Then I strapped oil my pack, picked up my hiking sticks, and walked another six miles to Congdon Shelter.

  A white husky, tied to a tree outside the shelter, announced my arrival with a soft growl.

  "What is it, girl A young man in fatigues stepped around the corner of the building. Seeing me, lie raised a hand in greeting. "Don't mind illy dog," he said, and then, after a pause, "but don't get too close to her, either."

  I crossed the stream and walked a ways into the woods to set up my tent. After that greeting, I thought I'd steer clear of the man as well as the dog. When I went back to filter water, though, I found a woman about my age filling her cooking pot. It was almost dark, and neither of us wore a headlampI standing right across front her before I realized that she was there. I hesitated, not wanting to startle her. She bent forward, and her straight, dark hair brushed the surface of the water. When she flipped it hack over her shoulder, she spotted me standing on the far bank. She didn't seem the least hit surprised.

  "Hi. I'm Morgan. Are you staying here%" Her voice sounded warm and confident in the darkness.

  "I'm Isis," I told her. "I'm tenting over on this side of the stream."

  "Well, I hope you'll come up to the shelter to cook your meal. There's four of us there, and all the others are nien. Not that I have anything against men, but, you know-the energy can get a little strange when you're outnumbered three to one."

  "Yeah, I can sympathize," I told her. "I'll be over in a minute"

  I picked up my stove, my food bag, and a handful of twigs for fuel, then joined Morgan in the shelter. She had donned a long black fleece robe over her shorts and tank top, and she was sitting cross-legged behind her Whisperlite, stirring a pot of soup. For the moment, none of the guys seemed to be focusing their energy on her. A tall young man with a lion's mane of blond hair was rolling out his sleeping hag in one corner, while the dog's owner conversed with a slim, neatly dressed older man on the other side of the shelter.

  "So, you're planning to be career Army," the older man was saying. "A fine choice. God will bless you for it. I served in the Korean War, myself, and I've worked as a recruiter ever since."

  "That robe looks comfortable," I said to Morgan.

  "Thanks," she answered. "It really is. I designed it especially for fall camping trips. I had this idea of what I wanted to keep me warm in the evenings, but I couldn't find it anywhere. I think when I get home, I'm going to make some more and sell them online."

  "I'd buy one," said a deep, lilting voice. The lion-maned man sat down on the other side of Morgan. I could picture him wearing such a garment; stretched across his shoulders, it would look like a bearskin cloak.

  "I'm Lew." He held out his hand.

  "Short for Lewis?" I asked him.

  "No, Lugh, L-U-G-H. It's the name of an ancient Celtic go
d. It's my real name, not just a trail name. My family's all Druids, see"

  "You're a Druid?" Morgan asked. "That's great! I'm a witch."

  The two soldiers in the corner had fallen silent. I glanced over at them and met the older one's eye.

  "A witch and a Druid, eh?" he said. "Maybe the rest of us better find someplace safer to sleep." He sounded as if he was only half joking.

  I gave him an apologetic smile. "Actually, I'm a witch, too," I admitted.

  "I thought you might be," Morgan said. "The way you just sort of appeared across the water"

  "You're-you guys aren't going to curse us, are you?" The dog's owner sounded genuinely worried. "I mean, we're, urn, Christians."

  Morgan threw back her head, laughing. "Of course we won't curse you. As long as you don't try to burn us at the stake." She looked him straight in the eye, a smile still playing around the corners of her mouth. "Deal?"

  "Sounds okay to me," he answered, his voice a little steadier than before. "I guess the things I've heard about witches might be a little-well, exaggerated. What do you guys believe in, anyway?"

  "Modern Wicca borrows from a lot of pre-Christian traditions;' Morgan told hinm, "so it's pretty open to personal interpretation. Probably no two witches believe the exact same thing. There are a few traditions most of us share, though-correct me if I'm wrong." She glanced at me, then continued. "We celebrate the changes of the season and the phases of the moon. Our major holidays are the solstices and equinoxes and the four cross-quarters, the days that tall halfway between. Most of us are polytheistic. We practice magic, of course."