The two soldiers exchanged a startled glance, but Morgan smiled sweetly at them and went on. "Magic, the way I like to think of it, is a way of using your energy and willpower to change things in the world. It's kind of like praying, except you're not asking God to do something for you, you're using the divine energy within yourself to make it happen. We don't have a written manual, like the Bible, but there are a few rules we follow. `I )o what you will, and ye harms none' is the most important. It means that you should figure out what your will is, and then follow through with it, as long as you're not harming anyone on your way. The 'harm none' part of it is kind of like your biblical commandment `thou shalt not kill.' You can interpret it really strictly and be a vegan who wears non-leather shoes, or you can just do your best not to hurt people" She gave the soldiers another smile, then caught my eye, laughing. "I'm pretty sure even the most liberal interpretation forbids us to go around cursing strangers."
"You don't seem terribly dangerous," the recruiter said, cautiously returning Morgan's smile. "Maybe I'll stay here tonight after all."
"Glad to hear it," she answered. "I'd hate to think of you struggling through the mountains all night on my account."
Morgan turned to Lugh. "I've got a ton of questions to ask you. I've never met a I)ruid before, so I'm really excited to hear about your traditions"
"Unfortunately, I can't tell you much," he answered. "The Druids III lily village suffered so much persecution over the centuries that they started swearing initiates to secrecy. Suffice it to say, we're one of the wain religions you borrowed from. There are a lot of similarities."
"And you? What do you believe?" the younger soldier asked me.
"Basically, I worship the Earth Mother," I told him. "Though I call her by many different names."
"So you're monotheistic," the recruiter mused. "Like us"
"More ... pantheistic, I guess. God in nature, in everyone."
"A lot of early Christians were pantheists," he answered. "Until the Catholic Church codified its belief system during the reign of Constantine."
I looked at him, surprised.
"I studied theology when I was younger," he explained. "Before I joined the army, I thought about being a minister." He stood up to hang his food bag, then sat down closer to us. The young soldier moved over, too.
By the time we finished supper, the five of us were sitting in a circle,jok- ing and arguing as if we'd known each other for years. Morgan brewed a big pot of lemon balm tea, and the young soldier offered everyone Oreos. We talked long past my usual hiker bedtime, our conversation ranging from Medieval history to Internet commerce. The one topic we avoided, by an unvoiced consensus, was politics; getting past our religious differences seemed like enough of a challenge for one night.
I hiked another fourteen miles the next day. By late afternoon, my concentration wavered; I stubbed two toes within half a mile. I hadn't stubbed my toes at all since the Whites, and I'd almost forgotten the risk. The second time it happened, just after the Massachusetts/Vermont state line, I sat down on a stump and cried. It was a pretty big break in the skin; I'd have to keep it bandaged for five or six days. For nearly a week, I'd look like an idiot or a martyr to everyone I net. It had been easier when jackrabbit was with me. She hardly ever stubbed her toes; her healthy feet beside my bandaged ones made our endeavor look a little less quixotic.
You've got three miles to hike, and it's ahnost sunset, I told myself. Pull yourself together. I picked up my hiking sticks and limped down the trail, still blowing my nose every few minutes. To cheer myself up, I started singing to a country tune:
That could be the chorus. Now, let's see-verses. I had already picked up my pace and stopped limping.
I sang as I hiked over the white marble ledges at the end of the ridge. I made up a few more verses, challenging myself to come up with rhymes for the names of mountains and towns along the Trail, before ending the song with a brief apologia:
On my way down the mountain, I stopped to pick highbush black blueberries in the last light of the coppery sun. I reached Sherman Brook Campsite half an hour later, with plenty of light left in the sky to set up camp.
In the morning I hiked down to Mass. 2, where I had a choice between two resupply points, each of which appeared to be about two miles from the Trail. North Adams, to the east, didn't show up on my neap, but the strip malls and apartment buildings on its outskirts looked dingy and industrial. I headed west toward Williamstown instead. As it college town, it ouqht to have at least one good bakery, I reasoned..Alaybe even a health Ood store.
I was right on both counts; I passed a health food store along the highway and found a wonderful bakery in the middle of town. There was no laundromat, though, nor any sign of a hostel. It was eleven days since I'd had a real shower, and the situation was getting rather urgent. Oh well. I can worry about that after I eau, I thought. I bought myself a first round of bread and ice cream and sat down on a park bench to finish my letter to jackrabbit.
By the time I put down my pen, I was hungry again. I checked my watch-two o'clock already. I had walked all the way into town, a distance of four or five miles, rather than the two miles I'd initially estimated. I planned to walk all the way back. On the way, I had to buy and pack my resupply.
I mailed the letter, bought more bread, and hurried back to the highway. At the health food store, I stocked up on vegetarian protein sources: instant black beans, seitan jerky, and a little container of hununus to eat with my bread that night. I bought the rest of my resupply at the supermarket across the street and sat down on the curb to repackage it. As I stuffed the last Ziploc of crackers into my food bag, I remembered that I had to call home. It had been over two weeks since I left Hanover; jackrabbit might be well by now and eager to return to the Trail. I found a pay phone at the end of the mall, but no one was home. Not prepared to talk to the answering machine, I left a brief, garbled message.
"I'm in Williamstown right now. Actually, I'm leaving Williamstown. I don't know when I'll get to the next place, and I'm not sure what it's called, either, because I'm not looking at my map. Anyway, I'll try to call when I get there. I love you guys. Bye."
It was 5:311 by the time I got back to the Trail. From the map's elevation profile, I knew there was a shelter only three miles from the road, but it was a steep uphill almost all the way. My shins were bruised from walking on pavement, and the toes I had stubbed the day before throbbed beneath layers of white tape. If there'd been a likely stealth spot at the base of the mountain, I would have taken it, but the ground was swampy, thick with jewelweed. Besides, the evenly spaced tall spruces here had the eerie, majestic symmetry of a Van Allsburg drawing-not a place where I'd be comfortable spending the night. I headed up the mountain as fast as I could, pushing myself along with niy hiking sticks.
As the chill of evening deepened, I walked into a narrow clifftop meadow where last rays of the sun glowed through the tips of the grass blades. In the west, fine bands of pink and gold streaked the sky above the mountains. To the east, a waxing moon hung in the branches of a gnarled oak tree. I looked around for the Trail. It made a sharp turn and plunged back into the woods at the eastern edge of the clearing-if the map was accurate, I was within a quarter-mile of the shelter. I didn't feel like going on, though. Under the trees, where the trail led, darkness had already fallen. I couldn't bring myself to turn away from the sun. I sat down at the top of the cliff and rebandaged my toes. In spite of the ache, they seemed to be healing faster than I could have hoped. While the sky burned orange above the western mountains, I ate my hummus sandwiches and the apple I'd brought for dessert. I lay on my back watching until the first stars came out, then pitched my tent in the meadow's plush grass.
Around the middle of the next day, I reached Mount Greylock, one of the few peaks on the AT. accessible by road. The Massachusetts War Memorial, a three- or tour-story granite tower topped with a sphere of faceted glass, doin- inated the grassy area at the mountain's summit. The tower do
or was locked, but a few hardy families of tourists wandered around its base or sat on the lawn in front of it eating ice cream sandwiches despite the chill. Across the road from the memorial stood a gracious old hotel called Bascom Lodge, which I soon discovered to be the source of the ice cream sandwiches. I also found out that it was run by the AMC. This caused me only I moment's hesitation. Luckily, my old grudges against the organization were no match for my hiker appetite. Inside the lodge, I found a dining room that served spinach lasagna, Caesar salad, and pumpkin pie, priced so reasonably that my whole lunch cost less than the two loaves of bread I'd bought in Williamstown.
"Are you on the A.T.?" asked the young woman who took my order. When I nodded, she continued. "1)o you want to do work-for-stay? We don't get many tourists this time of year, so the work's pretty easy. Just a few dishes, and you get all your meals for free."
"I was planning to hike a little farther this afternoon," I told her. "But thanks for the otter"
"Well, if there's anything you need before you leave-shower, laundryjust ask the guy at the gift shop. He usually gives hikers a pretty good deal."
I thanked her and sat down at one of the varnished pine tables. While I was eating, a tall, wiry man whose black beard had a few streaks of gray walked over to my table.
"Hi, I'm Ellis," he said. "I'm the ridge runner for the Greylock area. Are you a thru-hiker?"
"Yeah, I'm hiking southbound;" I told him. "My trail name's Isis"
"Isis? You're not-are your One of the Barefoot Sisters?"
"Guilty as charged."
"Wow. How do you do it? What does the ground feel like? Is your sister here, too? I don't mean to interrupt your meal, but I'd love to hear about your hike"
"Sure. Pull tip a chair," I told him.
After lunch, Ellis offered to watch my laundry while I took a shower. We were both planning to spend the night at Mark Noepal Lean-to, so we decided to hike together for the afternoon. In the gift shop, I bought a few postcards and asked the young man behind the counter how much the showers cost.
"Urn, a dollar, I guess."
"Is that for five minutes, or seven?" I asked him. "I've got to wash my hair, so I'll probably need more than one token."
"We don't use tokens," he answered. "You can take as long as you want."
He led me up a narrow staircase, pausing to pull a couple of fluffy creamcolored towels out of a linen closet. This is a different AMC from the one that runs Crawford Notch Hostel, I reflected. Very different. Maybe Upper Goose Pond Cabin will live up to the nobos' description after all.
"The women's showers are right in here." He swung open a heavy oak door and handed me the stack of towels. "I hope you don't mind that I charged you a dollar. Normally, we let hikers shower for free. But there was that ranger guy hanging around, and I wasn't sure he'd approve."
"That's okay," I said, holding back laughter. That ranger guy had been Ellis. He didn't seem like the sort of person who'd enforce shower-charging policies.
On the way down the mountain, an hour or so later, I asked Ellis about his job as a ridge runner.
"It mostly consists of keeping people from camping in places they shouldn't," he said.
I kept silent. He was walking behind me, and I hoped he hadn't noticed the back of my neck turning pink.
"I just don't understand it," he continued. "There are five shelters in the area I patrol, two of them on the A.T. But people still feel the need to stealth camp."
"Maybe they like the solitude," I offered. "Or maybe they want to stay someplace with a view. As long as they leave no trace, is it really a problem?"
There was a pause before he answered. "In the Greylock State Reservation, it's illegal. And it's my job to enforce that law."
"So, uni, what else does a ridge runner do?" I asked him.
"I'm on duty four days a week," he told me. "I hike all the trails around here, clearing blowdowns. I make sure the shelters are all in good repair. I helped build the one we're staying in tonight, Mark Noepal. Named in honor of a volunteer trail maintainer, a really great guy, who died young of a heart attack. Sawing the logs for the shelter was one of the last things he did."
"A lot of shelters are named for people, and I always wonder who they are," I told him. "It's good to know some of the history behind the place where I'm staying."
"Don't you carry the Companion?" he asked. "It tells the stories behind a lot ofshelter names:"
"No, I've just got the maps." Waterfall had carried the 7hru-Hikers' Cmfl- pallion, a book that described the services available in Trail towns. Except for the time we spent hiking with her, jackrabbit and I had relied on nobos for that kind of information. Now, I realized, I wouldn't be passing many more northbounders.
"I'll give you my copy of the Companion," Ellis told nie. "My ridge running job's almost over for the summer. I'll have to buy the new edition next year anyway."
Along with the hook, Ellis gave me a few tips he'd gathered from nobos during the summer.
"In Dalton-that's about fourteen miles from here-there's a guy named Tom who lets hikers tent on his lawn. After Dalton, you'll probably want to camp at the Cookie Lady's place, just a quarter mile east of the Trail on the Pittsfield Road. She bakes cookies for hikers, and she'll let you camp in her field if you ask. Try to avoid October Mountain Shelter; a problem bear's been hanging out there all summer, stealing hikers' food:'
"DO you have a lot of trouble with hears around here?" I asked, doing my best to sound nonchalant.
Ellis laughed. "No; I've never even seen one in the Reserve. We do have a problem with porcupines, though "
I'd noticed that few of the shelters outside of Maine had porcupine traps; I'd assumed that the creatures were less common in populous states like Massachusetts.
"They're always trying to get into the shelters to gnaw on the floorboards," Ellis continued. "They're not at all shy of humans. One night I was lying on my back in the shelter, and I woke up with a heavy weight on my chest. I had raised my hand to push it off when I realized that I wasn't home, so it couldn't be my cat. When my eyes adjusted to the moonlight, I saw its quills.-
"What did you do?" I asked.
"Oil, I just held still. After a few minutes it waddled off."
The spacious, recently built Mark Noepal Shelter had several layers of bunks. I chose a top one, just to be on the safe side. As I drifted oft, I listened for legions of porcupines scrabbling up the walls, but the only sound was Ellis's soft, rhythmic snore. Tempting fate, he'd laid out his mat on the floor.
The day dawned overcast. By the time I reached the town of Cheshire, four miles from the shelter, the morning's drizzle had turned to a deluge. Rain slashed against my bare legs and poured down the sleeves of niy jacket each time I lifted my hiking poles. Okay, I like rain, but not quite this much of it, I complained to the weather gods. So calm down, will you? On the other side of town, the woods seemed dark as twilight, all the leaves streaming and glimmering in the downpour. Pausing to tighten my pack straps, I saw the fur-a few long, black strands clinging to a branch beside the trail. Someone's got a black dog, I told myself. A big black doi, and they walk it here. It made sensemore sense than my initial image of a big black bear roving the outskirts of town. Still, I breathed a sigh of relief when the woods thinned out at the ridge top, and I could see farther than ten feet ahead of me. I ate lunch under a hemlock, with a boulder at my back and a cliff not far in front of me.
A few miles before the town of Dalton, I crossed a power line cut. After the relative brightness of the clearing, it took my eyes a moment to adjust to the forest again-so I heard the creature before I saw it. Crashing, plunging through the underbrush, a blur of dark fur and gathered muscle. As soon as my eyes focused, I realized that it was a relatively small bear, probably not much heavier than I was, and-more to the point-running away as fast as it could go. This gave me courage; I waved my arms over my head, hiking sticks and all, and shouted, "Shoo, bear! Go away!" at the rapidly dwindling creature.
As it vanished among the trees, I felt a rush of elation. 1, Isis, had scared off a bear. Not the Tae Kwon Do sister. Not the sister who was six feet tall, whose aura of quiet power made men step out of her way in dark streets. Me, Isis. Alone. It didn't matter that the bear had been running before I saw it; I felt as valiant as if I'd wrestled the creature and won.
Nonetheless, I wasn't terribly eager to encounter the bear again. For the rest of the afternoon, I recited poetry, sang at the top of my lungs, and chanted "Bear, bear, go away!" as I strode through the dripping woods. That night, I was grateful for the streetlit haven of Tom's suburban lawn.
In Dalton, I finally reached jackrabbit on a pay phone outside the general store.
"I'm so glad you called," she said. "I'm hoping to meet you in six days." She told me that some friends of hers were driving down to Western Massachusetts for a relative's memorial service. They'd offered to drop her off anywhere within an hour's drive. I checked my maps. At the rate I'd been going, five days would bring me to Great Barrington, where I was planning to stop for my next resupply. Five days and a zero. I could move faster-] knew that I was capable of hiking at least fourteen miles a day-but I wanted to enjoy this last week on my own. Six days seemed like very little time.
"I'11 be in Great Barrington," I told jackrabbit.
I hiked an easy nine miles to the Cookie Lady's house the next day. She was away at work when I arrived, but her husband Roy, a genial, silver-haired blueberry farmer, greeted me with a basket full of homemade cookies. For what was left of the afternoon, I helped him prune diseased limbs off his berry bushes. All around us, the hazy golden light of a day after rain saturated the fields with spring-like green. Snipping away the dead wood, enveloped by the scent of ripe fruit, I felt a sense of security that I'd been missing since I woke to frost at Goddard Shelter. At last, I was doing something useful to prepare for winter, instead of struggling futilely to outrun it. For a rural New England girl whose mother kept a quarter-acre garden, fall was the time to harvest and can vegetables, to mulch the berry bushes and fill the back hall with paper bags of potatoes. Time to gather food and firewood and prepare to hibernate. Not the time to head south through the mountains with a change of clothes, a sleeping bag, and one week's worth of food.
Barefoot Sisters: Southbound Page 19