Barefoot Sisters: Southbound

by Lucy Letcher;Susan Letcher

  On the side of a steep scree slope, where a few trees had managed to get a foothold in the jumble of rocks, we met a man out for the weekend. He carried a pack easily twice the size of mine. All his gear looked brand new: unscuffed leather boots, spotless nylon pack cover, the latest in high-tech breathable fibers in his pants and jacket.

  "Thru-hikers," he said in a somewhat accusatory tone. "I shared a shelter with thru-hikers once. It had been raining all day. The thru-hikers came in and hung their wet gear all across the entrance of the shelter!"

  "Hnun," I said, wondering what else he thought they should have done.

  "I mean, they didn't even leave any air space! The smell was terrible." He leaned forward conspiratorially, and then caught a whiff of us and stepped back. "I almost expired," he announced.

  At an overlook where the trail crossed the parkway, we met another man, a heavyset executive type in his forties, who stepped out of his car to take a picture of the view.

  "Where does that trail go?" he asked as we emerged from the woods.

  "Maine," I said.

  He looked at us blankly. "Any good views?"

  We covered more than sixty miles in our first three days as shod hikers and discovered the kinds of problems we had avoided by going barefoot. At lunch the second day, Isis took her shoes off and examined her toes. "I think my feet must have grown, because these shoes are way too small. Look at this" There were ugly dark bruises under both her big toenails.

  "Oh, that's bad!" I said. "The only time I ever had something like that was when I dropped a piece of firewood on my foot a couple winters ago. Lost the toenail."

  "I'll probably lose them, too." She grimaced. "I've got to get some better shoes. In the meantime, I'm going to hike barefoot again."

  I started to protest. "Rockfish Gap is thirty miles from here! If we want to get there tomorrow, there's no way . . "

  Her face was set. "I can do it."

  I didn't doubt it. I knew her feet were tougher than mine. I resented it, though; she was implying that I was the reason we had gone so slowly, even though she walked ahead of me as often as not.

  "Fine." After lunch I set off even faster than before. She did keep up, with a visible effort of will; every time I looked back she was right behind me, her head down, scowling.

  On the third day, the problems of hiking in shoes caught up with me, too. My left heel burned like fire. Seven miles from Rockfish Gap, as the sun began to swing toward afternoon, I had to stop. I took off the shoe and gingerly peeled back the sock. An ugly blister the size of a dime stood out on the back of my heel. I dealt with it as best I could, cushioning it with moleskin and covering it with duct tape. It still hurt.

  As we continued down the trail, Isis and I exchanged a glance. "How do people do this in shoes?" I said.

  Isis

  rom Rockfish Gap we caught a ride into the town of Waynesboro. The Companion didn't list any hostels here, so we decided to splurge on a night in the Comfort Inn. We unpacked our cleanest clothes, took quick prelinii- nary showers to remove the first layer of grime, and headed toward the neon pizza sign that beckoned from a mall across the street. As if my body took its release from the pack's weight as a signal to collapse, I found myself hobbling down the corridors of the hotel, the muscles in my legs threatening to cramp at every step. Walking downhill was even harder; on the gentle incline of the wheelchair access ramp my feet thumped down hard and flat, sending jolts of pain up my legs to my spine. Halfway across the lawn, I found the way blocked by a short, steep descent.

  "My knees aren't going to take this," moaned jackrabbit, who had stopped beside nee. "I'll probably end up rolling down"

  "Good idea," I said, lying on my side at the top of the hill.

  "You're not really going to-"

  "Better than trying to walk." I pushed off.

  A moment later, I heard jackrabbit's laughter ring out as she rolled down the hill behind inc.

  We ordered two large pizzas and split a few greasy appetizers while we waited for them to arrive. As we left the restaurant after our meal, jackrabbit said, "I don't know about you, but I'm not nearly full enough" I agreed. We bought a half gallon of cherry vanilla at the grocery store across the plaza and limped back to our room with it.

  As we worked our way through the ice cream, lying back against the overstuffed pillows on the hotel bed, jackrabbit examined the hotel's pay-per view movie menu. "Ick. Yuck. Gross. Is there anything rated R or under? Oh, other side. Hmph. A selection of last year's blockbusters," she said in a perky announcer's voice, "with emphasis on gratuitous violence and formulaic plots. Shall we try the TV?"

  "I guess so. Maybe we can find some interesting nature program.-Jackrab- bit and I had grown up without a television. From the programs I'd seen while visiting friends or babysitting, I didn't think we'd missed much.

  "There's always The Simpsons," said jackrabbit.

  She found the last fifteen minutes of a Sinipsons episode, after which we flipped through the channels with little success, until-

  "Hold on. Back one. What on earth is he doing?"

  "He appears to be holding a very angry snake by the tail."

  We had found the Crocodile Hunter. In the months that followed, as blizzards replaced the ice storms and each week on the Trail brought a host of new challenges and dangers, we tried to schedule our town stops for Wednesday nights, when Crocodile Hunter was on. As jackrabbit put it, "it's reassuring to see that there's someone out there who's crazier than we are-and he's still alive."

  We found other ways to entertain each other as we hiked into winter on our own. Way back in Maine, somewhere in the Barren-Chairback Range, the words of a song I'd been trying to write for years had suddenly fallen into place. Jackrabbit had woven a harmony for my simple melody line, and "The Nightbirds," as we called it, had become the serious theme of our hike, as "Dig A Hole" was the comic theme. Now we sang almost every night, between tea and sleeping-our own songs, folk songs, bluegrass, jazz standards, and spirituals. The spirituals inspired me to write a winter song, a hymn of loss and longing for home: cast of the sunset, and nest of the moon, there stands a I)r~qlit island; I'm goini1 home soon.

  With all our friends ahead of us, we counted more than ever on the registers to cheer us. Sometimes, we'd find an entry in Waterfall's fine, bubbly script, and we'd pore over her descriptions of the lovely fall scenery she was hiking through. She'd sign off with the words, "Life is good!" and draw a smiley face with pigtails next to her name. Other times, jackrabbit amused the by deciphering the entries of an early lobo named Porkchop. His handwriting looked like it belonged to a hyperactive preschooler, but, once decoded, his entries displayed a marvelous offbeat sense of humor, applied to the most random subject matter. In my all-time favorite Porkchop entry, he ranted for a full page about the relative merits of five or six off-brand versions of 1)r. Pepper.

  The best registers of all were those that contained entries from Pilgrim and Gollum, a father-son hiking team who'd started in Maine only a few weeks ahead of us. They were both fast hikers; the dates of their entries indicated that they had probably reached Springer before Thanksgiving. Although we'd given up hope of meeting them long ago, we'd followed their progress in the registers so closely that it felt as if we knew them. In Maine, Golluni had earned his trail name by leaving a series of clever, original riddles for the hikers behind him to puzzle over. His later entries reminded me of conversations with college friends in the early hours of the morning: meandering essays on topics ranging from "Why do flying grasshoppers hump into people? to "What if Monty Python hiked the Trail?" Pilgrim, his father, wrote contemplative passages on the changing of the seasons and the sweetness of a spring's water. Once, he filled two pages of a register with his graceful retelling of a Hasidic folk tale in which a man travels to a distant city in search of a treasure lie has dreamed of, only to find it under his doorstep when he returns home. Pilgrim's gentle, thought-provoking words always lifted my spirits.

 
Besides these glimpses into the lives of distant friends and strangers, the registers provided a final link to the people we'd been hiking with just before Thanksgiving. Netta wrote mainly Hebrew, but we could tell that she'd caught up with the guys when she scrawled #%$!* Black Forest! at the bottom of one entry. Underneath it, Black Forest had written I am sorry I stole Netta's.t'ram)la bar. I thought it b(Iont!ed to Heald. :Non, the only luau ti/ti! u'oinatt in this shelter is an,t!ry with mc. Sharkbait offered to beat up Black Forest if Netta wanted hint to, complained about the cold, and counted the days to Catawba. Heald poked fun at everyone with his dry New England sense of humor.

  Often, Lash and Black Forest collaborated on goofy messages to its, in which they threatened to hijack Snickers trucks and park them at road crossings. At Paul C. Wolfe shelter, just outside of Waynesboro, they duct-taped a couple of Snickers bars to a mouse hanger, with a little note reading some IIlaU1ksc'n'nn leftovers for the bQYetoot,ti'irls.

  I have lost my motivation, Lash wrote in the register there. Dear motivation, where did you too? Ife were hikitni so well totethcr .. .

  jackrabbit's eyes lit up as she read. "If he's lost his motivation, maybe we'll catch up to hint!''

  "I wouldn't count on it;" I said. "He'd probably get it hack the day before we caught him and pull a thirty."

  "Then we'll have to keep his motivation from getting to him before we do," said jackrabbit. Her eyes twinkled. "Let me see. If he lost it at this shelter, it's probably still somewhere around here. Motivations don't travel very fast without a host. We'll find it and hold it hostage until we see him again."

  I got into the game. "Look, it's right there. Lash's motivation!" I said, leaning over and pointing to the word motivation on the register page.

  "But how can we capture it?"jackrabbit asked. "We can't tear it out of the register."

  "Easy. Watch this." I took the notebook and carefully traced Lash's signature from the bottom of the page. I added an apostrophe and an S, then traced the word "motivation"

  "See? Lash's motivation. Put it somewhere safe." I handed the scrap of paper to jackrabbit.

  She laughed. "My sister the voodoo artist. Can you slow down Black Forest too? I was rather fond of my German badass."

  "Sorry. I can't help you there-unless he's foolish enough to leave his motivation lying around in a shelter somewhere"

  The next day, to our great surprise, we came within a few hours of catching Lash and company. Some northbounders I'd met in Vermont had told me to be sure to visit Rusty, a homesteader who let passing hikers stay the night at his farm. Jackrabbit and I left the Trail at a parking lot and followed the road southwest, as the nobos had instructed me. It looked as if few cars traveled that way; the previous night's snow covered the asphalt, undisturbed except for footprints. Footprints-five pairs of hiking boots, plus one large dog. Annie? Two of the boot tracks were flanked by the marks of hiking poles: Lash and Black Forest. The tracks led away from Rusty's, toward the trailhead.

  "We're within a day of them!" jackrabbit exclaimed. "Shall we go back to the trail?"

  "It's only an hour till dusk," I answered. "I don't think we'll catch them tonight, and besides, I really want to meet Rusty."

  After a few miles of road walking, we came to a driveway that seemed to fit the nobos' description and started down it. Soon, we found an iron gate barring the driveway with a small enamel sign nailed to a tree beside it. "This gate stays closed!" said the sign. Farther down the driveway, I could see an orange rectangle against the trunk of another tree. Was it a "No Trespassing" sign? Had we cone to the wrong place?

  "The footprints seem to come from here," said jackrabbit, behind Inc. "This roust be it." She didn't sound very certain, though.

  The orange rectangle on the tree was another sign, but it didn't say "No Trespassing." Instead, it said "If you don't like the Trail, get the hell off it!" Across the driveway, two more signs proclaimed "There is no such thing as a free lunch," and "Hike your own hike-don't tell anyone else how to hike his!" More signs hung in the trees farther down the driveway. "Pick up your trash!" "I didn't ask you to come here; don't make me ask you to leave." Several signs warned "beware of dog!" The house, when we reached it, looked like a mosaic of brightly colored enamel. "This is my house! You are my guest! Act like it!" said a sign on the peak of the roof. A board nailed over the lintel read "Closed for the winter;' but a sign beside the door stated "Rusty's Hard Time Hollow is open 365 days a year, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day-or until the Lord returns!" I was trying to decide which to believe, when a tall, gray-bearded nian in a plaid flannel shirt flung open the door.

  "Y'all must be the Barefoot Sisters," he rumbled. "Heard all about you from your friends. Come on in, and welcome. Don't mind the signs; they're just there to weed out the riffraff. Y'all hungry? I've got some sloppy joes on the stove" He led us through a screened porch, where dozens more signs flashed at us from the shadows, to a kitchen with smoke-darkened walls, lit by a single gas light and warmed by a blazing wood stove. A little orange dog made its appearance, wagging its tail enthusiastically and leaning its head against our knees.

  I wondered aloud if this was the dog we were supposed to "beware of"

  "Punkin?'' Rusty sounded affronted. "Punkin wouldn't hurt a mouse. Had him ever since he was a puppy. He's real smart, he can do all sorts of tricks. Only reason it says beware of him, is he can tell a good person from a bad. He starts growling at someone, I tell 'em to get the hell out" He flashed us a glare from beneath his shaggy eyebrows, but immediately smiled again. "He likes y'all, though "

  When we told Rusty that we were vegetarians, he insisted on making grilled cheese sandwiches. As we sat around eating supper in his living room, he passed us a photo album labeled A.T. 2000. In the early pages, we found Polaroid snapshots of some of the nobos we'd met. Around the Bend was there; a few pages later was the hunk who'd arisen from Lonesome Lake, and there was the young couple who'd given me directions to the Hollow, smiling and waving at the camera. Rusty pointed to a picture at the bottom of the page, in which a man in his late twenties, with a thin face and bright red hair, held what looked like a gold-painted circle of metal behind his head.

  "My first sobo this year. Porkchop, I think his name was. I have sobos wear the halo for their photos, so I can tell 'em apart from the northbounders."

  In the following pages, we found a lot of our old friends. Jackrabbit lingered over a picture of Tuba Man serenading Rusty's goats. ("Now there was an odd character," Rusty commented. "Touched in the head if you ask me, luggin' that thing all the way to Georgia.") On the next page, Blade's eyes shone brightly as if he had just heard the word "challenge," and he held the sobo halo aloft like a crown. Beside him, Waterfall squinted in the pale, wintry sunlight, the corners of her eyes crinkled and her lips pursed as if she was trying to hold back laughter. Matt was there, too, so thin that he looked even taller than I remembered him.

  At the end of the book, we found photos of the friends just ahead of us: Lash grinning from under his fluorescent orange hat, Sharkbait pulling his elbows in close to his chest as if he was shivering, Heald staring at the camera from under his brows as though he was posing for a mug shot. Beside him, Annie wore much the same expression. Black Forest held the sobo halo tipped to one side, and his eyes sparkled mischievously. Netta looked past the camera, her lips smiling but her brow contracted with worry.

  "Y'all missed 'em by just a few hours," Rusty told us. "They were here for days. I think they were waitin' for y'all."

  We set out early the next morning, fortified by the pancake breakfast Rusty had made for us and encouraged by the news that our friends were close ahead. In the shelter register at Maupin Field, a couple miles down the trail, Lash and Black Forest announced their plans; to make up for the time they'd lost waiting around at Rusty's, they were going to night-hike thirteen miles, ending with the three-thousand-foot ascent of a mountain called the Priest. Heald wrote that he, Sharkbait, and Netta planned to blue-blaze-hiker slang for t
aking a side trail rather than the white-blazed A.T.-going up the Mau-Har Trail to cut six miles from their night-hike and meeting the boys on top of the Priest.

  jackrabbit and I looked at each other in dismay. If they'd followed this schedule, we were already a day behind them.

  "Lash must have borrowed some of Black Forest's motivation," said jackrabbit. "I'm tempted to take this Mau-Har Trail to try to catch them. It looks almost level, and it's a lot shorter than the Three Ridges Trail, where the A.T. runs."

  "1)o you really think they went through with their plan? Don't forget the Maryland Challenge."

  We both laughed at the image of Lash and Black Forest blinking at us from their sleeping bags at eleven o'clock in the morning, whining about the rain.

  Jackrabbit laughed. "Yeah, we'll probably find them still asleep in the shelter right before the Priest, what's it called, Harpers Creek?"

  Sharp gravel and patches of ice on Three Ridges Trail slowed nme down. I hadn't found any boots in Waynesboro wide enough for my feet, so I was still barefoot. I did have my town shoes-a pair of sandals-and some neoprene socks I had picked up from the sale rack at the outfitter's store in Harpers Ferry. Kayakers used there to keep warm, I knew, and they would keep out dampness better than wool. I wanted to save the footwear until I really needed it, in case the sandals gave me blisters. Jackrabbit was having a hard time, too, despite her shoes; her blister from the Shenandoahs still hurt, and some steep climbs among boulders had brought back the old twinge in her hip.

  "I wish we'd taken the Mau-Har Trail," she said, as we picked our way down what looked like a frozen niudslide.

  "Next time," I answered vaguely, trying to step on frost fingers in such a way that the crystals wouldn't scratch my arches.

  We found Harper's Creek Shelter empty, but we were so tired that we decided to stay the night there anyway. While I cooked our instant rice and beans, jackrabbit read aloud from the register.