Barefoot Sisters: Southbound

by Lucy Letcher;Susan Letcher

  "Here's the grocery store" He pulled into the parking lot.

  "Thanks for your help, l)achs," I said. "And thanks for everything you've done for the Family. I know they appreciate it."

  He smiled. "I know they'd be out here whether or not I helped them. They're all pretty extraordinary people. And like I said, what I've given them pales in comparison to what I've learned from them. I give theta material things, boots and packs and a stove; they gave me my son back"

  Isis

  "e had two reasons to look forward to Partnership Shelter. First of all, we'd be meeting the Fancily there. The prospect of another evening in their company made even the clumps of wet snow that slid off the rhododendron leaves and down the backs of our necks seem bearable. Second, Partnership, a two-story timber frame building behind the headquarters of the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area, was famed as one of the few shelters on the Trail from which one could order pizza and get it delivered.

  Hope, Joy, and John ran out to meet us in front of the shelter, accompanied by a familiar orange dog who was baring her teeth gleefully and thrashing her whole body back and forth in greeting.

  "Annie?" said jackrabbit.

  "Yup. That's her," came a gruff' voice from under the shelter eaves. We looked up to see Heald and, right behind him, Netta.

  The group of us ordered six large pizzas and a few subs from the pay phone behind the park headquarters (this time, I'd made sure to bring cash), and I sat down to chat with Netta while we waited for the food to arrive. She told me that Lash had gotten off the Trail for Christmas. He planned to return the next day, right here at Partnership, so he'd be close behind us. Black Forest had hiked on ahead, fast and alone. In Atkins, he'd received a letter from his grandparents, who were planning to spend a few weeks in Hawaii at the end of January. They invited him to join them, if he could finish the Trail by January 21.

  "He decided to try." Netta shook her head, her dark curls bouncing. "He will have to average twenties ... that means four twenty-fives if he ever takes a day off ... and he will be all alone." She and Heald, Netta told me, had gotten so tired of being alone that they'd hiked four- and six-mile days for the past week, hoping we'd catch them.

  The next morning, Mary and Paul set out early, followed by the children. Heald wanted to stay around the shelter for a few hours in case Lash showed up, so Netta, jackrabbit, and I hiked out together. The children had left us messages, scratched in snowbanks: our names framed in hearts, their own names beside sketches of stick figures with packs. This inspired us to leave notes to the people behind. Happy Trails, Heald, I wrote, and made a quick sketch of Annie beside the words. Jackrabbit, feeling more flirtatious, wrote Sec you to,, 'lv, Las!,, with a heart.

  "Poor Lashy-Lash," said Netta. "You are teasing him"

  "`Lashy-Lash?' I like it;' said jackrabbit, and she added an "y-Lash" to her snow message.

  A few miles later, the Trail turned sharply up a steep embankment next to a tangle of snow-covered rhododendrons. In the relatively warm afternoon, the dark leaves had uncurled a little beneath their blanket of white. On cloudy winter days they looked black, but today, the sun shone on their glossy evergreen surfaces. Jackrabbit stopped, pointing to some more words beside the trail; Mary's neat blocky capitals spelled out STOP LOOK. LISTEN.

  All three of us stood still, looking out at the patch of rhododendrons. As the sound of our breathing grew quieter, a new sound reached lily ears; beneath the snow and the leaves, a hidden brook laughed in its stony bed. We would never have noticed it over the noise of our own footsteps-even our breathing might have drowned it out. Ruuui,u water! After all the dry springs and frozen streams, the sound alone filled me with delight.

  We stayed at Raccoon Branch Shelter that night. Lash never showed up, but the rest of us had a wonderful evening. We all worked together to find wood. In about fifteen minutes we had a pile big enough for a bonfire. Some of the smallest people brought hack the largest bundles of wood; at one point, I saw John dragging an entire fallen tree perhaps twenty feet long. Paul built the fire while Mary strung up a clothesline, and soon we were all sitting around the firepit, prodding the coals beneath our cooking pots, under three tiers of drying socks. After supper and a few songs, jackrabbit and I had tea with Mary and Netta. Our mom had sent us a tin of Christmas cookies in our Atkins mail drop; luckily, there were enough to share with everyone. I fell asleep feeling more peaceful and content than I'd felt in months. Jackrabbit and I were no longer alone. We had found our tribe.

  jackrabbit

  s we walked up toward the Grayson Highlands, the air grew colder and the snowdrifts deepened. We could see the trees on Iron Mountain, where we were headed, silvered with ice rime above about 3,500 feet.

  We clambered over a stile, the bottom third of it buried in snow, and the Trail came out into a pasture. An abandoned school bus lay in the strip of woods between this field and the next, up to its rusted hubcaps in snow.

  "See ya later," said Heald. "Me and Annie are gonna quit hiking and move in right here."

  Joy laughed. "Heald's gonna live in a bus!"

  "Beats walkin' in this weather." Heald reverted to his usual silence, but after a few footsteps he spoke again, a slow sarcastic grin coming over his face. "You know, if you hike in the winter, and your feet never touch the Trail 'cause of the snow, can you really say you've hiked the whole thing?"

  I had an answer for that one. "If you hike in boots and never actually have skin contact with the Trail, can you say you've done it then?"

  I heard Heald's rare chuckle over the sound of our boots crunching the snow. "You got a point there."

  Isis

  ater that afternoon, Hope and John walked with me and jackrabbit, while Netta and Mary brought up the rear. Hope was busy trying to decide where she wanted to live when she grew up (the Bahamas topped the list, but she also quizzed me and jackrabbit about Peru), when we came to a fallen tree maybe four inches in diameter, lying at waist height across the trail. Hope ducked under easily, followed by John, but they stopped on the other side and turned around.

  "This is gonna be real hard for Mary," Hope said, frowning. "She can't bend down with Faithie on her back"

  Both Hope and John seized hold of the tree and tugged it toward the side of the trail. Even when jackrabbit and I joined in, we got nowhere; there were too many small branches tangling the blowdown with the living trees around it. Finally I thought of the saw on my pocketknife. We all took turns sawing with a blade no longer than the trunk was wide, until we had cut it in two places and pushed the pieces oil the trail.

  "Mary's not the only one benefiting from that bit of trail maintenance;" jackrabbit told the children. "It's really going to help my knees, not to have to duck under that tree. Wish I had you guys around all the time,"

  John looked up at her with his solemn green eyes. "We want to keep hiking with you, too," he said.

  Late in the afternoon, Hope and I dropped back to hike with Mary.

  "Did you notice a tree that was sawed through Hope asked, skipping alongside her moni.

  "No," Mary said.

  "Oh." Hope stopped skipping and kicked at a lump of snow beside the trail. "We sawed through that tree, 'cause it was right in your way, and it was real big."

  "Well, you must have done a good job getting it out of the way, if I didn't even notice it."

  Hope threw back her shoulders and beamed.

  "I'm going ahead now," she announced. "I'm going to make sure there aren't any more trees in the way!"

  She dashed up the trail. Mary shook her head, smiling. "If I had a tenth the energy those kids do ..:"

  A quarter mile later, we caught up to Hope. I could see the dark curve of a well-traveled road cutting through the snow. On the other side, several cars were parked in a trailhead lot. Hope took Mary's hand to cross, looking, for a moment, much younger than her ten years. Just as we reached the parking lot, a family of four, parents and two grown children, jumped out of one of the cars. They
hurried over to us, exclaiming, "are you the Family from the North? We've heard so much about you! We're just out for the day: don't know how you do it in this cold! Can we take your picture?"

  My first reaction was relief to find that I wasn't the center of attention. My second reaction was astonishment at the incongruity of the scene. Here we were, struggling to survive and help each other through the winter. Gather wood, find water, walk. Carry enough food to share. Watch each other for signs of hypothermia. Push tree trunks out of the trail. And suddenly, someone was pointing a camera at Mary, as if she were a spectacle to entertain him, not a tired woman with three miles left to hike and dusk swiftly descending.

  Hope preened, obviously delighted with the attention, but Mary's smile looked forced as she posed beside the trail sign. They took three photos, then peppered Mary with questions. "Where's the rest of the family? We missed them? Oh, no! Here, if we give you our address, will you send us a picture of the whole family? How long have you been on the Trail?"

  Mary leaned against the sign, her face pale. I caught her eye and glanced past her to the trail, then back to her again. She nodded. I stepped to her side and faced the dayhikers, smiling.

  "I'm not a part of the Family," I said, "hut I've been hiking with them for a while. Maybe I can answer some of your questions"

  I told the wife that the Family had been on the Trail since July, that they had been homesteading before they started hiking, and yes, they did homeschool the children. Hope got their address from the dad, promising to send him a photo of the rest of the family "if we ever get a camera again."

  With a sigh of relief, Mary slipped away and headed up the trail.

  jackrabbit

  e camped at Old Orchard Shelter, packing into the small wooden building. A ratty camouflage tarp strung across the entrance had kept the snow from drifting in. Heald set up his bivy sack on the ground just in front of the shelter, under the tarp. Netta, Isis, the Family, and I occupied the sleeping platform. Hope and joy, with a minimum of bickering, set up their mats end-to-end across the bottom edge of the shelter floor.

  Joy bounded out of the shelter when her camp chores were done, still full of energy. She scooped up a handful of the powdery snow and ran toward Heald, who was returning from the spring with a pot of water. "I'm gonna getcha! I'm gonna hit ya with a snowball, Heald!"

  He jumped out of the way with surprising speed for someone of his size and set the pot down on the picnic table. "No you ain't. No girl's gonna hit nie with a snowball." He tried to look fierce, but he was grinning. Joy came closer. Heald reached forward and batted the snow out of her hands.

  Joy was indignant. "That's not fair, Heald. You're not s'posed to do that. It's against the rules!"

  As we cooked supper, we saw a hiker coming up the trail in the gloom. The loping stride, somewhat shortened by the foot-deep snow, looked familiar ... and the bright orange hat was unmistakable.

  "Lash!" The kids took up the cry. "Lash is here! Lash is here!" Mary had told me that the Family had camped with Lash a few days after Thanksgiving. The kids looked as excited as I was to see him again. I thought of the first time I had met him, when he and Black Forest hiked past our campsite in Pennsylvania. At the time, and so many times since then, I had thought I would never see him again. But here he was, dropping his pack and fending off John and Joel's attacks, picking up Hope and joy and swinging them around by their arms.

  Faith tottered up to the edge of the sleeping platform. "Lath? Lath, Mumma?"

  "That's right, sweetie," Mary said with a weak smile.

  The kids finally tired of climbing on Lash and returned to the warmth of their sleeping bags. He put on all his extra layers of clothing, and sat down on the edge of the platform to cook supper.

  "Hi, Lash"

  "Hey, jackrabbit. What's new?"

  "Not much. Same old same old, you know? I walk, I sleep, I eat. Missed you. Igo you still pee in a bottle?"

  He sighed theatrically, looking wounded. "Jackrabbit, there's more to me than lily bathroom habits!"

  "Did you see our messages in the snow?" Isis asked him.

  "Yes. 'See you tonight, Lash,' and all that?" He gave her a sidelong smile. "That's why I hiked a twenty-five today. Wanted to catch up with you.

  "Lash, I've got something for you," I said, opening the Ziploc where I kept my journal. "Here you go" It was the little scrap of paper where Isis and I had traced "Lash's motivation" at the shelter south of Waynesboro. "I thought you might want this hack. You seem to be having a bit of trouble without it."

  He looked at the paper and laughed. "So it's you guys that stole it! I should have known"

  I handed it to him. "Now that you've had to catch up with us for a change, I figured you should have it back."

  In the early morning hours I felt the snow begin, tiny pinpricks of cold that stung my cheeks. I pulled the hood of lily mummy bag tighter over lily head and tried to ignore it. The shelter was still in the predawn blackness, but far from silent. Mice scrabbled somewhere in the rafters, and off to my left I heard the tandem snores of Heald and Annie. One of the children niurniured something in a dream. I tried to go back to sleep, but my hips and knees were aching and my brain was wide awake, fretting about the future. Heald had mentioned something about balds ahead on the Grayson Highlands. I wondered how we would find our way across the open space if the snow kept up.

  Eventually the others stirred and began to stretch. I lay in my sleeping bag, relishing the last few moments of warmth, before 1 sat up and pulled on my polypro gloves. My hair crackled with tiny sparks of static as I combed and braided it. I heard the roar and hiss as Paul started the stove and the clink of pots and pans. Paul had offered to share the Family's hot breakfast with us, as long as we carried some extra cereal. It seemed like a good trade. The children got their cups out and Isis fetched oatmeal packets from our food bags for Hope and Joy. Paul poured hot water into the oats and stirred instant grits into the pot for the rest of us. In a few minutes he dished out the thick white gruel. We ate quickly before it could freeze to the sides of the cups.

  Lash and Heald were still closed up tight in their mummy bags, lying on the ground at the foot of the shelter. The big camouflage tarp across the entrance had kept out some of the snow, but handfuls of flakes had swirled in around the edges. The foot of Lash's yellow bivy sack was almost lost in a pile of white.

  "Look at Lash," Hope said, her voice frill of concern. "He looks like a snowdrift!"

  "A yellow snowdrift," I said.

  Joel giggled. "Don't eat the yellow snow!"

  The rest of the children took up the cry, laughing and pointing. Lash stirred and peeked out, his amber eyes just visible between the yellow edge of his bivy sack and the brim of his day-glo orange hat.

  "I hike twenty-five miles in the snow to catch up with you, and this is the welcome I get," he said petulantly.

  "Yellow snow, yellow snow!"

  Lash gave a dramatic sigh and rolled over, shedding his personal snowdrift.

  After breakfast, we packed up quickly, stamping our feet to keep warm. Joel checked the thermometer l)achs had given him. "Thirteen degrees," he announced triumphantly.

  Heald grunted. "It can get nasty out there on the Highlands. I'm gonna take the horse trail." He stared moodily out at the gray sky and the thickening snow. "Come on, ya smelly dog," he told Annie. He fastened on her filthy green pack and they headed into the woods.

  Isis, Paul, and I held a quick conference. "We've followed the white blazes this far," Paul said, "at least, for as much of the Trail as we've done. Might as well stay with the proper trail."

  Isis got out the map. "The horse trail is shorter, but who knows if it's as well-marked. If we follow the A.T., there's a shelter six miles out and another at eleven. We can hole up at the first one if it gets really bad."

  I remembered something Heald had said when we met up at Partnership Shelter. "That second shelter, Thomas Knob, has an attic. Heald said it's like Partnership. If the
snow keeps up, at least we'll have four walls around us there"

  It was calm and eerily still in the woods near Old Orchard Shelter. The snow had drifted knee-deep in places, but it was light enough to push through without too much difficulty. More was falling, brushing against our faces like tiny cold fingers. It clung to the branches of the trees in powder-soft piles, stacked six inches high and growing. The soft, gray light, diffused in the snowy sky, seemed to come from everywhere.

  Isis and I went out ahead of the group, breaking trail. The path led steadily upward, through a forest that changed from bare-limbed hardwoods to spruce and fir. As we hiked higher, the wind picked up, dislodging puffs of snow from the branches and sending them down, soundless white explosions against the white background. The temperature seemed to be dropping, too. I had started the day wearing my Gore-Tex rain gear, fleece jacket, hat, and gloves. On a warmer day, I would have taken the fleece off after a few minutes of hiking, but as it was, we'd been climbing uphill for several miles and I was still almost too cold.

  The light between the tree trunks ahead strengthened, and soon we came to the edge of an open space. I couldn't see the other side between the wraiths of blowing snow.

  "We don't go out there, do we?" I asked, but Isis was already making her way through the V-gate and into the field. I tightened the hood of my jacket and followed.

  "Hey, there are ponies here!"

  Sure enough, a cluster of shaggy brown and white animals stood in the snowbanks under the overhang of the woods. One of them came over and stood on the trail in front of us, watching us with its wild brown eyes. We shared some crackers with the pony. It was wary but eventually accepted them from our gloved hands. Its delicate lips revealed gnarled orange teeth; ice from its breath had condensed on the whiskers of its muzzle. It was comforting, in a strange way, to know that other animals were surviving the winter outside.

  As we walked out into the open, it became clear that the bald extended farther than we had thought. We walked for ten minutes, fighting the rising wind, and the trees on the other side were nowhere in sight. The Family caught up with us, moving with their usual speed even through the deep snow. We let them go ahead.