Barefoot Sisters: Southbound

by Lucy Letcher;Susan Letcher

  "It's a nice tent," I said, emerging. "How much are you asking?"

  We bargained him down to a reasonable sung.

  "Dude," Lash said, "it's a pretty good tent and all. I just don't understand why you're buying it now. There's, like, a hundred and thirty-five miles left. You can get through that without a tent"

  "Isis and I are hiking again," I said.

  "Next year?"

  "No, we're gonna yo-yo"

  "No shit!"

  Lash and Tim looked at us, their jaws hanging open. Charlemagne had another laughing fit, ending with the same choking cough. "Well, I'll be damned," he said once he had caught his breath. "That tent's gonna cover more miles than I am this year"

  Isis

  ash and Tim hitched into the town of Franklin at Winding Stair Gap, while we hiked three miles farther, to Rock Gap Shelter.

  "We're ahead of the guys!" jackrabbit crowed. "Remember when we thought we'd never catch tip to them? Oh, and look at this ..." she ran her finger along the bottom of the map, counting off the miles. "We just pulled a barefoot twenty, and it's not even dark yet! At this rate, we'll reach Georgia in a day and a half."

  "And Springer by the end of the week!"

  We were still congratulating each other on our newfound speed-hiking abilities as we packed up the next morning.

  "I wonder if they'll catch us by lunchtime?" I mused. "I've got some chocolate I've been meaning to share"

  "If we hike as fast as we did yesterday, we might have to eat it all ourselves," jackrabbit answered, strapping on her pack.

  "No such luck," I told her, and waved at Lash and Tim, who had just stridden into view around a corner of the shelter trail.

  Jackrabbit turned and greeted them. "Hey, guys. Bright and early. Either the nightlife in Franklin left something to be desired, or else you missed us terribly."

  "Uh, both, I guess" Lash looked more distracted than the early hour could explain. "Hey, did you ladies see the Tree?"

  "I've seen a few lately. Why, did you lose one?" I teased hint.

  "They haven't seen it!" Tim exclaimed, practically dancing with excitement. "Come on, we'll show you. It's just half a mile back . .

  "Back?" Jackrabbit could hardly have sounded more indignant if Tim had asked her to rinse out his socks for him. But curiosity got the better of her, and a few minutes later, we were both walking north up the trail, following the guys.

  They turned onto a side trail marked by a sign we hadn't noticed the day before in our hurry to reach the shelter. Wasilik Poplar, 0.5, it read. Point live off the (rail? I thought. Ui''Ii have walked two miles this morning before ive get anywhere. But I didn't say anything; to turn back at that point would have meant a mile completely wasted.

  The side trail snaked down the ridge for what seemed much longer than its stated distance. Around each bend, I expected to see an unusually large tree, but there was only more of the same second-growth forest. Unbroken by either snow or sunlight, it formed a monotonous, muted tableau of gray and beige.

  Then I saw it, at the bottom of a long downhill-a tree that made the forest around it look like a thicket of saplings. A broken-down split-rail fence, circling the tree twenty feet out from the trunk, looked like Tinker Toys beside it. There was nothing beautiful about the Wasilik Poplar; stubby, broken limbs protruded from a trunk shaped like a monstrous wine bottle, as thick at the base as ten of the ordinary trees beside it, and tapering halfway up to only four times their thickness. But the sight of this last giant of the Southern forests, raising its lightning-scarred branches high over the crowns of its neighbors, filled me with such joy and wonder that I forgot all about the long day's hike ahead of us. I wanted to spend hours tracing the fissures in its bark and leaning my head against the trunk, imagining that I could hear the sap rising. I wished I had something to leave with the tree, an offering to this survivor from the ancient forests.

  As I stepped through a gap in the fence, into the circle of the Poplar's clearing, something dark and shimmering among the dry leaves by the fence post caught my eye. I brushed the leaves away: a smooth, dry coil of cast-oft blacksnake skin, lighter than paper. What a gift, this symbol of renewal when the long winter had left the woods bleached and barren, and no sign of spring yet showed. And what a place to have found it, in the clearing of the Poplar. It would be a powerful talisman to carry with me, pressed in my notebook, for luck on our northbound hike. Or perhaps I would send it home and ask my mother to put it on my altar, between the sculpture of Inanna and the smooth triangle of black stone that I had found on a beach in Alaska.

  In the end, I carried it over to the base of the tree and tucked it in a crack between the roots. Alay your seedlings ~~rou~ old as you are, I prayed, as I clasped hands with my three companions, reaching as far around the trunk as the four of us, together, could.

  We reached Carter Gap Shelter just after dark; our visit to the Wasilik Poplar had gotten us off to a very late start. The unmistakable roar of a Dragonfly stove greeted us, and a barrage of headlamp beams fixed on us as we stepped into the shelter. When my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw four men and a woman, all in their early twenties, sitting on the edge of the sleeping platform. They had the fashion sense of winter thru-hikers: shorts worn over long underwear, hooded fleece jackets, and tight knit caps in virulent colors. But none of the men had much in the way of beards, and, even more strangely, I couldn't smell them from where I was standing. They seemed to be able to smell me, though; the two who had been eating put down their spoons.

  "Um, hi," said the young woman. "I'm Amy. Are you guys thru-hikers? I don't think we've met before"

  "Hi, Amy," said Tim, in his most suave accent. I saw her nose wrinkle a little as he stepped forward, but she shook his proffered hand. "I'm Tiny Tini. This is my pack, Scrooge. And these are my hiking companions, Isis,jackrab- bit, and Lash. We're southbounders."

  "Southbounders! No way!"

  "Through the winter?"

  "All the way from Katahdin?"

  "How did you get through the Smokies?"

  "Man, you guys must be nuts!"

  "Southbounders! I'm embarrassed to call myself a thru-hiker in front of y'all."

  I was hungry and tired, and I wanted to find the water source before the storm that had been threatening all afternoon broke over us. I renienl- bered, though, how excited we'd been when we met our first nobos in the Wilderness-those gaunt, scraggly men and muscular women whose eyes seemed to gaze into a distance I couldn't fathom. They had reminded me of storybook heroes, Robin Hood's merry men, with staves in their rough, tanned hands. I had wanted to sit all night at their campfires, asking about every detail of their journeys. Thinking back to my own early days on the Trail, I tried to answer these starting northbounders' questions patiently.

  "Go ahead, call yourself a thru-hiker," I told the man who'd spoken last. His eager, round face, rimmed in a couple millimeters of fuzzy blond stubble, looked terribly young. "We always did"

  When the excitement had died down, Amy told us how to get to the spring. "There's another shelter, too," she said. "The old one just across the trail. The maintainers who built this one haven't torn it down yet, and it looks like it's still sturdy enough to use. You guys might want to stay there; this shelter's pretty packed with all five of us."

  I glanced at the packs, stoves and jackets strewn across the sleeping platform. 71u,se nol,os have no idea, yet, hoii' many people could /it in here, I thought. I thanked Amy for the information, though, before we headed over to the old shelter. No point in foisting our stench on them for the duration of the night, and I was just as glad to be free of questions.

  "Sobos sleepin' on the wrong side of the tracks," joked jackrabbit, as we spread our foam pads on the pitted, slanting floor of the old shelter. The whole building tilted slightly to the left, looking as though one good gust of wind would knock it into a heap of kindling.

  We were eating dinner when the storm struck: a distant rumble of thunder, a light patter of rain on th
e tin roof, silence, and then a deluge. Rusted spots on the ceiling darkened and began to drip. We scrambled around, rearranging our sleeping bags to avoid the major leaks, and trying to patch the minor ones with candle wax and duct tape.

  By the time we had patched all the leaks that our improvised caulking could handle, finished our suppers, and snuggled into our sleeping bags, the storm was right overhead. Thunder crashed like cymbals, with the sinn ltane- ous lightning flashes lending us glimpses of wind-tossed hemlocks, rhododendron leaves rustling and gleaming like the wing covers of hundreds of huge black beetles, and a swaying, iridescent curtain of rain. The darkness between Hashes had a velvety thickness to it, like the darkness inside a cave. I took a hand out of my sleeping bag and held it up in front of my face. I couldn't see it. Not the faintest glimmer of pale skin differentiated it from the shelter floor or the clearing beyond.

  "This would he a good night for ghost stories," came Lash's voice, from my left.

  "Yeah," said Tim. "It's like in those horror movies, where you can't see anything. Then there's a Hash of lightning, and a homicidal maniac runs into the clearing with blood dripping from his ax!"

  I laughed. "What homicidal nianiac would be out on a night like this, ten miles from the nearest town? Besides, it's raining so hard that all the ketchup would wash off his ax before the,,, had time to shoot the scene. He'd have to go hack to the makeup tent to get it reslathered."

  Tim's voice became quiet and ominous. "This is Eric Rudolph territory, you know. The F.B.I. never caught him." He lowered his voice even more and spoke in a stage whisper. "Maybe he's out there right now."

  I laughed again. The infamous clinic bomber was one of the last people I'd like to meet alone in the woods, but it seemed preposterous that anyone who lived in the mountains would choose to venture out on a night like this. Even the bears, I thought, hungry as they were from their long sleep, would retreat to their caves in such weather. And then there was the utter darkness. A moment ago, its strange weight had frightened nie, but now I felt it cover me like a protective mantle.

  "Come on, Tim," I said. "If I can't see my hand in front of my face, he couldn't see me to attack me, even if he did night-hike all the way over here for the express purpose of terrorizing thru-hikers."

  "Night-vision goggles," Tim answered, a note of malicious triumph in his voice. "Imagine Eric Rudolph with night vision goggles. Out there. Right now."

  It worked. Adrenaline coursed through my veins like an electric shock. No movies I've ever seen, and few nightmares, have filled me with such intense, irrational panic. It didn't matter that a wanted man wasn't likely to show up in a shelter full of hikers. I didn't stop to wonder how he would have come by the night-vision goggles, either. The idea of a man out there, hunting me, who could see me even when I couldn't see him-wouldn't be able to see him if he were standing a foot away from me-made me feel nauseous with terror. I stifled a scream.

  "Stop it Tim! Stop!" I sobbed. I shuffled down in my sleeping bag until the rough logs of the wall pressed into my back. My body shook uncontrollably, and my eyes snapped open wide, as if they could stare hard enough to pierce the darkness. A flash of lightning threw the clearing into dazzling relief. Trees, rain, the slick black leaves of rhododendrons. In the corners of my vision, I saw my friends staring tip at me.

  "Hey ... Isis, I was kidding. Okay?" Tim sounded just as dismayed by my reaction as I was. "Listen, night-vision goggles are really expensive. And the good ones are military issue only. There's no way Eric Rudolph would have a pair. So don't worry, okay? Don't worry."

  "I'm fine," I told him, trying to control the tremor in my voice. "I don't know what happened. I'll be fine"

  IT be fine. Just Fide. I repeated to myself, but the panic took a long time to quell. I lay awake for hours, staring into the blank darkness. When I woke up the next morning, I still had my back pressed hard against the wall. The thunder and lightning had passed, but rain still hammered on the leaky roof. Lash had rolled under a drip in the night; he woke up cursing and left in a hurry. Tiny followed close behind him. Jackrabbit and I made hot chocolate and ate a slow breakfast, waiting for the rain to let up. It didn't. Finally, we put on our Gore-Tex, picked up our packs, and stepped out into the downpour.

  The day started with a mile of downhill, followed by the gradual, fivemile-long ascent of Standing Indian Mountain. As we began climbing, I noticed that the sleeves of my jacket were sticking to my arms. Was I sweating? I felt too cold. I looked down at my sleeves. Water darkened the cloth, instead of beading up and rolling off it. Somewhere in the course of the winter, my rain jacket had lost its waterproofing. So had any rain pants; I could feel them beginning to cling to my legs. I turned to look at jackrabbit. I took in the dark shade of her coat and the way the fabric stuck to her arms; her rain gear was failing, too. I met her eyes, and I was shocked by their dull, trapped expression.

  "Keep going," she said, in a weary monotone. "We need to stay warm."

  I walked on, faster, trying to warn) myself up. It worked on the uphill, but once we started down the other side of the mountain, I couldn't go fast enough. The soaking Gore-Tex didn't seem to offer any insulation; I felt as if I were swimming in fifty-degree water. I can't put any more layers on, I thought. I need my wool shirt and my fleece to change into at the shelter. I need to keep them dry. 'l'here'c nothing I can do about the cold. Halfway down the mountain, stumbling and limping on the sharp gravel trail, I recognized the thought pattern: lrypotherrrria. I threw down my pack.

  "Let's get our wool shirts on," I said to jackrabbit. "They'll keep us warm even if they're wet. I'm getting hypothermic, and I'll bet anything you are, too. '

  She responded by bursting into tears.

  Olt shit, I said to myself. Ole liick. I'm too late; shes it basket case already. I raised my voice.

  "Jackrabbit. Take your pack off and put your wool shirt on."

  "That's what I'm doing," she answered, through gritted teeth. She slung her pack to the ground, pulled back the pack cover, and grabbed her wool shirt.

  "Okay. Sorry. I was afraid you were too hypothermic to understand me:"

  "It's the rain. I hate the rain. Fuck it! I hate being wet, the way my fingers and toes shrivel up and turn spongy, like they're rotting."

  She continued talking as we stripped our wet jackets off, tugged the sleeves of our wool shirts up our wet arms, and put our jackets back on over them.

  "You remember that spring I worked as a gardener, out on the West Coast? I was there four months and I saw the sun maybe three times. It rained all day, every day. I worked outside from eight to five, kneeling in the mud pulling weeds. My rain jacket was a piece of shit and I didn't want to buy a good one-I was trying to save money. I was just out of high school. I thought, is this all there is? Is this what the rest of my life is going to be like? And I guess I could have just quit and gone anywhere, but it was easier to stay there. Stay miserable. That's what being wet all day reminds me of-being seventeen and depressed."

  The rain fell steadily all morning and into the afternoon. My shirt kept me warm enough, but I could feel the wet wool chafing my back and armpits. We passed Muskrat Creek Shelter without pausing to check the register; both of us knew that if we stopped in a shelter, we'd stay there.

  "We're almost to Georgia," I told jackrabbit. "I think it's only three more miles to Bly Gap"

  She sighed. "Isis ... I don't think I can do it"

  "What's wrong? Are you sick? Come on, let's go back to Muskrat Creek-"

  "No, I don't want to go back. ['m not sick. It's just ... I'm so tired. My hip aches. My knees are bothering me again. My toes feel like they're burning, and my hands-look at them-in this rain, they're falling apart."

  I balanced my hiking sticks in the crook of one arum, and took her hands in mine. She was right; they felt cold, the skin looked waxy and gray, and it had peeled back around the cuticles so far that it was bleeding in some places.

  My own hands had worried me all winter. Most
mornings, I woke to find them cramped into the position in which they held my hiking sticks; sometimes it took five minutes to massage them open again. The first three fingers on my right hand turned a bloodless yellow when they got too cold and came back to life, burning, half an hour later. I had exposed them so often in winter, to mend my pack or prepare our lunches, that they seemed to have suffered the same kind of circulatory damage as my toes. Compared to jackrabbit's, though, my hands looked strong and rosy.

  "Isis .. " Her voice sounded almost pleading. "I feel like I've spent all the strength I have, getting this far. There's nothing left in me. I don't think I'll make it to Springer."

  "You will. Here, borrow some of my strength if you want it" I gave her hands a gentle squeeze. "You'll make it, and we'll yo-yo. Right

  "I wish I had your confidence"

  "I wish I could give it to you." I squeezed her hands again, then let them go and grabbed my hiking sticks. "Come on, sister, let's go to Georgia. Maybe the weather will be better there"

  The rain did let up as we hiked down the last hillside into Bly Gap. I tried to cross my fingers around my hiking sticks. It didn't work very well, so I sent out a prayer to Nuit, the Egyptian sky-goddess, instead. Enout'h mater. 77nank you .10r the looter. Noll' could n'e have some swishlnc? I know' I'm very demnandin.q, but it's for n11' sister. ,She needs a little encourat'crnent riitht m'uv.

  ,Just then, we cane to a clearing. Through the drizzle, I saw a large oak in the middle of the trail, a few hundred yards downhill from us, so gnarled that it looked like a giant bonsai tree. Half the length of its trunk twisted along the ground, then forked into two main branches and a graceful lattice of side limbs, covered in lichen the color of oxidized copper. A white blaze shone from the nearest branch.