"Sorry, Isis" There was little contrition in his tone.
The car slowed a bit as it came through the gap. We all held our breath. I remembered the truck that had nearly run over John and me before we crossed the Roans. Then the car passed, the red taillights receding in the dark, flashing between the tree trunks.
"Jeez," Heald said. "I feel like a hunch of hobos, hiding out in a boxcar when the cops go by."
"Bunch of sobos, I said.
Heald gave a snort of laughter. "Here, pass nie that wine again. 11
The day dawned gray, but the clouds broke up as we packed our tent. I filtered two more liters from the leafy spring. No more salamanders came to light; they must have hidden themselves well for the daylight hours.
In the hazy sunlight, the north Georgia mountains seemed to stretch forever into the purple distance. Our endpoint was somewhere out there, somewhere close, but none of us knew which mountaintop it was. Isis and I paused at the top of the first steep ridge to search for Springer, and Lash and Tim came trotting up behind us.
"I think it's that one," Lash said, indicating a flat-topped ridge in the middle distance.
"That can't be it, too close. We're still, like, thirty-five miles from it," Tim said.
"Thirty-five miles. That's, like, nothing," Lash said. "That's a day and a half:'
I looked around. All of us wore the same expression of disbelief.
Tim gave a lewd wink. "A lot can happen in thirty-five miles, eh, ladies?"
Isis rolled her eyes. "Give it up, Tim."
I was pretty tired of his nonstop innuendo, too. "If you haven't gotten laid in the last 2,133 miles, Tim, what makes you think you'll get lucky in the next thirty-five?''
We came to Neel's Gap at midmorning. Sounds of traffic came up through the leafless woods for a long while before we saw the road. The white blazes of the Trail led through the alcove of a stone and wooden building, the Walasi-Yi Outdoor Center. We'd heard about the place from people who had hiked in previous years, and from the nobos we had inet. Thirty miles from Springer, Walasi-Yi is the first outfitter's store that nobos reach, and the first place with a phone and easy access to transportation. Many people completely overhaul their packs there, buying expensive new gear to replace things deemed too heavy or bulky in the first few days of hiking. Others, realizing that thru-hiking is not quite what they thought, leave the Trail there.
Downstairs, right next to the white-blazed posts of the alcove, was a small room with washers, dryers, and an overflowing hiker box. Isis rifled through the hiker box, emerging with two bags of dried fruit-banana chips and pineapple-and several gourmet freeze-dried meals.
"Sweet! Nice haul," I said.
"Yeah. Look at these dinners-the expensive kind!"
"Who would have left food like that?"
"Maybe they quit the Trail. Can you imagine quitting after thirty miles?" she said.
"Thirty miles. Where would that have put us sobos, Nesuntabunt?"
"Earlier, I think. That swamp with all the bugs. We had to run over the bog bridges for about a quarter mile. Remember?"
"Oh, yeah. I did think about quitting there. It wasn't an option, though"
"Maybe that's why lobos have a higher finishing rate," Isis sussed. "We don't really have an out until Monson. We have to he more committed from the start "
"Or maybe we ought to be committed!" I said. "Look at what we've been through: eaten alive by hugs, icebound, frostbitten, hungry . . . why would anybody in their right mind go sobo?"
"The people," Isis said. "Look at the friends we have"
Lash and Tim came around the corner of the building, each holding a Snickers bar. "Any chance the exchange rate has gone up?" Lash asked.
Tim made puppy dog eyes. "Time's running out."
We took our packs up to the porch on the side of the building, where there were picnic tables with another view of countless late winter mountains. The sun bounced off the flagstones and the wall, making a small patch of warmth. Isis and I bought a couple pints of Ben and Jerry's, that staple of hiker hangouts all along the Trail, and set to work. Lash and Tim sat at the next table clad in ratty spandex, mending their shorts with inexpert stitches. Heald lay on the flagstones, napping, with Annie draped over his midriff. Spike and Caveman came up in a few minutes with their own cartons of ice cream in hand.
A sniall group of northbounders, looking a little shell-shocked and uncertain, leaned their enormous packs against the railing. I remembered the feeling of the first few days on the Trail-the full-body weariness and disorientation, the perpetual effort of suspending disbelief. Tiro thousand miles is just a number to them, I thought, and I wanted to reassure them that yes, what they were doing was possible.
"You guys thru-hiking?" I asked.
"That's the plan," one of them said. He was a tall, lanky fellow, barely out of his teens.
"Awesome. Enjoy it while it lasts. This trail is a pretty amazing experience." Suddenly I realized my voice echoed the wistful tones of ex-hikers I had met all along the Trail.
"Are you a southbounder?" he asked, incredulous.
I nodded and gestured toward our ragtag group. "All of us, actually."
We enjoyed a few moments of adulation, shaking hands with the new nobos and wishing them luck-all of us except Heald, who squinted up into the bright sunlight and grunted something, but didn't move.
After the ice cream, we settled into a comfortable stupor, leaning against the picnic tables and soaking up the sunlight.
"I don't feel like hiking," Spike said, lolling against Caveman's shoulder. "I feel like ... slacking. Yeah."
"Sounds good to me," Isis said.
Caveman stirred. "This is a popular place. Chances are we can find somebody to shuttle us to Woody Gap or thereabouts, and hike back"
"And then we could stay at the cabins down the road, and eat town food!" Spike said, getting more excited.
Lash, Heald, and Tim elected to stay on the trail for one more night. Part of me was sorry to be spending our second-to-last night as southbounders without them, but most of me was glad to be away from the deluge of innuendo and double entendre that followed Lash and Tim like a bad smell.
In a short while, we sat in the back of Wes Wisson's van, headed for Woody Gap. A stout man in a plaid shirt and jeans, he regaled us with tales of the hikers he had shuttled. "There's one guy I brought out here this spring, said he was going to hike the Trail eating nothing but power bars. I said, `good luck, buddy!' Haven't heard anything since. Another guy, couple of years ago, called me from Atlanta wanting a shuttle up to Amicalola. So I went down there, and he had all the gear, you know, brand new pack, new tent, new boots, new rain gear. Musta spent thousands of dollars on it. And then, about five days later, I get a call here at Neel's Gap, from somebody wants to go back to Atlanta. I get here, and it's the same guy! He said hiking wasn't his thing. I thought, jeez, the least you can do is try it out first, before you spend four thousand bucks on it! There's no telling what people will do with their money."
The grass in the valley was beginning to turn green. In a few places, the fragile buds of daffodils peeked up through the mud. I thought how difficult it would be to leave the Trail now, with spring just starting, and I was glad that Isis and I planned to yo-yo. I wondered what lay ahead of us on our return journey. The southbound trip had been one surprise after another, some wonderful, some terrible. I had no idea what to expect or prepare for in our northbound hike.
Wes grew reflective as the countryside rolled past. "The Trail's a wonderful thing for a lot of people. It brings folks together. It's given me opportunities. Before I started this shuttle business, I was just a retired guy on a disability pension. Now I'm famous!"
Spike began to giggle.
"Oh, it's true," Wes told her with a look of severity. "Did you ever hear of a guy named Bill Bryson?"
"Oh, that was you!" Caveman exclaimed. "You're the guy that shuttled Bill Bryson from Atlanta! I remember that part of the book! I ki
nd of pictured you older and crustier, though"
"He did take a few ... liberties," Wes said, smiling. "But it made me famous. It really did. My wife and I were flying to Paris for our fortieth anniversary, and somebody on the plane knew who I was from that book. He must've said something to the flight attendant, because all of a sudden they announced it over the intercom. They said, `Ladies and gentlemen-"' he paused, enjoying the memory, "--`we have a famous person on board, Mr. Wes Wisson!' So I stood up, and people were cheering for me! They really were!"
He stopped the van in a gravel parking lot, and in a moment my eyes found the first white blazes and the narrow path winding off into the trees.
"Woody Gap," he said. "I'll see y'all tomorrow, then, at the cabins."
"Can I shake your hand, Wes, since you're famous?" Spike asked, with laughter playing about her face.
"Maybe tomorrow," he answered her, barely suppressing a grin.
We raced along the path in the midday sun, giddy with the sudden freedom of leaving our packs behind, passing droves of northbounders. On one mountaintop, there was a young woman trying to get reception for her cell phone. "Hello? Can you hear me? Hello? I can't hear you. Where are you?" The new hikers seemed to be almost all overburdened and underprepared, looking glum and resentful under huge loads. It was difficult, sometimes, not to laugh at the gear we saw; one man carried a cast iron saucepan that must have weighed ten pounds, and another had an electric coffee-maker strapped to the outside of his pack. I remembered the contemptuous comments of some northbounders we had met in Maine, though, and I tried to be considerate. I knew I must have looked just as foolish when I started southbound.
As evening wore on, we came to the shoulder of Blood Mountain, a place called Slaughter Gap. The sun set in a fierce red light that seemed to ooze between the branches and drip from the trees.
"I feel like Lady Macbeth," Spike said, looking at her hands. Turned palms-up, they looked bloody in the weird light.
"This is freaky!" Isis said.
"Where does the name Blood Mountain come from, anyway?" I asked. "And Slaughter Gap?"
Caveman said, "I think there was a big massacre here, when the settlers were fighting the Cherokees. I can't remember which side got killed."
"Probably the Indians," Spike said. "Whoever it was, a bunch of people died here" She shivered in the diminishing red light. "History's all about people dying, people killing, people taking things that don't belong to them. I want to write a new history."
"I think that hiking the Trail is a step toward it," Caveman said. "You begin to see the continuity of things out here. We're all part of the same community."
"Yeah," I said. "If we could just extend that to society out beyond the Trail"
"It's our mission," Spike said in a mock-heroic tone. "We must keep the Trail spirit alive, to bring freedom, happiness, and ramen to all mankind."
"I love you, guys," Caveman said in a drunk, weepy voice, and we all broke down laughing. The spell of the red hillside dissolved around us.
All day, I had been expecting to cross paths with Lash and Heald. We finally found them at the summit of Blood Mountain, two and a half miles south of Neel's Gap. The Blood Mountain Shelter loomed behind us, a stocky four-sided building of stone and timber that looked like a fortress.
"Hey, guys, you've gotta see this," Lash said. He stood on a rock pile by the shelter. I scrambled up beside him and looked out over the valley. Twilight had stained the sky dark red and purple, with a thin rim of gold along the western edge. The tops of distant mountains reflected the fading light, and the lights of houses in the valleys were just coming on, little enclaves of fireflies here and there among the deep shadows of the hogbacked ridges.
"Isn't that awesome?" he said. "Isn't that the most awesome thing in the world? The lights, man. Look at all the lights. All those people down there. And us up here. Long as I live I'm gonna miss this."
Isis, Spike, Caveman, and I said farewell to Lash and Heald, after exacting a promise that they would meet us at Hawk Mountain (eight miles from Springer) the following night. We galloped down the mountain in the gathering dark, leaping over roots and caroming off the larger rocks. Spike's joyous whinnying laugh echoed through the dusky trees as she ran. Far off in the valleys, more lights began to flicker on, and we ran faster, just for the sheer joy of running, free, packless. I felt as though I had suddenly gained superhuman jumping abilities. We made it from the summit to the road in half an hour, and came to Walasi-Yi just as the Goose Creek Cabins van came into the parking lot.
The driver was a grandfatherly man in his sixties, whose whole face crinkled up when he smiled. "Welcome," he said. "We can go on down to town for dinner if y'all'd like that. It's all-you-can-eat crab legs night at the Riverside."
"Sounds good to me!" Caveman said.
The Riverside Cafe was a busy diner, set, as the name suggested, on the bank of a rushing river. From our table, we could look almost straight down on the water. The air was thick with the perfume of frying things. The waitress, a petite young woman with permed blond hair and makeup that threatened to overwhelm her features, poured us water and handed menus around.
"Our special tonight," she said in a thick drawl, "is the all-you-can-eat crayubb for ten ninety-nine. For twelve ninety-nine you get crayubb and shriy-unapt "
Other than the seafood, everything on the menu was fried: fried trout, fried chicken, chicken-fried steak. Even the vegetable side dishes-turnip, squash, sweet potato, okra-passed through the Fry-o-lator. The food arrived quickly and was plentiful, accompanied by pitcher after pitcher of sweet tea. Isis, Spike, and I got identical-looking plates piled high with breaded, fried things. Trout, turnips, sweet potatoes-it was all indistinguishable in a coating of breadcrumbs, but it tasted heavenly to our trail-whetted appetites.
Caveman's plate was different; a tangle of long, ungainly crab legs draped over a heaping bowl of Gulf shrimp. It looked like a large amount of food, even for a hiker.
"Just what the doctor ordered," he said, smiling, and dug into the plate with abandon.
Caveman surfaced as the three of us were halfway done with our fried platters, and the waitress, frowning slightly, brought him another heaping plate.
There were other tables of hikers in the restaurant, easily recognizable by their lightweight clothes and general scruffiness, but none of them were as scruffy as the four of us, and none nearly as hungry. We drew more than a few stares.
"I guess they must not get too many southbounders here this time of year," Spike said, after the waitress brought out Caveman's third plate of crab legs with an alarmed expression on her face. We ordered some French fries to keep him company.
The restaurant was clearing out by the time Caveman's appetite slowed down. The fourth plate of seafood languished on the table. Caveman picked up half a crab and put it in the end of his sleeve like a red, warty hand. He stirred his water glass with the crab legs, then reached up to scratch his head with a look of stern concentration. Isis and Spike and I clutched our bellies, laughing helplessly. Caveman used the crab legs to wave down the waitress, who approached our table with a certain trepidation.
"Y'all want the check?" she asked, and Caveman shook his head.
"Before you bring it, could I please have a small dish of vanilla ice cream?"
Isis
series of five or six short, steep hills, where the map's elevation profile .showed two nearly level miles, changed our easy twelve-mile day into a grueling march. We doubted our position on the map, wondered aloud whether we'd gotten lost on an older section of trail, as we had in Pennsylvania, and almost went back to look for a place where we might have taken a wrong turn. The iron-gray sky didn't help our moods-now that our GoreTex had given out, rain threatened us with hypothermia as well as discomfort.
"If there was a train track right here," jackrabbit growled as we slogged up the fourth unexpected PUD, "I'd hop on the first freight car that came along, and go right home to Maine. If there was a
road, I'd hitch out. I'm sick of this."
"Nothing but logging roads between here and Springer, and I doubt we'll see any cars on them," I told her. "I'm afraid we're in it for the long haul."
Twenty minutes later, we came down into Hightower Gap, where the trail crossed the intersection of two logging roads. To my surprise, I noticed a small blue car parked in the V of gravel between the roads. I turned to jackrabbit.
"Hey look, there's your ride! You still wanna hitch out?"
"It'd be hard to hitch a ride from a car with no driver," she said, her lips curving in a faint smile. "I wonder what the driver's doing out here, anyway?"
"Probably taking a hike," I said.
"This time of evening? This time of year? This stretch of trail? No one in their right mind ..."
Her voice trailed off, and we looked at each other, laughing.
The twilight deepened as we hiked the last half-mile up to Hawk Mountain Shelter, where we planned to spend the final night of our southbound hike. One foot in front of the other, I told myself, picking my way up the rocky trail in the gathering darkness. The shelter can't be far from here. I heard running footsteps and looked up. A handsome, clean-shaven young man with bright blond hair, wearing sneakers, shorts, and about fifty Mardi-Gras necklaces was hurtling down the trail toward us. My God, he must be crazy! I thought. I wonder who on earth he is. Not a northbounder, that's for certain. No one would have that kind of energy after his first day hiking. A sobo? Crazy. Sobo. Suddenly I had it-Tuba Man.
It was indeed Tuba Man, on his way back down to his car to get his tuba. He had gotten jackrabbit's last e-mail update, calculated the day we'd reach Hawk Mountain, and driven out to the Trail to serenade us on the night before we finished.
"I forgot the pizza, though." He sounded contrite, as though he'd messed up a really important plan. "I was going to bring you a pizza. I could still go back to town and get one ..."
"pizza! Forget pizza!" jackrabbit laughed, flinging her arms around his beaded neck. "You brought yourself!"
It was an interesting evening at Hawk Mountain. Spike and Caveman had arrived early. Tim, Lash and Heald came in a little after we did, bringing the total number of Y2K sobos at the shelter to eight. Of the thirty-odd starting nobos camped there, nine were "repeat offenders"-people who had hiked the Trail in previous years and returned to hike it again. There were almost as many of us who had completed, or nearly completed, thru-hikes, as there were beginners who had just hiked their first eight miles of the A.T.
Barefoot Sisters: Southbound Page 59