Jackrabbit, Spike, Caveman, and I gathered wood for a campfire, while Tuba Man played an arrangement of "Linos and Lucy" so fast that I wondered how he found time to breathe. An hour later, he was playing something more sedate, when two men dressed in full camouflage, carrying assault rifles and what looked like binoculars on strings around their necks, stepped into the light of our fire. The older one cleared his throat and began speaking.
"We're with the Army Rangers," he said. "We're training a group of R.O.T.C. cadets here tonight, and we're going to simulate a reconnaissance mission. A few of our men will pose as enemy soldiers; they'll build a campfire behind the shelter. At twenty-one hundred hours-forty-five minutes from now-the cadets will move in from the north, circle the shelter in a clover-leaf formation, and take notes on the enemy position. After ten minutes, they'll leave the way they came, and return to the rendezvous point. Thank you for your cooperation.
"Cooperation?" I asked jackrabbit, as the men vanished into the woods. "It doesn't sound like we have any say in the matter"
At ten of nine, I headed to the woods to pee, but stopped halfway there. What if the R.O.T.C. class had arrived early? What if they were out there even now, watching our every move? I could wait to pee until I was sure they had cone and gone.
I waited. Nine o'clock came and went, and not the least rustle of a leaf betrayed the presence of the R.O.T.C. class. Davin, these guys are good, I thought to myself. Either that or they're late. I crossed my legs under the table, and asked the woman sitting across from me, a petite, frail-looking brunette named Abbie, how it felt to be a repeat offender.
"It's a dream come true," she answered. "I've missed the Trail every day since I finished, back in '98."
Around quarter to ten, a loud crashing noise came from the woods down the hill to the north of us. Ten or fifteen yards beyond the shelter clearing, I could see about twenty people, most of whom seemed to have glow-sticks taped to their backs, running back and forth between the rhododendron bushes. They continued dodging from thicket to thicket, occasionally tripping over each other with muffled curses, for the next five Minutes. Laughing to myself, I walked a ways into the forest on the other side of the shelter and relieved mny aching bladder.
When I returned, I found Tim and Tuba Man telling a story to a rapt audience of hikers, while jackrabbit bandaged a cut on Tuba Man's hand. In the background, the crashing and cursing continued, still concentrated down the hill to the north of us.
"We decided, since they were doing such a lousy job of sneaking up on us," Tim said, "we'd circle around behind them, sneak up on them, and show their how it's done"
"The poor kids!" I exclaimed. "You probably gave them the fright of their lives!"
"Naw. The guy I sneaked up on, he just thought I was one of his coin- panions. When he saw I was a hiker, he looked kinda confused, not scared or anything. But Tuba Man-"
"I sneaked right up behind this guy," Tuba Man said with a grin, "and he didn't even notice me. So I jumped up and hollered, `who brought the beer?' Then he turned around, and I noticed that he wasn't a kid. He was one of the officers. He glared at me for a minute, and then he said, in this really disapproving voice, `we're on a mission here"'
An hour or so later, when the K.O.T.C.ers had finally crashed away down the mountain, I lay in my sleeping bag, going over in my mind the evening that had just passed. It seemed so surreal: forty hikers at one shelter, tuba music, Mardi-Gras beads, and the inept soldiers-in-training running around in the bushes with glow-sticks on their backs.
When I thought of the day that lay ahead of us, though, it seemed even less believable. Eight miles to Springer. Eight miles out of two thousand one hundred and sixty-eight. (This was the number the Data Book offered-more accurate, I knew, than the mileage on the sign atop Katahdin. The actual length of the A.T. varies each year as sections are relocated.) I'd been hiking toward Springer for eight and a half months, through the White Mountains and the rocks of Pennsylvania and a winter I couldn't have imagined until I found myself in the midst of it. And now it was half a day's journey away. It was too much to contemplate. I closed my eyes and fell asleep.
jackrabbit
ist hung about the trees in the morning as I packed up the wet tent. For once, I didn't mind the extra weight of it-I knew today's hike would be short. Tuba Man came over as I stuffed the soggy bundle into my pack.
"Hey, thanks for coming out here," I said.
"No prob. I had a good time" In the early morning light, his eyes were a heart-stopping shade of blue.
I wanted to say something, anything, but I found myself tongue-tied. "It's great to see you," I finally blurted.
"Yeah. It's good to be back here. I miss the Trail."
"I hope, I mean, maybe, I'll see you again sometime?" My voice came out high and breathless, and I knew I was blushing.
He didn't seem to notice, though. "You never know where nie and Charisma might turn up," he said with a sweet smile that made my knees weak. Then he was gone, walking down the side trail with his sleeping bag and tuba under one arm, waving to everyone with his free hand. I watched him until he disappeared into the thick fog.
Isis and I finished packing and left the shelter only a few minutes behind the other sobos. We walked barefoot in the cool red mud, wearing a few strands of Mardi-Gras beads that Tuba Man had given us. I had expected to feel boundless elation as the destination approached, but the fog-shrouded woods seemed to swallow up my feeling of triumph. Instead, I felt a certain numbness, and something almost like regret. I'ni firuishint the pail, but I haven't even hiked the whole thiiic,'. I've spent eiqht months of nay life doin,'-what? It seemed like just another day on the Trail. I kept walking. The thick clay underfoot stuck between my toes, staining my feet red.
A few miles into the day, we followed the short side trail to Long Creek Falls. Among the rhododendrons, indistinct in the mist, the rain-swollen stream cascaded over a ten-foot drop. The rush of falling water shut out all other sounds. Isis and I stopped to eat a snack, and I watched the ever-changing shapes of lace in the current. All at once I felt the singularity of time close in around nie: This is the only time I will ever stand here, in this (feather, tn'ellty-three years old, thinlrinc exactly these thonc1hts, my feet exactly here in the dead leaves. Each niolllcm of illy life is as unique, as irrel'ocahle, as the patterns in this tfaterfall.
Before long, we came to it Forest Service parking lot. It began to rain steadily, long needles of water that shimmered in the open air. We pulled up the hoods of our jackets. I read the wooden trail sign tacked to a tree at the edge of the clearing:
Less than a mile now. Like the 2,160 miles on the sign at Katahdin's summit (or the 2,168 in the current Data Book), it was just a number. But slowly, underneath the numbness in my brain, I could feel joy and amazement gathering. It was March 3, 2001, and a journey of more than eight months was ticking down to its final minutes.
We stopped at the shelter. Tini, Lash, and Heald huddled in their sleeping bags in the loft.
"l)id you guys summit yet?" I called.
"No," Tim said, almost wistfully. "I don't want to go up there in the rain. And its like ... well, I guess I don't want it to be over, you know?"
Lash peeked out from under his fluorescent orange hat. "Yeah, what he said."
"It's just another mountain," Heald grunted.
"Think we'll go up tomorrow," Lash said.
"Come on, guys," Isis said. "Who's going to take our summit photos?"
Tim intentionally misunderstood. "What'd you say? Naked summit photos?"
"Too cold for that, man," I said. "Come on, somebody's got to take pictures for us"
"Spike and Caveman went tip there just a few minutes ago," Heald said. "You could probably catch 'em if you head out now."
"Thanks, man. See you in a few."
We heard Spike's laughter, echoing through the trees in the thickening mist, long before we saw her. She came running down the trail, followed by Caveman, who was grinni
ng from ear to ear.
"Look what I got! Look what he gave me!" Spike said in a breathless voice. She held up her left hand, showing a ring with an enormous glittering diamond.
"Oh, Spike! Congratulations!" I hugged her.
"I carried it for the whole Trail," Caveman said, a little choked-up. "I thought, if we could put up with each other for two thousand miles, it was worth a try-
-so he got down on one knee, and he said, will you-will you ..: " tears of happiness streamed down her cheeks.
"That's so sweet. Congratulations," Isis said. "Come back to the summit with us. We'll take pictures for you."
"Thanks;" Caveman said. "It's only a couple minutes' hike"
A io►iple ►►►i►mtes. The sense of joy gathered inside me now, stronger and stronger. We were almost running. The rain picked up, huge chilly drops that dripped from the gray trees and splattered against the hood of my Gore-Tex jacket, but the weather could not mar my happiness. I hardly felt the cold mud and sharp gravel underfoot as we climbed the last few feet of the rise.
And there it was. The low, wooded summit of Springer Mountain in the rain. A brass plaque set in a boulder marked the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, and a smaller plaque marked the last blaze. As my fingers touched the cold, wet metal, it finally became real to me-this was the endpoint. The destination. This stand of oak trees, this dark rock, this forest around us receding in the mist, was the goal for which we had struggled for so many months. And we had arrived. I found myself laughing and crying at once.
It was too cold to stand still for long. We all took pictures of each other posing by the plaque. Spike showed us where a register was hidden in a cranny under the rock. I wrote a few inane sentences, overcome by emotion, and left a message for the Family from the North. I hoped we would be back on the Trail in time to see them summit. My fingers cramped around the pen in the cold; rain dripped off the hood of my jacket and blurred the letters.
I looked around the clearing one more time, trying to fix it in my memory. The shapes of the trees and rocks seemed to take on meaning, like fragments of a pattern wholly beyond lily understanding. I sent a silent prayer of thanks to the overcast, rainy sky. And then we turned to walk down the mountain, back the way we had come.
Isis
e sat in the corner of Springer Mountain Shelter, listening to the rain on the root.
"My God. We did it. I never really believed we'd make it. And here we jackrabbit murmured. I glanced over at her; a radiant smile shone through ears that still streamed down her face.
I felt buoyant with happiness, but my joy had more to do with Spike and Caveman's engagement and jackrabbit's peace of mind than with any great sense of accomplishment. It was another day on the Trail, no more nmonmen- tous or heroic than another. We had hiked up to a wooded peak of inconsequential height, important only because its name had been on our tongues for two-thirds of a year. Important because there had been times when we had both thought that we'd never reach it. But why shouldn't we have reached it? We'd reached hundreds of little, wooded mountains, and hiked over most of them without a second thought. Third Mountain. Fourth Mountain. Mount Mist. Bake Oven Knob. Hazeltop. Mount Love. Devil's Tater Patch. Springer. Springer. The name still gave me a little shiver of delight, like the name of some magical distant place I'd read about in childhood, Timbuktu or Cairo or Zanzibar; I just couldn't reconcile it to the mountain where we had stood.
I found the shelter register and searched it for the final entries of our other sobo friends. I'd expected poetry and philosophy and heartfelt goodbyes to friends behind, but most of the entries were brief and to the point. I made it! Can't believe it! Time to hit the nearest town and order the last large pizza I'll be eatin ' by myself fior a while.
The starting northbounders were more prolix, recording their hopes and fears by the paragraph. I wondered if we'd left register entries like that in the Wilderness. Probably. I thought back to our first few weeks on the Trail-no bread, far too many peanuts. Matt sharing his crackers with us at Wadleigh Stream Lean-to. Tenbrooks striding out of a thunderstorm and joining us for tea. Highlander singing in the summer night. Waterfall complimenting jackrabbit on a well-turned Piscataquis Pirouette. Waterfall stealthing with us in the Whites and playing piano with jackrabbit the afternoon before she left Hanover. Waterfall. There had been a time when we thought that we'd finish the Trail together.
"Hey, ya'll! Surprise!" I looked up and she was there, her blue eyes full of laughter, her blond pigtails framing her face under a floppy cotton hat. I had to blink a few times to make sure I hadn't imagined it. Behind her stood a group of other hikers, friends we'd met at the Gathering. They'd all driven out with her to meet us. I sprang to my feet and ran to embrace Waterfall, feeling tears start in the corners of my eyes. Suddenly, I felt like we'd accomplished something. We'd caught up with Waterfall, and here we were, standins,, on Springer together in the rain.
T be continued ...
Table of Contents
CHAPTER I
The Wilderness
CHAPTER 2
Southbounders
CHAPTER 3
The White Mountains
CHAPTER 4
Isis Alone
CHAPTER 5
The Gathering
The Rocks of Pennsylvania
CHAPTER 7
"As Long as It's Fun"
CHAPTER 8
Boots and Snowshoes
CHAPTER 9
The Scales
CHAPTER 10
The Last of the Sobos
"Bye, Never See You Again"
CHAPTER 12
Sobos on the Wrong Side of the Tracks
Barefoot Sisters: Southbound Page 60