Girl in the Woods

by Aspen Matis

  “Just fuck all of them,” she said. “Fuck them. Men are animals.” She told me Boomer and Never-Never and a hiker named Shell and a few other guys had been joking around, teasing a marmot. It was getting dark and everyone set up his shelter. “There was this marmot, hanging around, and Boomer chased it away. But it came back. The guys were rowdy.”

  They started to harass the animal, circle around it, close in. Boomer threw pebbles, then stones. With a makeshift slingshot, Shell shot sticks. They struck it until it was crippled. It hobbled and squeaked, terrified, and it trailed blood.

  She leaned against me. I was freezing by now, shivering convulsively. “I left,” she said, “but I know they killed it.”

  Silverfox and I hiked down Sonora Pass together. The pass’s northern side was even steeper, cragged and cliffed in places, frosty slick granite sheeted with black ice. We descended in small steps, quiet, focused. This was my scariest descent yet. I stepped with precision, tentative now, gripping and planting my ice ax, thinking of Icecap to distract my frantic heart. Far more frightened here than I’d been on Whitney with him. Letting myself miss him, the safety he gave me.

  But I also saw he wasn’t what I needed now. To have stayed with him any longer would have been a forfeit, a shortcut that bypassed the intention of my whole hike. I’d needed to walk on my own. I hoped my solitude would help me reclaim my innocence, remember who I’d been, to find who I wanted to be. To become her. To love her, Deborah, Debby, Doll Girl, Wild Child, me, despite the irreversible truth that I’d been raped. I was learning again that I could trust myself and, also, I was seeing, other people. I was brave enough now to go out alone toward what I wanted, to trust that I was strong enough for it, to know that help would come when I needed it. It always came.

  Silverfox and I made it down. Safe now, we descended the gentle slope of a wooded foothill, along a loud stream.

  “Fuck them all,” she yelled. “Icecap was a total dick to you. Jesus Christ, Icecap too.”

  I blinked at her. The sky behind her white-blond hair was bright deep blue. Her split ends glowed, lit by sun, a thousand tiny frayed golden strands of light, wild and lovely. “Not really,” I told her. “He actually isn’t.”

  Speaking this, I realized that he really wasn’t. He had been good to me. Night after night after night, alone with him in wilderness, I had trusted him. Lying beside him, naked sometimes. He had held me through forty-three nights and nine hundred miles as I said No, No, No, No, No. He had never pushed. He’d never asked me why.

  I gave him forty-three tests to see if a man could listen and not take what I hadn’t offered. Forty-three whispers praying he would erase the man who didn’t stop.

  I didn’t get hurt. I had shown him my power. I had shown myself, and together we had obliterated my fear and dread.

  At last I knew what I’d been doing with Icecap-Daniel. He had shown me not all guys are Junior Mason. He had shown me that some men can be kind.

  I was grateful to him. He left me better off than he’d found me.

  I looked at Silverfox, into her ice blue eyes. “No,” I told her, “Icecap was good.”

  She leaned away. We walked the rest of the evening without talking. I didn’t like her. Her squint and lean showed that she again despised me.

  That last night, my final night in the High Sierra, we camped together, but didn’t huddle or chat. Silverfox and I went our separate ways after refueling in Bridgeport, California the next day. I entered the Northern Sierra alone again.

  My thrilling solitude had begun deep inside John Muir’s exalted Range of Light, in beauty, at Upper Crabtree Meadow three hundred miles behind me. I couldn’t know then, but my isolation would extend from the Sierra to shadowed pine forests, up through southern Oregon’s Volcano Lands: a thousand consecutive miles of walking the wilderness alone.

  The next month I would find a note left in a register that said “I miss Wild Child,” signed “Icecap,” but I never saw him again.

  PART III

  The Way Through

  CHAPTER 15

  A THOUSAND MILES OF SOLITUDE

  Solvitur ambulando

  —A LATIN TERM THAT MEANS

  “IT IS SOLVED BY WALKING”

  All great and precious things are lonely.

  —JOHN STEINBECK, EAST OF EDEN

  you say it was lonely only sometimes

  what was the rest of the time

  —CORRINA GRAMMA

  JUNE 18, UNKNOWN PLACE, THE NORTHERN HIGH SIERRA

  The mountains of the Northern Sierra rise and fracture like the shards of a dropped ceramic, impaling the uneven ground, erect. Sun-poured and slashed by shadows black and long. Deadly, lovely, angular faces thrilling to witness: frightening; they morph you. You’re merely a blackened speck. Long ridges cut the sky, drop down into fog-washed forest, hemlocks with arms like soft walls, sweep back up again to sharp summits, gray.

  I stepped carefully, walking along a slick and rocky ridge, down toward timberline, down down into woods that smelled of black soil and sage. In the forest, on my own, I felt like a dandelion seed, caught circling in gusting wind: lonely, but also sometimes gleeful, riding on my own safe current.

  One day I came upon a register in the forest. Trail registers had become my only link to other hikers, my way of communicating with my north-drifting community. I always liked to read the registers’ notes—but in this particular Ziploc-protected notebook I saw something that startled me. It was an entry by a hiker named Vic, telling that Monty’s Donner Party from Warner Springs had failed. Up north they had encountered just as much snow. Not one of the group’s members made it through. Each one abandoned the trail. BoJo—I remembered him from Kennedy Meadows; he’d been a computer programmer and the PCT had long been his retirement dream—had fallen in the snow and broken his foot. I hoped this was only a rumor.

  I remembered BoJo, how insecure and sweet he’d seemed. He’d told me that ever since he’d learned of the long footpath from Eric Ryback’s old boyhood travel memoir, he’d wanted to hike the trail. He’d saved up to quit his programming job for seventeen years, since long before he’d begun to lose his hair and balance. I found his fall so sad. He had followed Monty and in a blink derailed his wild dreams.

  I wondered where he was now, if he was back in Cleveland, if he was happier than he’d been before walking. I signed “Wild Child” without a note, shut the book, and sealed it safely back into its Ziploc bag. I kept walking north, thinking about where the trail was taking me.

  My beauty and independence were new for me. They brought me pride and satisfaction; they changed my sense of possibility. I felt awake in my body. Living in the woods, building my little shelter each night, a silent shadow, drifting in and out of mountain towns, a ghost, I was entirely self-reliant. On the trail I had persisted despite fear, and walking the Pacific Crest had led me deeply into happiness. I felt amazing now. In this body that brought me twelve hundred miles, I felt I could do anything.

  But I also began to fear the place where the trail ended. I wondered what I’d do after the walk, where I would land, if I should go back to college, if I could even face it. The image of the gap in the forest invaded me—the trail abruptly stopping. After all this hard work walking, strong in motion, the hike would leave me in Canada, myself still. What if the PCT’s essential lessons were only ephemeral? I feared I could simply lose the trail’s grand gifts—regress. The PCT would end, and I felt panicked.

  I felt truly homeless, directionless. I hadn’t been making my own path; I’d been walking an old established trail, only mindlessly following it. And it would end. And Junior was still at Colorado College. I couldn’t go back there.

  Maybe I could move back home to Newton and live with my parents, get a job waitressing at Johnny’s Luncheonette. Other girls I knew did that on their summer breaks. And lots of young writers supported themselves with mindless jobs. I’d again live with my folks. I would waitress and also write. I would be safe. My mother loved m
e madly. Yes, there were certainly worse things in the world.

  Home in Newton my mother would resume blocking me from harm. She’d drive me to appointments. She would feed me well. I would be taken care of. She’d make sure that I was proactively protected against sicknesses, as she’d insisted on doing since I was a child.

  But I also knew that she wouldn’t see me, didn’t get me, couldn’t see what I was or what I am. Back home, my mother would still impulsively choose my clothes as she’d chosen my name. But all the identities she’d chosen for me felt wrong, now. I could not return to the person she’d picked for me to be. My relationship with my mother trapped me in the identity of a child.

  I was here, alone in the Northern High Sierra, learning I could survive on my own. I was not fragile and weak; I’d have to learn to face adversities. My mother couldn’t protect me from Junior. She couldn’t protect me from life, yet she had never taught or trusted me to go and live it well. She didn’t recognize how capable I was, respect my autonomous capabilities. She taught me only how to need to be taken care of.

  I was here because I needed to learn to take responsibility for making my own decisions—to earn my own trust.

  And now, finally taking the chance to make the mistakes that would allow me to learn, I felt stronger. I found, within my solitude, my competence. I was learning to take care of myself—to feel powerful.

  My strong body pushed me across the peaks of the High Sierra, I could survive violent hunger—find my way through, against all odds. Debby Parker couldn’t.

  Now the idea of returning home, to my pastel wooden childhood bedroom, made me feel just as weak and claustrophobic as imagining going back to my cinder-block dorm. I feared returning to Newton would mean the loss of all the progress away from Debby I’d been making as I hiked. Just as I’d known I needed to cross the Range of Light without Icecap in order to get what I needed—to grow—I sensed that I couldn’t go home and go forward. At home, I would be trapped as helpless Debby Parker.

  But the trail would end, that was inevitable.

  I walked down the blond sand trail, the sun was white, the foxtail pines brick corkscrews, the sky China-silk blue. I was placeless. I carried everything on my back, exactly what I needed to survive. I didn’t know how I’d survive without this structure, silent bears and vista highs, the infinite beauty.

  A thick sheet of water cascaded off a smooth granite ledge like a glass curtain. Soaked moss gleamed. The far edge of the waterfall ended in a rock, and there the glossed sheet shattered, sprayed violently. My heart fluttered, frantic.

  I pulled off my shirt, unhooked my bra, exposed my body. I was slim and strong now. I stepped into the frigid pulse of the waterfall, braced and goose-bumped, struck by thrill. I was on my own. I had passed two bearded thru-hikers several hours before, but I didn’t care. I’d seen others nude on the trail, though not so often; timing-wise, it just didn’t happen a lot. And I loved my body now.

  I was shivering, euphoric. The granite smelled fresh, of roots and sand, and the freezing water pounded the rock-slab floor, the spray golden, pure light. I wouldn’t be embarrassed—or even endangered—to be seen naked out here in these woods. I had the body of Wild Child. I knew that if anyone saw me, they’d sense my strength. They wouldn’t touch me.

  A warm spring wind shook the pines, I watched them quiver. I felt heated from within, as if by an internal fire flickering. I had never felt so strong—so defiant. I was so far from my mother, from my coddled, suburban self, from the sad-mute raped girl who stood at Mexico’s edge. A thousand miles past that girl. Getting clean.

  I knew fiercely that I couldn’t move back home.

  The next register I came upon again had a note that struck me. It read, “Thirty miles yesterday, twenty-eight already today. It’s been a little extra fun. Wild Children are gettin wild. Hand massages, foot massages . . . other massages.” It was signed by a hiker named Panther, whom I’d briefly met back near the town of Bridgeport, who’d been quite sweet to me. He was olive skinned and blue-eyed, a striking combination to me, soft-spoken and intent in his eye contact. His voice low and gravelly and quiet. I remembered I’d needed to lean toward him to hear him. We’d spoken for a minute; he’d passed me.

  I hoped maybe his wording was only an unfortunate coincidence.

  Day after day I trudged north, through snow, alone, pitching my tent in darkness, waking each new morning in the fetal position, disoriented. Mornings were terribly cold. Often I’d emerge from my shelter to find the forest dusted with snow, shimmering. Sometimes the mound of old snow I’d slept atop was fifty feet deep, which, if it weren’t for the treetops poking through the white ground at my feet, I wouldn’t have known.

  The landscape opened. I emerged from low woods to a field of boundless snow. I entered it, feeling exposed, stepping carefully into an uneven ocean of sun-cups, the bowls’ bottoms weightless snow, melting in daylight. Step in one, and I might fall through. I tried to walk the whole way across the field only balancing on the pockmarks’ glossy rims. Focused, I nearly stepped on a pika, the cutest little mountain creature, a puff of fur like a crossbred bunny-chipmunk. My foot fell toward it; it squeaked and flashed, gone. My heart sped; I flushed hot, shaken by what I’d almost done. I thought about Never-Never and Shell and Boomer, slaughtering a marmot for no reason. It was inconceivable. Barbaric. They were savage. I pictured the scene, the pelting stones, hot momentary madness obliterating compassion as they took a life, what their cruelty had required. I wondered if killing required very much at all, or if anyone could be a brute if angry enough, hungry enough for love. Blind enough to suffering.

  The snowfield sloped downhill. My gait was wild now, floppy, my steps careless, heels punching the crust of glassy ice, shattering it. My hard steps shot cracks through virgin ground, I was the hammer to windshields; my impact shattered and shattered the world. I was loving the jolt of breaking through—

  Then I fell through—up to my neck.

  My body stopped. Adrenaline struck my heart; I wriggled. I freed my arms, tried to push out, free. But my legs were stuck. I couldn’t shift my feet, not an inch; my heels were numbing. I thrashed; my ribs felt bruised. I couldn’t even move my toes. Nothing. I pressed my hip left, into the sea of snow; it burned me, I held my core against it until the hole melted wider, harder, dripping. I tried to contort myself out, breathe, pressed my bare snow-burned palms against the snow, pushed, pushed—determined. Still I was trapped. Fighting still—

  And I broke out. In one slick thrust I popped my body free. I was euphoric—success!—I breathed, okay. But my right shoe was gone. It remained in snow, five feet deep down, stuck there. I didn’t think. I didn’t stop. I pulled off my fleece shirt, tied it around my exposed foot, and violently, maniacally dug.

  I was wearing only thin black running spandex and a polypro shirt. I hadn’t planned for this long delay on the snow. As the hole widened, my body heated; my right foot cooled, freezing and then burning. I thought I’d lose my foot. I was desperate to live, digging. At last I produced my icy shoe. Shoved my numb foot into it. Limped north.

  I placed my feet down on the holes’ glassy ridges, tried to follow the shade where snow was more compact, not melted by the sun into soft bowls like death traps—but I couldn’t always tell. I was alert constantly, meticulous. I was scared.

  I heard frantic squeaking—a tiny fluffed pika resting in a snow hole. June was still winter in the High Sierra. At long last back in the forest, trees were dripping, everything melting, the sound of budding spring. I’d thought I’d gotten out of the cold without harm, lucky, but as my foot regained feeling, I realized I couldn’t step comfortably. I saw that there was damage from the fall. My left shoe was torn open, its silver mesh now a flap clinging to a gaping hole.

  I immediately used the satellite phone to call my mother and asked her to mail me new running shoes to Sierra City, the mountain-resort town with the next post office the trail would meander by. She said she’d overnight them.
She said she’d already sent that post office dried strawberries and freeze-dried green beans and also a plastic baggie of children’s Flintstone multivitamins I could chew, so I wouldn’t need to try to swallow a grown-up pill. She’d picked out the purple “grape” ones, leaving me with the oranges and the reds, as she knew I liked those flavors better, and she didn’t want me to have to carry any needless weight.

  There was no need to overnight the shoes, as I wouldn’t reach Sierra City for another six or seven days, but I knew that didn’t matter. She wanted to help me quickly; I wouldn’t dissuade her. I felt grateful for her devotion. I simply thanked her.

  I slipped past a father and daughter out for the weekend, and then, several days later, a bearded thru-hiker hanging out with a troop of raucous adolescent Scouts. Though I was starved for contact, I didn’t stop to talk to any of these strangers. I had forgotten how to convincingly speak the polite things strangers say to each other. When I was alone in the woods and a robust troop leader spoke to me now, I responded only with an aloof and chilly, “Oh.” I’d hardly glanced at him. I didn’t need another Edison, or even another Icecap. It was difficult, but it felt good to walk this path alone. The trail became low snowless spring pine forests, and for three days walking in my broken shoe, I encountered nearly no one.

  The trees were friendly, they gave me rest and shadowed refuge. Slipping through them, I felt safe and competent. My whole body was occupied. I had little energy to think or worry.

  The thoughts I did have were very simple. I repeated the same lyric a thousand uninterrupted times in a row. I replayed: I forsake these men who kill, I forsake these men who kill. I pitched my own tent every night. It took me only a minute and a half to pitch my tent, lay down my sleeping bag, take off my clothes, swaddle myself, use my unpacked knapsack as a pillow and fall asleep. My body pulsed softly into feral dreams. I became efficient, mechanical. I was walking about thirty miles each day. I expected it would be lonesome and it was, but sometimes it was good.