“You’ve had your father almost thirty years longer than I had mine.”
I didn’t want to finish, because my dwindling walk represented the milestones of Life.
I stared into the morning of my last fifteen mile day. No more stiff, too-early wake-up calls. Five hours of peace and pain. The final night of my adventure with my father. We’d share our last country breakfast the next morning, before we loaded the car.
I wished Time worked like a mental camera, with a button to freeze the frames.
Cooper tugged my fingers, and I hoisted him to my hip. “Go see the elephants?”
Peacocks preened along the driveway.
“Those aren’t………no, wait.” I kissed his ear. “We can go see as many elephants as you want. Dad!” I shouted into the living room. “Get ready. I need to be on the road by ten.”
His belly sliced the front of his pajamas, and he gripped the leather sofa with both hands. Maybe he wanted to stop Time, too.
When he shuffled up the stairs, I ached with every labored step. “Dad. Do you need help?”
“Nah. I—” He slid his foot to another step and huffed. “I got it.”
When Mom dropped Kristen and Cooper to walk with me, Dad occupied his usual seat. The car listed to the right as they drove up the highway. “I just love your parents, Andra.” Kristen waited while I slipped Cooper into a cloth backpack. “Coop does, too. Your mom was telling him that story.”
“Which one?”
“About the teeny, tiny woman.”
“Oh, yeah. I remember that one from when I was a kid.”
“Coop laughed and laughed at her high-pitched voice.”
“I always did, too.”
She pushed chocolate-hued hair behind an ear. “Maybe they can be another set of grandparents to Cooper.”
I left him and his mother at the War of 1812 memorial. Another ten miles on my own.
I waved to every passing vehicle. Spring lit up the Trace like blinking holiday lights. Green obliterated brown. Bees floated around my head, drunk on nectar.
As I approached a bridge, I took out my phone to snap a record of a lone bicycle towing a cart. Cyclists rode the length of the Trace in a week. An extended winter kept me bereft of their company for much of my walk.
I stopped next to the abandoned bike. From my own Trace experience, I knew better than to explore under an overpass. The bike’s owner might be down there, using Nature as a toilet. For the same reason, I avoided a perusal of the trees ringing the highway. Everybody deserved a private place to relieve themselves.
Before I took another step, a man streaked from the woods, his arms raised over his head. “I’m the ghost of Meriwether Lewis,” he belted in deep monotone, while I stood frozen. Closer and closer, the ghost-man came. When he was two feet from me, he whipped one hand behind his back and produced a copy of my novel. “The ghost of Meriwether Lewis would like you to sign his book.”
I took in his fuzzy white beard. His sunburn. His cyclist lycra. “Is this your bicycle?”
He unsnapped his helmet and scratched his head. “Dang it. I promised your dad I’d hide in the woods and pretend I was the ghost of Meriwether Lewis. Don’t tell him I didn’t scare you.”
“Oh, you scared me. You don’t know how many brushes I’ve had with his ghost.” I took a drag from my CamelBak. “I’m Andra.”
“Tom. I’m riding the Trace for my seventy-fifth birthday.”
“All the way to Natchez?”
He handed me a pen and waited while I scrawled my name on a page. “Yeah. Figured an epic bike trip might be just the thing to ring in a milestone birthday, ’cause when you get to be my age, you never know which one of these’ll be the last.”
“Well, when you get to Natchez, you have to stay with Miss Ethel.”
“Oh, your dad already told me about her. Sounds like the perfect way to end this crazy adventure.”
“Or to begin one. She’s up for anything.”
He zipped my novel into his pack and shook my hand. “I’m looking forward to reading your book while I camp.”
I gripped his palm an extra second. “Whatever you do, I hope this year brings Life’s grandest moments.”
“Thanks. Hope I didn’t spook you.”
Before I could reassure him, he tipped his helmet and disappeared, while I scanned the skyline and listened for his pedal squeaks.
Birdsong trilled through trees.
I stared at nothing and wondered how many ghosts I met on the Natchez Trace.
My last fifteen mile day came too soon. And, just like when I started, my phone lit up with messages from readers all over the world.
I knew you had this.
You’re a badass.
Almost there! Tomorrow’s the day!
Make sure to savor it.
Mileposts ticked past, and I zipped my phone camera into my pocket and recorded the world with my senses instead. Cut grass and manure. Slight changes in slope. Migrating birds and tufts of pink on red bud trees. Life would no longer be hearing without listening, scents without smell. I licked my lips to taste salt film, and I ran my hands along white numbered mileposts.
I was full. I overflowed with the joy of Life.
But as I climbed into the car and stretched my legs, I didn’t mourn the end of daily fifteen mile meditations. The road blitzed by the window, a watercolor painting. Incomplete. Wherever our lives ended, I could still make memories with my father. Plan time with my parents. Add another pushpin to anticipate in Life’s timeline. We didn’t have to take five-week car trips. Experiences added up in hour-long walks. Weekend excursions. Memories we built into the busy monotony of Life.
Hours later, I prepared for my last Trace night. Dad fingered the chrome grille of a Model A and exclaimed, “That’s some car.”
It belonged to a couple celebrating their fiftieth anniversary by driving the Trace. I took pictures while Dad sold them a book.
Before they went inside, the woman slipped a wisp of green into my hand.
“A four leaf clover,” I breathed and caressed downy petals. “I can’t take this.”
“I find them all the time.” She smiled. “How do you think I’ve stayed married fifty years?”
I thanked her as she and her husband closed their bedroom door, the room Kristen and Cooper occupied the night before. While Dad settled at the television, I dragged myself upstairs for one final soak in the tub.
I hummed with bliss. With accomplishment. Yet, I was a failure, though I didn’t know it. I wanted to finish my walk with the headline
- Debut Novelist Walks Her Way to Best Seller -
I would complete my last day with five hundred books sold. Slightly more than one book per mile.
And I didn’t care. My mental sky was lit with five weeks of memories, time with my parents nobody could erase. Gifted minutes. Millions of seconds to match my million steps. My hours built days that bloomed into five weeks, seasoned with lessons in joy. I was determined not to stand over my parents’ caskets and whisper, “I wish we’d done………….”
Life is about what happens between all the things we wish we’d done. And when we do those things, Life fills holes and lights the flame of wishes. Life makes wishes live.
LEARNING TO FLY
Tom Petty
“Last bit’s gonna be hilly, Andra.” Dad yelled from his window while Mom snapped a photo of me walking away from milepost 435. My last day walking the Natchez Trace.
“Nine miles to go. I’ll see you at the end.”
Mom slipped my iPhone into my hand. “We’ll stay with you today, Andra. You know, in case you need us.”
I swallowed the burn in my throat and turned before she could see my face. “Okay.”
Air bulged with the promise of rain. I wove along the highway, one eye on the purple bruise spreading across the sky. My phone jangled through a thunderclap.
“Andra Watkins.”
“Can I speak to Andre Watson?”
Sigh.
“Speaking.”
A male voice continued. “This is News Channel 4 in Nashville. We’re coming out to interview you, but we can’t get there until 1. Can you make the walk last that long in this weather?”
I pulled the phone from my ear and checked the time. Eleven o’clock in the morning. Two hours to walk nine miles.
I laughed. “Yep. I can’t wait to meet you.”
“We’ll just find you if the weather holds. Don’t worry about being somewhere specific. If you see us, you see us.”
I ended the call and squealed. I was going be on Nashville TV.
Maybe?
Adrenaline flooded my insides, a nerve-and-nausea cocktail I battled whenever I stood in the wings, awaiting my entrance in a play.
Before I took a step, the phone mewed again.
“Andra Watkins.”
A female voice chirped in my ear. “Hi, this is Alex from The Tennessean? I want to be there when you wrap up today. When’ll that be?”
“Two,” I blurted before I did mental calculations. Frantic, I added up time and hoped everything came out right.
Call waiting beeped through our goodbye.
“Hello?”
“Andra. It’s Michael.” My husband was on his way into Nashville to pick up supplies for an event at Parnassus Books. My first official appearance as a published author.
“Hey, Dear. So much is happening. I’ve got a TV station coming out and—”
“Well, you might want to shake up your schedule.”
“Why?”
“Because, when I drove through the gate at the end of the Trace, the last milepost was 442.”
“What? How can that be?” I dragged out my rumpled Trace map and read the words, ‘The northern terminus, milepost 444, is near Nashville, TN.’ Was the Parkway map a lie? “Everything says it’s 444 miles.”
“I know. I scoured my map, too, and I drove it, just to make sure. Even stopped and asked somebody.”
“And?”
“Four forty-two is the end.”
Rain blotched my face. The atmosphere was a giant water balloon, and Trace spirits hovered, ready to throw it my way. “So, I’ve got to make six more miles last three hours?”
“Just finish whenever, Andra. Timing doesn’t matter.”
“It does, though. There’s the TV at one. Newspaper at two.” My voice trilled upward, a crescendo of panic. After five weeks without a set schedule, two appointments threatened to undo me. A raindrop landed on my nose, and I watched it, cross-eyed. It skittered down the front of my green jacket and disappeared.
A little girl with blonde curls knocked inside my head. I spent more than a year with her, writing her story. She started in a courtroom with a bead of sweat running down her nose. I would end my tale with a snout full of rain. I wiped my face and laughed.
“What’s funny?”
“Oh, nothing. I wanted this day to last. I guess now I’ve got an excuse to take my time.”
“What about the weather?”
“Dear, I can walk through anything.”
An hour later, I walked up to the bridge near milepost 438. I stood on the edge and looked down. Grass and highway spun together, a gaping infinity. I wasn’t sure I could cross it. The guardrail didn’t reach my waist as I took a few tentative steps onto its southern end. Sky and trees and asphalt collided with vertigo. I wound up on my stomach. A cold expansion joint zippered across pavement. My knuckles scraped against cardboard, and when I closed my hands around a box, I focused on its lettering—Fix A Flat—to lift me to unsteady feet.
“You saved a bike. Maybe you saved my life.” I threw the box on the ground and took a picture. Before I looked down again, I snapped several more. The gentle angle of the roadbed. Toothy metal. A lone figure on the other side.
My mother. I kept my eyes on her, a worthy competitor to the glory of Birdsong Hollow. Because, sometimes, being in the moment meant not looking down.
I wobbled away from the northern end of the bridge and caught Dad in exquisite form. His last sale on the Trace. A motorcyclist. A pull-off. A person and a parking lot were all he needed to pounce.
He wagged my book in the man’s face. “She wrote this book here. See?”
I walked over and offered my hand. “Hi. I’m Andra. Are you riding the whole Trace alone?”
“Aw. I couldn’t compete with your walking it. Your dad here’s been filling me in. But no. I’m just out for a joy ride.”
“Tell me about your bike.”
I listened to his stories about riding. About Vietnam. About living.
“I’ll take one of your books.” He unzipped a black satchel and made room.
Maybe I could sell books, too.
As I high-fived Dad, I realized we were a team. He moved in for the pitch, and I closed the sale. How would my writing career ever survive without my father?
I pottered into the road, my home for more than a month, my thoughts consumed with images of Dad. His triple-chinned laughter. The cadence of his voice. His habit of turning off his hearing aids.
I waved to the TV van and breezed through my interview. When they told me to walk along the highway while they filmed me, my body did what it needed to do. I left them to navigate my final downhill, my twisting approach into Nashville, but I wanted to dig my heels into pavement and stop Time. I vowed to live pain and wonder again if my parents did it with me. I started my trek dreading every second with them. When did our relationship agony morph into ecstasy?
“Ma’am. You okay?” A man sat in a white SUV, his mouth obscured by a handlebar mustache. I took in the logo on the side of his ride. A federal ranger. The first one I’d encountered since Jackson, Mississippi, three-fourths of the Natchez Trace Parkway.
“I’m great. Been walking the Trace. This is my last day.”
“You come all the way from Natchez?” He leaned through the window and ran his fingers over the United States Government emblem.
“Yeah. I started March 1.” I held my breath and waited. Rangers south of Jackson greeted me with doubt. One even regaled me with the story of a couple who tried a through hike, only to be washed out at milepost 90. His tone dripped with, “And they were more fit than you.”
The first federal employee to admit I might succeed was a surveyor at milepost 222. It was radio silence from there.
He pounded his door. “We been talking about you for weeks! The maintenance crews have been cut back and all that—budget nonsense, you understand—but they’ve been doing extra runs without pay just for you. ‘Gotta check on our girl!’ Every day, they’ve been following your trek on their own time.”
“Really?” I thought about the trash collectors I came upon at pull-offs, the foresters I encountered as they removed fallen trees and debris. The trucks that honked as they rattled past. When I talked to them, they said they were doing their jobs as well as they could with no funding, trying to preserve a forgotten place. I blinked back tears with the realization that underpaid, unappreciated people gave their own time and resources to make sure I was safe. To pave the way for me to finish. I swallowed. “Everybody’s been following me?”
“Yep. I’m so glad I got to meet you. And you’re finishing today.”
Still shell-shocked, I nodded. “In about a mile. Yes.”
“Well. Good luck to you. We’re all rooting for you, wherever you go from here.”
His taillights faded into rain, and I whispered, “Wherever I go from here.”
I walked over a short bridge. Along a wooden fence. To milepost 442. The official end of the Natchez Trace Parkway.
But I found a new beginning.
I WOULD WALK 500 MILES
The Proclaimers
What did I expect to feel as I walked through a wooden gate and hoisted my foot onto milepost 442, the end of the Natchez Trace? I knew I’d see Michael and my parents. Even the reporter from The Tennessean.
But I didn’t realize my friend Cindy Duryea would drive twelve hours from South Carolina, didn’t k
now she stopped in Aiken to pick up her eighty-nine-year-old mother. I never knew she called her Nashville-based daughter Katy from the car to say, “I just picked Mom up. Now, we’re on our way to get you and meet Andra, and won’t that be something?”
I experienced my walk’s greatest gift at the finish line. Hugging Cindy and knowing my journey inspired someone else’s adventure. She knew she didn’t need five weeks. She took twenty-four hours and did something spontaneous with people she loved.
I smiled for the camera and wondered what would happen if more people copied Cindy? For a few hours. A couple of days. Maybe even a week. Memories could be stamped on any unexpected outing with people who mattered.
It’s only too late to make memories when it’s too late.
As everyone gathered around me, I couldn’t feel anything. For the first time in five weeks, nothing hurt. My body was numb.
But my mind buzzed with the trip’s revelations about Mom. About Dad. About myself. My heart overflowed with joy. I nodded to ghosts who detoured from the traditional Trace route and stood by my side.
Because the last seven miles of the Natchez Trace Parkway were a new road. Around Nashville the Old Trace was consumed by development years ago. When I nodded to the boatmen, I knew they came because they wanted to be there.
After almost an hour of celebrating, people peeled away, and I was left with Michael, Mom and Dad.
“I’d like to go to that big stone sign a couple of miles back and take some pictures.”
I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to the Natchez Trace.
We piled into two vehicles and drove through misting rain. When I looked into the trees, I was transported to points on the Trace’s 10,000 year timeline. I focused on hardwood and leaves and slivers of sky, and for a few seconds, if I closed my eyes, I traveled through Time.
For 442 miles, I tried to honor the countless men who walked the Natchez Trace, alone or in packs, to build the frontier states of the USA. I listened to the voices of Native Americans who were displaced. “See what we did?” They whispered from ancient mounds and buried places. Quebecois French mingled with conquistador Spanish on the wings of thousands of migrating birds. I heard sounds I didn’t recognize, rhythms I never expected. And, at the end, I only had one plea.
Not Without My Father: One Woman's 444-Mile Walk of the Natchez Trace Page 17