“You might want to get a bigger journal,” Mom went on. “And you need a heavier fleece. We've been lucky with the weather. People can freeze to death easier than you think.”
We picked out a tent for Mom, and a pack, and a second pot and spoon, and another stuff sack for food. I started adding up the price tags. Mom's boots were expensive, and so was the tent. My five hundred dollars wouldn't pay for the pile of gear on the floor. “Can we afford this?” I asked.
“We're going to need it,” Mom said.
“But … ”For years I'd been hearing about the stuff we couldn't afford.
Mom smiled in a way I didn't like. “You're picking this exact moment to be practical?” she asked. “You who want me to quit everything and walk for half a year? You've suddenly chosen to be aware of this one small piece of reality? Dani, I'm touched.”
So much for family feelings. I started to stuff my gear back into my pack. I bit my lip. My face felt frozen. Mom came up behind me and touched my arm. It felt like an electric shock. I jumped away. “I'm sorry,” she said. “That wasn't fair.”
“I know a lot about reality,” I said. “We can afford the tent,” Mom said. “We'll put it on my credit card. We'll work it out.”
“But—”
“This is part of the reason we can only stay out here a week. I need my job. But we'll work it out.”
I got the fleece but no journal. We got more food (and more interesting food), too. Dad barely said anything on the trip back toward Suches, but he looked at his watch several times. I knew he was thinking of Lisa, and all my anger came back in suffocating waves. When he came to where the Trail crossed the road, he stopped and we all got out of the car. He hugged me stiffly.
“See you,” Mom said, keeping her distance from him. “We'll probably stop near Hiawassee, I think there's a hostel there. We'll get a ride back to Amicalola and pick up my car. Dani will call you when we're home.”
Dad took his cell phone out of his pocket and held it out to her. “No, thanks,” Mom said.
“You might need it,” he said.
“We'll be fine.”
“Really … ”He tossed the phone across the gap between them. Mom moved her hand to catch it but missed. The phone smashed on the asphalt.
“Sorry,” Mom said. Dad picked it up and fiddled with it, but it was broken. “We'll be fine. Don't worry.”
“All right. Good-bye.” Dad stood leaning against his open car door. Mom and I went into the woods. I didn't look back.
When we'd walked awhile and stopped for water, I asked, “Why didn't you want the phone?”
“Pain in the neck in the woods,” Mom said.
March 4
Woods Hole Shelter (Georgia)
Miles hiked today: 12.7
Total miles hiked on the Appalachian Trail: 26.7
Weather: cold again
We climbed Big Cedar Mountain, full packs and all, and made it seven miles to Woods Hole Shelter as daylight was fading from the sky. I was stumbling tired. I'd fallen on the last downhill stretch, and my knee was scraped and bleeding. My hands and feet were freezing. Six people had already set up in the shelter, and one more came in on our heels. No Beagle. No Vivi, either. Bunk space for us, which was good. I didn't feel energetic enough to set up a tent. Mom didn't look energetic enough, either, and for the first time I thought about her walking so far in new boots.
“Feet okay?” I asked.
She nodded but grimaced. “A few hot spots. Glad we bought moleskin. I would have told you if we needed to stop. Get water,” she added.
I looked around. “Spring's back that way,” a woman hiker said, pointing. “You passed it.”
“Thanks.” I grabbed my water bag and bottle, and the filter. Then I recognized her—she'd been one of the many hikers at Stover Creek Shelter, my first official night on the Trail.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hey!” Her face lit up. “I was wondering what happened to you. Your brother passed me on the Trail yesterday, but I didn't see you. I was kind of worried.”
“Brother?” I said. My heart fluttered queerly. Was Springer with me after all? I was never sure how I felt about ghosts.
“Beagle?” she said. “He called himself Beagle.”
He was calling himself Beagle. So I'd named him, given him his Trail name. I grinned. “Yeah, Beagle, he's fast. I'm hanging back with my mom now.”
“Cool,” she said. “Family that hikes together, huh? Great idea.” She held out her hand. “I'm Corinna. Still don't have a Trail name. I'm waiting for somebody to give me one.”
“I'm Katahdin,” I said.
She pulled her hand back. “That's your Trail name? Really?”
“No,” I said. I looked back at my mother, who was fiddling with the stove. “She gave it to me. It's my real name. Since always.”
Corinna looked amazed. “Guess you don't need a Trail name, do you?”
I thought of Beagle calling me sis and little brother. I hadn't liked either of those. “Guess I don't,” I said.
We had been eating nothing but noodles, oatmeal, and gorp—all food I'd packed myself, so I couldn't complain—but for dinner Mom created a feast: chicken stew with tomatoes and spices and dumplings, vanilla pudding, hot tea. We had two pots now, and two spoons. Mom made the pudding in a zippered plastic bag with powdered milk and water. We cut the side of the bag and squeezed it into our mouths. One glob hit the side of my mouth and dribbled down my chin, then fell into the dust. Mom said, “That's a waste of good pudding.”
I said, “Help yourself,” and picked it up with my fingers and held it out to her. Mom laughed. I laughed, too. I don't think we'd laughed together for a year, but we kept on laughing until I thought I was going to choke. I wiped my mouth on my hand and said, “Don't you want to do the whole Trail?”
She said, “Yeah.”
“Really?” She sounded like she meant it. “Then why don't we?”
She took the pudding bag away from me and kneaded it back and forth in her hands. “Money and logistics,” she said. “Having lots of money isn't important, but having some money is. I don't want to lose our house. I want to be able to pay my bills. It's a freedom thing. Between Springer's funeral and the last medical bills and the divorce, we don't have much savings.”
I dug my toe in the dirt. I was sitting on a rock near where Mom had set up the stove, a stone's throw from the shelter. Corinna was eating at a picnic table under the shelter's porch. I'd thought of inviting her to join us, but I didn't.
“Plus,” Mom continued, “you can't just leave your life behind. You go to school, Dani.”
“I thought I'd call it homeschooling,” I said. Mom gave me a strange look. “I mean,” I explained, “I did think about school, before I started. But if I made it to Mount Katahdin on September first, then I'd only miss a few days of eighth grade, and we could just say I was homeschooling. They wouldn't even know.”
For a moment Mom looked like she wanted to laugh, and then she did laugh, covering her face with both hands.
“You are such an enigma,” she said. “You take off in the woods and have everything planned so well that sometimes I forget you are still a child. What did you think I would be doing for those six months? Sitting home by myself telling everyone, ‘Katahdin's homeschooling,' when I didn't even know where you were? Oh, honey, that's hilarious. If I hadn't found you right away, your face would have been on milk cartons nationwide.”
She kept laughing. I felt stupid. I really had thought that no one would care if I missed school. School was dumb; school was easy. But I knew Mom was right. “We could still say it,” I said. “If we did thru-hike. Now that you're here.”
Mom wiped her eyes. “One,” she said, “we are not thru-hiking. I give you a week and you want to take two thousand miles.” She was still smiling so I knew this was supposed to be a joke, but I didn't smile back. “Two,” Mom said, “home-schoolers are actually supposed to be learning schoolwork. What do you think, you're going to st
uff an algebra book into your pack?”
“We could just say it,” I said. “I wouldn't actually have to do it.”
Mom said, “That's the silliest thing I've ever heard.”
We had never been a family that talked much. This conversation felt like more than the total amount we'd had all year. I was exhausted. I shut up and rinsed the pots and rubbed the spoons clean. Mom watched me carefully. “Happy?” she asked. I looked up.
“No.”
She sighed. “But you want to keep hiking.”
“Of course,” I said. “Are you happy?”
She thought for a moment. “No. I forget what happy feels like.”
“So why keep asking me?” I said.
March 5
Walasi-Yi Center, Neels Gap (Georgia)
Miles hiked today: 4 (so far)
Total miles hiked on the Appalachian Trail: 30.7
Weather: partly cloudy, warmer
Before lunchtime the next day we were back at Walasi-Yi. I couldn't believe it, given how long it had taken to drive there. “The car had to go around the mountains,” Mom said. “We walked over them.”
I felt a little foolish that I'd made such a stink for ten miles of the Trail. I looked at Mom. “It's okay,” she said.
Mom did have a small blister by then, so she went into the center to get more moleskin and look at the sock liner options. I stayed outside. I stuck some money in the soda machine and sat down on a bench to have a drink. I was tired, but I liked feeling tired. I had slept well every night on the Trail so far. When someone sat down on the bench beside me, I didn't look up.
“I thought you'd been sent home,” he said.
I turned so quickly I spilled my soda across my hand. “Beagle!”
He smiled. “Breakfast girl,” he said.
I wanted to hug him, but I didn't move. I didn't know what to do or say. He looked exactly like I remembered him. “I thought you'd be a long way from here,” I said. “Someone told me you were hiking fast.”
He held up his arm, bandaged white from elbow to wrist. “I met a sharp stick too hard and too fast,” he said. “I tripped going downhill. Twenty-six stitches. Amazing.” He shook his head. “So I had to get the folks here to run me to the hospital, and then I had to stay and wash all the blood out of my clothes.”
“Did you cut any tendons?” I asked.
He looked amused. “No, I did not cut tendons. The ER doc told me I hadn't. She said that was good.”
“It is good. If you damaged your tendons or your ligaments, you wouldn't be able to move your fingers correctly.”
He eased his arm onto his knee. I thought he should have a sling. “You going to be a doctor, little brother?”
“No. I hate hospitals. I'm never setting foot in another one as long as I live.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
He grinned. “So you'll just have your babies right out in the forest, like the bears and the birds and the butterflies?”
I said, “I'm never having children.” “When the time comes,” he said quickly. “Years from now.”
I didn't answer. After a moment's silence, I told him, “My mom said we could hike for a week.”
Beagle stretched out. “Cool.”
Nothing outdoors was green yet, but it still felt green, with the woods all around and the sun and crisp air. I felt like I could sit still forever. “Is your laundry done?” I asked. All my clothes were horrendous, but I didn't want to waste any of my hiking week on laundry. I'd looked up Hiawassee, and it was fifty-three miles away. That meant ten-mile days, which would be fine.
Beagle shook his head. “Hardly started. I had to wait on the machine.”
“Does your arm hurt much?”
“More than I care to say.”
My mother came out of the building. “This is Beagle,” I said. “My friend Beagle.”
Mom nodded and said hello. “Dani said you bought her breakfast,” she said.
“No big deal,” he said.
“We could treat you to lunch,” Mom offered.
“That would be great,” I said. “We could wait here until your laundry is done, and you could hike with us this afternoon.”
Beagle looked uncomfortable. “Hey, sorry,” he said. “I've got some buddies I met up with; they went into town and they're coming back to get me.” After a pause, he added, “Come along with us, if you want.”
“I think we'd better keep moving,” Mom said. “Come on, Dani.”
Something in her tone made me get up and adjust my pack and start walking, but I was ticked. “Bye, Beagle,” I said.
“Bye.” He looked like he couldn't remember my name.
“Katahdin,” I said.
“That's right. Cool name. Bye, Katahdin. Good luck.”
Mom headed for an outbuilding. “They have showers here,” she said. “We're both taking one.”
“We could have gone with him,” I said.
“I don't think he looked like he wanted us to,” Mom said. “He said he's got buddies. Probably a bunch of young guys. They're probably having a good time together.”
I knew the truth. Beagle was happy to be in my company. It was my mother he didn't want to hike with.
“I called your dad to be sure he got home,” she said. “He couldn't talk because Lisa was puking. He said she has terrible morning sickness. She puked the whole time they were in Jamaica.”
“Oh, I'm sorry,” I said with bitter sarcasm.
“She's your stepmother now,” Mom said. “You might as well get used to her.”
“Right,” I said. I thought of Lisa's baby. A little half brother or half sister. A little nondefective baby. “What else did Dad say?”
Mom shrugged. “Honestly? I think he's jealous.”
March 7
Post Office, Helen, Georgia
Miles hiked today: 9
Total miles hiked on the Appalachian Trail: 52
Weather: rain
Bull Gap, Corbin Horse Stamp, Cowrock Mountain, Hogpen Gap, Sheep Rock Top. For the next two days we hiked through a regular farmyard. Nothing happened. Beagle and his friends camped near us the first night, then walked ahead. Mom's blister healed. She was quiet. We usually hiked apart anyhow. The person ahead—usually me—stopped and waited every hour or so. I was quiet, too. I felt more comfortable spending the days without words.
At Low Gap Shelter we ran into Vivi again. She seemed pleased to see us, and she asked us if we wanted to go into a town called Helen with her the next day. “I've got a food drop at the post office there,” she said. “Plus, I'm dreaming of a night in a motel room and a meal I haven't carried on my back.”
Mom perked up. She seemed tired. “We could read a newspaper,” she said. “We could call your father.”
I didn't miss newspapers and I didn't miss Dad. “We could get a pizza,” I said. Some things you just couldn't cook on an alcohol stove.
“Probably we could,” said Mom.
“Several,” suggested Vivi.
It was raining and miserably cold. I didn't have rain gear but I did have a big plastic poncho, like a tarp, and so did Mom. It didn't help much. Rain dripped onto my pants and down my neck. My boots were so wet they squished. We were warm enough so long as we kept moving, but we felt chilled the moment we stopped.
“Think pizza,” Vivi said encouragingly. “Think hot shower.”
“I am,” I said. I couldn't imagine staying that night in a shelter, much less a wet tent.
After nine miles we got to the road. A car came along and Mom stuck her thumb out, expertly, as though hitchhiking was her main and customary method of transportation. The car screeched to a stop. Mom walked up to it and stuck her head through the open window. “Get a ride to Helen?” she asked.
The man inside studied the three of us. “You thru-hikers?” he asked.
I said, “You bet.”
So there we were in Helen, a surprisingly touristy little town. We went first to the post office, where
Vivi picked up the box of home-dried food she'd mailed to herself, and I used the pay phone to call Dad. I stomped my feet to warm them and put my fingers in my armpits. Dad sounded sulky. “You have no idea how much work this is even with you only being gone a week,” he said. “Your school says I have to write a letter to excuse you. A phone call won't do. Couldn't you have planned it better?”
“How's your new baby?” I asked. “How's your new wife?”
“Look, Dani, your timing was far from impeccable.”
I said, “Maybe you should have stuck with the family you had.”
He had a lot to say back to that, but I didn't listen. I held the phone out to Mom and we could both hear his voice rising and falling angrily. Mom started talking and calmed him down. Then she listened to him for a long time. I watched her face take on that rocklike bad-news look. I felt my stomach twist. When she hung up, I asked, “What's wrong?”
She said, “You shouldn't talk to him that way. He's your father. Everything is not his fault.”
“It's true. He should have stayed with us.”
Mom paused for a moment, pressing her fingers against her lips. “Let's talk about that later,” she said. “Shall we?”
“Let's talk about it now,” I said. Vivi looked up and the clerk at the counter stared.
“No,” Mom said. “I've got some things I need to think about, and some things I need to say. I need to think first. Let's find a room, warm up, and have dinner.”
Mom stomped out and I followed. Vivi hurried after us; Mom looked surprised when she caught up with us, as though she'd forgotten Vivi existed.
We found a cheap motel and split a double-bed room with Vivi. We all took showers and washed our underwear and socks in the sink, and emptied our wet packs of everything and hung our wet gear all around the room. I wished I had something to wear on my feet besides soaking-wet boots. I wished I had something to wear that was dry, but I didn't. Even my spare underwear was damp.
We went to a restaurant and ate several pizzas. I couldn't believe how hungry I was. Back at the room Vivi turned the television on, then quickly turned it off again. “Too loud,” she said. “Already I'm used to quiet.”
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