Barefoot Sisters: Southbound Read online

  "I know a lot of women who hike solo," I told her. "As long as you're cautious and observant, the Trail's a pretty safe place. But I'm hiking with my sister. She's a little ways behind me now. I stopped here to wait for her."

  "Hey, maybe you and me could hike together!" exclaimed the young nman, turning toward his sister. "Maybe when we both finish high school!"

  "I'd like that," the girl answered. She glanced at me again. "Do you always get along?"

  I laughed. "Goodness, no. We argue. In fact, we're in a fight right now. But we'll talk about it, and make up, because we know we'll have to see each other's faces in the morning-and every morning after this, for another three or four months. And every once in a while for the rest of our lives. You can walk out on a marriage, if you get sick of it. But you can't walk out on your own family."

  "I'd never want to," exclaimed the girl, throwing her arms around her brother's shoulders. The tips of his ears turned pink, and he attempted to extricate himself.

  "Do you always get along?" I asked them.

  "No way!" she said, releasing him. "Jerry picks on me real bad."

  "Kim's got a temper like you wouldn't believe!"

  "But when we're not fighting, there's no one more fun in the world."

  Just then, jackrabbit limped up to the tower. Her face looked pale and drawn, her body thinner than I remembered. I waved to her and held out the granola bar I'd been saving. She shook her head.

  "It's four thirty. We still have three miles to the campsite. We'd better go."

  There was no trace of anger in her voice, only weariness, and a note that sounded almost pleading. Pleading? My strong, brave sister, so loath to ask any- one's help or pity that she'd walked sixty miles of the Whites without telling nie that the sole of her foot was bruised? Suddenly, I realized why the calculation of miles meant so much to her. It was one thing I wasn't-and most likely never would be-terribly good at. If I were hiking the Trail alone, I'd probably take a year to get from one end to the other. Taking over the logistics of our hike was how jackrabbit could contribute without feeling dependent on me.

  I waved goodbye to the kids, picked up my pack, and followed her into the woods.

  The next morning we woke to a wet, cold fog blanketing the forest. The maples, at the peak of their fall color, blazed in the damp gray air. Jackrabbit and I chatted more than usual as we walked, pointing out particularly brilliant trees to each other, wondering aloud when we'd see our first New Jersey bear. Jackrabbit avoided harping on how many miles we had left to cover, while I, for my part, tried not to dawdle over views and registers.

  Just in time for our lunch break, we came to the shore of Sunfish Pond. Months back, a northbounder had told inc to look for this place, the last glacial pond on the Trail. I knew that I would miss the imprints of the most recent ice age when we hiked beyond the range of glaciation: the U-shaped valleys gouged from the rock and the deep, clear tarns that sometimes filled them, so much like the landscape of home. I had looked forward to this final glacial pond, hoping it would grant nie a memory worth carrying into the unfamiliar Mountains of the South.

  The motionless water darkened from blue-gray to black under its curtain of fog. Across all inlet from us, flame-orange blueberry bushes blended their leaves with the red maples above them. Their reflections plunged toward the pond's dark center like the sparks of a bonfire leaping into the night sky. Through the fog, the crowns of birches and maples marked the far shore: blurry spheres of yellow and red hanging in the indeterminate space between water and air.

  For a hiker, I didn't pay much attention to my lunch. I gazed out over the water, trying to fix every detail of the scene in my mind. Jackrabbit seemed just as transfixed as I was. "Look at the trees on the far shore," I Murmured, and she answered in the same reverent tone, "Look at that red leaf down at the water's edge" As we packed up to leave, I felt a brief, wrenching sense of loss. However Ion I live, I thought, I will never atain stand on the shore of Sunfish Pond in the frt, on the loveliest day of Oitober, havilt,q walked hundreds of miles to get here, without even km,ivin,~ what awaited inc.

  "It's hard to leave this place, isn't it?" said jackrabbit. I smiled, comforted by the thought that we would share this memory. Far down the trail, after all the leaves fell, we would be able to sit in a shelter at night, passing words back and forth like a loom's shuttle, until the tapestry of Sunfish Pond clothed the gray walls in vibrant autumn color.

  "Youse may've heard some had things about Pennsylvania, but you've got to agree it's a beautiful state," PA Mule told us. He was a trail angel we'd met at the Gathering, a carpenter from Philadelphia. We shared a booth at the pizza parlor in Delaware Water Gap, the first Trail town in Pennsylvania. A platter of rapidly vanishing garlic twists sat on the red Formica table between IN Mule had arrived early and ordered the twists to tide us over while we waited for our pizza.

  "The trail runs along the tops of ridges all through this state," Mule continued, "and this time of year, with the leaves talling, it's nothing but views. You're closer to the sky up there" With his soft, deliberate voice and the lock of dark hair that shadowed his eyes, he'd struck me at first as an intensely shy man. Now, though, he seemed perfectly at ease keeping up the conversation while we attacked the food.

  "Sure, there's rocks," he responded to a mumbled interrogative from jackrabbit, "hut they're no worse here than they are in Jersey. I don't know about barefoot. Youse are the first people I know who've tried to do it that way. But after coming this far, I don't reckon youse'll be scared off by a few rocks."

  Sheltowee, another trail angel we'd stet at the Gathering, arrived just as we finished the garlic twists.

  "Sorry I'm late!" He grinned, his blue eyes sparkling above round, ruddy cheeks, and he shook a few raindrops from his curly reddish-blond hair. "I had to work overtime"

  "You look pretty cheerful for someone who's been working overtime," I remarked. "Don't tell me-you just figured out that you'll have enough vacation time to hike the John Muir Trail next summer" I knew that Sheltowee had hiked the AT. the year before, and I'd discovered from talking with people at the Gathering that the rate of recidivism among long-distance hikers was pretty high.

  "You got the right idea. But what I'm planning is much better than that!"

  "You're taking five months off to hike the Continental Divide Trail?" jackrabbit volunteered.

  "Close, but no granola bar. Ladies-and gentleman-I am quitting my job. If all goes according to plan, I'll be hiking for the next six years on a path that takes me through all of the lower forty-eight states"

  "I didn't know there was a trail through 'em all," PA Mule said.

  "Well, there isn't, really. I'm connecting up a lot of different trails. I'll hike all the big ones: the A.T. again, the Continental Divide, the Pacific Crest Trail, and that new one that runs cross-country, the American I )iscovery Trail. But I'll also hike a lot of smaller trails and do some road walks to connect them up,.

  "Wow. How'd you decide to do this:

  "Well, I pull down a pretty good salary, working in management. Before I hiked the Trail, my goal was to be a millionaire by the time I turned forty. After the A.T., I started looking at it ditii'reutly. What was I doing with three houses and four cars, when I was so much happier living out of a tent? I realized that I could retire by age forty, if I cut my expenses and lived a bit more simply.

  in not promising to do this hike. If I get sick, or hurt, or just plain tired of walking, I might buy a little cottage somewhere in the woods and try niy hand at gardening. I might move to Mexico and live on a houseboat. Or I might go hack to work. But right now, just thinking about those trails makes me happy. I'm smiling when I get out of bed in the morning and smiling when I work overtime. 'Cause I see it all as a path leading hack to the forest. The forest, the cornfields, the desert, the little backroad towns where they never see a stranger unless he's buying gas. I love this country, and I want to see it all:'

  jackrabbit

  n
the morning, PA Mule took us into Stroudsburg, the nearest large town, to resupply. We stocked up on the usual Trail staples: noodles, granola, dry milk. At the outfitter's store, Isis finally bought an ultralight headlamp. It would make cooking after dark much easier. After we brought our shopping bags back to the hostel in Delaware Water Gap, Mule drove us out to Fox Gap so we could slack the seven miles back to town.

  A steady cold rain streamed from the low clouds. Bright leaves spiraled down from the trees and plastered themselves to the ground, a Persian carpet of cool flames, vivid reds and oranges and yellows. The colors were beautiful, but the leaf covered rocks made for treacherous tooting. With the quick reflexes I had developed from hiking barefoot, it was relatively easy to predict how the rocks would tip, and to shift my weight to protect myself. It was harder to avoid the small rocks, hidden under the leaves, which occasionally jutted up into uty insteps. No wonder the northbounders had told horror stories about the Pennsylvania rocks. I could see how hikers in boots, lacking the skills that I'd developed, could easily turn an ankle or worse. Remembering Tuba Man's tale of falling off the ridge, I was suddenly thankful for the awareness and traction that hare feet provided, no matter how much the sharp little rocks could hurt.

  Back at the Delaware Water (;ap hostel after our slack, dripping wet, we found the common room bill of children. The sound of young voices came though the door and lightened the gloom of the day. A black-haired girl of about ten and a younger girl with ash-blond hair lay on their bellies, intent on a picture they were both drawing. A thin woman with round blue eyes and waist-length brown hair sat on the couch, cradling a younger child in her arms.

  "Are You Isis and jackrabbit she asked with excitement. "We've heard so niurh about you, and we've wanted to meet you for so long."

  Isis smiled and held up a bare foot, pink and wrinkled from the wet day. "I'm Isis ..."

  "Oh, Paul is just gonna flip out! This is so great!" Her wide, ingenuous smile seemed to fill the room with warmth, and we were instantly captivated. "But let nie introduce my family-"

  "Are you guys the Family from the North?"

  She beamed again. "Yeah, that's what they call us . .

  "Excellent! We've been wanting to meet you for a long time, too"

  "Aw, thanks. Well, I'm Mary, and this is Faith." She held up the youngest child, a baby of perhaps two years, who gave us a sleepy-eyed smile. "And that's joy-" pointing to the girl with dark blond hair, who looked up with a shy grin and went back to her drawing. "And-"

  "Hi, I'm Hope! Do you guys really go barefoot all the time? Are you really from Maine?" The oldest girl had vivid green eyes that sparkled with curiosity.

  There was the sound of a car pulling up outside.

  "Oh, that's probably Paul and the boys. A trail angel took them into town for our resupply."

  The door burst open and a man walked in, loaded down with bags of groceries. He had a long black beard and a black braid halfway down his back and the most intense dark eyes I have ever seen. He was small and wiry, projecting an air of quiet competence. Every inch of his body rippled with lean muscle. My first thought was, here is somebody not to mess with.

  "Go out and help," he barked, and I instinctively moved toward the door, following Hope and Joy.

  He put the groceries down. "Oh, I'm sorry," he said, and his face changed instantly from brooding to apologetic, flashing a charming smile toward me. He had the same powerful charisma that Mary had shown. "I was talking to the children."

  He came over to shake my hand. "I'm Paul," he said. His grip was like iron. I could see a network of small scars crossing his hand and forearm, the mark of a lifetime of physical labor.

  "Jackrabbit," I said.

  "This is Joel-" a stocky brown-haired boy in his early teens grunted a greeting from behind a box of groceries "-and John." The younger boy, ten or eleven, had olive skin and a shoulder-length braid of dark hair and delicate elvish features. He nodded solemnly in greeting.

  The Family unpacked their groceries with practiced ease, transferring food from boxes to Ziplocs and stowing it in their packs. Most of it went into Paul's, an enormous magenta internal frame that dwarfed mine.

  While they worked, I thought back to all the things I had heard about them. A young sobo couple at the Gathering had told us they were homesteaders, with a strict and unbending interpretation of the Bible. An argumentative Hip-Hopper had characterized them as tax cheats and uneducated bums, "a couple of crazies with way too many kids and no common sense" I hadn't known quite what to expect. As I watched them unpacking the food, the thing that struck me most about the Family was their politeness.

  "It's my turn to carry the bagels, John," said Hope, her face taking on an adult seriousness.

  "But they're heavy. I'll take 'em again, I don't mind.'

  There was little squabbling; they all put their heads down and did what needed to be done. I could imagine them running a homestead together, quietly shouldering responsibilities and sharing the burdens.

  When the work was (lone, Paul settled into a well-worn armchair and busied himself with the register, checking back over the old entries. Joy glanced toward us but held back, looking nervous, and Mary picked up a storybook and started reading to her. Joel stayed in the corner, rooting for something in his pack, but Hope and John, the ten-year-olds, came over and said hello. They stood before us uncertainly, shy but brimming with curiosity.

  "Are VOL] guys twins?" I asked.

  "No," Hope said. "People ask us that a lot. Mary's my nmonm, but Paul ain't my dad. Him and mom met when I was real little. John and Joel was from Paul's other marriage. Faith and Joy's theirs together."

  "Are you twins?"John asked, and I laughed.

  "Isis is three years older.

  With this established, the kids quizzed us about our hike. We gave them a short history of our adventures so far. (Hope made appropriate noises of concern and patted my knee when Isis got to the part where I was injured.) Isis demonstrated how to walk barefoot over rough ground, a skillful roll of the foot from ball to heel. She navigated the maze of gear on the floor with her eyes closed, feeling her way with her feet. The children looked up at us with wide, shining eyes. They drew pictures for us: rainbows and flowers and smiling faces, but also full shelters and mountains With small hordes of figures in packs climbing the sides.

  "This is us," John said. "Here's nie and Hope, on the top of the mountain, and there's Joy and Dad way out front like they always is, and Joel right behind them. Mary's in the back like usual."

  "Where's Faith%" I asked.

  Hope gave me a slightly exasperated look, as though I had asked a very dumb question-a glance that I recognized immediately as the mark of an older sister. "Mona carries Faith. She ain't big enough to walk yet" Sure enough, there was a blue Kelty kid-carrier pack leaned against the far wall, with all manner of things-clothing, foam pads, a cooking pot-strapped to the outside. The pack frame alone looked like it must have weighed ten pounds, and I didn't want to imagine how much it would weigh with all that gear and the chubby two-year-old.

  "No wonder she walks in the hack with all that weight!"

  Hope gave me another older-sister kind of look, this one with a tinge of severity. "We all got to carry a lotta weight. Paul's pack weighs seventy. Mine's twenty-five, mostly-

  11 -except when she carries the bagels-"

  "How much is yours, John I asked.

  With everyone's attention on him, he became shy, his dark eyes turned down toward the carpet. "Maybe thirty."

  "Mine's forty, unless we get extra cream cheese," Joel broke in from the corner where he'd been repacking his clothes. His voice cracked in midsentence, and he reddened and turned back to his packing.

  I knew adults who carried less than thirty pounds, and my own pack was generally about forty. "Wow. How many miles a day do you guys do?"

  "Our biggest day was twenty-one. We usually do fourteen, fifteen. I)epends on terrain," Paul spoke up from the armchair. His voice was
deep and slow, with an accent that I couldn't quite place; possibly Midwestern.

  "That's impressive." A strange mix of feelings flowed through me: amazement, at the strength and endurance these kids must have, and sadness, that they would be ahead of us almost immediately, if we continued at our snail's pace. Some uncharitable corner of my brain felt a good deal of resentment, too, that we were being out-hiked by seven- and ten-year-olds.

  There were many questions still churning under the surf:ice of illy mind. I wanted to know about their history, this rumor of their religious fervor, and why they were hiking in the first place. I wondered about the stories of their tax evasion, and I worried a little about the kids' seeming lack of educationtheir grammar wouldnt have held tip at any elementary school. But I was still a little nervous about awakening Paul's wrath, and I decided that if we were only going to have a short time with the Family, it would be better spent playing with the kids than arguing about politics.

  Later that night the pastor came by, a solidly built wo►nan with gray curls and kind eyes the color of the sky after rain. Her face crinkled into a wide smile as she surveyed the mayhem of the room: empty grocery bags, clothing, and hiking gear, scattered everywhere on the burgundy carpet, and the children lying on their bellies in the midst of the clutter, writing and drawing. We thanked her for the church's hospitality.

  "Oh, it goes both ways." she told us. "The hikers have brought a lot to this town. Is there anything else I can do for you?"

  This was my chance. "Is there a piano here that I can play?" My fingers itched for a keyboard. It had been weeks since I'd played.

  "Well, I can let you into the sanctuary. Please lock up again when you're done. And I'd rather not turn all the lights on up there, if that's all right-the hills, you know

  I took the candle lantern up the narrow stairs and into the main room of the church. Polished dark wood gleamed hack faintly front all the corners of the room, and the ceiling arched up beyond the reach of the fragile light. The grand piano stood in the corner.