Barefoot Sisters: Southbound Read online

  We stopped for lunch on the shore of Peniadutncook Lake, a few miles farther on. The giant firm of Mount Katahdin rose above the water, dwarfing the low hills we had crossed. As we unpacked our food bags, Ashley stepped out of the woods. She told us that she'd gotten off the day before at White House Landing, accompanying a fellow hiker who had twisted his knee. Ashley brought cheese and more crackers, which she shared with us. Even more than the food, her cheerful nature revived us. The clouds seemed to lift as she sang, "blue skies, smilin' on me, nothin' but blue skies, far as I see ..." She broke off.

  "Matt thinks that should be my trail name. Blue Skies. I sing that song all the time."

  "It's perfect!"Jackrabbit and I both spoke at once.

  "You think so? Then I have a name! I'm going to go write it in the first register I can find. See you at the campsite!" She strode off up the trail, singing.

  jackrabbit

  fter a few days of barefoot hiking, I could tell that my feet were toughening-the little scales of spruce cones hardly bothered me, and the sharp sticks and hidden rocks were still perceptible, but no longer painful. In flat, low places the trail ran along bog bridges: split cedar logs lay lengthwise to form a track through marshy sphagnum moss. The old wood felt deliciously soft and smooth under my bare soles.

  One thing was bothersome, though: the bugs. Blackflies wiggled their way into our hair and the cuffs of our clothing. Thick clouds of mosquitoes hung in the air, making an ominous whine that followed us everywhere. Whenever we stood still, even for a moment, they landed and bit straight through the thin cotton shirts we wore over our tank tops. At one point, the trail crossed a beautiful open bog with small dark pools of water and drifts of tall purple iris. I wanted to pause and look at the flowers, but the cloud of bloodsucking insects hovering over the surface of the water was audible even from a distance. Isis and I exchanged a glance and started running, our heavy packs bumping awkwardly. We didn't slow down until we reached slightly higher ground, several hundred yards from the swamp.

  We stopped for the night at Antlers Tentsite, a space of open ground at the end of a skinny point, with a firepit of blackened stones. The lake glimmered all around through the branches of tall red pines. Matt and Ashleynow Blue Skies, I reminded myself-were there, setting up their tarps between trees.

  "Hiya, sisters," Matt said. "Isis, right?" She nodded, smiling. "And I can't remember your trail name. Grasshopper?"

  "Sorry, Matt, wrong phylum. I'm Jackrabbit. Long legs, big ears." And a jumping round kick that would flatten an opponent from ten feet away, but I didn't feel the need to explain that part of the name just then.

  "Hi, guys," Blue Skies said. "Good hike today?"

  "Yeah, the hugs were something else, though"

  We exchanged a few more pleasantries while I laid out the ground cloth and set up the tent. I could see thunderheads building rapidly over the lake, so I gathered wood as quickly as I could and set a pot of water to boil on the Zip stove for macaroni.

  The storm hit just as I finished cooking. I quickly put out the stove, drained the noodles, and shook the cheese packets into the pot, and we dove into the tent with our spoons and our dinner. We had leaned our packs against trees outside, with their waterproof covers, and the rest of our gear was in the tent. I felt slightly smug: ivoman outwits nature, stays dry in storm. The raindrops beat against the fly of the tent, sounding as fierce as hail. I sat back and scooped a heaping spoonful of the macaroni and cheese. But just then, I felt a trickle of water soaking my shorts.

  "There's water coining in the back of the tent!" Isis said. "It's pouring in! My sleeping bag is getting wet!"

  And so it was. A veritable river was flowing across the slick nylon. We tried to pile our gear against the edges where it was drier, but soon the whole floor was awash. Miserable, we perched on our haunches and finished off the pot of macaroni, watching our sleeping bags darken with dampness.

  The storm blew over in a relatively short while, and in the late light everything glistened, wet. When we stepped outside to survey the damages, it was evident ,vhat had happened; the ground cloth, sticking out for several inches on all sides of the tent, had acted as a funnel. All the rain draining off the fly had poured right back under the tent.

  Blue Skies came over while we were wringing out our sleeping bags. "You guys okay? What happened?"

  "We had a bit of a problem with the ground cloth;' I said.

  Her forehead wrinkled. "If you cut the ground cloth to fit just inside the tent footprint, you won't have any drainage problems," she offered.

  "Thanks." I gave a rueful smile. "Wish I'd known that half an hour ago."

  "The same thing happened to me on my first solo backpacking trip, actually," she said.

  "Live and learn."

  "Yeah."

  "I've got a lot of learning to do, I think. I'm just glad to be out here."

  "Me too. It's so beautiful." She stared out across the lake for a moment. The storm still darkened the mountains on the far side, but the lake sparkled with late sunlight. "This is an awesome tent site. Have you seen the privy here?"

  "Well, I haven't really needed-"

  "Oh, you ought to check it out. It's really something"

  "If you say so"

  And it was something-larger than most of the outhouses I'd seen, it had a small table with a wash basin (no running water, of course), a chair, and a mirror. Rainbow-colored curtains hung in the screened windows, and the interior was blissfully free of mosquitoes. A sign on the door proclaimed it "Fort Relief."

  I stole a look in the mirror. It was my face, all right, the same constellations of freckles, blue eyes, and high cheekbones, but hidden under layers of dirt and soot. Blackfly bites had left lumps and streaks of blood on my cheeks. Wild wisps of dark blond hair straggled out in all directions. In the enclosed space, I was powerfully aware of the odor I exuded: a rank, heavy mammalian perfume of four-day-old sweat. Funk. I out-stank the privy itself. Was it possible that two weeks ago I had marched across a stage in cap and gown and picked up my college diploma? I stared into the eyes of the grungy woman in the mirror and we winked at each other, sharing a secret joke.

  A green spiral-bound notebook lay on the table, with "Antlers Tentsite Register" scrawled on the cover. I sat down in the chair to read it, enjoying the dry and mosquito-free interior of the privy. The register was full of dates, names, short comments about the weather, jokes, illustrations, quotes, deep thoughts. Blue Skies had signed with her new name and drawn a caricature of herself, grinning, wearing pigtails.

  I picked up the pen and wrote: 6/25. Isis and jackrabbit tented here. I looked back at what I'd written: Isis and jackrabbit. I was so unaccustomed to my trail name that I had written it in lowercase. Well, I thought, Ivhy not? I'd chosen the name jackrabbit because it made me feel strong and invincible. Yet in the past few days I'd amply demonstrated that I was still capable of stupid mistakes. To write my name in lowercase might be a more accurate reflection of how I felt now: uncertain, confused, chagrined. This is nett' territory, I thought. The skills I've mastered over the last lour years are not the skills that mill serve the here.

  Isis

  y the time we reached Antlers Tentsite, every inch of my skin itched from hug bites and sweat. I couldn't do n►uch about the bites, but the sweat, at least, could be washed away. Jackrabbit, who isn't a big tan of cold water, offered to set up camp while I took a dip.

  I waded into the lake, lily feet slipping on mossy stones, hoping to get out deep enough to go for a quick swim. I must have walked out a hundred yards from shore, but the water never reached past lily knees. Finally, I sat down, leaned back, and lay still for a minute beneath the thin layer of water. Then I rinsed lily hair and headed back to shore. Halfway there, I looked over illy shoulder. Two of the biggest leeches I've ever seen were gliding along in my wake, and a third was detaching itself from the underside of a nearby rock, preparing to join in the chase. I've never run so fast through knee-deep water. Ten mi
nutes later, when I came back to the shore to get water for supper (escorted by the cloud of mosquitoes I was almost accustomed to), the leeches were still there, oonching their slick bodies as far up the beach as they could go, waving their mouth ends toward me. It felt as though everything, in the water and sky, was after my blood.

  That night, as I huddled, shivering, in the least soggy corner of lily sleeping bag, the memories I was trying to walk away from came flocking back to lily mind. In the tall before I started hiking, lily first long-term boyfriend had broken off our relationship abruptly, over the phone, claiming that our dif}er- ence in religion precluded any serious attachment. He was Lutheran, I am Wiccan. I suppose the incongruity would be obvious to anyone who wasn't in love. But we'd talked about our religions at great length, and it seemed to me that we'd found a way to mesh them. Eric ruefully admitted that he believed in the pagan Norse gods of his ancestors, and I told him that I worshipped a god of compassion and self-sacrifice, though I called her Inanna, not Jesus.

  The day he broke up with me, I reminded him of those conversations, trying to hold him on the line. And then lie said things I could not forgive. He said that when lie and I were together, he'd forgotten everything he held dear: honor, family, faith. He said that his friends, understanding the awful ascendancy I had over him, had counseled him to break up with me over the phone, so I wouldn't be able to frustrate his purpose with spells. I started to protest, but he continued, saying that it was one thing for him to indulge in a sinful liaison while he was young-anyone could make that mistake-but lie wanted to have children someday, and he couldn't imagine inc the mother of his children. This was the man who had told me, only a week before, that if he was dying in the desert he'd rather find me than find water.

  In the winter that followed, I fell into a deep depression. I could hardly look at food; I lost twenty pounds in a month. I lay awake until 2:00, sonie- tinies 4:00 in the morning, turning our last conversation over and over in lily mind, searching for any vestigial scrap of tenderness, or, alternately, sifting through all my memories of the good times, trying to find some hint in his words or behavior that could have prepared nee for such a betrayal. In the mornings I worked at a bakery, a job I used to love for the scents of yeast and molasses, and the comforting, everyday magic of rising bread. But that winter, whether from carelessness or exhaustion, I burned my arms on the heavy baking trays and cut my hands with the onion knives almost every day. I still have scars from it.

  By the time jackrabbit (with a lower-case j, she'd told nie, like the animal) and I hiked Katahdin, I was still fifteen pounds underweight, but I hoped and believed that I'd put my depression behind me. I've spent enough of my life out of doors to know that one can't afford to be careless with knives and fire in the wilderness.

  That night at Antlers Tentsite, though, the loss of Eric washed over me one final time in all its first intensity. The sky cleared after the storm and moonlight poured through the thin walls of the tent, bringing back memories of the night I met him. We walked past fields of purple lupine, its peppery scent mixing with the salt tang of the harbor. As the twilight deepened, a full moon rose red over the river, and when he rowed me out to the ship where I was working, we tried to follow the moon's wake, batding a rushing ebb tide. After he left me safe on the deck, I watched the tide, grown even stronger, catch him and sweep him far off his course. I followed the glint of his hair under the now-white moon, until he disappeared up the river.

  A loon called, over the lake. I was curled in my sleeping bag, under the red pines; Eric was somewhere in the South Pacific. I knew I would never see him again, had known that ever since I hung up the phone eight months before. Still, in the warm, clear night, I felt that he was close beside me, and I could reach him if only I knew how to draw back the curtain between us. The wings of thousands of mosquitoes brushed against the tent, reminding me of the terrible delicacy of a lover's hands, how the faintest touch echoes in the caves of the pelvis and ribcage.

  jackrabbit

  e left Antlers Tentsite late in the morning, after building a fire to dry out our gear. It was a long day's hike, hampered by many little ups and downs and by patches of sharp gravel in the trail. Of all the surfaces for barefoot hiking, gravel is the worst; it's nearly impossible to set your foot down without landing on many small, sharp uncomfortable points. Late in the day, as gloom settled around us, I wished I had a watch. It was impossible to tell whether night was truly coming or another cloud bank was moving over. I'd decided not to bring a watch on the Trail when we started, since the niicroscheduled world of classes and exams was all too fresh in my head, but I was beginning to regret it.

  "Where do you think we are?"

  Isis stopped and took out the map. "Well, that lake back there must have been Crawford Pond, so I guess this is Little Boardman Mountain"

  "Are there any campsites near here? It seems like it's getting late"

  "I already told you. There's nothing. I guess we'll just have to find a level piece of ground somewhere. We have enough water to cook with."

  "I guess so." Part of inc wanted to just keep going, hiking into the night, until we found familiar people again. I missed Blue Skies' cheerfulness and Matt's profound and sometimes ridiculous Zen proclamations. I was nervous about camping in the middle of the woods, with no one else around. But I was more nervous about trying to hike after dark with our single feeble flashlight, and I was bone tired.

  The shadows thickened under the moose maple and witch hobble bushes. The woods here were full of tiny maple saplings, probably regrowing from a clear-cut. Here and there, the pale bark of birches shone between the ranks of gray trunks. I started looking for a place to spend the night.

  "How about this?" It was a clearing maybe twice the size of our tent footprint, right beside the path.

  "That'll have to do"

  We set up the tent and Isis cooked beans and rice. A fierce cloud of mosquitoes whined around us as we ate, and we said little. We brushed our teeth, hung our food bags over the branch of a maple tree up the trail, and turned in for the night.

  I lay awake for a long time, listening to the sounds of the night forest around us. Branches creaked, wind stirred the leaves, and small animals twittered and rustled. I strained my ears, waiting for the regularity of footsteps to signal an approaching threat: strange human? Bear? But the sounds blended into one patternless yet steady hush, and eventually I fell asleep.

  Isis

  n a cool, bright morning, we reached the 3,500-foot summit of Whitecap Mountain and looked back for our last clear view of Katahdin. Thirty miles distant as the crow flies (and almost seventy miles as the Trail winds around lakes and along streambanks), the great mountain still filled the horizon. It seemed impossible that we would walk beyond sight of it; I imagined us standing at the summit of Springer, at the southern end of our hike, and looking out through the winter forest to see the jagged edge of Katahdin shining across two thousand miles of air.

  Cheered by the sunlight and the sight of Katahdin, we hiked fast. Soon I was daydreaming about catching up with Matt and Blue Skies, who we hadn't seen in two days. Get real, I told myself, there are seventeen miles and some 3,000 .feet of elevation gain between the place we started this morning and Chairback Gap Lean-to, where they must be staying tonight. The longest day we had hiked, up to that point, was the perfectly flat eleven miles between Wadleigh Stream and Antlers Tentsite.

  By the time the summer day drew to a close, I felt more than ready to spread out my sleeping bag on any patch of level ground. None presented itself, though; the trail was bordered by a stream on one side and dense spruce thickets on the other. I'd checked the map earlier, and we were nowhere near any designated campsites or shelters. How much farther would we have to walk?

  Orange-edged sunbeams slanted through the branches. A wood thrush's song-silvery notes spiraling up and down the scale in endless variations-rippled through the canopy. I looked up; instead of trees the width of my waist, we stood in th
e shadows of trees around which both of us together could barely stretch our arms. Out of vast tracts of commercial forest, we had stepped into forest primeval: the Hermitage, owned by the Nature Conservancy, one of the last few patches of old-growth in the state.

  This forest was so different from the young woods we had crossed that we could hardly recognize the species of the trees. Jackrabbit and I walked round and round one ancient deciduous tree that seemed to have sprung from another world, or another era of this one. Its deeply fissured, graygreen bark looked like a cross between beech and maple, but its high branches glowed a strange, pale gold in the twilight. Finally jackrabbit found a fallen leaf, the tree was a white birch, and the mysterious glow at its crown was the sun on limbs still slender enough to be wrapped in the familiar papery bark.

  After the Hermitage, the ordinary woods, which only a few nights ago had felt so deep and mysterious and full of bears, seemed like a toy forest in which we were children pretending to go for a hike. It took a slow uphill mile for reality to sink in, but when it did, it was sobering. We were still four or five miles from the nearest shelter-half a day's hike, at our current pace. We were low on water, and we hadn't seen a flat patch of ground big enough for a tent since we'd left the Hermitage. It looked like we'd have to hike another mile and a half uphill, trying to beat the darkness, and camp at East Chairback Pond a quarter mile off the trail. It wasn't a designated campsite, so we'd probably be alone. I'd felt nervous enough on Little Boardman Mountain, camping right beside the A.T. This was much worse. What if something happened to us? A quarter mile seemed like a long ways to go just to see a pond; maybe no other hiker would come down there for days.