Called Again (24 page)

It wasn't Melissa's fault that Brew was injured and couldn't hike. It wasn't Brew's fault, either. It was the fault of that dumbass who intentionally fouled Brew in a recreational league basketball game, tackling him on a lay-up like it was the game-winning shot of the NBA finals—when the guy's team was already down by twenty points!
That
is who I was really mad at!

But I was also annoyed that Melissa kept talking about her photos and
The New York Times
and her career and how great it was to hike in the “summer sun” on the “interesting rocks” in Pennsylvania.

My head felt like it was about to explode. Just then, my big toe caught the top of a rock and pitched me forward onto my hands and knees. I stood up to dust off the dirt and examine what new scrapes had been added to my collection, when I heard Melissa say, “Maybe your shoes are causing you to trip. My shoes are awesome. They have great traction and are really comfortable, and . . .”

That was it. I had had it! I wasn't tripping because of my shoes. I loved my shoes. They were absolutely the best hiking shoes I had ever worn. I was tripping because I was hiking over forty-five miles every day and my body was exhausted, and sometimes it was a struggle to lift my feet as high as they needed to go.

“Mel, I want to hike by myself right now,” I barked. “I'll see you at the next road!” It wasn't entirely polite, but it could have been a lot worse.

I arrived at the road crossing several minutes ahead of Melissa and in a foul mood. New York Steve was sitting in the shade, drinking ice water. It was his last full day with us, since he would be going home tomorrow. And since we were farther than two hours from his home, he had been staying at a hotel every night. But tonight I couldn't end at a road crossing, and I needed Steve's help hiking in and camping out.

“Steve, I need you to help me backpack tonight.”

“No way,” he said.

I guess I wasn't the only one who could be blunt.

“Are you serious, you're not going to help me?”

“I'm a runner, not a backpacker,” he said. “I don't camp out.”

Brew was standing over by the car, pulling fries out of a McDonald's sack. I walked over to him.

“I need to talk to you—
just you,
” I said.

Brew nodded. “Grab some food. I have your pack and we can rest in the forest.”

He followed me into the woods, and we each picked a rock to sit on.

“Melissa and Steve are driving me crazy,” I said. “I know that I should be appreciative that they are here and that they are helping us, but neither of them will hike the next stretch because it goes over the Superffund site near Palmerton, and they both said it would be too hot and rocky. Steve isn't helping me tonight because he doesn't want to camp out. And if I hear one more comment about the freaking pictures or
The New York Times,
I am going to lose it.”

“Do you want me to call Jim?” asked Brew.

“Who?” I asked.

“You know, Jim. Rambler. The hiker you met in the Bigelows. He lives in Pennsylvania and he emailed me the other day saying he could come out and help us if we needed it. It would be good to have some fresh legs. The past few days—and weeks—have been really hard on everyone. I know that you are completely exhausted, but Melissa and Steve are tired too. They are both planning to leave soon anyway, and we really need someone with us who knows the trail and can camp out with you.”

“What are we going to tell them?” I asked.

“I'll handle it.”

“Okay,” I replied. “Call Rambler.”

Brew and I seemed to be experiencing a role reversal. Off the trail, I was far more comfortable with confrontation. I wanted to solve problems, not suppress them. Brew hated conflict, and he avoided it at all costs.

But this summer, he was far more authoritative and assertive. He was showing me a whole new side of himself. I loved the old Brew, but seeing the new Brew in action was kind of a turn-on.

Too bad I was becoming less attractive on this hike, not just physically, but socially, too. I knew that the record would test my mind and body, but I did not realize how much it would test my
friendships. The record prevented me from putting others before myself. And it was causing a lot of collateral damage.

That afternoon, at a road crossing outside of Palmerton, Brew and I thanked Steve and Melissa for their help, and together they drove away in Steve's SUV. It was a tense, awkward parting. I had experienced so many good times with both of them in the past, and on the record attempt we had covered countless enjoyable miles together. But that last day was a bad one, and it left a foul taste in everyone's mouth.

My two friends drove away feeling hurt and unappreciated. I felt horrible about how everything ended, especially with Melissa. She had been with us from the beginning, and her help had been invaluable. I could never have made it to Pennsylvania without her. I had thanked her countless times along the journey. I even thanked her as she was leaving—but it sounded different.

I watched Steve's car disappear, and as guilty as I felt, I knew that asking them to leave had been the right decision. We would have all agreed that the group dynamics were not working. And in order to set the record, I needed more than a strong body and a strong mind working together; I needed a strong support team working together.

I had to trust that when this was over, I could offer the heartfelt apologies, and we could have the tearful conversations that hiking forty-five miles a day did not afford. I hoped that our friendship was stronger than a few bad days on the trail.

During my first thru-hike in 2005, I had allowed myself to express and experience all my feelings openly, and I had discovered sentiments inside myself that I didn't know existed. But this journey was just the opposite. I had to suppress feelings of frustration, fear, sorrow, discontentment, and pain. At times, I even had
to rein in my excitement and pride because when I lost control, I lost sight of the goal. Maintaining that constant focus made me feel and act distant, and that might have been the most difficult part of the entire endeavor.

Thank God for Brew. He was still human; he could still feel. Brew could express my sentiments to others even when I couldn't. And he felt my inner struggle and excitement, even when I didn't let it show.

At our wedding, we had included a Bible reading from Matthew 10: “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one.” Until now, I always thought that verse referred to sex, and because of that it was one of Brew's favorite nighttime devotionals. However, this hike had given the passage new meaning. My husband could not physically hike, and I could not emotionally feel. But he was my heart and I was his legs, and together we were still whole.

JULY 6, 2011—JULY 14, 2011

S
crambling over the jagged outcroppings and wobbly rocks at Bake Oven Knob and Bear Rocks seemed much more difficult than it had been on my previous hikes. When I arrived at the Cliffs on a mid-summer evening, I could not believe that I had either forgotten or underestimated how dangerous this high, narrow ridge could be.

In all three of these sections, the rocks seemed more ubiquitous, the late-day heat seemed more oppressive, and the potential missteps seemed more perilous than they had in the past. I decided that the heightened risk must be in my head. Either my increased age or my extreme fatigue was making me more timid. I concluded that the only thing different about these sections
was that more graffiti had been added to the easily accessed overlooks.

When I finally arrived at PA 309, Brew was waiting for me with a pie and two new crew members. I nodded to the scraggly-looking hikers who were standing beside Brew, thanked them for coming, and then focused on my pie. I was too hungry to engage in pleasantries; I needed food before I could focus on conversation.

When we set the women's record, often I decided to end my day early based solely on my stomach. One evening in 2008, I insisted on stopping at six o'clock even though there was another road crossing a mile away. I was ravenous, and Brew had just been to the store. He started preparing our campsite as I dug through the grocery bags. When Brew had finished setting up our tent, he returned to the car to find me surrounded by scattered and torn packages of food, as if I had been a hungry bear rummaging through a hiker's pack.

Brew just laughed. “Can you slow down enough to pass me the frosted animal cookies?” he asked.

I stared back at him with big eyes and a guilty look on my face.

“You didn't!”

He searched for the family-sized bag of frosted animal cookies and held up the empty bag in amazement. Brew looked at the package for nutrition information before giving me a bewildered glance. I batted my eyelids innocently while continuing to shove cheese crackers in my mouth.

“1,800 calories? I was gone for ten minutes and you already consumed 1,800 calories?”

I just flashed a cheese-cracker grin and kept eating.

And that was in 2008! Now that my miles per day needed to hover around fifty for the overall record, trying to get enough food in my system was impossible.

I was trying to consume three times the recommended caloric intake and it still felt like I was hiking with an energy deficit.
Sometimes I did not have enough saliva to process the food I was eating, so I would have to take a bite then rinse it down with water.

Instead of delighting in the fact that I could have anything I wanted and still lose weight, I began to see eating as a chore. I could tell immediately when my body needed more food, not because of a rumble in my stomach, but because it became difficult to take another step. I was like a car; once my gas gauge was on empty, I couldn't go any farther.

That night at PA 309, I sat down in our blue camp chair, propped my scraped legs on the back of our vehicle, then with a single plastic fork, I devoured the family-sized dessert pastry that sat on my lap. My mother would have been aghast to see me eating a pie for dinner. But in my defense, it was a fruit pie.

Displaying atrocious table manners and appalling appetite was probably not the best way to greet our new crew members. But after getting down as much sugar and carbs as I possibly could, I kissed Brew, grabbed my daypack, and headed back into the woods with Rambler and Dutch.

Rambler's beard was a half-inch longer than the last time I had seen him, but he looked much cleaner than when I saw him in the Bigelows—and compared to Dutch, he also looked shorter.

Dutch was a six-foot-three-inch twenty-one-year-old from the Netherlands, and his legs seemed to start just below his neck. He had finished the trail at the same time as Rambler. I hadn't met Dutch in Maine, but Rambler said that was because he spent half of each day hiking fast and the other half reading in his tent.

Now the tall European was trying to fill the last month of his tourist visa with activities that didn't cost too much. Serendipi-tously, he had been staying with Rambler near Philadelphia when Brew called for help, and within hours they were both on their way to meet us. But they weren't just coming to be helpful; they were also coming because they missed the trail.

I followed Rambler and Dutch over the rocks, and after a half hour of walking, we stopped to pull out our headlights. We continued in the black night, listening to the knocking of the unstable stones under our feet.

Even though both men had full packs and I was just wearing a simple daypack, I struggled to keep up with their bright lithium beams. I kept diverting my headlight from the stones below to the hikers outpacing me up ahead. Their footwork was unbelievably nimble considering we were hiking over loose rocks in the dark.

Finally, when the rocks grew less frequent and more stable, we could relax enough to carry on a conversation.

Because I was somewhat acquainted with Rambler, I spent most of my time asking questions of Dutch. I wanted to know about his home and his family, and I wanted to know about his thru-hike.

Dutch was thoughtful and soft-spoken. My initial impression was that he was much more interesting and mature than most twenty-one-year-olds in the United States. And he was certainly more conscientious and wise than
I
had been when
I
first hiked the trail.

After responding to my surface-level questions, it was Dutch's turn to drive the conversation. The lanky European, whose height and headlamp made it possible to mistake him for a distant radio tower, decided to skip the small talk and ask me exactly what was on his mind.

“Trying to set the record—do you have fun?”

It was a simple question, but recently it had consumed me.

I answered immediately, “No. I am not having fun.”

“Then why are you doing it?”

“Because it's worthwhile.” Saying this clearly and confidently served as personal reminder, as well as an answer.