Called Again (31 page)

After Rebekah left, Brew and I enjoyed another stretch of private meetings on forest service roads and asphalt. Usually when we thru-hiked together, we would experience our worst arguments during the first week of the trip. After that, things would usually be very harmonious and agreeable, until the “almost-end.” The almost-end is one of the hardest parts of any journey. It comes at the point when you are more uncomfortable, tired, and weak than you have been since you began, but you are too far from the finish to feel hopeful.

You are waiting for your second wind, for the motivation you need to bypass fatigue and accomplish your goal. Brew and I had avoided our usual fallout in the first week, and now I was hoping to prevent the almost-end argument as well. So I decided to do a little preventative maintenance.

“Do you know where we are?” I asked Brew.

“On a dirt road in southwest Virginia,” he answered.

“Yes, and do you know approximately how many more days we have to reach Springer?” I had done the math, and I was confident that Brew had too. In fact, he even had his “positive numbers pen” in hand. Most of the time he used it to calculate my mileages on a clipboard, but currently he was doodling a smiley face on my thigh.

“If you stay on schedule, then we have less than two weeks to go,” he said.

“That's right. You have done such an
amazing
job this summer, and I want to make sure that I am extra kind and appreciative toward you this week.” I said all of this in my most syrupy-sweet voice. “And it would really help me if for the next few days you could be even
more
encouraging and supportive than you usually are.”

“Ahhh . . .” Brew knew where I was headed. “We are at the almost-end, aren't we?”

I nodded.

“Yeah.” He hesitated, then went on, “I don't know what else I have to give, and I don't know how you can keep doing what you are doing, but we both need to find more. So let's try to find it together.” Then he took his pen and began a new sketch near my knee.

“When do you think it's going to feel like the
real
end?” he asked.

“Erwin, Tennessee,” I said. “I think when we get there and we only have a week left, it'll start to feel like—OWWW!” I wailed as Brew nearly punctured me in the quad with an exclamation mark.

I looked down at my leg. It now read “L-O-V-E-!”

“That hurt!” I cried.

“Love hurts,” Brew said with a smirk.

My next trail companion was a legend among hikers and ultra-runners in the Southeast. Matt Kirk had hiked the Appalachian Trail twice and was the first person to run the hundred-mile stretch of the A.T. in Shenandoah National Park in less than twenty-four hours. He had set endurance records on the 1,000-mile Mountains-to-Sea Trail, the three-hundred-fifty mile Benton McKaye Trail, and the hundred-mile Bartram Trail, and he was also the
fastest to string together all of the Southeastern peaks above 6,000 feet. We had never hiked together, and to put it lightly, I was a little intimidated.

Matt brought his wife Lily to join us. Lily was beautiful and kind,
and
an A.T. thru-hiker. Their relationship had been cemented on the trail's northernmost five hundred miles.

At this point, the efforts of my support crew had yielded thirty completions of the Appalachian Trail and over 65,000 miles of collective wisdom and experience. More than ever, I was convinced that this journey was anything but a solo effort.

Matt and I set out together from Wind Rock. Our plan was to meet Brew and Lily twenty-six miles later at the Senator Shumate Bridge in Pearisburg, Virginia. We were accompanied on the trail by his mutt Uwharrie. Uwharrie was also a thru-hiker. (Correction: the collective wisdom and experience of
thirty-one
A.T. completions now carried me down the trail.)

If I had to guess, I would say most dogs I know would prefer the couch and an unending bowl of dog food to the rough footing and relentless miles of the A.T. I had come across one too many dogs with shredded footpads and clearly defined rib cages to ever consider having a pet join me. However, Uwharrie and Matt were simpatico. You could tell that nothing made either of them happier than hiking down the trail.

Because Matt had set several trail records himself, I didn't have to begin our discourse by explaining why I wanted to hike the A.T. this way. And he didn't ask me if it was fun, because he already knew that it wasn't. Just as Rebekah and I understood each other's faith, Matt and I both understood trail records. And instead of explaining our choices, we spent time defending them.

“I think one of the main problems is not that people misunderstand trail records,” I said. “It's that they misunderstand traditional backpacking. I took nearly five months on my first A.T.
thru-hike, and until now, it has been the most difficult of all my hikes. I don't care if you are hiking ten miles a day or fifty, the trail is still hard, you're still going to get eaten by bugs, and you're still going to feel dirty and tired. Anyone who expects hiking to be perpetually comfortable and fun is probably a day hiker who travels non-technical trails in good weather.”

“Yeah, I feel you,” said Matt. “I usually think that the harder a hike is, the greater the reward. Between my relationship and my job, I can't backpack as much as I used to. Putting in big miles lets me get my fill—and stay married and employed. It also allows me to draw more strength from nature. I remember one time on the Long Trail, I had just given my last piece of food to Uwharrie going up Camel's Hump, and I was starving and frustrated with myself for not carrying enough supplies. But then I arrived at the summit and the view was so awesome that I drew energy from it. I just drank it in, and, man, I just started cruising down the trail. It was almost like I was floating.”

I felt like Matt was floating down the trail right now, gliding in front of me with his long, steady strides. Like Dutch, Matt was one of the few people I hiked with who had longer legs than I did. I was working hard to keep up, and Uwharrie made it worse by constantly running between us, reminding me that he was actually hiking twice as far as his two-legged companions.

“Matt, do you mind if I hike in front for a while?”

“Of course not. Do whatever you need to do. The entire reason I am out here is to help you.”

I was still a little overwhelmed by Matt's trail resume and his hiking skills, but it helped that he was as mellow and supportive as he was accomplished.

When Matt and I reached the bridge, Brew's jaw dropped.

“I didn't think you guys would be here for at least another hour!” he exclaimed. “You were hiking almost four miles per hour.”

I smiled. I knew that I could not have hiked as quickly or enjoyed that section as much without Matt. Unfortunately, he was not willing to take the 4:45 a.m. shift the following morning. He was, after all, a teacher on summer vacation. But then again, so was my husband.

The next morning, Brew and I walked through Pearisburg in the dark, then I started hiking alone toward Angel's Rest. The sun had not come up yet and it was already sweltering. I was pouring sweat, my clothes were clinging to my skin, and the air was so thick that it was hard to swallow. At least, having grown up in the South, I was somewhat accustomed to these conditions. I considered my roots a real advantage on the record. It would have been difficult, if not impossible, to tolerate the heat and humidity otherwise.

Matt rejoined me on the next section, and that helped take my mind off of the high temperatures for a while. However, that afternoon, we were reminded of the summer swelter in a most unpleasant way when we came across deer carcasses lying near two separate road crossings.

Throughout the entire trip, I had refused to take extra steps.

I always wanted Brew to park exactly at the road crossing, and if there wasn't room on the shoulder of the road, then I expected him to park nearby and carry all the supplies to the trail. (I know, it sounds ridiculous. But my husband had told me it was okay to be a diva, so I was.) Sometimes the distance between the car and the trail was only twenty yards, but that was still twenty yards too far. I'd decided that if I had to hike over forty-six miles per day, then I wasn't going to waste any of my energy by walking off-trail.

However, in this scenario, the stench at the road crossing was so unbearable that I had no choice but to walk up the road and upwind. Matt had to go even farther, as Lily had refused to park within two hundred yards of the rotting flesh. Ever since hitting Maryland, the thought of a Clif Bar had made me gag, so you can imagine what the smell of a decaying animal did to me. I had only
thrown up once on this trip, and I didn't want to repeat the experience. As soon as I started dry heaving, I just grabbed the snacks out of Brew's hands and raced down the trail.

I wasn't grossed out by the dead animal—the smell, yes, but not the animal. I was really frustrated and angry at the person who dumped it there. What a waste! There wasn't a single part of the body that had been used. It wasn't hunting season, and I assumed that a poacher had killed simply for sport. Three hundred years ago, Native Americans and settlers would have used the meat for food, the skin for clothing, the sinew for string, and the bones for tools. Now we have a tendency to treat our natural resources like garbage.

The next road crossing was similarly unpleasant. As the smell grew stronger, so did my nausea and my frustration. The only one who didn't seem to mind the putrid scent was Uwharrie. I was utterly impressed with that dog's olfactory senses. Not only had he detected the carcasses well before Matt or I had, but when we came to a junction with an intersecting path, Uwharrie always headed down the right trail without missing a step. He must have been following the scent of previous thru-hikers—which is almost as bad as that of a dead deer.

As the sun started to go down, I relied more on Uwharrie than on my headlamp. And as Matt and I headed down to our final road crossing, we resumed our conversation about trail records.

“Matt, do you ever think you would want to try for an A.T. record?”

“I don't know,” he said. “I think if I tried for a record on the A.T., I would probably go after Ward Leonard's sixty-day unsupported record. I love the idea of being self-sufficient. But the most time I have ever spent going after a record was twenty-four days on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, and I don't know if my body could handle that type of effort for two months.”

Matt paused for a moment, then asked, “What does it feel like trying to set a 2,181-mile record?”

I thought about his question for a minute, then answered, “Well, it feels like I'm breaking down.”

I continued, “Initially I thought there might be a turning point where my body would adjust or adapt to the challenge, but that never happened. Not on this challenge, anyway. There's been no time to rest or recover. So from the second I started, I've been experiencing a physical and emotional decline. I think the key to setting a record out here is just to try and break down as slowly and intelligently as possible, without completely shattering.”

When we arrived at the road, I was relieved to find we weren't camping next to another dumpsite for poachers. Instead, we were treated to one of our best nights of the entire summer. Our tent was buried beneath a thicket of rhododendron beside Laurel Creek. I washed off in the clear, cool water underneath a dark sky full of twinkling white stars. Then I crawled into my tent to eat rehydrated sweet-and-sour chicken. And while I ate, I was serenaded by the sound of crickets, southern katydids, and the swirling currents of the nearby stream.

The campsite was perfect. There was a cool breeze, running water, humming insects, and soft black dirt to sleep on. The man I loved was nearby, and two friends were camped on the opposite riverbank. I was surrounded by life and beauty. My soul was content, and my life felt full. I thought about all the time Matt and I had spent discussing trail records over the past two days. In so many ways it did seem like trail records were similar to faith. You couldn't really explain it or make it make sense; you just had to experience it to appreciate its value.