Called Again (38 page)

I decided to sit down, figuring I wouldn't fall as far if I fainted, and that I could rest while I waited for Carl to catch up.

I sat in the middle of the trail, calling for him every few minutes. I was probably there for twenty or thirty minutes, but it was long enough to realize that Carl was not coming. I kept thinking,
He should be here by now. Something must be wrong.

My personal fear turned into worry for Carl. Was he okay? Should I go back and look for him? I didn't know what to do.

Finally, I decided that I didn't know where Carl was or how to find him, but I did know that I had six miles to the next road, and I should do everything in my power to make it there safely.

I stood up and started to hike. Surprisingly, instead of feeling depleted, I felt like I was floating. It was a weird, almost out-of-body experience. I was breathing through my nose, my mind felt disconnected from my feet, and I was flying down the trail. I remember Matt Kirk sharing a story about being in dire need of food and reaching a transcendent state of gliding down the trail— followed by several intense hallucinations.

This must have been the feeling he was describing. Fortunately, I wasn't hallucinating yet. At least I didn't think I was.

When I was two miles from the road crossing, I heard a noise I didn't recognize. It was very loud, almost as if there were a storm or groundswell coming from the forest floor. I kept floating along and staring into the woods, when suddenly I saw two large wild boars. They saw me, too, and ran, crashing through the underbrush. But instead of charging farther away, they ran straight across the trail—fifteen yards ahead of me.

I was stunned to see the two portly animals with short, stiff legs move so quickly. And I was even more surprised to see the two adults followed by a dozen or so farrows, or baby boars. They were a collage of colors: pink, brown, gray, and black. Before this encounter, I had only seen four boars in all my years of hiking in the Appalachian Mountains. And now I was convinced that there was a polychrome family of fourteen running out of sight.

When I got to the next road crossing, Brew looked shocked to see me exit without Carl.

“What happened? Where's Carl?” he asked.

“I don't know,” I said. “I hoped he would be with you. I never even saw him. I thought he bailed before Blood Mountain and
went back to Neels Gap. All I know is that I just encountered a whole lot of animals and I'm not sure they were all real. I need some food, and I need it
now.
”

I sat down and started chugging a Coca-Cola. The sugar revived me like an IV pumping through my veins. Next, I began to work on the hard-boiled burrito that Brew had made earlier. Three hours ago it had made me retch. Now it smelled tempting and tasted delicious.

As I started to feel better, I also started to get excited. I looked around and saw James and my oldest brother, Jones, standing by the car and pulling out gear so they could hike the last twenty miles with me. Maureen was there smiling and taking even more photos than usual.

I felt warm and full inside. It was probably a result of the egg burrito and the Coke, but there was also a part of me that felt satisfied by more than just food.

I glanced over at Brew, who was calling Carl from a borrowed cell phone while simultaneously rummaging through the trunk of our car to pick out my snacks and refill my water bottles.

“There's no answer,” Brew said with a concerned and frustrated look on his face.

I told my husband the same thing I had repeated in my head for the past six miles. I said, “Carl will be fine. He is an experienced runner, and he knows these woods like the back of his hand. He can take care of himself.”

“I hope so,” responded Brew.

Then I asked, “Honey, do you
feel
it at all?”

“Feel what?” he replied.

“The finish.”

“We're still twenty miles from Springer Mountain,” said Brew matter-of-factly. “When you hike another nineteen miles and when we find Carl,
then
it will feel like the finish.”

I knew that my husband was not trying to be a killjoy. He
was just staying focused. And I needed to stay focused as well. I couldn't let go of my emotions or my intensity just yet. But repressing my joy was a lot harder with my oldest brother standing five feet from me.

Jones had never come to the trail before. He had a frenetic, high-powered banking job that made it difficult for him to take time off. The fact that he was here, in the middle of nowhere Georgia, where his Blackberry didn't work, helped me to realize just how special and important this day was going to be.

He and I set out together to hike the next section while James and Brew stayed at Woody Gap to wait for Carl.

It proved to be an exceptionally entertaining stretch, especially since we didn't hike. In fact, it was the first time all summer that I ran for an extended period of time. I'd started out from Woody Gap with a brisk hiking pace, but my brother was soon goading me from behind. “This is runnable. Why aren't you running this?”

“Jones,” I replied in a mixture of consternation and amusement, “I haven't run all summer.”

To which he responded, “Well, better late than never. C'mon, pick up the pace!”

The prodding was so good-natured and humorous that I decided to appease him. I could hear Brew's voice in the back of my head, saying, “Slow down. It is not worth it to run on your very last day and risk an injury.” But I couldn't help it. All summer long, ultra-runners, endurance junkies, even a national magazine writer had tried to get me to transition from walking my miles to running them. Yet the only person who succeeded at the task was my brother, who spent eighty hours a week in a cubicle in Manhattan.

As we trotted down the trail, Jones kept provoking me over and over. But beyond reminding me to keep my cadence up, he also kept saying things like, “It's so beautiful out here,” and “All you have to worry about is food and water. This is the life!”

My brother was right. Compared to his high-tech, high-speed world, my existence for the past forty-six days had been wonderfully simple. I had spent the summer going three miles per hour, never once having to look at a computer or use my phone except in emergencies. It's amazing that even setting a speed record on the Appalachian Trail seemed unhurried when compared to our modern existence.

When Jones and I jogged out of the woods at our next road crossing, Brew's jaw dropped.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“My brother the banker wouldn't let me walk,” I replied.

Brew laughed and shook his head. “Just be careful,” he warned. “Really,
really
careful.”

“I will, I promise. Have you heard from Carl?”

“Yeah, he tried to catch up with you, but kept getting sick,” Brew said. “He ended up taking a side trail to a nearby road. I think your dad's on his way to pick him up.”

I gladly let go of the notion that some grave misfortune might transpire in the eleventh hour. Now that Carl was accounted for, there was nothing keeping us from Springer Mountain.

After a quick snack, I returned to the woods with my other brother, James.

“Don't you think this is runnable?” he asked.

I looked back in disbelief, only to see him chuckling.

My brothers like to claim that they were the ones responsible for making me tough and determined. However, if anyone was responsible for making me—and my brothers—that way, it was my mother. All three of us had grown up hearing the same phrases over and over again. My mom was like a broken record when we were upset, always repeating lines like, “Life's not fair” or “Oh, get over it—you're fine.” When my brothers picked on me, she would say, “Don't give them an emotional payoff.” And
the phrase I heard most often was, “Quit being such a drama queen!”

Often, I was envious of my friends, whose mothers coddled them, but I was now convinced more than ever that God knew exactly what he was doing when he assembled our family. I might not have always received the empathy that I wanted, but I had the mom, dad, and brothers that I needed.

When I arrived at Three Forks, Brew was there, and not far away was a man with a cap, white beard, and round belly who was standing in a creek. As I drew closer, I could tell that the man in the water was Warren. Before Brew could say a word, Warren started calling out to me like a preacher from a pulpit.

“From the currents of Katahdin Stream, you have traveled along the worn peaks of the mighty Appalachian Mountains— mountains formed by the rivers and worn by the rain. Now here you stand, at the base of Springer Mountain, and it is time to drink once again.”

Warren reached down into the water and filled his dented metal cup. Then he handed it to me. The man who'd never once tasted bottled water was offering me a sip of refreshment from the only catchment device he ever carried on the trail.

I brought the cup to my lips and drank. Warren grinned.

I wiped the extra water from my lips with the back of my wrist and handed the cup back to him. “Thank you,” I said.

Then I sat down to eat some potato chips while Warren remained in the water, dividing the currents with his strong, thick calves. The front of his green shirt had a white blaze printed on it, the ubiquitous sign of the Appalachian Trail. He stood so still and silent that it almost looked like he was an actual trail marker. And for me, at least, I think he was.

It was strange to see Warren again, now that I was so close to the end. He had been there before I began my first A.T. journey. He had helped me plan for the Long Trail. He was a constant
friend and mentor. But the last time I saw him in Vermont, he was also a source of frustration.

Warren had known all too well the obstacles that awaited me. He painted too realistic a picture of what I would have to endure to be successful. But at the base of Springer Mountain, there was no one I would have rather had with me.

Of all the people who would surround me on top of Springer, only Warren could truly empathize with what my body and mind had been through over the last month and a half. And he was one of the few people who could ever fully appreciate what we had accomplished.

As I continued to shove Kettle chips into my mouth, Brew asked, “Do you want to change out any gear for the last section?” He froze for a moment and said, “Wow. Did I really just say ‘the last section'?” Then he immediately returned his attention to my daypack.

This was our final road crossing before the Springer Mountain parking lot, and while I'd had some time over the past few hours to wrap my head around the end, it was clear that Brew still couldn't comprehend the words coming out of his own mouth. Even though he had said “the last section,” he didn't once mention the finish, the record, or the people who would be waiting for us on top of the mountain. He was entirely focused on whether I had the right food and enough water. He checked to make sure I had Benadryl and an EpiPen, and then he looked at the map to make sure he could navigate the maze of dirt roads.

As I put the potato chips down and stood up, Brew held out my daypack. I took it from him, then held on to his hand and gave it a squeeze. Then I let go and turned to see James waiting by the trailhead. I walked over to join my brother, and together we disappeared into the woods. It was the last section of the entire trail, and all I had to do to reach my goal was hike to Brew.

As we climbed toward the Springer Mountain parking lot, James
and I were both pretty quiet. I'm not sure if we didn't know what to say or if there just weren't words to express how we felt. Every now and then, I would childishly blurt out, “Oh my gosh . . . oh my gosh . . . oh my gosh.” But then I would revert to a far more expressive silence.

JULY 31, 2011

W
hen we arrived at the Springer Mountain parking lot, the small gravel clearing was packed full of cars, more than I had ever seen there. And in contrast to the array of cars in the parking lot, I could see only two people standing there. A few yards away, surrounded by SUVs, stood Brew. He had his arms crossed and he was wearing a crooked smile. Tears were welling up in his eyes. For the first time in forty-six days, his posture and the look on his face seemed relaxed, almost limp. The burden he had put on himself—the burden not to let me down—had finally been lifted. The tunnel vision he'd had for so long seemed to have faded, and in its place had emerged a new expression.

When people ask me why I would want to set the record, or what I could possibly gain from hiking the trail in forty-six days, I think back to the contented look I shared with Brew in the Springer Mountain parking lot. That one glance made every step, every mountain, every ailment, every storm, every discomfort, and every tear worthwhile. No trophy or winner's purse could ever match the value of looking into the eyes of my husband, knowing that together we had accomplished the impossible.

Brew and I walked toward each other and wrapped ourselves in a teary, tight embrace.

“You did it,” he whispered.

“No,
we
did it,” I replied.

We hugged and cried for a long moment, and then Brew pulled away and reached for my hand. It was time.

We had one more mile to hike to reach the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, and we were going to walk every step hand in hand.

Looking toward the trailhead that led up Springer, I smiled at the only other person in the parking lot. Squatting by the path, waiting for us to hike toward her, was my mother. She was kneeling down to take photos of us as we began the final mile of our journey. Having my mom there made a perfect moment even better. We had both come such a long way.