Called Again (5 page)

Traveling to Australia was heart wrenching because it put me 12,000 miles away from the person I loved most. But hiking the six-hundred-mile Bibbulmun Track was one of the best things I could have done for Brew, for myself, and for our impending marriage. Five months is a short time to date before getting engaged.
But instead of spending the first month of our engagement worrying about a wedding, I simply thought about marriage. I mourned the loss of my singleness and I contemplated the full meaning and commitment of matrimony.

Contemplation came easily, as the Bibbulmun Track was the most solitary trail I had ever hiked. Most Australians refuse to hike the footpath between December and February because of the one-hundred-degree heat. But after hiking through the southern California desert on the Pacific Crest Trail without any shade and very few water sources, the high temperatures on the Bibbulmun Track, which were often diffused by a forest canopy or ocean breeze, did not prove to be a problem for me.

During one stretch along my journey, I went three full days without seeing another person. A few years before, and certainly before I started hiking, that level of solitude would have made me really uncomfortable—or it simply would have driven me crazy. But now, I embraced the isolation and I embraced the crazy.

For three full days, I talked to animals instead of people.

The kangaroos were not very good conversationalists. They hopped off before I could even finish a sentence. In my first few days on the trail, I was constantly startled by the sound of them bounding through the underbrush. They were stronger, taller, and much faster than I expected—not nearly as quaint and cute as they'd been in the books I read as a child. But because I saw between fifteen and thirty a day, I quickly grew accustomed to them.

There were plenty of other critters. The emus reminded me of the ostriches that I had seen after climbing Kilimanjaro in Africa, but they were far more skittish. I usually spotted them near berry bushes, and as soon as they felt my presence, they panicked and sprinted off. The spiders in Australia were very large, but I actually preferred these giant arachnids to the smaller U.S. varieties because I could spot them from yards away, which kept me from hiking into so many webs. And then there were the lizards. They were so huge, colorful, and primitive that I was convinced I might also spot a dinosaur hiding in the forest.

Most of the human interaction I had occurred when I would reach a town and could call Brew on a payphone. He knew that I could call at any time, most likely during the middle of the night, so he didn't get very much sleep while I was on the Bibbulmun Track.

Hiking to hear Brew's voice encouraged me to hike longer days and higher miles. The reward for all my hard work was no longer reaching a warm shower or hot meal, but simply hearing my fiancé's voice. We both valued our time apart and recognized its significance in our relationship, but at the same time, we hated it.

One day toward the end of my hike when I reached the small town of Pemberton, I called Brew. It was late at night in the States, but I could tell his voice was weighed down with more than fatigue.

“I'm worried about this summer,” he said.

“About the A.T.?” I asked hesitantly, knowing the answer.

In our brief planning session before my departure, we scheduled our wedding for June 8, right after Brew finished teaching and twelve days before I wanted to start the Appalachian Trail. I had told him on our first date that I was planning on a record attempt that summer, and I didn't want to give it up, especially now that I had dedicated it to Meredith. But looking down, I noticed the shiny new ring on my finger, and I realized I would have to try something that I wasn't very accustomed to—compromise.

Brew continued, “I just want to be able to see you as much as possible on the trail, and I can't imagine seeing you hurt or hungry or cold or wet, without being able to help you.”

I took a deep breath. One thing Brew wanted assurance of before we got engaged was that I loved him more than hiking, and that I would always put him above the trail. In my mind— and my heart—there was no comparison, but he still needed to hear that.

“I want to do what is best for us,” I said. “If that means that I don't get to hike the A.T. this summer, then I'll deal with it. But I've been dreaming about this trail record for months and working toward it. We are going to have our entire lives to be together and hike together, and I may not have the time or the ability to go after this record in the future. So I'd really like to do it now. Remember, you
are
robbing the cradle.”

Brew's solemness eased, and he let out a laugh.

I liked to tease him that I was his trophy wife. I also liked to remind him of our five-year age difference and of the fact that he'd had his entire twenties to travel and explore. Marriage would certainly be our greatest adventure, but I still wanted to have some smaller exploits along the way.

“Well, what if we did a supported hike?” Brew asked.

“You mean you'd help me the whole way?”

I had never done a supported hike before. I had always traveled on my own with everything I needed on my back. In a supported hike, Brew would take our car and meet me at points where the trail crossed a road. I could limit my pack weight and have daily access to food, dry socks, and my husband. I loved the solitude and self-sufficiency of traditional backpacking, but I loved Brew more. It made sense that this would no longer be my hike, but our hike.

“I'm going to be following you and worrying about you anyway, so I might as well help you. What do you say? Want to try a supported record?”

And from half a world away I said, “I do.”

JUNE 2008—AUGUST 2008

B
rew and I were married on June 8, 2008, in a beautiful outdoor ceremony in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Charlottesville, Virginia. We spent almost two weeks honeymooning in Montpe-lier, Montreal, and Maine's Acadia National Park, and then on June 20, we began our supported thru-hike on the Appalachian Trail at Mount Katahdin, Maine. It was the greatest newlywed adventure that I can imagine, but it was also the most demanding.

The goal was to cover the Appalachian Trail's fourteen states and 2,180 miles in less than two months. My job was to wake up with the sun, hike all day, then go to bed when the sun went down. Brew's role was far more complicated.

I needed my new husband to locate obscure road crossings, hike in to find me, and always have the correct provisions in his pack or in the car. His role included setting up camp at night, preparing our food, running our errands, and encouraging me with positive feedback and humor whenever we were together.

At the end of the day Brew would sometimes hike in to meet me with our camping gear. Other times he would leave the last road crossing of the day with me and carry a pack with our supplies so that we could stop and set up camp. Ideally, if I could end the day at a road crossing, he would have our dinner ready, our tent set up, and our sleeping pads and bags unrolled by the time I arrived. It was up to him to make sure that I had everything I needed, all the time.

And I didn't realize how stressful the endeavor would be on Brew. He had never spent a night on the Appalachian Trail before the summer of 2008, and I had forgotten how difficult that transition could be. Brew had to grow accustomed to sleeping every night in a tent, waking up to black flies and mosquitoes buzzing in his face, and going several days without taking a shower. He also had to adjust to a diet of Clif bars and freeze-dried dinners. In other words, he had to learn to be very uncomfortable, very quickly.

But Brew's emotional burden was even greater than his physical discomfort. He had to learn simultaneously how to be a new husband
and
a one-man support team. On the trail, my success and safety depended entirely on Brew. If he couldn't find me, then I would not have any food or camping gear for the next section. My well-being was completely in his hands—and he knew it. And the fact that we started in the most logistically challenging and remote portion of trail didn't help his anxiety.

The northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail is in the middle of Maine, which is to say, the middle of nowhere. Katahdin, a large rocky monolith whose name means “Greatest Mountain,”
rises from the surrounding bogs and forests like an impenetrable fortress. It offers fulfillment to the thru-hikers who arrive at its base and hope to those who depart from its peak. The mountain is a great teacher, but its answers are always changing and are often bestowed in the form of new questions.

The day we began, I climbed the barren slopes of the Mighty Mountain with my new husband and then descended the arduous terrain on my own. After just a few hours, I exited the sanctuary of Baxter State Park. I paused at the park boundary and looked over my shoulder at the mountain behind me. I didn't know when I'd see it again, but I sensed that someday I would.

Ahead of me, Brew waited at the next road crossing. When I saw my husband standing at our car, I ran to meet him. He was my moving mountain, my migrating trail marker, a source of strength. Every time we parted, I would immediately look ahead and press forward to meet him again. Even on day one, it seemed that the motivation to set a record was less compelling than the incentive of hiking to Brew. At this point I was still thinking more about our wedding and our honeymoon than about the difficult task that lay ahead. I was too full of love to worry about the hardships of the next 2,000 miles.

I gathered more food and supplies at our car and kissed my husband good-bye before entering the Hundred-Mile Wilderness. The common misperception about the Hundred-Mile Wilderness is that there are not any roads for evacuation, entry, or support. But it only feels that way. The thick woods, low-lying marshes, large undisturbed lakes, and abundant moose make the wilderness seem remote and impassable. But there are roads. Granted, they are mostly unmarked private logging roads that you have to pay to access and pray to navigate, but there
are
roads.

Brew did a great job maneuvering through the maze of obstacles in the Hundred-Mile Wilderness and I was able to see him at least twice a day. After I hiked out of it and crossed the wide
channel of the Kennebec River, access to the trail increased, and I could see Brew even more often.

When the burly climbs, copious river crossings, and swarming black flies of central Maine began to wear on my body and spirit, I could always count on Brew to sing me a song, tell me a joke, or give me a kiss that would get me through the next section.

There were multiple times when I was between road crossings, all alone, and my body felt like it couldn't take another step. In those moments, I would start to sing—poorly and out loud— the Diana Ross chorus, “Ain't no mountain high enough, ain't no valley low enough, ain't no river wide enough to keep me from getting to you.” And my determination to overcome everything to get to my husband was renewed.

Brew felt the same way about finding me. Together we were a well-oiled machine, leap-frogging one another with perfect precision . . . until day six. That morning, I left early from our campsite near the still waters at Horns Pond Lean-to. Brew was still asleep in the tent, but I knew that in another hour, his alarm would sound and he would quickly pack up and hike down the mountain as well. I hiked four miles down a steep incline to where our car was parked at Maine Route 27. I changed clothes and loaded up on snacks for nine more miles of rugged terrain before I could see Brew and have access to our SUV again.

I made it to Caribou Valley Road in three hours, but when I arrived, Brew wasn't there. We had agreed to leave notes for each other on pieces of bright orange surveyor's tape in case one of us arrived early and had to press on. I looked around for one of those, but I could not find any on the nearby trees. The road was a rocky mess and had suffered multiple washouts from a nearby stream. It seemed like it would be difficult for an ATV to navigate, let alone a full-sized vehicle. I waited for Brew for over forty minutes. There were several times when I thought I heard our faithful Toyota Highlander traveling down the uneven road, and I was convinced
that I could see a cloud of dust materializing through the trees, but the noise never grew louder and the car never appeared.