Halfway to the Sky

  Vivi answered slowly, “I think out here we're more aware of how much we need each other. If I abandon you today when you need help, maybe someone else will abandon me tomorrow. But if I take care of you, then you can take care of someone else, or someone else might take care of me.

  “It's a community of strangers,” she said. “A neighborhood that extends two thousand miles.”

  That night I dreamed Springer and I were running races in the grass. The field was wide and full of yellow dandelions; the sun was warm and the air smelled sweet. I was wearing my sundress with red poppies on it, my favorite dress when I was four years old. Springer wore his soccer uniform, blue shirt, black shorts. We were running across the grass, racing, laughing. He stumbled and fell, and I ran into Daddy's arms, yelling, “I won again! I won again!” Springer got up, a puzzled look on his face, and said, “Why do I keep falling down?” My mother glanced at my father quickly, then looked away. I knew something was wrong.

  It wasn't really a dream. It was a memory. The next day Mom took Springer to the doctor. The day after that was his sixth birthday, and the day after that we took a long ride to the Knoxville Children's Hospital, and they told us Springer had Duchenne's. A nurse led me down the hall to get special lollipops out of a big glass bowl. I chose carefully, one for me, one for Springer. I remember thinking that the right flavor of lollipop would make Springer better. I was really stupid then.

  I woke up in the dark room and found that I was leaning against my mother. Her breathing was soft and regular, her body warm. I snuggled closer to her and went back to sleep.

  March 26

  Mount Collins Shelter (Great Smoky Mountains

  National Park, Tennesee/North Carolina state line)

  Miles hiked today: 13.5

  Total miles hiked on the Appalachian Trail: 199

  Weather: cold high up, muddy, snow melting

  Springer walks and runs in my very earliest memories, but in all my later ones he is weak, far weaker than me. He couldn't push his own wheelchair—his arms were never strong enough. From the time he was eleven he used an electric-powered chair. Springer could not lift a regular baseball bat, let alone swing one, so when we played in the yard he used a hollow plastic one. He could not throw a regular basketball, but he could throw a lighter ball, though never high enough to make a basket. He needed help to get his schoolbooks out of his backpack. Using a pencil made his fingers tired.

  Here on the Appalachian Trail, I grew stronger every day. I carried thirty pounds on my back, up and down mountains, over rocks, in the cold wind and hot sun. I no longer felt achy at night. Mom was as fit as I was, and we walked farther every day. We ate often, as much food as we could hold.

  It was odd to think of someone like Springer, all the problems he had and all the things he could not do, and realize that he came from my mother, who looked so healthy and strong, but who carried Springer's disease in every one of her cells.

  Odd to think how I might carry it in mine.

  We had rested a day at the Hike Inn, until Mom's sore ankle felt better and the snow had begun to melt. Vivi stayed with us. Like us, she'd gone off the Trail for a few days: She'd flown to Baltimore for her niece's wedding.

  “It was good,” she said. “Gave me a chance to see my kids, gave them a chance to see me. They're all for Mom's little adventure, but they can't help worrying some.” Vivi laughed. “My youngest nephew kept saying, ‘But you said you were going to be a thru-hiker!' He couldn't understand that thru-hikers didn't have to hike nonstop.”

  Mom let out a snort. I didn't say anything. I tried to picture Vivi's kids. “Do you have grandchildren?” I asked.

  “No,” she said, “but my daughter got married over Christmas. So maybe I'll get some soon, the good Lord willing and the creek don't rise.”

  We left the Hike Inn to enter the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and right away it seemed like a different sort of Trail. There were rules to follow about where we could sleep and what we could do. The shelters were packed, and not just with thru-hikers, either, despite the still-chilly weather. The open fronts of the shelters were all caged with mesh fence, to keep the bears out, and even if we had to tent, we were supposed to store our food inside the shelters.

  “Do bears make you nervous?” I asked Mom.

  “No,” Mom said. “I saw bears the first time. They eat garbage. They don't eat people. At least, not often.”

  At Derrick Knob we met a guy named Trailhead. He was a high school teacher, about Vivi's age, and he started talking to her at dinner and then he started talking to me. “Look at that!” he said, watching me boil noodles. “She cooks dinner for herself, without being asked!”

  “She eats dinner herself, without being asked,” I said.

  “Can you filter water, too? Can you sling your food bag into the trees?”

  I glared at him. “She's got dead aim with a carbinger,” Mom said. Carbingers are little metal doodads that can clip stuff to your pack. We tied one to our rope to weight it so we could throw it over a tree branch more easily. It was true I usually hung the food, because Mom was pitiful at it. I cooked more often, too, because Mom didn't like the stove. Mom fetched most of the water.

  “I'll have to take your photograph,” he said. “I teach high school English, and a self-sufficient adolescent is something of a miracle to me.” He bugged me, and I guess Mom could tell.

  “Self-sufficiency is made, not born,” she said.

  Something in her tone made Trailhead back off. He talked a little bit about himself then; he was from some Podunk town with no hills. “Land so flat you can stand on a stump and watch the earth curve away,” he said.

  “Sounds awful.”

  “Damn sight easier to hike, though.”

  This broke everyone up laughing. By the end of the evening I liked Trailhead pretty well. “You're thru-hiking?” he asked me. “You and your mom?”

  Mom was listening. “Kind of a section hike,” I said, “but it's a long section.”

  I kept checking the Trail registers. Beagle's notes were getting more mysterious. At Fontana Dam he wrote, Hiking in snow is a miserable experience. Wet and cold. Good night, Katahdin, wherever you are.

  I couldn't argue with that, but I wrote, The mountains look beautiful under blankets of snow. Today I saw green shoots poking up from the ground. Spring will come soon. Katahdin.

  “Spring is here,” Mom said in my ear. I jumped and covered the registry with my hand. Of course she didn't see what Beagle had written—he was a few pages back, a week ahead of us now.

  “That's private,” I said.

  Mom raised an eyebrow. “Then save it for your journal, not the registry. It's spring, Dani. The first day of spring was a week ago.”

  “Whatever,” I said.

  March 28

  Cosby Knob Shelter (Great Smoky Mountains National

  Park, Tennessee/North Carolina state line)

  Miles hiked today: 13

  Total miles hiked on the Appalachian Trail: 216.5

  Weather: sunny, no breeze, warmer (mid-60s)

  We arrived at the Cosby Knob Shelter on our last night in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to find that a troop of Girl Scouts had taken it over. You would think that since there are campgrounds scattered throughout the Smokies, Girl Scouts would use them instead of shelters designed for thru-hikers. You would think that if they decided to stay in a shelter, they would show consideration for people who were obviously on the Trail for more than a weekened, and not, perhaps, take over the entire thing. You would be wrong. They built a big fire and spread their mess all over the one picnic table. They tore branches off trees to use as hot dog roasting sticks. They did not notice when half a dozen thru-hikers muttered angry words in their general direction, packed up their gear, and left. They were lively Girl Scouts. They sang a song about squashing bumblebees.

  Mom and Vivi and I were not exhausted, but we were tired. We finished our dinner right about the time the Girl Scouts
started theirs, and now we wanted to sleep.

  “How far to the next shelter?” Mom said, eyeing the troop.

  “Eight miles,” I said back. Mom groaned. We couldn't go that much farther—we'd be walking until midnight. But in the park you weren't supposed to set up tents away from the shelters. “We could go maybe half a mile,” I said.

  Mom shook her head. “Better not.” The Girl Scouts, gathered around their campfire, began another song.

  Vivi grinned. “If you need something for earplugs, I've still got clean socks.”

  We set up our tents on the edge of the cleared area and climbed in. I'd gotten used to sleeping in shelters with strangers. I'd gotten used to weird smells and weirder noises, grunts, whistles, and the scamperings of mice in the dark. I had not gotten used to Girl Scouts singing.

  I got out of my tent and walked over to the fire. I had planned to say, politely, something like, “Would you mind keeping it down a bit? Those of us who are serious hikers are trying to sleep,” but as I approached the group I realized two things, and I held back. The other girls were my own age. And they all looked happy.

  One of them noticed me. “Hi!” she said. Her ponytail swung perkily. “You aren't lost or anything, are you? Is your troop somewhere around?”

  I was wearing a short sleeved T-shirt over a long-sleeved T-shirt and the tights I usually slept in. I'd hiked all day—several days, actually—in both shirts, and hadn't taken either one off when I'd gotten into my sleeping bag. The Hike Inn had been our last laundry opportunity, and these were the cleanest clothes I owned.

  “I'm with my mom,” I said. “We're camping in those tents over there.” I pointed into the dim light.

  “Neat!” said Perky Girl. “I wish my mom would come hiking. I just love it, don't you? I love camping out. I love this shelter. We walked almost four miles from the Cosby campground to get here. We had to carry all our food and everything!”

  I nodded. “I've gotten kind of used to that,” I said. “We're hiking the Appalachian Trail.”

  Perky Girl nodded, uh-huh. “How long is that?” she asked. A few of the others looked up, and an adult who was with them saw me and started to walk over. I looked at the loaded picnic table. They'd brought food enough for an army. How they'd carried it four miles was a mystery.

  “Two thousand, one hundred and sixty-seven miles,” I said. Chocolate. They had chocolate on the table, and marshmallows, and graham crackers.

  Perky Girl started to nod again, then made a choking noise and looked up at me, thunderstruck. “Two thousand?” she said.

  I said, “I've done two hundred so far.” They seemed like nice people, and not just because they were interested in me. They gave off a friendly aura.

  “You must be a thru-hiker,” said the adult, who I guessed was the troop leader.

  Which I suppose should have been the cue I needed to say, “Yes, and so are the other people who might have enjoyed this shelter but are sleeping in tents because you took it, and who are being kept awake by your thoughtless giggling and noise.” But once again I was stopped by two things: the thought that they did get to the shelter first and so didn't kick anyone out of it; and the s'more shoved into my hand by Perky Girl. “You must be starving,” she said, wide-eyed. “Come sit by the fire.”

  When I weighed myself on the hiker scales back at WalasiYi, fully clothed, the needle hovered just below 105. “Good God,” my mother had said, “you're already losing weight.” She gave me a speech about the number of calories consumed by walking up and down mountains carrying thirty pounds on your back for eight hours every day. “I'm eating,” I said. “You know I am.” She did know. “You're going to have to eat more,” she said.

  The truth was I was almost always hungry. Two hours after eating an enormous meal, I was hungry again. I had never been heavy, but now my pants hung loose and my hip bones chafed against my pack belt, and as my mom reminded me often, we still had a long walk to go. So I ate, and ate, and ate, lots on the Trail and more at every town. That night around the Girl Scout fire I had over a dozen s'mores. I think there was half a chocolate bar in each one. They were delicious.

  The Girl Scouts all seemed interested in hearing about my hike. They told me about their troop and the town they came from, the school they went to, how much hiking they did every year. I said, “My mom and I, we're taking some time away.” I did not say what we were getting away from. I looked toward the tents, and there was Mom, rubbing her eyes sleepily as she approached us.

  I got up to go. The troop leader introduced herself to Mom, and before I knew it I was eating yet another s'more while three of the Scouts toasted marshmallows for Mom.

  The fire flickered, and the chocolate tasted smooth in my mouth. Mom sat down on a log near the fire. I sat down on the ground beside her and leaned against her legs. She pulled my hair back from my face with both her hands. The warmth from the fire felt like a blanket around us.

  In the morning the Girl Scouts slept late while we intrepid thru-hiker types pushed out early. There were several people in tents on the fringes of the woods. One woman, whom I'd seen for several days running but not ever spoken to, gave me a nasty look when I ran into her at the spring. “Why is it you can talk to those Scouts half the night and ignore the rest of us?” she said. “Would it kill you to be friendly?”

  I blinked. Mom and I kept to ourselves, sure. Why should anyone care? “I suppose it would depend on who was friendly with me,” I said.

  “Well, I guess,” she said irritably. “I don't suppose you'd have anything to fear from me.”

  Except that I might catch your attitude, you old bat, I thought. I said, “There aren't many people out here like me.”

  “Solitary, you mean? Hermits in the woods?”

  “Twelve,” I said.

  The woman nearly dropped her water. “Oh, wow, are you? Well, no wonder you don't talk much, I suppose. I never knew a twelve-year-old who did. But I'm surprised at your mother, you think she'd be dying for a chat after a long walk all day. I know I am. I never thought I'd hear anything as quiet as these woods. Have you ever seen such a place for being by yourself all the time? I know I haven't. When I get to a town, I head straight for the busiest place I can find. I just want to hear words so bad. I miss television, don't you? You must, a kid like you. What was your mother thinking, dragging you on this kind of a trip? You must be plumb miserable.”

  By this point we were back near the shelter. I said, “The trip was my idea,” and dove into my tent. I hoped she'd leave. Instead she introduced herself to Mom (“Flutter, that's my trail name, some men I hiked with the first week gave it to me, don't know why, they were in some kind of hurry, they went on ahead”), and the next thing I knew she was offering to hike with us and pool our food for lunch. (“I know I'm sick and tired of everything that's in my pack, I bet you're sick and tired of everything in yours. We could share—just like grade school.”) I shot out of my tent and started sending Mom signals behind Flutter's back, and mouthing, “No. No, Mom. Say no.”

  Mom said, “Oh, shoot,” with such vehemence that it sounded like a swear.

  “What's that?” Flutter asked, licking her lips nervously.

  “We can't do that. I'm sorry.” She turned to me and said, “Pack up fast, Dani. We've got to run.”

  I packed up fast. When we were well under way, with a dazed-looking Flutter left behind us, I asked, “Why are we in such a hurry?”

  “Because,” Mom said, “if I have to share the washing machines at Mountain Momma's with that nitwit I will lose my mind.”

  “But we lost Vivi,” I said.

  “We did not. She had her tent down already. She'll be up with us by lunch.”

  April 2

  Rich Mountain campsite (Tennessee/North Carolina state line)

  Miles hiked today: 9 Total miles hiked on the Appalachian Trail: 278

  Weather: mild—leaves budding out on trees

  We took a zero-miles day at Hot Springs, North Carolina. It wa
s the first real town the Trail went through, and as Mom said, we needed a real town. We needed groceries and clean clothes; I needed to have one of my boots repaired; Mom said she needed “a decent cup of coffee, and maybe later a beer.”

  “What about a newspaper?” I teased her.

  She grinned. “I'm thinking more along the lines of a really good book.”

  We got a hotel room across the street from the outfitter's and took my boot to be repaired. Mom bought me a pair of sandals for walking around town in. They were wonderful, so much lighter than my boots. Mom watched me walk for maybe half a block, and then she turned us around and bought some sandals for herself. She went to the bank and found a phone to check her answering machine messages, and spent some time making phone calls. I went outside and watched ducks walk on the lawn. We found Vivi and went out for a big dinner. Then Mom said, “They've got white-water rafting here. Are you still against it?”

  I said, “We've got a lot to do tomorrow.”

  Mom sighed. “How do feel about renting a Jacuzzi?”

  “What?”

  “They don't call it Hot Springs for nothing.”

  So we walked to the spa and rented a big hot tub, Vivi too, and sat in it for an hour. It was heaven. Vivi said, “You know how when you're really hungry and then you get to eat something good, it's the best feeling in the world?” I nodded. On the Trail, that was a feeling I had all the time. “That's what this spa is for my muscles. I walk and walk—but then there's this.”

  I thought of what Beagle had written in the registry at the outfitter's. This town is paradise, or maybe I just miss civilization. It's hard to contemplate getting back on the Trail. Good night, Katahdin, wherever you are. He had written it only a few days before, so I guessed he must have gotten held up somewhere. I wrote, Towns are useful but ordinary. I love the extraordinary Trail. Katahdin. Mom didn't see it. I didn't tell her about it, either.

  “Have you called your father?” Mom asked. She knew I hadn't.

  “Tomorrow,” I said.