Becoming Odyssa - Jennifer Pharr Davis [104]
So when the trail remained buggy and humid, when the terrain became increasingly difficult, and when the most exciting discovery in southern Vermont was a big pile of moose poop, I began to feel mistreated.
The first half of the AT had been an adventure. I met new people every day, and I was learning how to backpack, how to be a thru-hiker. The mid-Atlantic was also an adventure, in its own scary way. But Vermont was just kind of boring.
I had figured out how to backpack, so those details no longer occupied my time. I knew most of the people in front of and behind me, and there really weren’t any thru-hikers nearby whom I hadn’t met yet. My diet, my routine, where I slept, what I saw . . . it had all become commonplace. I hadn’t planned on getting off the trail and hitching to Manchester Center, Vermont, but when I came to the road, I just didn’t want to keep hiking. So I went to town.
Manchester Center was a cute town. Unfortunately, it was so cute that all the lodging options cost over one hundred dollars. It was a ski town in the winter, a mountain resort in the summer, and a leaf-peeper destination in the fall. They had great coffee shops, expensive restaurants, and very few locals. When I realized that staying inside Manchester Center was out of my budget, I got a ride back down the highway and found a motel several miles from town.
Getting a motel room by yourself on the trail is kind of like drinking alone. It’s supposed to be a social tradition, so doing it by yourself often means you’re ashamed, or trying to hide it, or else you’re just really depressed. I told myself that wasn’t it—that I just liked the taste.
The sad thing was, the motel room didn’t make things better. At first it felt good—the shower, the warm bed. But once I was clean and dry, I didn’t have anything to do and it was only 5:00 PM. I turned on the TV and just lay there for four hours, mindlessly watching a rerun of the MTV Music Awards. I hated it.
Somewhere amid the evening gowns and makeup, the loud music and provocative performances, I was overcome with a sense of fakeness. Nothing about the awards show seemed real. I was stuck in a motel room, listening to overinflated performers sing bad music and watching them receive funny-looking awards. I didn’t care how hard, miserable, boring, or scary the woods were. They were better than this.
I realized that I didn’t miss the lifestyle I’d left when I started the trail. I missed my family and friends, I missed my warm bed and clean clothes, but I would rather watch a sunset than watch TV, I would rather walk than sit in an office all day, and I would rather sing out loud to myself on the trail than watch the MTV Music Awards.
The next few days were much better. The trail didn’t change, but I did.
Suddenly, I loved hiking. I loved the trail, and I loved Vermont. I made a vow that I would only hike twenty to twenty-five miles a day, that I would swim in every lake I passed, and that at night I would find a place where I could watch the sunset.
I also tried to find a resting spot each afternoon where I could sit still for an hour and watch the world around me. I’d stop and get to know a stream or watch the trees dance in the breeze. I marveled at spiders building webs, squirrels gathering nuts, and birds calling to each other. Sometimes it would rain during my breaks, but that was okay because I had my raincoat. Other times I would find myself surrounded by a cloud of bugs, but I would just apply DEET and stare past the swarm.
I learned that I didn’t need much to be entertained. I didn’t need loud music, bright lights, or TV. I just needed to be still.
Being still was a relatively new concept for me. I couldn’t remember much stillness in my pre-trail life. And the times I do remember were