Becoming Odyssa - Jennifer Pharr Davis [122]
The “nearest pay phone” ended up being thirty minutes away on bumpy back roads. Scrunched on Mooch’s lap in the very back of a station wagon with my chest to my knees, it felt like a lot longer.
she dropped us at the first gas station we saw. There, we called a hiker hostel in nearby Stratton, Maine. It took several hours for the owner to come and pick us up, but then he drove us directly to the hospital, where Nightwalker was diagnosed with giardia and given a prescription. From the hospital we returned to Stratton, where we spent two days resting so Nightwalker could regain his strength.
It was hard to stop when we were so close to the end. Katahdin had just come into view, and now it felt like it was taking us forever to get there. But it also made me realize how strong my ties to Mooch and Nightwalker had become. I knew that the boys would have stopped and waited for me if I had been sick. After hiking eighty percent of the trail alone, now it wouldn’t have felt right to summit katahdin without those two by my side.
We didn’t do much at the hostel except sleep, watch tV, and stare at the southbounders. There were over a dozen southbounders at the hostel, and they were all so pretty. They looked like models out of an outdoor magazine. They smelled good, their clothes were clean, their hair wasn’t in knots, they didn’t have tacky hiker tans, and they were full of energy and laughter.
On the other hand, they looked at us in horror. Even after two days of rest, we were still gaunt, sunburned, and covered in bug bites and scars.
Our last night at the hostel, after taking a shower, I spent several minutes looking in the mirror. I combed through my nappy hair with my hands, ran a finger over the scratches on my arms, and picked the loose scabs off my old bug bites. I wasn’t pretty—at least, not the way the southbounders were pretty. I didn’t look groomed, and I wouldn’t be chosen to be in an outdoor magazine. But I did feel beautiful, probably more beautiful than I had ever felt.
I felt beautiful because my body was toned, my legs could hike thirty miles a day, and my arms could pull up on branches or brace my fall when I needed them to. I felt beautiful because my body was capable of hiking over two thousand miles. I felt beautiful because I was part of nature, part of a creation that was expansive and awe-inspiring. I might not have been considered pretty by society’s standards, but what society thought mattered less and less to me.
After two nights at the stratton hostel, Nightwalker felt well enough to return to the trail. We were all eager to resume our journey. Thankfully, the trail leveled out a bit after the Bigelow Mountains, so the next obstacle we came to wasn’t a mountain but a river.
Right before Caratunk, Maine, the trail crosses the Kennebec River. Although it’s not very deep, the river is extremely wide and can rise rapidly. Thousands of successful fords, or river crossings, had been completed here in the past, but unfortunately, one year, a sixty-one-year-old hiker lost her life when she slipped in the river and stayed submerged due to her pack. After that incident, the Appalachian Trail Conservancy decided to offer a summer ferry service. The service consists of a small canoe that shuttles people across the river early in the morning and again in the late afternoon.
I wanted to ford the river, but the boys didn’t.
They told me that the official route of the Appalachian Trail was on the ferry, and that if I didn’t cross in the canoe, I wouldn’t be on the official trail and it would compromise the integrity of my hike. The ATC had even included a blaze on the bottom of the boat to support that logic.
I didn’t see how walking by foot instead of riding in a canoe would compromise my hike.
Then Mooch, determined to get to katahdin as soon as possible, bluntly stated, “Listen, Odyssa, Nightwalker is still weak. He needs to take the ferry and I want to take the ferry, so if you ford, you ford alone. I know