Becoming Odyssa - Jennifer Pharr Davis [125]
Toward the end of the day, my vision literally became blurred from fatigue. I tripped and fell on a well-groomed section of trail simply because I was having trouble keeping my eyes open.
When I arrived at Cloud Pond Lean-To that evening, Nightwalker was there, but Mooch was nowhere to be seen.
“Where’s Mooch?” I asked.
“He decided to hike ahead.”
“Hike ahead?”
“Yeah, he said he wanted to spend a night or two on his own.”
I could certainly understand the desire to be alone. But I was mad that Mooch had split up the group so close to the end. At least, I tried to be mad, but even my emotions were watered down with fatigue. I was too tired to care. I was too tired to eat. I was too tired to talk. I just wanted to sleep. If I had become a good hiker on the Appalachian Trail, I had become a great sleeper. It was still bright outside, but I was unconscious by 7:30 PM.
The next morning, when Nightwalker gently nudged me awake, my eyes were still gluey. I could have easily fallen back asleep and slept for the rest of the day. Struggling to pack up my gear, I asked Nightwalker to hike with me for the first half of the day; I needed his conversation to stay awake.
When it was time for lunch, we decided to venture down a short side trail to enjoy our meal by a waterfall. After I finished my meal, I packed up my belongings to head back to the trail.
“That wasn’t a very long lunch break,” said Nightwalker.
“I know, but I feel like I need the extra time to make it to the shelter this evening. I’m so tired, I feel like I’m barely hiking two miles per hour.”
“Okay,” he said. “I’m going to enjoy the waterfall a little longer, and then I’ll catch up with you.”
After about thirty minutes of hiking, I began to wonder why I hadn’t yet seen Nightwalker. I hiked for another half hour, and still no Nightwalker. I started to worry. He was a fast hiker and I had barely been going at a shuffle for the past hour. He should have caught up to me by now. Where was he? Was he lost?
I saw a sign up ahead, and much to my confusion, it implied that after an hour of hiking, I was now three miles south of where I had eaten lunch. I pulled out my guidebook and began to survey my surroundings. It looked familiar, but NO . . . I couldn’t have.
I was hiking in the wrong direction!
The whole point of this trail, the one thing that kept me going, was the knowledge that every step was taking me closer to my goal. All I had to do was follow the white blazes and hike north, and I couldn’t even do that anymore.
On the verge of tears, I turned around and shamefully walked back in the direction I had come. My delay put me directly on top of the exposed White Cap Mountain for a late-afternoon thunderstorm. And when I arrived at Logan Brook Lean-To soaking wet to find a completely dry Nightwalker sitting there smiling, I was jealous and also hurt that he didn’t seem more concerned.
“What happened?” he asked lackadaisically.
“I went in the wrong direction.”
He started to laugh, and I shot him an irritated look, struggling to hold back tears of frustration.
“I’m sorry,” he said, trying to back-peddle as quickly as possible.
“I just want to go to bed,” I said. And ten minutes later, I was asleep.
As soon as I woke up the next morning, I found myself blinking, batting at, and blowing away the bugs that hovered above my sleeping bag. I packed my belongings and started hiking very quickly, hoping to outrun them. As I jogged through the cloud of insects, I noticed a strange burning sensation in my legs. I looked down and discovered that I had a rash all over the bottom half of my body. My legs were covered with small, painful red dots. In some places, the rash was so concentrated that it looked