Becoming Odyssa - Jennifer Pharr Davis [32]
Zeus and Spring’s hospitality was uplifting, and the wisdom they imparted would serve as a reserve of strength for the rest of the trail. The fact that Second Gear and I had been crossing the nearby road on one of the days that Zeus and Spring opened their home to thru-hikers felt predestined. I guess with the trail name Odyssa, it’s no coincidence that I spent an afternoon with Zeus and his wife.
When we were warm and full, Second Gear and I thanked our hosts and started back to the trail. There were five miles until the next shelter, and I walked with Second Gear the whole way.
I had found out a little about him while sitting around the table with Spring and Zeus, and now that we were back on the trail I wanted to know more. On our walk to the shelter, I learned that he had grown up two hours away from my hometown, on the other side of the Appalachian Mountains in Johnson City, Tennessee, and that, like me, he had just graduated from college.
It was becoming clear that an overwhelming number of thru-hikers were recent college grads. The obvious reason was that college graduates were able to devote four to six months to the trail without leaving a career and family behind. That also explains why recent retirees are so prevalent on the AT. But more than that, I think college grads are called to the trail because we have a lot of figuring out to do. We’ve spent our entire lives under the influence of family, school, and religion, and we need to test our doctrines. The trail provides a place to sort through the fact and fiction of our childhoods.
That was one reason it was so important to me to meet as many different people as possible and not become part of a group: I wanted to retell my story and explain who I was until it made sense. And, just as importantly, I wanted to listen to other hikers and learn from them.
When we arrived at Little Laurel Shelter, I could hardly remember what the previous stretch of trail looked like, but I knew all about Second Gear’s family, his high school experience, his ex-girlfriend, and his post-trail ambitions.
Instead of sleeping in the shelter that evening, I decided to tent a few yards away. I was glad about that decision when, just as I drove my last stake into the ground, a tall middle-aged man hiked up the trail.
I could hear him swearing to himself from fifty yards away, and not an “Ouch, I stubbed my toe on a rock” type of cursing, but rather a constant stream of four-letter words occasionally interrupted with coherent English. His angry, aggressive rant made me imagine him grabbing the tree in front of him and violently shaking the roots up from the ground, then lifting the trunk over his head and hurling it into the bushes.
When the towering brute looked my way, I quickly shifted my eyes back to the ground. In an effort to look preoccupied with my camp chores, I re-staked the last tent peg into the ground, calmly unzipped my tent fly, carefully removed my shoes, and then dove as quickly as possible into the sanctuary of the synthetic walls. Once I was safely inside my tent, I listened to the ruckus near the shelter for another twenty minutes, until the profanity sputtered to a stop.
With my mind still racing and my heart pounding inside my chest, I decided to write in my journal until I was calm enough to fall asleep.
April 5th
Out on the trail, I don’t know whether to trust people or to run from them. This afternoon I went from trusting complete strangers and spending time in their home to wishing that I was back at my parents’ house, away from the crazy guy at the shelter who is cursing at the top of his lungs. It’s not the profanity that bothers me, it’s his anger and unpredictability. I want to pack up and find another spot to camp, but that would be too obvious. I’ll try to