Becoming Odyssa - Jennifer Pharr Davis [33]
The night proved uneventful, and the next morning I held to my plan. I pushed out of camp as dawn broke and didn’t stop for a rest until the sun reached the middle of the sky. But just after I finished making my peanut butter and Pop-Tart sandwich, my spine stiffened as I heard the rustling of someone coming down the trail. I stood frozen and breathless until Second Gear rounded the turn and I could relax.
Second Gear had also decided to tent last night. Well, actually, he didn’t really tent because Second Gear used a hammock, but regardless, he stayed outside the shelter and avoided any interaction with our unsavory neighbor. And, like me, he decided to rise early and hike hard this morning to distance himself from any more obscenities.
By now, I had seen several hikers use hammocks instead of tents. By suspending a lightweight cocoon between two opposing trees and then hanging a tarp above the hammock, they were protected from the elements, but they didn’t have to sleep on the ground. It seemed like a cool concept, as long as there were trees around.
As he sat down to join me for lunch, Second Gear commented on my sandwich.
“Peanut butter on Pop-Tarts?”
I admit that my trail nutrition was not what it should have been, and I was still experimenting with my no-cook diet, but I was quite confident in one culinary truth. “Peanut butter tastes good on everything,” I said.
“Everything?” inquired Second Gear.
“Yes, everything.”
Then, looking at the contents of my food bag, Second Gear proposed that I test my theory using Slim-Jims.
Unwrapping the processed stick of beef jerky, I dipped it in my peanut butter jar, stuck it in my mouth, and confirmed: “Yep, everything.” Two weeks ago I had never eaten a Slim Jim; now I was eating them with peanut butter and enjoying it.
After lunch, Second Gear and I spent the remainder of the day hiking together. It’s amazing how much you can learn about someone in a few hours when there are no distractions. Except for short stops to admire the view, or to analyze a tuft of wild boar hair in a berry thicket, we spent the afternoon engrossed in conversation.
As I talked with Second Gear, it struck me how honest we were with one another. I wasn’t trying to be exceptionally open or sincere, but there was something about walking through the untamed forest with a relative stranger that allowed me to share more of myself than I ordinarily would have.
The thru-hiking community was the first group I had been part of that didn’t have a hierarchy. Being a thru-hiker was not like working at a job where you answered to a boss, or like being part of a family that was subject to its elders. On the trail, I wasn’t expected to be mild-mannered, but I also didn’t need to be authoritative. Everyone was on an equal playing field. I think that helped hikers to express themselves openly. That and the confidentiality.
Most people you encounter on the trail you will know for less than a day, and even those you see more than that will most likely not be part of your life once you return home, so the chances of a leaked confession are slim to none. Counseling and Catholicism finally made sense to me: there was something cathartic about sharing my thoughts, desires, sins, and successes without worrying about rumors and public perception.
At the end of a six-hour stretch with Second Gear, I felt absolved. I had shared so much with him in such a short time, and after just over twenty-four hours together, I felt that I knew more about him than friends I had known for four years in college. Then it struck me: I knew his background, his preferences, and his ideology, but I didn’t know his real name—and the nice thing was, I didn’t need to.
The intimacy of the afternoon was disrupted that evening when we found Hogback Ridge Shelter full of weekenders. Until now, I had viewed weekenders as backpackers who couldn’t take six months away from work and family, so instead they would spend twenty-four