Becoming Odyssa - Jennifer Pharr Davis [44]
By now, I had also noticed a direct correlation between the weather and my appetite. At this point on the trail, I was experiencing ravenous hunger every few hours regardless of the weather, but when the temperatures dropped and the rain started to fall, my appetite became insatiable all day long. I now wished that I hadn’t eaten three Snickers bars to end my lunch yesterday, and had saved one or two more for today.
My logic yesterday was that I had five Snickers, so I could eat three for dessert, which would make my pack noticeably lighter, and then I would enjoy one a day until I reached Damascus. At the time, I couldn’t believe I was eating three candy bars at once, but they tasted so good and went down so easily that I probably could have eaten all five.
I was amazed at how much I could eat now. At the past three food resupplies, I thought I had bought enough rations that I could feast on the trail and still have leftovers when I reached the next town. Instead, my food continued to disappear far more quickly than I expected, and by the end of each section I would stumble into town starving and with an empty food bag. At lunch today, I realized that, once again, I would have to measure my food intake carefully until my next resupply.
The one upside to the cold rain is that I became highly efficient. When I could see my breath but not feel my fingers, all I wanted to do was put in my miles for the day and then curl up in my sleeping bag. Aside from a brief stop for lunch, I hiked continuously for twenty miles and was able to reach Vandeventer Shelter at 4:00 PM.
I was the only person there, and the first thing I did inside the empty building was strip naked. I peeled off my wet clothes as quickly as possible and changed into my warm, dry ones before anyone else arrived. Next, I unpacked my warm sleeping bag and wrapped it around my shivering body. I was very hungry, but I was worried that if I started eating, I would eat the rest of the food in my pack and have nothing left for the next day and a half.
After warming up for a few minutes, I decided to look around the shelter for the register, and that’s when I spotted the trash in the corner. At least, I thought it was trash, and apparently somebody else had thought so too, which is why it had been left here. But as I investigated, I found an open bag of tortellini.
This wasn’t the type of pasta that is hard and comes in a box. This was the type you find in the refrigerator section of the grocery store that’s already soft before you cook it. If I still had a camp stove, I would have boiled water and cooked the pasta, but instead I just stuck the cold cheese-filled shells in my mouth one by one. I had no idea how long this pasta had been here, who had been eating it, or whether mice had already gotten into it, but I was really hungry, and the pasta was helping. I felt both ashamed and thankful, and I finished the entire package.
Eventually other hikers, none of whom I had met before, began arriving at the shelter. I was joined by two men in their mid-twenties, then three boys just out of high school. I was amazed that three kids who weren’t even in college yet were out here hiking the trail together. Their youth and enthusiasm were infectious. Their stories about their countless mishaps and poor decisions on the trail made me realize that they were even more naïve and reckless than I was.
Just before dark, one of the boys became a little too bold and out-spoken for my liking.
“Did you guys know that someone was murdered at this shelter?” asked the grinning seventeen-year-old.
I thought he was kidding, and so did the men in their twenties, because one of them said, “Yeah, right.”
“No, seriously,” another kid confirmed. “One of the first AT murders happened here. This twenty-two-year-old girl hiking by herself got hatcheted with an axe. And I hear some people think this shelter has been haunted since then.”
Then the third kid chimed in with a ghostly moan followed by a rendition of The Twilight Zone theme song.
I was mad that they were joking about a murder,