Becoming Odyssa - Jennifer Pharr Davis [5]
We were already almost halfway around the table. I was thankful to be positioned at the end of the nine-person panel, but I was still worried about what I would say.
“Well . . .” Wesley began. “I grew up on a farm in Alabama. I was outside every day doing work, hard work. After I graduated high school, I left the farm and started working in the city. I spent thirty years behind a desk, and the whole time I was there, I missed being outside and I missed manual labor. We sold the farm when my father died, but now that I’m retired I want to hike the Appalachian Trail. I want to work hard during the day and go to bed with the sun. That’s what I think we were made to do.”
“Do you think your body will remember what it’s like to perform manual labor?” asked Warren.
Part of what made me nervous was that Warren responded to each answer with more questions. He was the king of what ifs: What if your hiking partner doesn’t like it? What if you get injured? What if you don’t finish in time to get back to work? What if your spouse wants you to come home?
Warren was especially hard on Jeff, the middle-aged man seated to my right.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Warren interrupted Jeff’s response, waving his hands and shaking his head. “You said you want to hike the trail for fun? Do you think hiking in the rain and snow is fun? Do you think walking twenty miles a day with blisters on your feet is fun? What are you going to do when you wake up one morning and decide that the trail isn’t fun anymore?”
At least now I knew not to include the word “fun” in my answer.
Jeff tried to backtrack for several minutes, unsuccessfully, then Warren finally called on me.
“And last, young lady, we come to you. Tell us a little about yourself and why you want to hike the Appalachian Trail.”
“My name is Jen,” I began nervously, “and I’m twenty-one years old. I decided during my freshman year of college that I was going to hike the Appalachian Trail, and I arranged my classes so I could graduate a semester early—this past December. I’m planning to start the trail in March from Springer Mountain, Georgia, and I’ll stay out there as long as it takes to reach Mount Katahdin in Maine.”
“Okay, but why do you want to hike the trail?”
Ugh, I was hoping he would forget that part.
I took a deep breath. I had given people different answers to that same question for the past three years. I said that I wanted to hike the trail to be in nature, to push my limits, to meet new people, to put off getting a job, or to give my mother gray hair. I had given various answers depending on what I thought the person asking the question wanted to hear. But I knew that Warren would see through a trite response. So for the first time, I tried to tell the truth.
“I feel like I’m meant to . . . I mean, I feel like I was made to . . . I guess what I’m trying to say is that I think I’m supposed to hike the at.”
“What does that mean?” asked Warren.
“Well, when I think about doing anything else it just feels wrong. The thought of not doing the trail fills me with regret to the point that it almost hurts inside. The idea of thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail came to me three years ago, and since it entered my mind, not a day goes by when I don’t think about the trail. It’s not like I chose to hike the trail, but more like it chose me.”
“Ah, yes,” said Warren, looking surprisingly pleased. “So the trail is a calling?”
“Yeah . . . a calling.”
Admitting to everyone—including myself—the real reason that I wanted to hike the trail made me feel good. A little crazy, but good. I felt lighter and breathed easier knowing that I was able to be honest.
Meanwhile, Warren had stopped asking questions and started whimsically singing, “The trail is calling, calling, calling, calling to you and to me.” Then, with a more serious look on his face, he sat up straight and looked around the room.
“Thank you all for your answers,” he said. “They were very . . . insightful.”
Then, before wrapping up our morning session, Warren once again managed to look at me and