Becoming Odyssa - Jennifer Pharr Davis [53]
But even without saying anything directly, I felt like I was unmistakable in communicating my desire to part company. I left camp without waking him each morning, and hiked as fast as possible until he caught up, at which point my body language expressed displeasure, and my voice dripped with disappointment.
This particular morning, around the time I expected to start hearing Moot’s rapid shuffle behind me, I came to a dirt road. At the road sat an old pickup truck. An old man stepped out of the truck in worn denim overalls and gave me a big grin with the few yellow teeth he had left.
“Hey, darlin’, I’m doin’ some trail magic with tha church. All tha ladies, they make a big breakfast for tha hikers. I’ll take ya down the road to the church if ya’s interested.”
I felt like I was in the middle of nowhere, and it was hard to believe that there was a church or any other sign of civilization down that gravel road. But I was hungry and I thought the detour might be just what I needed to throw Moot off my scent, so I climbed into the truck bed with my pack and held on tight as we traveled swiftly down the bumpy road.
Within ten minutes, we arrived at a quaint, white chapel at the edge of an open field. The building was no more than a one-room sanctuary with a steeple, but this morning the cinder-block basement had been transformed into an all-you-can-eat buffet, complete with muffins, pancakes, cookies, casseroles, biscuits, sausage, bacon, juice, and coffee—all the delicious food you could imagine, and no Moot? Double sanctuary!
The breakfast spread sat on a small round table covered with a red-and-white checked tablecloth. A handful of thru-hikers sat around the table, and around the thru-hikers hovered every loving grandmother who lived within a ten-mile radius. About fifteen gray-haired women circled the table, ready to refill plates and top off glasses. In between their duties, they would engage the hikers in conversation.
“Oh, don’t you look nice and fit! Here, try my marmalade.”
“You’re doin’ so good on that trail! Have another one of my muffins.”
“You are some of the first thru-hikers that’ve come through this year. Let me get you some more casserole.”
Each woman insisted that you try her dish or have seconds on her recipe before you could consider yourself finished. Food is certainly one of the best ways to express love, especially to a thru-hiker, but I spent most of the meal feeling like an overwhelmed tasting judge at a rural county fair.
When it was time to leave, the women packed us to-go bags to take back to the trail. Then, with two other thru-hikers, I gathered my belongings and walked outside to wait for our blue jean-clad chauffeur to return from his next run.
When the truck arrived, Moot was sitting in the back. As we traded places in the truck bed, he started to object to my departure, but within seconds the swarm of grandmothers descended on him and surrounded him with an impenetrable wall of love and affection, and an artillery of baked goods. I knew that Moot would have to spend at least an hour eating before our hosts would let him return to the woods, and that gave me some breathing room.
When I arrived back at the trailhead, I followed Kid and Chilly up the next mountain. They were both thru-hikers, both tall, cute, and in their mid-twenties. However, while Chilly was easygoing and personable, Kid was one of the most cold and standoffish thru-hikers I’d met.
Kid hardly spoke, hardly smiled, and hardly did anything but look at the ground and hike. Both of them were strong hikers and I enjoyed trying to keep up with their pace. I loved it when Chilly prodded Kid into short bouts of conversation. I could tell that Chilly had spent many miles trying to befriend Kid, and that it gave him a certain satisfaction to force a smile onto the stoic face.
I stayed with Chilly and Kid until mid-afternoon,