Becoming Odyssa - Jennifer Pharr Davis [58]
After setting up my tent, I took off my shoes and socks to inspect my feet. As soon as I slid my wet, mud-stained socks off, I was assaulted by an overwhelming smell of mold coming from my feet. I admit that I had experienced foot odor on the trail before, but now the stench suggested that my feet were rotting off. It was one of the worst things I had ever smelled, much worse than the diapers I’d changed as a babysitter, and on about the same level as the hog farm and sewage-treatment plant that I had visited on school field trips.
Examining my feet was only slightly more tolerable than smelling them. The flesh was wrinkly and white, the top layer flaked off when I touched it, and the skin between my toes was cracked and bleeding. Worst of all, the soles of my feet were covered with strange Dippin’ Dot–sized indentions.
I knew that some of the pain was from the rock field, but I also determined that the damp, putrid socks I had been wearing since Damascus were part of the problem.
With so much time on my hands before sunset, I built a small fire and burned my socks. I had a clean pair in my pack, so I offered the non-wicking, sadistic foot coverings up as a sacrifice. I thought that perhaps if I burned my socks, I would also burn away the pain that afflicted me. And while I wasn’t physically healed, it was emotionally gratifying to watch the synthetic threads melt into the hot embers.
The sacrifice worked. The next morning my feet felt better, and thankfully, instead of traversing another daunting rock field, the trail spent much of the morning hugging farmland, wandering through hay fields, and traveling through paddocks.
There are places in southwest Virginia where the trail travels across private farmland. The landowners are very generous to allow hikers on their property, and there are signs posted regularly that make it clear that hikers are at no point supposed to wander off the trail.
I loved being near livestock. Without people around, I tried to talk to the animals with moos, neighs, and brays, but when they didn’t respond I reverted to speaking in English.
I was caught off guard, however, when I came to a pasture full of steers. So far, I hadn’t encountered any animals with a reputation for goring people, but now I found myself locked in a staring contest with a mammoth black steer with sharp white horns. Now my words were rooted in fear instead of a need for socialization.
“Nice steer, good steer. You just stay right where you are. No need to get up for me.”
I kept telling myself he was a steer. I grew up close enough to the country to know that steers had been castrated and were less aggressive than bulls.
The enormous creature sat exactly in the middle of the trail. So much for land easements. There was no way I was staying on the path if a horned animal that weighed seven times as much as I did was sitting in the way. I made a wide semicircle off the trail and around his flared nostrils. He turned his head to follow me with his eyes, then when his neck could go no further, he stood up . . . and he was definitely not a steer!
For the next four hundred yards, the bull followed close behind me. I walked, looked back, then sped up, again and again. I was trying not to make any sudden moves, but I didn’t want the bull getting any closer either. I felt like an unwilling rodeo clown or an innocent bystander on the streets of Pamplona. I rationalized that if I kept my back to him and he did charge me, at least he would gore my pack, which might keep me alive.
When I finally reached the fence, I quickly climbed over the stile to safety. Once I was out of range, I turned to the bull and stuck out my tongue. He responded by pawing at the ground with his right front hoof. All of a sudden the fence didn’t look quite so sturdy, so I turned and kept hiking.
I really liked hiking in Virginia, but besides the bulls, there were