Becoming Odyssa - Jennifer Pharr Davis [59]
The first was cow patties. Lots of big farm animals meant lots of big cow patties. I knew I had too much time on my hands when I started trying to accurately date them. I decided that the harder, drier, and lighter the cow patty, the older it was. Some of the really old ones—I’m guessing three to five years—looked less like manure and more like flat white rocks. On the other hand, dung that was distributed within the past three years had more of a yellow color, it could be easily be broken apart with a hiking stick (or mop handle), and it distinctly showed undigested blades of grass and hay. The stinky, mushy brown piles that were covered in flies and sucked my shoe off when I accidentally stepped in them—well, those were the recent additions.
As if dodging aggressive animals and feces weren’t difficult enough, the hardest trial was getting in and out of the pastures. Most fields were surrounded by barbed wire or an electric fence. In order to climb over the fencing, hikers had to walk over an A-frame-shaped set of steps, known as a stile. The stiles were old and wooden, several had missing boards, and most of them shook and swayed when I passed over them. The biggest problem was that when I turned around at the top of the stile to climb down the opposite side, my pack would become wedged in the space where the two ladders connected. When I tried to use my momentum to free my pack, I would lose my balance and tumble down the descending ladder, often landing on my knees.
The third downside to the gentle terrain of Virginia was the water quality. So far the water on the trail had been great: copious, clear, and coming up from natural springs or running off the sides of undeveloped mountains. But after Pearisburg, the water wasn’t quite so appealing. The water sources for this part of the trail were creeks and rivers that bordered rural farmland. I worried about pesticide runoff from the crops, but the bigger deterrent was the animals grazing on the banks of the rivers or drinking from the creeks. Unlike hikers, animals did not follow the rule of relieving themselves a hundred yards away from a water source, which might have been why, after heavy rains, the rivers looked like chocolate milk.
I hadn’t anticipated the decrease in water quality, and since I didn’t have a filter, I went thirsty for most of the morning. In the early afternoon, the trail left the rolling countryside and began to climb up the ridge of a nearby mountain. As soon as I had hiked above all visible livestock, I stopped at the first stream I came to and immersed my water bottle in the cool, clear current. I filled it to the brim and was about to bring it to my lips when something in the creek bed caught my eye.
A bone.
A large white bone the size of my forearm was nestled among the rocks a few inches from where I had filled my bottle. As I looked closer, I began to notice several other bone fragments scattered throughout the stream. It looked like some animal had died right in this spot. I gagged and quickly dumped out my water bottle. I decided to continue hiking up the mountain, hoping there would be more water closer to the top.
A few miles later, I still hadn’t passed any water sources when I reached the narrow mountain ridge where the trail transitioned from a dirt path into a sloping rock face. The slant of the trail was relentless, and soon my ankles began to ache from climbing the severe incline.
As I hobbled across the slick granite, time moved more slowly than it had in my high school pre-calculus class. Since this morning, I had traveled sixteen miles, and only consumed one liter of water. My mouth and throat were so uncomfortably dry that I started coughing involuntarily. I kept praying that the trail would descend the slope into a watershed.
After several more miles, I was still on the ridge and still had no water. My thirst grew with every step. I began to feel dizzy and lightheaded from dehydration, and my body’s core was filled with a dull ache. I imagined