Becoming Odyssa - Jennifer Pharr Davis [61]
“Oh, have a good night,” she said cheerfully. “And don’t worry about bears. Katahdin won’t let any animals near the shelter.”
Worry about bears? I was hiking the Appalachian Trail to see the bears!
I fell asleep quickly, but then woke up again, and again, and again, as Katahdin spent all night pacing the shelter and barking at noises coming from the dark woods.
I was not sad to say good-bye to Katahdin the next morning, or to see the woman hike south when she left the shelter.
It had rained all night, and it was still drizzling when I started hiking. After four miles, the trail reached yet another rock obstacle: the Dragon’s Tooth.
I didn’t know what the Dragon’s Tooth was, but it sounded mean. And when I arrived at the jagged rock outcropping, my fears were validated. The Dragon’s Tooth was a rock field on a granite slope. It required some novice-level bouldering skills to traverse which, in my opinion, jumped to intermediate in the rain, and advanced-intermediate with the addition of a pack and mop stick.
I wish I had been hiking in the opposite direction, because climbing up through the Dragon’s Tooth would not have been nearly as difficult. As I hiked down the Tooth and off the ridge, I struggled to lower my fully extended six-foot body to each descending precipice.
At one point, I was wiggling my lower body backward off a rock ledge to the path four feet below, and I felt a rock underneath my left foot. I thought I had made it to solid ground, so I pushed off the ledge to transfer my weight to my feet. But with my full weight on the rock, it came loose, and I tumbled off the ledge to the path below, landing hard on my back.
The fall knocked the wind out of me and I panicked for a moment. I quickly propped myself up on my elbows, and after a few seconds, my lungs once again filled with air. I wiped the raindrops off my face and examined my stinging left elbow. It was dirty and scraped. Next I felt for my hip, which was sore to the touch, and although my hip belt had protected it, I was sure it was bruised.
I wanted to cry. If there had been anyone else around, I probably would have cried, but without an audience, without sympathy, I just whimpered and took a few deep breaths. Then I stood up and kept hiking.
On the backside of the Dragon’s Tooth, the trail started a long, steady ascent up to the neighboring ridge. The climb itself wasn’t too difficult, and my elbow and hip began to feel better, but my feet started to feel tender, and soon the tenderness grew into raging discomfort.
I could have endured the pain in another part of my body, but hiking on hurting feet was awful. The pain was so overwhelming that I couldn’t feel my toes. I also couldn’t tell when my weight was on the ball of my foot and when it had shifted to my heel. I was miserable.
At one point, the ridge took a short dip to cross a highway. There was an empty parking lot next to the road, so I stopped to rest my feet. The morning’s drizzle had begun to clear, and I took my socks off to air out my feet.
I had the same symptoms that I’d suffered two days before on the rock field outside of Pearisburg. I had no clue what could cause my feet to hurt this much and smell so bad.
Maybe it was just a process that they had to go through in order to toughen up for the trail. But I had hiked nearly seven hundred miles—my feet should be tough by now!
I had switched socks in Damascus and wondered if that could be part of my problem, but socks were socks, right? Surely a slight change in the padding and material wouldn’t cause polka-dotted holes to appear on the soles of my feet.
Perhaps it was the rain? At the ATI, Warren Doyle had told us to expect