Becoming Odyssa - Jennifer Pharr Davis [66]
I felt like God had been sending me encouragement throughout my time on the trail. He had sent me sunsets, wildflowers, wildlife; He had sent kind words from strangers, or trail magic when I needed it most. But my time in Roanoke was His biggest gift yet. I no longer cared how crazy it seemed or what other people thought: I believed I had been called to the trail.
When Pastor Leslie dropped me back off at the trail on Monday morning, it was the middle of April and I was in central Virginia. That meant I was well ahead of most thru-hikers, so I only encountered a handful of people on the trail. It also meant that I was able to watch one of the prettiest stretches of the trail wake up from winter and bloom into spring.
Spring was timid in arriving. During the day, she would show her presence through a deer next to her fawn, the excited chirping of a songbird, or an early flower such as a bright orange Indian paintbrush poking up through the heavy, wet fall leaves. But at night, she surrendered herself to the cold temperatures and snow flurries that still gripped the darkness.
I decided that if spring needed encouragement to hang around, then I was going to be her biggest cheerleader. I thanked her each time the sun greeted me with a blanket of warmth, I laughed with the wafting breeze when it carried a scent of honeysuckle to tickle my nose, and I hiked late into the evening so that I could dance down the trail to the crickets’ serenade.
Like the weather, the trail had also become more kind. The path no longer presented grueling half-day climbs, but it did keep me busy with constant ups and downs that alternated their views between mountain vistas, expansive valleys, rolling meadows, and winding countryside.
Yes, it was a good time to be a thru-hiker in central Virginia. With so much beauty, so few people, and such mild terrain, I found myself unintentionally hiking thirty miles a day. I wasn’t hiking any faster than before, but the days were longer, the trail was less difficult, and I always wanted to go a little farther to see what pleasant surprise awaited me around the next turn.
I loved waking up to hike, but for the first time since starting the trail, I no longer loved to eat. Leaving Roanoke, I had filled a third of my pack with just food. But on this stretch, I didn’t want to eat any of it. I don’t know if I was distracted by the splendor of the trail or if I required fewer calories in spring’s warmer weather. Perhaps I was just tired of trying to consume four thousand calories every day. But whatever the reason, my appetite had vanished.
One night, I had a lollipop for dinner—that was all. The next day, instead of lunch, I just sucked on multicolored, sour neon gummy worms for energy. This seemed to be working, until I tripped over a rock and got one lodged in my throat.
I could barely breathe. I hunched over, hacking to try and dislodge it, but the worm remained. The sour coating burned the back of my throat.
Finally, red in the face and reduced to my knees, I dislodged it with a convulsive cough. It had been a freak incident, but I was traumatized by the thought of choking with no one around to help. And that did nothing to help my appetite.
Even though I wasn’t eating, my energy level stayed constant—until I reached Cold Mountain.
A lot of hikers love maps; they love to carry maps, they love to look at their maps throughout the day, and they love to figure out the specific distances and elevations separating different points on the maps.
I don’t particularly care for maps.
The trail is clearly marked, the mountains are clearly there, and the elevation is not going to change no matter how many times you pull out the map and look at the climb