Becoming Odyssa - Jennifer Pharr Davis [67]
I was glad there were no maps warning me about the climb up Cold Mountain from Brown Mountain Creek. If I had known what I was getting myself into, I think I might have just stayed in the valley. It took several hours to reach the top, and the ascent was so steep that I had to walk on my tiptoes because my heels couldn’t reach the angled tread.
At the start of the climb, I felt lightheaded and dizzy, then after an hour I began to feel a slight pain in my stomach. Initially, I thought it was a cramp, but then I realized it was a hunger pain. My body needed nourishment. The problem was that I was so lightheaded and nauseated from not eating that I couldn’t stomach the thought of food.
Originally, eating had been one of the biggest draws of thru-hiking. Being able to eat whatever I wanted and still lose weight was revolutionary. It was a no-fail diet. I never dreamed that I would get tired of it. But just like filling up a gas tank, keeping up with my caloric needs had become a chore.
I knew I wasn’t going to make it much farther if I didn’t stop to refuel, so I sat down and started gumming a granola bar. I sucked on it until it became soft, and then rolled it around with my tongue until I could swallow it. I didn’t want to chew. I was tired of chewing.
One hundred and fifty calories was enough to get me to the top of Cold Mountain. Unfortunately, climbing down the mountain wasn’t much easier than going up it. My body felt horrible hiking, but when I stopped to take a break, I felt even worse.
When I came out to a dirt road, I was tired, weak, and still unwilling to chew. There was a pickup truck nearby, and beside it stood a woman who was probably in her mid-thirties. Granola, as she introduced herself, had braided pigtails and wore a cute athletic tank-top and sport skirt. She was a vision of cleanliness and beauty—except for her legs, which looked like they hadn’t seen a razor in over a year.
“Are you a thru-hiker?” I asked.
“I was last year,” she said. “I made it to Katahdin in July, but I liked the trail so much that I just turned around and started hiking back to Georgia.”
The trail had a term for thru-hikes completed back-to-back in the opposite direction. “So you did a yo-yo?” I asked.
“Yep, and when I got to Springer Mountain, I still didn’t want to go home, so I headed farther south and hiked the Florida Trail.”
“I didn’t even know there was a trail in Florida,” I said.
“Yeah, it’s great,” said Granola. “It’s fourteen hundred miles long and goes from the Everglades to the Panhandle. But it’s pretty flat and doesn’t have clean water. That’s one of the reasons I was so eager to get back to the AT. This year I’m just hiking my favorite sections and visiting old friends.”
Granola walked over to the pickup truck. “I have some food in here. You want something?”
“No thanks, I’m not really hungry,” I replied.
Granola looked stunned. “I never thought I would hear a thru-hiker say that.”
“I know, it’s weird.”
“Well, what about a drink? I have a cooler in the back with sodas.”
Hmm. I didn’t have to chew soda. “Yeah, that’d be good. Thanks.”
Granola handed me a cold Pepsi. As I opened it, I asked, “How much longer are you going to be on the trail?”
She laughed. “Until my life savings are gone.”
I guess, for her, hiking was a different form of life savings.
I stayed at the road with Granola while the cold drink infused my veins like an IV drip. The sugar and caffeine rejuvenated me, and after thirty minutes I was ready to keep hiking.
After leaving Granola, I surfed the sugar wave for about an hour until I once again crashed into a state of physical exhaustion. My body was overcome with weakness, and even though my muscles cried out for energy and my stomach screamed for food, my mind said that I still wasn’t hungry. I traveled the next three miles so slowly that I barely