Becoming Odyssa - Jennifer Pharr Davis [68]
The Priest Shelter was perched on top of a lonely mountain, and I was the only hiker there. When I arrived, I still didn’t want to eat, I just wanted to lie down.
I curled up in my sleeping bag, ready to fall asleep. In my famished state, I wasn’t really aware of the thoughts that were running through my head. At one point, I thought about having to quit the trail because I was too weak to finish. My eyes shot open.
Had I really just thought about quitting the trail? Up until this point there had been no correlation in my mind between not eating and not hiking. Could I really sabotage myself like that?
I sat up quickly and grabbed my food bag. I didn’t care that I wasn’t hungry, I didn’t care that I felt sick and hated chewing. I was going to make it to Maine even if it meant I had to force-feed myself to get there. I pulled out one food item after another and ate as much as possible. I gorged myself on nearly two thousand calories. But I didn’t feel sick. Instead, my body seemed to absorb every bite immediately. When I was finished, I set my watch alarm for 9:00 AM, twelve hours away and two hours past sunrise.
I was not going to quit. I was going to eat and sleep as much as I needed to remain healthy and stay on the trail.
It’s amazing what food and rest can do. It was a drizzly morning with heavy fog, but I felt much, much better, and after a big breakfast I set out to test my new strength.
I knew that my recent turn toward self-destruction was my own fault, but I also don’t think I grew up with a very good model. The majority of our culture believes that we can operate with very little sleep as long as we supplement it with enough caffeine and processed food. My college friends treated caffeine pills like candy and Red Bull like water.
None of us really thought about how what we put into our bodies would affect their outputs. But the trail was teaching me that if I wanted to make it to Maine, I was going to have to take care of myself. I was going to have to eat often and vary my diet to include more than snack cakes, candy, and energy bars. I was also going to have to rest and maybe not hike thirty-mile days back to back.
During my leisurely descent down The Priest, I saw a man in running shorts pierce the mist and sprint up the mountain toward me. He looked exceptionally healthy and strong. I stepped to the side of the trail to let him pass, but surprisingly he pushed a button on his monstrous wristwatch and stopped to talk.
“Ya’ thru-hiking?” he asked in an enthusiastic Southern accent.
“Yep, I’m going to Maine. Are you a runner?”
He laughed. “Yeah, you could say that. I like to run. And I really like to run on trails.”
“Have you done any races?”
He laughed again. “A few.”
“How far do you go?”
“Oh, thirty, fifty, or a hundred miles, usually.”
Wow! I couldn’t imagine running fifty or a hundred miles at once and was in awe of the discipline (and masochism) it must take to complete such a race.
“Well, don’t let me hold you up,” I said.
“All right.” He pushed a button on his enormous watch and started running up the trail. But before he turned at the next switchback, he looked back and yelled, “By the way, my name’s David Horton. Have a good hike!”
“I’m Odyssa,” I called back. “Good luck with your running!”
Then I turned and continued walking.
David Horton? David Horton? DAVID HORTON!
My jaw dropped. I knew I had heard that name before, and now I remembered why. Even with my limited knowledge of trail culture, I knew who David Horton was—he was one of the most famous trail runners in the world. He had won countless races and been featured in numerous running magazines. And in 1991, he had set the speed record on the Appalachian Trail by doing it in fifty-two days. Fifty-two days—that meant he averaged over forty miles a day. How was that humanly possible?
I was so excited to have had an unexpected celebrity encounter in the middle of the woods that my mood only suffered slightly when I realized that I had just met the Michael Jordan of trail running and