Becoming Odyssa - Jennifer Pharr Davis [72]
When I arrived at the lodge, I entered Magic Momma’s room and the adjacent room where Nightwalker and Mooch were staying. Next to the beds there was a laptop computer and a wallet, and on the floor there was an open bag of beef jerky. I stole a piece of jerky.
Then I took a long shower and a quick catnap before the boys arrived and woke me up.
“What is this, Goldilocks and the Three Bears?” Mooch asked.
“Yeah, we said you could have some trail magic, not our beds!” Nightwalker followed.
Their sarcasm was a welcome wake-up call.
At dinner, Mooch spent most of the meal entertaining us with crude jokes. I thought it was hilarious. Not so much because of the jokes themselves, but because I don’t have any friends who would be willing to use such profanity and sexual innuendo in front of my mom, or their mom, or anyone else’s mom. But Mooch kept cracking himself up, and Magic Momma just kept shaking her head and smiling.
Magic Momma refused to let me pay for my meal, which was very generous because a hungry thru-hiker is not a cheap date. Nonetheless, she insisted on treating everyone to appetizers, entrees, desserts, and drinks.
When we were finished, I was full, I was content, and I was ready to hike back down the trail to find a camping spot. That was, until we walked outside and into snow flurries.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” said Nightwalker. “It’s May and it’s still snowing?”
Turning to me, Magic Momma pleaded, “You can’t go back to the trail in this.”
“Well, she can’t have my bed,” Mooch quickly interjected.
“Yeah, I’m not sharing mine, either,” agreed Nightwalker. “But you’re more than welcome to sleep on the carpet.”
Mooch relented. “I might give you a pillow . . . if you’re lucky.”
It was settled. I was clean, fed, and now I was staying in a hotel room—even if it was on the floor.
One of the best parts about spending the night with Mooch and Night-walker was that I got to slackpack with them the next day.
You’d think a slackpack would be substantially easier than hiking with a heavy pack. But for me, that day, it was hard—and it would have been miserable if I’d been carrying my pack.
Some people think it is inappropriate for me to discuss women’s issues on the trail, and I don’t think that’s really fair. I don’t think it’s fair because it’s natural, it’s unavoidable, and it’s highly disruptive to everyday activities—especially hiking. (Moot understood.)
Menstruation is a fact of life. And the only way to describe how tough the day was is to mention that my lower back hurt, my stomach was cramping, I suffered a slight headache, a wee bit of nausea, escalated hunger, and fatigue. Combine that with having to hike thirty miles (with or without a pack), and that just makes it a hard day. But the one thing that made my day better was that Mooch was in even more discomfort.
Intimacy is not just fostered on the trail, it’s required. If you’re hiking as part of a group, you have to be vulnerable. When you’re hurting, even if it’s embarrassing, you have to communicate that you’re not feeling well, that you need to slow down, or that you need help.
When Mooch needed help, he turned to Nightwalker.
“Nightwalker. Hey, Nightwalker,” he said.
“What’s up, Mooch?”
“I need a favor. I need you to slap me across the face as hard as you can.”
“What?”
“Seriously, I need to take my mind off my butt rash, and if you slap me really hard, that might do the trick.”
We erupted with laughter. Well, Nightwalker and I erupted, but Mooch still looked serious. I’d noticed that Mooch had been waddling uphill, but, not knowing him that well, I thought it might just be the way he hiked. And even though Nightwalker never slapped him, I think just confessing his symptoms made Mooch feel a little better.
We devised a system to help Mooch make it to the road where