Becoming Odyssa - Jennifer Pharr Davis [9]
The warmth and soft glow that greeted me the next day was a welcome relief. I had spent the majority of the night staring into the darkness and waiting for the sun to rise. And when the morning’s first rays peeked into our lean-to, everyone in the shelter began to stir. Some fired up their stoves for a warm breakfast, and others fetched their food from the nearby storage cables and crawled back into their sleeping bags to enjoy Pop-Tarts in bed.
I didn’t want to cook, I didn’t want to reveal that my food bag was in my pack beside the shelter, and, unlike the four Georgia Peaches, I didn’t know how to change clothes inside my sleeping bag. The last one didn’t matter so much since I was already wearing all my clothes.
I decided that my best option was to roll up my sleeping bag, shove it in my pack, and start hiking.
I turned to Sarah, who now had Pop-Tart crumbs on her top lip.
“Hey, I think I’m going to get started.”
“Okay, we won’t be too far behind you. But if we don’t catch up, remember, you can’t leave Springer without us.”
I laughed. “I’m sure I’ll see you before then.”
Then I hopped out of the shelter, collected my pack, and headed into the woods.
My second day on the trail featured a challenging ascent, scattered snow flurries, and excruciating pain. Although it was still early in the trek, I was already developing a routine. I would hike for thirty or forty-five minutes until my shoulders screamed and my hands went numb. At that point I would take a short break, remove my pack, and rest my arms and shoulders until I regained blood flow to my fingers. Then I would continue on my way.
My pack wasn’t abnormally heavy; I estimated that with my gear, food, and water it probably weighed thirty pounds, but unlike most hikers, I never weighed it. Pack weight was a controversial topic among thru-hikers. Those with really heavy packs, over fifty pounds, will carry them with pride. They have increased joint pain and hike slower, but they feel tough and prepared for anything. On the other hand, lightweight backpackers struggle daily to reduce their fifteen-pound loads by a fraction of an ounce. They hike faster and get fewer injuries, but they sacrifice comfort at their campsites.
I was somewhere in the middle, and my head told me that my pack was manageable, but my shoulders gave me a different message. The pain throbbing in my narrow, boney shoulders was somewhat my fault: I was never fitted for a pack before I left to hike. Instead, I had gone to a downstairs closet in my parents’ house and rummaged through thirty-year-old sleeping bags and campfire cookware to find an old external-frame backpack that my brother had once used at summer camp. Its faded gray color and worn hip belt weren’t glamorous, but it was free.
My first full day on the trail, I passed twenty-five or thirty hikers headed north. I greeted all of them, and while some stopped to talk, others simply nodded their heads and kept going. It was strange to think that ten percent of the people I passed would quit before reaching the North Carolina border, and another sixty percent would quit before the halfway point. It was hard to believe that only one in four of the wide-eyed hikers I encountered would complete the trail.
I think most people would assess potential thru-hikers based on their physique, experience, and pack weight, but I predicted their odds of success based on facial expressions. If a person could smile in the blustery snow flurries and bare forests of North Georgia while carrying a cumbersome pack on his back, I decided he would make it to Katahdin. On the other hand, if a person offered a gruff greeting, didn’t look up, or simply grunted as I passed by, I figured the odds were stacked against him.
As the sun reached the horizon, I encountered fewer and fewer people. The darkening sky meant that most hikers would be looking for refuge