Chapter 57: Chapter 56, Continued

I had just returned from pooping when I heard them. Their dulcet accents drifted towards me from out of the trees. My heart racing, I struck a casual pose, leaning against a boulder near my backpack to wait, flipping my hair in a rakish manner.

"Oh. My. God!" said Lil Dipper, stopping short when she saw me.

"Oh, hi," I said indifferently, pretending to examine my fingernails. "Fancy seeing you here."

"M.C.!" cried Redwing. And we laughed and ran to each other to exchange awkward hand shakes.

"We never thought we'd see you again!" said Redwing.

"Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you," I joked, and we laughed again.

I quickly filled them in on what I had been up to over the past week or so. Walked fast. Cried a lot. Went into Roanoke with Bandito and his family to see Iron Man 2. Found out that I had been being a total dumb-ass and that Memorial Day was on the 31st, not the 24th.

"So you'll have enough time to make it to Harpers Ferry!" cried Lil Dipper.

"Yes, ma'am."

"And you'll get to see your girlfriend," said Redwing, her smile faltering.

"Yes, ma'am," I replied. "Although I'm still working on getting her to come out to the trail to bring us pizza and beer."

They told me what they had been up to. Walking fast. Missing me. Going to the Home Place, a legendary All-You-Can-Eat restaurant in Catawba. Missing my smile, my quiet dignity and leadership, my ample wit, the carefree flip of my sunny blonde hair...

"Stop it, Redwing! I'm blushing," I teased.

"There's someone else who'll be glad to see you," said Lil Dipper.

"Who?" I asked, immediately thinking of Hobbes.

"M.C.!" cried Caveman, crashing out of the woods. "I thought I heard your voice!"

"Caveman!" I cried, not lurching forward for an uncomfortable hug. Because that wouldn't have been manly. Plus it would've been weird and cumbersome with our packs on. "Miss me?"

"Yeah! Only like a drownin' man misses oxygen, or like a fish in a fish tank misses the ocean, or Buzz Aldrin misses outer space, or like, someone who misses something a lot misses that thing!" said Caveman. Then he turned to shout back down the trail. "Hey, P-Nut! You'll never guess who we found!"

"Who?" came P-Nut's voice just before he emerged to find us all waiting there. "M.C.! No way!"

And we hiked on as a group.

The others continued to catch me up on their most recent adventures. They told me how Hobbes had been rudely denied service at the Home Place. How P-Nut and Caveman had cuddled in a sleeping bag together on the restaurant's lawn after the meal. How they had been thinking about me the whole time I was gone.

"Stop it, P-Nut! I'm blushing," I teased.

We caught up with Bandito on McAfee's Knob, where we all sat down to take a much-deserved break and the obligatory legs-dangling-over-the-cliff photos. I made sport of and ruined several people's shots by sneaking up on them and pretending to push them off. Then Alphabet and Nature and Saint arrived. It was like a family reunion. Plus Saint.

We easily could have sat around there all day, enjoying the views. It was beautiful. Very easy to understand how it might come to be the "most photographed place" on the Appalachian Trail.

"My family comes up here every Thanksgiving," Alphabet was saying to Caveman.

"Wait, wait, wait," I interrupted, "Your family goes hiking? Here? Every Thanksgiving?"

"Yeah," shrugged Alphabet, like it was the most natural, understandable thing in the world.

"That's ridiculous," I scoffed, unbelieving.

Caveman laughed. "Oh, how I've missed that Major Chafage charm!"

I didn't understand. Caveman pointed out that it generally wasn't polite to question or mock someone's family traditions. Which is fair enough. To my, but mostly her credit, however, Alphabet didn't see at all offended by my brusqueness.

Eventually the lot of us packed up and moved on, thinking about reaching the Lamberts Meadow Shelter, some six miles away, before nightfall. We would ultimately fall short of even that meager goal, but it was for the best. The hike itself was relatively smoo–

Lil Dipper suddenly tripped over a root and face-planted hard, skidding headfirst several yards downhill, her shoe somehow coming of in the process.

Caveman swore in alarm, jumping out of the way, then quickly stooped to help her up. "Are you okay?"

"Huh huh," chucked Lil Dipper, sounding more like a caveman than Caveman. "I fell."

I couldn't help but laugh. The rest of us were just glad she was all right.

We caught up with Hobbes on the Tinker Cliffs. He was cowboy camping amongst the trees, sitting in his sleeping bag and staring out at the horizon, almost zen-like.

"What's up Hobbes? You stayin' here for the night?"

"Yeah," he said, rousing from his meditation. He shrugged, seemingly annoyed by the intrusion. "I figured Lambert's Meadow would be too crowded."

"You're probably right. And it is really nice up here."

"And secluded," added Hobbes pointedly. "And quiet."

For some reason, I began to suspect that Hobbes wanted to be alone. Naturally, we all stayed. Five minutes later, we had surrounded his rather inconspicuous campsite with a half-dozen mismatched tents.

We built a fire, told stories, and I showed off my 2 pound, 12 ounce bag of Peanut M&M's, which was the envy of everyone. And then we all watched the sunset and went to bed, contented. Our family was whole again. If only for a day.

Chapter 55: Yogi This

The Thru-Hiker's Handbook defines Yogi-ing as "the good-natured art of 'letting' food be offered cheerfully by strangers without actually asking them directly (if you do, it's begging!)."

We were approaching a viewpoint near Dragon's Tooth. There were a lot of day hiker's about, but I wasn't paying them any attention. Bandito wanted to stop for a mid-morning snack, or maybe an early lunch. I didn't feel particularly inclined to join him. Maybe I was just in a pissy mood, still stung by my recent string of humiliations, or perhaps I was preoccupied with thoughts of Megan, and of how far we had yet to go. Maybe both. Or maybe I was just out of food.

"I'm all outta food, man," I lamented. "I'm just gonna keep going."

Bandito shrugged. And I turned to go.

"Hey!" came a voice over my shoulder.

It was a couple, about my age, sitting on a nearby rock.

"You outta food?" asked the man.

I nodded tentatively.

"Here," he said, going through his pack. He handed me an apple, some granolla bars, and a can of Coca Cola. "Stay. Eat with your boy."

"Really?" I asked, not believing my good fortune.

"Sure, it's no problem," grinned the man.

"Wow! Thanks a lot!" I said.

And that's how you Yogi.

"I get half," said Bandito later, as I cracked open the soda.

Yeah, right. I chugged my share and then gave it to him. "You get to pack it out."

The way down from Dragon's Tooth is a bit crazy. Fantastically steep but mercifully short, the descent is one of maybe three or four parts of the entire Appalachian Trail where the use of metal rebar handholds, while not strictly required, might be strongly suggested. I quickly came to the realization that using trekking poles here was more of a liability than a help. I stowed my Leki. My other walking stick, that I had just so recently picked out of a barrel at the Woods Hole Hostel, proved more problematic.

I looked down, and thought I saw a switchback below us. Figuring the trail looped around somewhere, I decided my best option was to drop the stick over the cliff, then pick it up later. So I did.

The trail went straight. Oops.

Bandito had his own bout with bad luck. On his way down, his sole surviving carbon-fiber trekking pole practically exploded, shattering spontaneously in his hands. Somehow, he managed not to curse. Or burst into tears. If I hadn't been sobbing in the bushes nearby, I might have applauded his reserve.

We sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" as we marched down to the parking lot, where we were greeted as conquering heroes by his awaiting parents, sprayed down by a nervous HAZMAT crew, thrown in the back of a pickup truck, shuttled to a general store in Catawba where Bandito picked up a mail drop, and then finally driven to a hotel in nearby Roanoke.

I didn't have any clean civilian clothes to change into, so Bandito's parents very thoughtfully went out to buy me some at a nearby Walmart while I showered. Then we did our laundry. Then we went out for some fantastic Indian food that Bandito was either too stubborn or xenophobic to try, his loss. Then we went shopping, and I bought a two pound, twelve ounce bag of Peanut M&Ms. Because really, why not? Then I talked to Megan on the phone and figured out that Memorial Day was on May 31st, not May 24th, and that I therefore had an extra week to make it to Harpers Ferry. And then we went to see Iron Man 2. And it was horrible. And then we returned to the hotel and promptly we went to bed.

And when I woke up the next morning, I couldn't really remember, but I had the vague feeling something important had happened.

Chapter 54: The Catawba Challenge

The Catawba Challenge consists of hiking the 53.6 miles from the Pine Swamp Branch Shelter to Catawba, Virginia. Bandito and I had decided to do it in just two and a half days. It was destined to be our most difficult test yet, filled with random encounters with south-bound section hikers, spontaneous bouts of tree hugging with the Keffer Oak—which at 300 years old and with an 18 foot circumference actually isn't that old or particularly large—nervous breakdowns, the death of yet another of my walking sticks, and some expertly wrangled trail magic.

And now, because I can't actually remember anything from that first day's hike, here's a fascinating excerpt from one of my favorite novels that I totally didn't just make up, Another, More Sordid Teenage Love Affair, by Emmanuel Asiago Tortone:

as radiant and graceful as a lotus blossom floating upon a pond dappled by moonlight. She immediately attracted the amorous attentions of all the other bees and butterflies, all of whom had shinier stripes, more muscular thoraxes, and prettier, faster wings than he did. And she became unapproachable, surrounded by an impenetrable web of admirers, drawn ever in by her intoxicating beauty.

Everything she did was effortless.

The way she seemed to glide through the party in her silky green dress, the turn of her head, the careful arch of her eyebrow as she leveled an inquisitive, slightly bemused gaze at whomever was lucky enough to amuse her.

The way her laugh carried across the air and jarred his senses.

The way playfulness and vulnerability commingled in the twinkle of her eye.

The way she could kindly and cleverly deflect anyone and everyone's meticulously constructed advances, making them seem callous, corny and clumsy in retrospect.

The way her eyes seemed to seek him out in the crowd, the way the rest of the world melted away in the heat of her attention. They way she made him feel like they were the only people in the room, in the house, the yard, the world.

Although his facile, facetious friends found fault in her gummy smile, this one flaw only made her all the more perfect for him, made him ache with longing every time he saw it, which was far too rarely. It was a continual and constant challenge to keep her entertained, to keep her from slipping into what he feared was a dangerous and all-consuming melancholy that could make the entire world fade behind it, cold and colorless. But he welcomed this challenge willingly. He lived to face it.

His only dream, his one talent, his life's purpose was to make her laugh, every moment of every day. But she didn't know it. And even if she did, there was nothing she could do about it. And neither could he.

We stayed at the Laurel Creek Shelter overnight. We'd gone 18.5 miles. We'd do 22.5 tomorrow, then the last 12.6 into Catawba by noon on the third day. So far so good.

Our second day was much more interesting than the first, if no less difficult. We walked past the aforementioned Keffer Oak, which is actually one of the bigger trees I've ever seen. A nearby plaque said something about the virgin forests of the Americas being filled with trees of similar or even surpassing majesty, before logging and agricultural needs cut them all down.

I felt a sudden surge of empathy for the stalwart tree, and felt like hugging it. So I did. My little brother thought this was awesome and insisted on taking pictures to commemorate the occasion, then asked me to take pictures of him doing the same. I was considerably nonplussed, but reluctantly acquiesced. The entire episode remains one of the low points of my life.

The day was also marked by another of my legendary nervous breakdowns. We were climbing a woods road towards the Audie Murphy Memorial, a granite marker commemorating the spot where the legendary WWII hero died in a plane crash in 1971. It was really steep, and I cried.

But you know what's more interesting than that? Pizza! Here's my favorite recipe for pizza dough:

First heat up a 1.25 cups of water so it's warm to the touch. Shouldn't take long.

In a large bowl, mix one tablespoon of sugar—preferably unrefined cane sugar or honey, or just a dab of molasses—and one tablespoon baking yeast. Add the warm water. Mix, and let stand 5 minutes.

In a measuring cup, mix together 1.5 cups of unbleached flour—organic spelt or white whole wheat works best, while white flour is too processed and thus unhealthy and plain whole heat too dry—and 1.5 teaspoons of kosher sea salt. Add this mixture to the water, which should now be bubbly or fizzing, indicating an active and viable yeast. Stir until smooth.

Add more flour in half cup increments until total flour volume is 2.5-3 cups, mixing and kneading in as necessary. Herbs like oregano, rosemary, and dill can also be added during this time for flavor. If you're feeling especially adventurous, you could try adding some diced olives.

Knead in 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. I prefer mine fair traded, sometimes even garlic infused.

Let rise for one hour, or until volume is doubled. Makes 2-3 pies.

We spent our second night at the Pickle Branch Shelter. It had been such a long, arduous, emotionally taxing but really, really interesting day. There were so many memories, so many unique and funny moments and spectacular views that I knew that day would stick with me forever. So I went to sleep.