University of Badass

Within our first hour of hiking, a signpost read, “2,000-mile marker of the Appalachian Trail.” Then it took the rest of the day for the three of us to hike five miles north from Stratton into the Bigelow mountains of Maine. We clambered over the pocked and pitted massive boulders with thirty-pound packs, some half as big as my house, crawling over them on hands and knees.

Whenever a hiker passed us, I wondered why they chose to hike these 2,190 miles. Story after story passed us, and I wanted to know “why” from each of them but didn’t ask. They were in a hurry now. They had already hiked over 2,000 miles north of Georgia. They were coming from behind us one second and completely gone the next, like a vision. Most would gasp a quick hello and continue without a pause. And they always passed us. I’m a slow hiker who marvels at every mushroom and patch of moss.

Although we saw people of all ages hiking, most were in their 20s and 30s and had been hiking for four to six months. Most were solitary young men, some with hollow desperate eyes and some with eagerness, rushing to get to Katahdin, the end of the Appalachian Trail. They want to be free of their names because everything else you did before the A.T. doesn’t matter out here in the wilderness. It only matters that you can walk and sleep in the woods, so they give each other fictitious names for their stint on the Trail.

The three of us were over sixty years old when we set out to hike for ten days. We mailed four days of food to Caratunk and carried six days of food with us, along with our tents, stoves, and sleeping bags. At the end of each hiking day, our rustic campsites were covered in rocks and roots, so if we each found a tent site the size of a baby crib mattress, we were lucky. Otherwise, we positioned our tents so our hips and backs wouldn’t get poked. It’s not always peaceful to sleep in the wilderness. At times the wind was so loud I dreamed I was lying on a tarmac at an airport or getting washed up on a beach after a hurricane.

One night after darkness fell and we had settled into our tents, a tribe trooped in. First, a young couple was whispering, murmuring, and laughing, then more came. Then, even more. The group set up their sleeping bags on a wooden platform near us as a carefree group of merry elves in the deep woods. “Are those rocks or tents?” I heard one ask as they passed us.

That was me forty-five years ago; I might have been annoyed by their disturbance in the dark if I had not remembered that fact. But the soft chatter brought me back to times when I did the same thing, coming into a campground or hostel late at night, trying to be quiet but tripping on something or bumping into someone and busting into a giggle. They had so much life ahead of them, but they were friends with made-up names camping in the woods for now. Their only care was following a white painted blaze on trees to guide their way.

Finally, after half an hour, the smell of pot wafted toward us, more soft chuckling and talking, and peace descended like a blanket. Then the gentle sound of a ukulele lulled us toward sleep. We were deep in the wilderness with nothing but each other, trees, and a stream for miles around.

As the morning light brightened the woods, we saw our sleeping-bagged hobbit neighbors lined up on the wooden platform like multi-colored sausages on a grill. One of them lifted a head, so I smiled and waved. “Good morning,” I said as soft as I could. Again, a reciprocal wave and smile. One by one, the Frodo-types gradually came to life. Then, again, the smell of pot drifted over to us.

“Smells good up there,” I said as I stuffed my sleeping bag and tent into my pack.

“Yep. We like our Sativa pot to get us moving. But at night, we like our Indica to unwind,” he said.

This memory of being breezy in the woods before the reality of jobs and responsibilities caves in will someday make them better adults and parents who understand what it is to be wild and free for a time. In the days ahead, we would see more tribes with bandanas over frizzy hair and dogs leaping from one rock to another, like animals, disappearing as fast as a goat or a deer. Their physical shape was impressive. A few I worried about, such as a guy about fifteen years old struggling to keep up with his buddies and who would have cried if he let himself. There were young women entering the forest alone for “just a few more miles” as the darkness descended. “Where you headed?” I asked one wearing a headlamp as she hiked into the black woods. Without hesitation, she answered, “Pearce Pond,” which was still miles ahead. Another wanted to catch up with her friends two miles up the Trail as the golden sky spread behind the trees, making shadows and silhouettes of pines and mountains.

The most distressing was a young woman of about 25 who was all alone. If I had to guess, she might have been a scientist or a computer geek who had been working in a dead-end cubicle somewhere. She had a hole on the seat of her pants patched with a piece of duct tape. She was tall, peaceful, and wore glasses. We asked if she would be camping in the spot where we found her sitting on a rock by the pond, surveying the glassy water.

“You setting up camp here?” I asked.

“No, I’m headed north a few more miles,” she said as she lifted herself from the rock. It was getting dark, and this young woman headed into the woods on a trail covered with roots and rocks. What if she got lost? Or tripped, fell, and hurt herself? My soul ached as I watched her walk off into the descending twilight, all alone with miles of wilderness in every direction.

As I stooped down by the pond to fill our water bottles, I reflected on how painful it had been for me to find my way. I was that lone girl, afraid I would always be that way. I wondered if this was her last-ditch effort to make some changes in her life, to shake things up for something different. Was she like me? Desperately lonely, almost to the point of becoming unhinged and unable to find a purpose? The young woman walked on, but I couldn’t get her out of my mind as I sat by the pond collecting water.

A dragonfly landed on my shoulder in the setting sun. The wilderness was altering me. In every direction were ferns, brown earth, rocks, roots, pine needles, and worn rocks where millions had probably stepped on an exact stone I had. Mushrooms in red, yellow, gold, and white. Purple asters and every imaginable color green of moss. Gray bark hung like shingles on king-sized trees. Each day we stepped over sticks, leaves, stones, and pebbles. Then onto giant boulders of mammoth proportions with inclines that seemed only Spiderman could climb. But we did it. The Trail shows us abilities we never knew we had, and everything is growing and growing around us. The trees, the moss, the tiny creatures we can’t see. The clouds bloom huge, then drift on. How could this not be changing us, too? Emotion bubbled up and out of me with the thought of the girl trudging alone and the desperate face on the young man.

When a butterfly breaks out of its cocoon, its wings strengthen from the effort. So we, too, do the pulsing, pushing, and struggling to find our way in our own time. That’s what empowers us to become who we are intended to be.

Watching others strive to complete this demanding journey cemented my conviction that being badass is not easy. To reach a goal, you must be uncompromising and tough to get there. Hiking the A.T. could very well be the University of Badass. For one person, it might be simply a few months of adventure. For another, it is a Herculean effort of grueling hiking while hungry, tired, and depressed. The lessons of the A.T. are like getting a tattoo on the brain; impossible to forget.

We left the Trail after six days, intending to hike for ten. Unfortunately, one of us wasn’t feeling well, and another had gotten into a pattern of insomnia, causing her to trip and fall twice while stepping from rock to rock, and could be dangerous. All it took was to hear a forecast of two inches of rain that night. So we altered our plans and got off the Trail before we didn’t have access to do so.

After returning home, I didn’t want to see or talk to anyone for three days. There was something extremely personal about marinating in nature the way we did, eliciting a feeling of getting peeled like a potato, all the layers scraped off until only the flesh is left. We become another animal with all traces of humankind wiped off, leaving us equal to deer, bears, and owls.

I will return to the Trail. Or to some other trail deep in the woods. The motivation to be saturated in nature is stronger than ever.