The Distance from Me to You (4 page)

Hubris.
That was the word that came to mind a few hours into McKenna's first day on the trail. Why in the world had she chosen the most strenuous route up Katahdin? For the first hour or so, the Abol Trail was not particularly formidable, just a gradual incline on an easy wooded trail, lovely canopy above her, gurgling stream beside her. A section of this stream was actually known as Thoreau's stream, so of course she stopped beside it for a little communion. She couldn't kneel down and splash water on her face because her pack was so heavy, but as far as the walking: piece of cake!

And then that hour was over and McKenna remembered that while Thoreau had waxed poetic about his time in the wilderness, at least one biographer claimed that the climb up Katahdin had brought him to the brink of hysteria. McKenna wasn't
quite
hysterical, not yet, though she was a lot more tired than she'd planned. Although she and Courtney had gone on a few overnights, most of the hikes she'd taken at home, in the afternoon after working, had been a couple hours. Out here, a couple hours was just the beginning of her day.

About a mile in, the grade of the trail changed from rambling and gradual to steep. Seriously steep. McKenna had to stop to catch her breath and take sips of water way more often than she'd anticipated. Her plan had been to hike five miles today—per her guidebook, she knew that the campgrounds could get crowded in the summer, so she'd made a reservation at the Katahdin Stream Campground. In her mind it had been a modest plan, even though she knew it was a dramatic uphill. She was young! She was in great shape! She might not be a star on the track team, but she was a solid runner, and she'd earned badges for more peaks in Connecticut than anyone else in her high school's hiking club. By starting her hike with the most difficult route, she would prove to herself that she was capable of doing this Herculean task she'd set for herself.

There weren't many other hikers on the trail, but the ones she saw quickly overtook her. At the Great Outdoor Provision Co., the guy who'd helped her pick out her gear spent a long time telling McKenna what she should pack and what she should leave behind. She knew weight would be important, but how much difference could it make, bringing four T-shirts instead of two, and her two favorite sweatshirts, and three pairs of shorts, plus the really cute Patagonia skort?

“You should bring a Kindle instead of books,” the guy at the store had said when she'd shown him her list. “You can always charge it off the trail.”

McKenna had nodded, not wanting to contradict him, but inwardly she thought that a Kindle would be sacrilege. Now,
as the Abol Trail became ever steeper, she catalogued the copy of
Walden
, the two new novels, and the songbird guide she'd wanted to check several times but hadn't been able to because that would have meant taking the pack off and then putting it back on. And she had thought she'd been so clever, bringing just paperbacks. As a kid, when she hiked with her father, he used to talk about trail rhythm, that great moment when your feet start moving in time with your arms, and each step covers the same amount of ground. But how was she supposed to establish trail rhythm when, three hours in, she could barely stand upright?

Finally, as noon approached—or close to it, McKenna guessed, as the sun seemed to be directly overhead and was beating down with impressive strength—she knew she'd have to stop and rest. She chose a little outcropping with an inviting flat rock and shrugged the pack to the ground. It landed with a loud
thump
, the sound itself chiding McKenna for overestimating herself. She took a big chug of water and thought that if she'd gotten anywhere near as far as she'd planned, she would now be admiring an impressive vista instead of just the thickly wooded forest.

A blackfly buzzed her head, and she swatted at it, only to have another swoop down on her neck. When she unzipped her pack to dig for bug spray, it erupted with clothing, showing off the inexpert job she'd done at the hotel this morning. She made a note that from now on, she'd pack everything she might need during the day at the top and in the outside pockets.

She ate two granola bars and an apple and drank some more water. When she was ready to go, she hoisted the pack onto her back and immediately stumbled forward, scraping her shin. The shock of that sharp scrape made her push herself upright again. She could see blood dribbling down toward her foot, but with the heavy pack on her back, she couldn't really bend down to inspect it, so she decided to tough it out instead.

And tough it out she did, as the path only got steeper and more rocky. Sweat poured off her forehead and into her eyes. Her back was soaked. Above, the sky started to darken, rain clouds obscuring the strong sun, which would have been a welcome relief from the heat if McKenna had thought to zip the waterproof cover over her pack. As thunder crashed in the distance, she had no choice but to stop and dig out the rain cover—of course packed toward the bottom—jam everything back in, and hoist the pack onto her shoulders again.

She slogged on through light rain, not minding getting wet as long as the contents of her pack stayed dry. All the clothes McKenna had packed for the trip, including underwear, were quick-drying, except for her two favorite T-shirts, one of which she was wearing. It became sodden in no time, chilling her through to the skin.

The rain made it impossible to guess what time it was, and she started to worry she wouldn't make it to her campground before dark. She soon came to a steep wall of rocks that she would actually have to
climb
—finding footholds and handholds. She racked her brain, trying to remember her
guidebook's description of the trail. Maybe this meant she was close to the end.

McKenna braced herself against the rocks. For a day hike with something light on her back, this might be doable. Hard, but doable. As it was, the weight of the pack pulled her dangerously backward as she tried to keep her balance. She took one careful step and then another. The rain came down like a mist, making everything that much slicker; she lost her grip as a mossy rock came loose and scraped both legs as she slid, before she managed to right herself.

A surge of adrenaline overtook her. She felt strong and determined and eager to get to her goal. On the other hand, she felt unsteady, and the drop-off to the east was steep and perilous. She remembered what Brendan had said back in Abelard:
It's not a joke. There are a thousand ways a person could die out there.

She pushed his voice out of her head, instead riding a second surge of adrenaline, pulling herself up precariously. All it would take was one slide in the wrong direction. There was nothing to catch her if she slid off that drop, just an unforgiving ravine.
A thousand ways a person could die.

“I could die,” McKenna said out loud.

The words startled her. Despite all the warnings over these last months of planning, this thought had honestly never occurred to her in any kind of real way: what she was doing was actually dangerous. She could die. As much as McKenna didn't want to die before she turned eighteen, she especially
didn't want to die on the very first day of her hike. Certainly that would make her go down in history as the most pathetic thru hiker ever.

Maybe if her pack weren't
quite
so heavy. Maybe if this were the last day of her hike, instead of the very first. Maybe if it weren't raining.

McKenna had to admit. She was already beaten.

This feeling came over her. A fount of determination. All she wanted to do in the world was ride that surge and keep climbing, finish what she'd started.

But if she did that, she would risk tumbling off the mountain. So very carefully, she crab-walked back down the small stretch of rocks she'd managed to traverse, and made the decision, for now, to turn around.

• • •

As she headed down the Abol Trail back toward Baxter State Park, the sky opened up and dumped in earnest. McKenna couldn't decide whether this was a sign that she'd made a wise decision or proved herself a total wimp. At least the rainwater would clean out her scrapes.

It only took her a few minutes of walking to remember: going downhill on a trail marked
MOST STRENUOUS
, carrying a pack that's far too heavy, is even harder than going uphill. By the time she returned to the first, early section of trail, the rain had let up, but her shoulders and back ached in ways she hadn't anticipated feeling until she was well into her forties—or at least well into her thru hike. The scrapes on
her legs stung, she had guzzled every last drop of water. The thought of walking for another full hour made her throat fill up with tears. All she wanted to do was throw down her pack, lie on the ground, and give up. She took two steps off the trail and leaned back against a tree, looking up at the slants of after-rain light filtering through the dense northern canopy.

Something rustled just behind her. It couldn't be a person, it was coming from the wrong direction, off the trail. Heavy footsteps, cracking branches. Something big.

McKenna frantically cataloged the various animals it could be, and in her discouraged state arrived on the scariest possibility:
bear
.

Seriously? On my first day?

Just that phrase,
first day
, perked McKenna up a little. It was her first day. She hadn't given up. She would find a way to do this walk, one way or another.

The animal lurched into view. It was a moose. Larger than McKenna could have ever imagined, and twice as beautiful. Probably female, since it didn't have antlers. Her eyes were huge and dark and totally indifferent to McKenna. She bowed her head and scooped up some leaves, chewing thoughtfully as McKenna stared.

“Hi,” McKenna said once she'd recovered. She wanted to reach out and touch it, but of course knew better. Instead she said again, “Hi, Moose.”

The moose did not reply, but McKenna felt heartened all the same.

• • •

Back at Baxter State Park, McKenna walked around the campground, looking for an empty site. As her guidebook had warned, even on a weekday the park was full to capacity—she of course hadn't made a reservation because she hadn't planned to camp here. Now she could only hope that today's rain, coupled with the gathering clouds, would scare some people away.

She had no luck on her first scouting trip, but did find an unoccupied picnic bench under a covered shelter, and shrugged her pack off with something that might have been joy if she hadn't been so profoundly exhausted. Before doing anything, she lay down across the bench and closed her eyes, too tired to even get out of her wet clothes. After half an hour or so, she sat up and opened her pack, pulling out her first-aid kit to douse her legs with disinfectant. The scrapes didn't look as bad as they felt—apart from the first cut, everything else could be categorized as a light scrape. She only used one Band-Aid.

The sun had dipped low enough that the northern New England air felt chilly, and McKenna shivered, leaving her pack on the picnic table while she traipsed across the parking lot into the public restroom and changed into dry clothes. Her pack contained two hundred dollars in cash, her iPhone, and the thousand dollars' worth of camping equipment she'd spent years saving up to buy. But she just couldn't contemplate lugging the whole thing into the bathroom with her. And as hard as the day on the trail had been, she wasn't yet uncivilized
enough to strip down in the middle of a campground full of people.

Thankfully, when she got back, her pack still sat there, undisturbed. Outside the shelter, rain began to fall again. McKenna unpacked everything, spreading it out on the table. She would need all the food she'd brought to get through the 100 Mile Wilderness, the first section of the southbound AT. She removed a T-shirt and piled it with the one she'd worn today, plus two pairs of shorts and both sweatshirts. The cute skort she couldn't bear to part with; she decided she'd wear it tomorrow. She put on her fleece jacket, a little heavy for the evening, but she found comfort in the fact that she still had something warm. She had spent a decent amount of money on two pairs of long Gramicci pants—now she took one pair and placed it in the discard pile, along with two of the seven books. She kept
Walden
, and her songbird guide, and a novel she hadn't yet started, plus the little journal to record her trip.

When she repacked what she planned to keep, she hoisted her pack back on. It was still heavy, but the items she'd discarded made a difference.

A car rattled by, heading out of the campground, a group of people fleeing the bad weather. But McKenna was too tired to go in search of their abandoned campsite. Instead, she ate an entire bag of Trader Joe's Natural Turkey Jerky, then laid her sleeping bag under the picnic table. Tomorrow she would leave her plastic bag of discarded items with a sign that said
FR
EE TO GOOD HOME
.