Snowflakes floated down like particles of dust as we stretched our arms up to a wide purple sky. We took in the sweet indulgence of night yoga, inhaling winter pine, and underneath our sneakers, the rocks and roots of Georgia. Somehow, in my sister’s company, breathing deeply felt good and fulfilling rather than restricted and terrifying. Maybe one of the fearful things hiding deep in my belly which I didn’t want to encounter was the sense of ultimate aloneness, which dissipated with my sister’s nearness.
Afterwards, my sister and I squatted on the pale, yellow benches straddling a picnic table and settled in. Her ghost stories were the conjurings of a magician and found her creeping along the perimeter of flickering shadows cast by a campfire. Her cheekbones and chin momentarily catching hints of yellow as she sprinkled soft words like moon dust and performed the whole spectacle so that we felt the woods closing in around us—skeleton trees loomed, and all sound was sucked away as no katydids or tree frogs had awakened from winter slumber yet. We knew in a few weeks these trees would be shaking like maracas with cicadas who fluttered simultaneously, passing secret insect messages back and forth across the treetops.
Walkie, with her long brown ponytail swinging, alternatively crouched down and sprang up, creeping across the small pebbles that littered the campsite. She whispered, she cajoled, she cast a spell, with her stories. I wished that she would come prepared with three or four per night, but we usually performed only one a piece before climbing into the tent.
In turn, I was especially delighted when the story I’d prepared, rehearsing it in my mind even as we’d climbed those merciless 604 steps up Amicalola Falls, sufficiently spooked my sister.
We sat together shivering, furtively rubbing our hands together, shifting to warm one part of our bodies only to find another newly exposed inch of chilled skin.
“The Barefoot Sisters slept in a bathroom once,” my sister started.
“Oh my gosh, no! We’re going to get Covid or Guiardia,” I said, but my eyes followed hers to the heated bathrooms that lay down the hill from our tent.
“I mean, do you want to bring our sleeping bags down there?” I continued, thinking it through now.
“I don’t know,” she said finally. “Maybe, let’s just go warm up for a few minutes, and then, when we come back, we’ll be warm when we get in our bags.”
This seemed reasonable. So, off we went, traipsing down the hill, newly merry and tired and cold, to the bathroom.
It featured timed lights that turned off and then, back on again every ten minutes, and we sat in the soft glow whispering about the next day, our first real day in the woods.
There was nothing to do. There in the bathroom. Soon, we retreated up the hill, climbed into our sleeping bags and softly talked until I drifted off.
“Are you awake?” Walkie asked a little while later. “I couldn’t hear you breathing,” she continued. She woke me and brought me back to the cold to make sure I wasn’t dead.
She was shivering and hadn’t fallen sleep yet; her bag rated at a comfort level of 29° while mine was rated to keep me comfortable in temps of less of 20°.
“What should we do?” I asked, twisting myself inside my bag to prop myself up on an elbow.
“I’m not sure.” Her bundled angel face looked content to just sit there and shiver all night.
“Do you want me to lay on top of you?”
We tried that, me sort of sprawling over her with my cocooned feet, and then, rolling onto her. This created more heat, but the discomfort of elbows and knees outweighed the benefit. Next, Walkie abandoned her bag and tried scrunching in next to me. We turned this way and that, hunching in our shoulders, stretching the bag across our hips, trying to zip ourselves. Together, we were a lumpy, slithering inch worm. It wouldn’t zip with both of us inside it.
Blast it all, I hated being cold, but there was no way I could let my sister lay there freezing, shifting in her bag, her feet seeking latent pockets of warmth, dreaming of wool sweaters, and rewaking with shivers just to stare at the ceiling of the tent until some hint of dawn came. I suggested she take my bag hoping it would keep her warmer and wiggled out of our bumpy potato sack as she nested deeper, stuffing her pillow into the hood of my mummy bag.
By now, I was wide awake and reassessing my chances of falling asleep again. I would be too cold in her bag, as I’d been nearly too cold in mine, only my exhaustion having dumped me into fitful rest. I didn’t want to rustle around next to my sister, disturbing her, trying and failing to get warm again as hours passed. The ground is the coldest thing in any campsite, colder than the night air and colder than the snow falling lightly outside, and I could feel it seeping upwards through the air-filled sleeping pad beneath me. Passing hours of dark night, drifting off briefly and waking to find only 20 minutes had passed…I just couldn’t do it.
I unzipped my side of the tent. Like someone’s stocking feet roaming to the refrigerator in the night, the zipper on nylon meant someone was awake in these woods. Even if that someone was just me, I was comforted by the sound, and went outside to the picnic table to smoke and write. It was a little after midnight and freezing, my gloved fingers were stiff, and I couldn’t maneuver my pen, but the elation of the day and knowing tomorrow we would be entering the woods in earnest, left me jazzed enough that I thought I’d just pull an all-nighter. Writing and shivering for some time, I decided I’d head back down to the bathroom.
There, sitting on a two-foot-wide bench in the eerie half-light of the softly glowing bathroom, I willed time to go by faster and began dreaming of coffee and writing down my next ghost story, pausing to rehearse bits of it as I wrote. I promised myself that at 4am, I could get up, boil some water, sneak into our bear canister for packets of instant coffee, and begin getting ready for the day ahead.
Time dragged on, and weariness set in, so I strategized positions that would squeeze my body onto that tiny hard bench. Lying flat on my back with my legs dangling to the floor, then, flat on my belly with my legs outstretched. Finally, hauling my knees up and hugging them tightly, I leaned my face onto the cool, comfort of the bacteria laden wall, closing my eyes for ten minutes at a time and listening to the lights and heating intermittently buzzing back to life.
I did not sleep, but I was supremely warm and happy as half-hours ticked by and 4am finally approached. Excited that deep black night would soon turn to dawn, I gathered myself to head back to camp. I was ready for coffee and sunrise, but back at camp, I found my hands were like paws, stiff and frozen. The bear canister’s plastic lid was as hard as ceramic and would not budge to open. Its shining hopeful contents, instant coffee packets, just millimeters away if I could reach through the frozen plastic to get to them.
A fierce determination gripped me as I tried to force it open. “This is me. I am a bear.” I thought.
Wandering through our campsite, crunching gravel under my sneakers, I searched for something hard to use in forcing the canister open. Locating our nail clippers and unfolding the small sharp file inside, I pressed the tip down on the canister’s hard plastic button, but it only slipped off.
“Walkie,” I whispered into the crisp air, crouching beside the tent, “I’m walking around out here.”
“What?” She said quietly, a sleeping bag shifted in the dark. “I’m walking around, and probably making noise. I just wanted you to know it’s me, not a bear.” With that, I gazed into the woods, my thoughts turning to the lodge which lay a half-mile away through the inky darkness. There must be coffee there. And heat.
Rocks & Roots 