On our fifth day in the woods, I woke with a renewed promise to myself and to my sister. She needed me as much as I needed her even though those needs were different. I sometimes needed closeness, she sometimes needed space. I sometimes needed chatter, she sometimes needed silence. And she most certainly did not need me bringing up any more half-brained ideas fueled by inexperience. I would follow our plan from here on out. It was a good plan. We both trusted it.
And now, I knew her mental toughness meant she would not give up, would not listen to her body if it needed to rest, would not give an inch to these mountains. My sister had the heart of a wild deer and mind of a mule. Despite my ineptitude at a myriad of things, including just walking for hours, I was her big sister, and couldn’t be the one pushing our limits in my excitement. She would never box herself in with fears, so I might have to be the one to say “this is too tough for me, we need to stop,” if I saw it was too much for either one of us.
That morning at Hawk Mountain Shelter, we lead yoga again at the request of the other hikers. Strangers wandered up from all sides of camp to stretch and breathe in the mountain air. Even Sam and Fireball strolled up to join our group, grinning softly, no hint of worry on their faces leftover from yesterday’s events. Toto watched us excitedly from the loft and then peed on Marky Mark’s sleeping bag.
When we left camp, we were perhaps not flying as high; some of our initial elation over being in the woods replaced with a more determined countenance. We came here to hike together, not to get ourselves into a pickle.
Hawk Mountain Shelter taught us that we were truly not in control out here. We had Sassafras to get over that day, and Sassafras could bring it on. It would not find us rushing, taking missteps, or getting hurt. With purpose, we strode and knew we would get to the other side of the mountain where the safety of the hostel promised food and a shower.
The day floated by for me. Uphill and more uphill. Switchbacks, false summits, the whole lot of it challenging and good. As we had in days prior, we would catch up with, pass other hikers, then lag behind, and be passed ourselves. “The Yoga Sisters!” some of our fellow hikers called out smiling.
Up ahead, my sister was saying words I couldn’t discern, performing her mediumship with the mountain, and I walked behind her, watching my feet more carefully than I had yesterday as the path was strewn with slick roots.
“If you could have any treat right now, what would it be?” Walkie called back to me.
“Every kind of food. All the food.” I said.
Sassafras was all uphill, 666 feet over a mile, but seemed no more difficult than Springer. It was steeper, but uphill is uphill. And suck is suck.
We agreed that we would not have made it in the dark the night before. There were twisted roots strewn across the entire trail, and while we had indeed passed some stealth sites where we might have made good camp, the FarOut app had been accurate in its assessment of water sources, namely, there were none. We refilled in the gorgeous running stream that lay beside Hawk Mountain Shelter that morning and had already drunk more than half of what we carried by the time we reached the summit of Sassafras.
We still had a few more miles in front of us. Had we camped on or near Sassafras, we wouldn’t have had any water for making dinner or coffee. While not necessities, these treats helped with morale, sipping stale and lukewarm instant coffee in the morning being one of our favorite indulgences.
The mountaintop was sprawling and flat with tall trees. And this time, I felt that word, in my core, in my calves, in my springing sneakers. Another summit.
Before the 604 steps and on the way up Springer, I hadn’t had my expectations set accordingly. Now, I knew what a mountain was, and more importantly, I hadn’t any doubts I would reach the top, so my steps weren’t bogged down in the mires of negativity and questioning. What a heavy weight to carry day in and day out.
All those doubts and worries had not carried me to the top of the falls or to the summit of Springer Mountain. Only my steps, only walking no matter how I was feeling, had taken me there, and somewhere at Hawk Mountain Shelter, I left behind five pounds of self-doubt which I had deemed unnecessary and burdensome to carry any further down this trail. Out here in the woods, worry was a self-indulgence I couldn’t afford, we had steps to take and there wasn’t room for thinking about anything else too much.
Our hiker friends now ambled up the hillside calling out to Walkie “hey, yoga sister!” They stayed just a moment to enjoy the summit and then, shuffled down the trail where it would descend for most of the rest of the way to Gooch Gap, while Walkie and I took our packs off and sat on the mountaintop to rest.
At the next turn, the trail opened up into a flat wood filled with skeleton trees, gray bark, gray branches, gray sky. The trail meandered along the perimeter of spindly trees that reached towards the sky.
As we walked, we began hearing an intermittent moaning—it took us a minute or so to realize the sound was emanating from two tree trunks rubbing against each other. As we rounded the bend coming around to the other side we began a mild climb, and that’s when I saw it.
Looking out over the tops of the swaying trees, I saw a checkered blue and white bandanna hung high in the branches.
I stopped dead, awed by the utter out-of-placeness of that lone fluttering cloth at the top of a hundred-foot tree. Turning to alert my sister, I saw eight or ten more, blowing, moving, tied to the very highest branches. My mouth which had moved to speak was stopped and hanging open. A sea of treetops adorned with brightly colored and neatly tied bandannas.
Walkie had stopped a few steps ahead and glanced back, and I pointed up into the trees. Maybe they had marked those trees for a future cutting or controlled burn? “Do you think those are markers of some kind?”
She hadn’t quite grasped my thought and turned her gaze into the treetops.
At that moment, the blue and white checked bandannas became minty blue shadows cast along the tree trunks of the higher trees. The bandannas weren’t fluttering; they weren’t there at all.
I fumbled my way through explaining about the shadows that were checkered bandannas a moment ago. But my sister seemed satisfied with my ramblings, and we turned and continued down the trail.
It took me a minute to let go of the longing I had for my sister to see them. And to reconcile myself to the fact that they hadn’t ever been there.
My hiker brain was inclined to hallucination during late afternoons on the trail. The tombstones carved out of granite that were really burnt-out tree stumps…and now, bandannas hanging in the treetops…
Hallucination is a fairly common experience among hikers. Above 7,000 meters, hikers can start to experience a phenomenon called “the third man syndrome,” a particularly fascinating kind of hallucination during which a hiker suddenly finds themself accompanied by a guide or companion who speaks to them and walks with them, rests with them, eats with them…and who does not exist.
Frequently, this ghostly companion shows up during dangerous moments, offering helpful feedback or clues about what to do next, with the hiker surviving a challenging ordeal only to find themselves reaching safety at last, at which point they find themselves alone again. Of course, this companion may just as often offer poor guidance resulting in a fatal outcome—but those stories are never brought back to us. Confirmation bias at its best, we only hear about those guides that were helpful.
Be sure to get yourself a helpful hallucination. Mine had not been particularly so, although I’d been sincerely and thoroughly absorbed and fascinated by each one.
Again, silence found us as we continued down, down, down into Gooch Gap. I was relieved that a shuttle would soon pick us up and deliver us to the Above the Clouds hostel. There in the meadow beside a rural highway, we found a hiker perched on a tree stump, a long red braid draped over one shoulder.
Excited for more hiker chatter, we approached to introduce ourselves, and she began crying. Her knees were aching, and she wasn’t sure she could finish the trail.
“Can I give you a hug?” My sister asked and rushed across the small meadow to gather her in like a mother. “I’ve dreamed of hiking this trail my whole life, and now, I’m probably going to have to quit,” Red Braid said tearfully against my sister’s shoulder.
I had reached my limit of seeing hikers hurt, hobbling, sick, injured. I slumped down on a log, listening to her quiet sniffles as my sister encouraged her. I felt so sorry for this sweet hiker who had pushed her body to the limit in just over a couple of days on the trail.
I was thinking, too, of Blood Mountain, which lay before us, the day after tomorrow. There would be no more putting off the highest peak on the trail in Georgia.
I knew the truth now, too. Deep down, now as we’d almost reached it, I knew I couldn’t and shouldn’t climb Blood Mountain. I had always known it down in my belly where heaviness prevailed. I carried this secret with me the rest of the evening knowing I was going to have to divulge it to my sister at some point. I could not scale that mountain, scrambling up boulders. I could not fall on a wet rock and find myself stranded in the woods. I knew my limits, and I wasn’t up to it.
Rocks & Roots 