Nimrod and Nice Beard ordered a knee brace for Red Braid and were keeping her another night to help her spirit and body recover. With a little bit of rest, they were sure she could make it over Blood Mountain. Fireball’s leg was healing well, and Yukon proceeded to check in with her quietly before we left the hostel.
Our hiker friends took the first shuttle out, but I delayed us with my hungry eyeing of the hostel’s food selection. After buying much more than we needed to finish our hike, I found my sister out on the front porch, bundled against the morning chill and snuggling with Blaze, the kitten. Looking up at me as I banged the screen door shut, Walkie quietly said “I miss Tipu.”
Walkie and I took the second ride out, and Nice Beard dropped us off in Gooch Gap, where we stepped out into cool mountain air and walked, clean and well-rested, back into the woods.
Collectively, we had to make it to Preacher’s Rock and over Cedar Mountain that day and then, down to the scattered campsites on the other side. We would enter Blood Mountain Wilderness that morning, and any hiker who carried a food bag rather than a cannister needed to stop at or before Lance Creek. Either that or get up and over the mountain in the dark—not a viable option given the boulder field each of us needed to navigate on the back side.
Given that we had a bear cannister, Walkie and I had the option of hiking all the way to Jarrard Gap which lay closer to that mountain where bears were more numerous and habituated to humans.
We walked, we paused, we took off layers of clothing, and cresting the top of the next hill, the trail turned downward for some time, finally delivering us to Woody Gap, where we proceeded across a logging road. Here, Sam and Fireball caught up to us.
Before reentering the woods on the other side, our fellow sister-hiking team stood shoulder to shoulder with us in front of a large sign which read:
Blood Mountain Wilderness
People are only visitors. Challenge and risk are experienced, and safety is not
guaranteed.
We passed and fell behind and repassed our fellow hikers just as we had in days past. Primarily, Sam and Fireball, were our hiking companions, keeping up with each nearly all day.
They were a decade younger than my sister and I, probably even younger, but they were brave, and their roles seem to have reversed at some point, much like my sister and mine had done.
Fireball, the younger sister, seemed the natural leader and supporter, out here on the trail only to see her big sister safely to Neel’s Gap. There, she would hitch a ride with Nice Beard all the way to Atlanta and return to her real life leaving Sam to continue, finding her own feet as she continued on alone.
“New Hampshire is the hardest state on the trail. Then, Maine. Then, Georgia,” Nimrod had told us. So, Fireball was hiking the first half of the third hardest state with a burnt inner thigh. But her spirit had not been affected in the least.
I marveled at how youth could overcome so many fears due to sheer naivety and optimism. Fireball, with her burnt leg hidden under a mound of gauze, had hiked up and down Sassafras, and would continue climbing, also, Cedar and Blood Mountain. And then, Sam would hike alone for six months all the way to Maine. For now, she was hiking with her sister, and after all, how much better does life get?
Today, the trail was filled with vistas which suddenly popped into view each time we approached a knob, causing us to stop to take photos more often than we had during previous days. Sometimes, Sam and Fireball were there waiting for us on a knob, and sometimes, they were somewhere behind us arriving soon after.
“We should ask them to split a cabin with us when we reach Neel Gap,” my sister suggested.
Another day of steep ascents led us to more and more bald faces and boulder-strewn pathways, requiring my sister and I to test our scrambling skills, passing our walking sticks to each other as we ascended short vertical rock climbs.
We reached Preacher’s Rock in the early afternoon. My sister had been particularly eager for this view, one of the most beautiful in Georgia, but the miles and miles of mountains in the distance were hidden in clouds, and we couldn’t see them. Still, we sat on the giant bald rock, nearly at the summit of Cedar Mountain, enjoying treats we’d carried from the hostel, worth their weight in sheer indulgence.
Greg heaved himself up onto the rock beside us, crossing his legs and taking out his lunch. We hadn’t seen him since Hawk Mountain Shelter a few days before. Still in great spirits, he confessed he’d tried the ramps, and they had given him indigestion.
Another straggler also appeared on Preacher’s Rock. Cap—we hadn’t seen him since the lodge. Back when he’d hovered about me in my stupor from climbing that waterfall. That seemed like a long time ago, and I wondered how we’d missed running back into him before now.
Just as we were collecting our trash and rubbing dirt off our shins and knees, the clouds began to dissipate. We stopped, awed as the mountains were increasingly revealed, a curtain of cloud cover drawn back by some unseen stagehand.
We sat back down to watch; Walkie’s spirits instantly rejuvenated. With the sudden appearance of miles and miles of forest below, we tarried longer, indulging in a bit of sunbathing, and further baking our shoulders and legs.
Soon, she and my sister were taking photos and inching their way down the bald rock. They still had plenty of rock behind them, but every sister instinct in me was getting hinky at their joyfully posing and laughing. “Walkie,” I said sharply, and she froze looking at me, “could you come back up? You’re making me nervous.”
Vultures circled in the distance as my sister joined us back up higher, and Jimmy suggested that they must have spotted some poor, lost hiker. We might have stayed an hour which was much too long as we had further to go than the rest of them and wanted to get to camp before night fell.
“You know, I haven’t thought about the pandemic once out here,” a nearby day-hiker said to her husband.
The real world was so far away, and I could almost forget it existed except for the boys. Now that we were nearing the hardest part of our trail, I kept imagining my sweet son waiting for me on the other side.
Cap stood up and began pacing back and forth across the bald rock gesticulating with his turkey elbows. As he began to rant, he sometimes spoke to the air, sometimes shook his fists at the mountains. The whole world was his assembly, and I thought that stagehand might just pop back out to hook him around his neck as he was blocking the view.
“There is no pandemic,” Cap said, his face getting more crunched up by the second. “The government will do anything it can to control you. Best keep your eyes open and your powder dry.”
His clothing, I noticed for the first time, was not typical of hikers. He wore camouflage head to toe. I mean “hike your own hike.” It just seemed out of place.
He seemed out of place for the first time to me. He had been a little awkward back at the lodge, a natural failing of many good humans including myself, but now, I began to reconsider him.
Did Cap stand for Captain? I hadn’t thought about it. He was wearing a hat, so I just assumed, but now…was he a wanna-be military service man? We came from a military family ourselves and had a great respect for all its honor and tradition, but it raised our awareness of those folks who didn’t know what it meant to serve, and only wanted to pretend to be tough guys without all the discipline that goes with it.
With that, and the afternoon passing us by, my sister and I glanced at each other, packed ourselves up, and left Preacher’s Rock to continue down the trail toward Jarrard Gap, still three miles away.
We were quiet as we walked, and I reviewed our time on Preacher’s Rock. Soon, I started combing through the things I’d said that might have upset my sister. She wasn’t talking to herself or to me.
And then, I found it. I had ordered her away from the edge of Preacher’s Rock in front of a crowd of hiker friends.
“I don’t mean to baby you,” I told her finally. Hoping, she would be completely surprised by this offering, and say she hadn’t noticed it.
“You do sometimes baby me,” she returned.
“I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean to. It slipped out,” I told her.
“You tied my shoes yesterday,” she said over her shoulder.
It was true. I had tied her shoes. Untied shoes are to moms as laser pointers are to cats. We walked in silence. I had seen too many mishaps out here, and I couldn’t risk my sister being hurt. Even if she stayed mad at me.
“You were starting to freak me out up there, that’s all.” More silence. “I look up to you. You’re the strong one,” I said to her, “but that doesn’t mean you don’t need anyone to look out for you.”
And even now, her worn sneakers were starting to slip more often on the thick, slimy roots crisscrossing the trail.
“That’s all. I won’t do it again,” I said, “unless you’re about to die, ok? Then, I have to say something.”
“Ok, but since I’m telling you things just this once, you need better shoes. We’re going over Blood Mountain tomorrow. Maybe you should wear mine.” My shoes were pristine having suffered no amount of imposed athleticism during their brief lives, but hers had seen several hundred miles of wear.
More silence. “Ok, I’m finished now,” I called up ahead to her.
We were quiet. I couldn’t take it back and tell her that I wouldn’t intervene on her behalf in the future. And I might have been wrong. I had no idea if anything bad really would have befallen my sister had I not spoken up on Preacher’s Rock.
“I can’t wear your shoes,” she said after long minutes of quiet, “that would be even more dangerous. Your feet are bigger than mine, and mine are practically molded to my feet.”
She was right. It had been an ill-advised suggestion. You couldn’t suddenly put on a new pair of shoes, a full size bigger than your feet to boot, and hike up and back down the toughest peak on the trail in Georgia. We would just have to go very slowly, as slowly as the dickens, down Blood Mountain’s boulder field.
Rocks & Roots 