By the time Erin and I stood in the parking lot at the base of Springer Mountain, the Southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, we had spent almost a year thinking about the trip. We were as prepared as anyone could be, but the time for planning was over, and now we just needed to take those first steps.
So why did I feel frozen in place?
We’d met up the night before in Dahlonega, Georgia. Kevin and I drove up from Florida, Erin got a ride down from Ohio with our friend Nicole, and my mom had driven over from her home in Clemson, South Carolina to see us off. The five of us had dinner and cheers-ed our new adventure. My mom fawned and fussed over Erin and I as if we were still 12, asking us over and over in her sweet southern drawl if we’d packed enough to eat and “are you girls really just gonna poop right there in the woods?” Afterwards, we’d all piled into Erin’s hotel room for a pack explosion- what we called the phenomenon where you take everything out of your pack and marvel at how the contents can both fit into your small pack and blanket an entire hotel room. We wanted to go through our stuff, split up the things we were going to share and double check we had everything we needed. Somehow, despite our meticulous planning, we still ended up at Walmart at 10pm desperately looking for spandex shorts for Erin.
“How did I forget about chafing?” Erin had said when she’d realized she hadn’t brought anything to wear under her hiking shorts. As a rule, long distance hiking and actual bare thighs do not mix. Not finding what she wanted, Erin had settled for full-length spandex pants which she cut off to shorts length. As she modeled them around the hotel room, one jagged leg slightly shorter than the other, she proclaimed, “I’m about to start a new fucking trend.”
After a late, restless night, I hugged my mom goodbye a million times while she told me to remember “You. Are. Loved.” adding, “Sweet Pea, you can call me to come pick you up anytime.” Kevin and I drove in silence up the mountain to the parking lot where we’d start our hike. He hadn’t talked much since we’d left the apartment in Florida the day before. In fact, as the time drew closer for me to leave, the quieter he’d become. The quiet made me nervous. A few nights before I’d left, I’d asked him if he was still okay with me leaving.
“Of course, I am,” he’d assured me. “But I can be okay with you leaving and still wish you were staying, can’t I?”
When Nicole and Erin got to the parking lot, we made small talk and took a series of pictures of Erin and I all bundled up with our packs on our backs and hiking poles in our hands. I was stalling; trying to figure out how to say goodbye. Kevin would be going back to his life, our life for the past months, alone, and I was walking into the woods without him. We both knew that as soon as I started walking down the trail, things would be different. At the very least, I wouldn’t be moving back to Florida when I finished, I’d be off to law school in some yet-to-be-decided new town. Standing there in that parking lot, I was having a hard time balancing my sadness at leaving Kevin with the overwhelming excitement and nervousness I felt because the time had finally come, after almost a year of planning, plotting, thinking, obsessing about the trip, for us to start our hike.
It was the bitter cold that finally forced us to say goodbye. It had snowed the night before and the ground was covered, the trees still held a light dusting. From the parking lot we stood in, we knew we would have to hike about a mile South to reach the peak of Springer Mountain, the official starting point of the trail, and then backtrack through the parking lot to head North toward Maine, the direction we would be heading for the next months.
Kevin pulled me aside. “I love you, you know?”
“I know. I love you too.”
“Be careful out there, and after this, promise you won’t leave me for this long again.”
“I’ll be careful,” I told him. He climbed into his Jeep, and tears stung my eyes as I watched him drive back down the dusty road.
“Dude! Let’s go!” Erin said. I turned and looked at the trail up ahead. The canopy of trees formed a tunnel, looking like a secret passageway, inviting us to walk through and begin our journey. With Kevin gone, the sadness was there, but bubbling up next to it was an incredible excitement.
I bounced on my toes. “OH MY GOD LET’S FUCKING GOOO!”
Erin and I talked giddily as we walked. I could barely believe the thing I had imagined happening for so long was actually happening. Erin told me she heard that when you reached the top of Springer Mountain, you were supposed to take a small rock, and carry it with you the whole trip, to place on the top of Mt. Katahdin, in Maine, the Northern terminus of the trail. We joked about not being able to find a small enough rock, and being weighed down by the boulder in our pack the whole trip.
An hour passed quickly, but we still hadn’t reached the top of Springer, so we were relieved when we finally spotted one of the mileage signs that often dotted the trail.
Erin reached the sign first and stopped. “Dude, you have got to be fucking kidding me.”
“What?”
“This sign says Springer Mountain, 2.5 miles THAT way,” she said, pointing in the direction we had just come from. “We went the wrong fucking way!”