Five days later, Erin and I sat alone together in a shelter for only the second time since the beginning of the trail.
“It’s going to be weird sleeping without See Blue mumble-singing Blue Oyster Cult all night,” Erin said, throwing a pebble at a tree. We both felt guilty. The day before, caught in a sudden shower of freezing rain, Erin and I had stopped for the day short of our planned destination without telling See Blue. With his long legs, See Blue was a fast hiker and always the first one out in the mornings. When we’d arrived at a shelter, shivering and unwilling to walk another mile, the other hikers there reported that he was long gone. We had no idea how far ahead of us See Blue was, or when we’d see him again.
“You think he’ll wait for us to catch up?” I asked.
“Like we’ve waited for Pilgrim and Sug? Or Mike?”
“Right.” Separating from See Blue was another illustration of how unpredictable trail life was. When Mike, and then Sugar High and Pilgrim had decided to stay behind, Erin and I had hiked on, not willing to change our schedule, and I doubted that See Blue would alter his full speed ahead mentality for us even though he had become like an older brother to Erin and I.
The three of us had spent the five days since the sunny afternoon on McAfee’s Knob hiking through the rolling mountains of Virginia. After the dramatic peaks and gaps of Georgia, Tennessee, and North Carolina, Virginia’s landscape was a welcome change. Instead of hiking up and down mountains, in Virginia the trail largely follows ridgelines and meanders through pastures. Thru-hikers spend more trail miles in Virginia than any other state, almost 550 miles. In the early days, we would long to be in Virginia, joking that it must be like a paved highway all the way to West Virginia (it wasn’t). It was a milestone to get to Virginia, and would be a milestone to get through it.
During those days together, See Blue, Erin, and I had spent an equal amount of time hiking North and exploring Southern Virginia trail towns. We resupplied at a gas station in Daleville, Virginia and caught a hitch in the back of a pick-up truck sporting multiple confederate flag stickers into the charming town of Buchanan where the owner of a Christian bookstore/50’s café bought us all lunch. We spent a night watching hours of Friends reruns in a rundown motel in Glasgow, a town notable only for the dozen full-sized fiberglass dinosaurs stationed throughout the sparse town center. We had also hiked almost 100 miles and had scaled the last peak over 4000 feet until we reached New Hampshire. See Blue introduced cocktail hour to our routine, surprising us by packing in wine and marshmallows one night, prompting Erin and I to stock our own “mini-bars” with little bottles of liquor. We discovered that See Blue slept naked inside his sleeping bag (“you gotta let your shit breathe, girls”), a revelation that amused us to no end, as did his tendency to hum out loud to whatever heavy metal song was playing on his Walkman. We had settled into a comfortable trio, happily dividing camp chores, picking up the slack for whoever was feeling especially tired on a given day.
Now, with See Blue miles ahead, Erin and I both grew silent as we sat, legs swinging from the edge of the shelter, tossing rocks at the trees and looking out into the woods that had become our home.
“Wow. We’re, like, alone,” I mused.
Erin stared at me for a full ten seconds and then the sides of her mouth curled into a smile and her nostrils flared with suppressed laughter.
“Wow. You’re, like, fucking deep.”
“And you’re, like, a fucking asshole,” I laughed and shoved Erin’s shoulder, causing her to tip over, making us both laugh harder.