CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

DAY 97, MASSACHUSETTS, 653.7 MILES TO KATAHDIN

“How is this still even the same day?” Erin wondered aloud as we sat around a campfire with Mike, Ben, and Pilgrim early that evening. After an explosively loud initial reunion, we’d finally settled down to eat. I laughed at Erin’s phrase, but I knew exactly what she meant. Still fresh from finding Mike and Ben the night before, we’d gone into town, bowled, Erin had hurt her knee, we’d lost See Blue, ran into Pilgrim, hiked 20 miles, and it was somehow still daylight.

“Brie?” Ben offered, and I started laughing.

“Why not? This day is so weird,” I said, taking a small bit of this fancy, new (to me) cheese. Ben had hiked in a package of hard salami and a wheel of brie, which he’d heated over the fire so that it was warm and gooey, and was now offering them around like a fancy waiter.

“How’d you know where to find us?” Mike asked Pilgrim.

“I didn’t. I didn’t even know you guys were with Sweets and Not Yet.”

After we’d said goodbye to Pilgrim and Sug in Harper’s Ferry, they’d continued hiking North until Pilgrim had left the trail to go home for his college graduation from SUNY Geneseo. Sug had kept hiking, and would be getting off the trail soon to go to a wedding the same weekend as we’d be going to Cara and Chris’s wedding. Pilgrim got back on the trail the day before and saw a note Erin and I had written in the last shelter log, so knew he must be close. Unbeknownst to him, he’d passed us while we were in town, so when he got to the shelter he thought we’d be at, he’d turned around in hopes of finding Erin and I. Somehow, he’d missed Mike and Ben completely.

“If we hadn’t been saying goodbye to Blue, you would have missed all of us,” I said in wonder. “God! What a weird day!”

“I still can’t believe See Blue is gone. I was so excited to see him again,” Pilgrim lamented.

Mike raised his slice of salami, “To Blue.”

“TO BLUE!” we repeated.

We stayed up late filling each other in on what had happened in the others’ absence, everyone so genuinely in awe of the crazy set of circumstances that had brought us all back together again. Pilgrim had last seen Ben on a chance encounter in Blacksburg, Virginia, and Mike when he’d decided to stay behind at the hostel in Tennessee. It had been over 500 miles since Erin and I had last hiked with Pilgrim. And now here we all were, in the same shelter on the same day. We were missing See Blue and still needed Sug, but knew that if we were with Pilgrim, he’d be able to find us when he got back on the trail. I don’t know who, but someone brought up the idea of trying to finish the rest of the trail together, and we all jumped on it. It was as if we’d all been thinking it (I’d actually wished it out loud days earlier), but we were all so ingrained with the notion of “hike-your-own-hike” that no one had wanted to impose their schedule on anyone else. In the beginning, we never would have dreamed of changing our end date, but now we were all comparing notes and mileage and the days Erin and I needed to take off for the wedding—the boys were now thinking they may come after all—and trying to find a way to make it work for all of us. It felt good to finally admit that these friendships were important enough not to leave to chance reunions on the trail.

I had a happy glow, and a newfound love for brie cheese, as I rolled my sleeping bag out and pulled on the new warm socks that Kevin’s mom had sent me. Ben sat down beside me.

“I brought this for you,” he said, handing me the Kurt Vonnegut book, Sirens of Titan. I must have looked confused because he added, “You told me you only read crap books and so I thought I’d bring you something that wasn’t crap. This isn’t my favorite Vonnegut, but it’s the one I found.”

“I like reading crap,” I said, taking the book from him and examining the cover, “but I guess I can give this ‘literature’ a try.”

I felt Erin’s gaze watching the exchange, but I didn’t look at her.

“Shit, does this thing have aliens in it? Ugh,” I said dramatically after I read the cover.

Ben laughed and then said simply, “Only read it if you want.”

I rolled my eyes, but put the book in my bag anyway.