I grew up in Moultrie, a town of about 18,000 people in southwest Georgia. It was one of those places where everyone knew you, your people, and your business. Shortly after we moved there, when I was 7, my mother got pulled over by Linda, a woman driving a nearly identical station wagon. My mother had not been waving at people as she drove along, and  Linda’s friends had accused her of being stuck up. This was a terrible insult, and Linda asked my mother to please wave back. So part of our driving preparations was to learn the wave: hand at the 12 o’clock position on the wheel, thumb looped, other four fingers raised in salute. My dad was a family physician — a real country doctor, tooling around town in a yellow pick-up truck that I inherited and wish that I still had — which did not exactly help with anonymity. I remember holidays spent delivering Christmas cheer with him to some of his patients, like the woman who had her young son buried just outside her kitchen window so that she could keep an eye on him. I especially remember the bounty bestowed upon my family in return: the fresh vegetables in brown paper bags stacked on our garage steps, the watermelon tucked in the back of his truck in the summer, the mountain of cakes and cookies sent home with him in December — my favorite being from a patient who always cut out a slice of her pound cake and left this note in the missing piece: “It looked so good, I just couldn’t help myself.”

I spent most of my teenaged years trying to figure out how to get of Moultrie. It felt too small and suffocating and not at all anonymous, and I dreamed of moving to a city so large that I never had to drive and where no one would know me. I figured New York would fit the bill, or possibly San Francisco, and as I plotted my imaginary life as a grown-up, it always took this trajectory: me, happily alone on a subway, raising four fingers in a salute at no one.

Which is not at all how it turned out. I married a Macon boy, and we settled in Savannah, a small city of 142,000 people, give or take a few, for my first job, a clerkship with a very grumpy federal judge whom I adored. The clerkship ended, and inertia kicked in, and rather than casting a large net in big cities, we stayed here. At first, only one of us was happy, and it wasn’t me. But we moved into a little house, and later had two children, and still later moved to a bigger house two doors down, and along the way, acquired dogs and friends and routines and rituals. We built a life. And nearly 23 years to the day that we moved to Savannah, I have such deep roots and a strong connection to this place that I really cannot imagine living anywhere else. I love that it looks perfect in bad weather. I love that when I go someplace else and return home, its beauty never ceases to take my breath away. I love that it is old. I love that I transact 95% of my life between Bay Street and Derenne, Bull and Waters.

It is always good to appreciate what you have, as the events of this weekend have conspired to make me do. The unthinkable happened yesterday afternoon: my beloved daughter was in an accident. She was biking home from downtown, with a large shopping bag on her bike’s handlebars. The bag became caught in the front wheel, which came off and sent her flying onto the pavement. Thank God for the helmet, but she broke her left elbow. A friend of a friend happened to be biking behind her, and a motorist stopped. The motorist stayed with her while the friend got ice, and a few minutes later, we drove by her, oblivious to what had happened. (This clearly places me out of the running for mother of the year, an award I am certain never to win, so I might as well tell you the gory details of our driving by our injured daughter: Chris and I were headed home from work, talking about a party that we were going to, singing along like knuckleheads to “Can’t Touch This,” convertible top down. Truly we fiddled while Rome burned.) But our daughter saw us when we drove by, and the phone rang, and the friend of a friend said, “Your daughter has been in an accident,” and I have never driven a more stressful few blocks than I drove yesterday. The kindness of this friend of a friend cannot be repaid (although I am dropping off some good beer and homegrown tomatoes today as an attempt, however feeble it may be). When we were with her, the friend of a friend got on his bike and rode to the party that we were supposed to be going to. And as Chris and I waited for our daughter’s x-ray and sling and prescription for painkillers, my phone chirped with well wishes from people at the party. It was a bad situation made better.

Chris and I rode our bikes past the spot this morning on our way to the farmer’s market, an easy 10 minute ride. The fresh produce, the wild game offered for sale, the farmers’ accents, and the invitation to sample their wares all made me miss my childhood home and got me thinking about how far I’d come. Maybe not geographically: I live four hours away, still in south Georgia, still in a smaller community. But psychically: Anonymity, no salutes with waving fingers, and a life spent taking public transportation may not be all that it’s cracked up to be. It was good to feel of a place, and part of a community, that had my back.

ALC

Our best day on the trail was the next day, for which I am also forever grateful.

I have thought a lot about that day, and the next, this morning. This weekend marked a year since my son and I began our hike, and being one for celebration, I decided that the milestone needed commemoration. So I went to the closest bit of wilderness I could find: a state park 20 minutes from my house. For the next two hours, I rambled along the trails, looking (amusingly enough) for the white blaze marking the main trail, embracing again the feeling of being slightly lost, and enjoying the silence and meditation. I thought about how much better the journey is with someone you love in the near distance, and how much more enjoyable the time is without a heavy burden weighing you down. And I realized again just how delicious a Snickers bar can be when you are truly hungry.

But while the state park was beautiful and flat, it had nothing on the Appalachian Trail. I like to write, and I like to think that I can use my words. But words fail me in describing the beauty of the Great Smoky Mountains, so named because of a smoky haze that hangs about the peaks, which you can see in this picture:

It was green and lush and enchanted — and I mean that in a fairy tale sort of way: both absolutely gorgeous and slightly menacing. We walked through a section of forest that had been burned, and it was downright creepy. At times I did not know whether I would run into another hiker or an evil stepmother or a troll with a vendetta:

While the North Carolina trails were far more tended — volunteers built simple bridges over streams and removed fallen logs blocking trails — you were largely on your own in the Smokies. (Let me tell you, it is not easy to limbo under fallen logs with 40 pounds on your back.) But there were some very human touches. First, the signs — the signs! — were everywhere. You knew roughly how far you were from shelter-to-shelter and the names of the shelters. As I walked, I made it a point to memorize these distances and names and keep track of time. (There was little in the way of outdoor experience that I could contribute, but in the event of an emergency, and assuming cell phone reception, I could go into mom overdrive.)

Second, there were steps made out of four-by-fours stuffed into uphill segments of the trail. Like I did at first, you’re probably thinking, “Oh, how nice! Steps! Doesn’t that make it easier?” But after my first few sets of steps, just seeing a four-by-four made my heart sink. There were never three steps. In fact, I don’t know how many steps made up a run; I quit counting at 50. And these steps were clearly not designed for someone with a 29 1/4″ inseam. If you want a mental image, imagine me, huffing and puffing and crabbing my way up the steps with walking poles flying, cursing under my breath. (Except when I was cursing out loud.)

Third, there were retaining walls of stone blocks high up on the sides of mountains, retaining walls that had been built as part of WPA projects. The walls were meticulously constructed in places where it seemed impossible to construct walls. They were a marvel — and they really drove home to me the desperation of the time in which they were built.

But perhaps most importantly, the Smokies were far more populated. We saw other hikers with some regularity. On that first full day in the Smokies, my son and I stopped for a siesta at the first shelter along the route, about eight miles from where we had spent the night. We ran into a couple — French Canadian hikers, roughly my age, with unbelievable supplies of food. (Large plastic buckets filled with food. Food that had not been selected by a 16 year-old boy at Target. Food that could change your entire attitude about a hiking trip. That kind of food.) And we started talking.

On the trail, people always asked about our relationship: Was that really your son? Although he looks like his father, we look enough alike, and if you were to spend any time in our presence, it is clear that I am his mother. But I think the question arose from a certain disbelief: Are a mother and son really hiking the AT together? We were the rarest of combinations. I saw friends and solo hikers and couples and even one pair of sisters, but I never saw another mother and son. I remember that the Canadian woman, in her accented English, told me flat out that I was a fool: A slower hike, with plenty of food and fewer miles, was far more enjoyable.

And she may have been right, except she discounted one key fact: My son and I talked. Not the whole time. (A good pace was two miles per hour, and we walked about 16 or 17 miles a day.) But we talked enough. If there is an attorney-client privilege, surely there is a mother-son privilege. So I will tell you only this, some of my best advice:

1. When you fall in love, remember that it’s important to feel that the other person is great. But it’s at least as important — and maybe more so — that the other person makes you feel like the best version of yourself.

2. I have struggled hard on this trip, but I kept moving forward. Life is like that sometimes, and not just on a mountain trail.

3. Yes, your father and I will die, and if we’re all lucky, we’ll die before you. Neither of us wants to live in a world where either one of our children dies before we do.

4. It’s okay if you go to Georgia Tech. If you do, you cannot root against Georgia in my presence unless Georgia is actually playing Georgia Tech. And then it can’t be too obnoxious, and it certainly can’t involve bets that the loser wears the other’s team colors for the next game. Football is important. But family is more important.

At one point after a particularly difficult climb, my son looked at me and said, “Don’t take this the wrong way, mom, but you’ve got balls.”

Either that statement — or the exertion — made my heart beat faster. Fortunately, we were at another shelter, and the day’s hike was over. This time, there were seven other people there, and the overnight stay felt like the world’s worst slumber party (at least until the next night, which was really the world’s worst slumber party). We used the privy, started cooking dinner, and then strung up our bags far from the shelter itself and out of the reach of bears:

Our cabin mates included an older man, hiking solo, who was very loud and had way too much food (of all of the over 40 people on the AT, was I the only one who was hungry?); a woman who insisted on performing interesting yoga poses in the middle of the shelter; and two sisters in their 50s who decided to sleep on impromptu air mattresses — large yellow chambered pool rafts, possibly from the 70s, that took them forever to blow up. The sisters were terrible snorers, and their every movement on the pool rafts sounded like a fart, so that the entire night sounded like this: ZZZZZZZ ssspprrrrtt ZZZZZZZZ ssspprrrrtt ZZZZZZZZ ssspprrrrtt. Until I punctuated the night with a piercing scream — ARRRGGGGGHHH — a mouse had run across my face. Which is one of those things that will keep you up all night. But night turned into morning, and morning brought lumpy oatmeal, and the lumpy oatmeal meant more hiking.

That next day passed much the same way, and I realized that when I wasn’t absolutely hating the hike — which seemed like most of the time — I absolutely loved it. My son and I detoured to a rock formation called Charlie’s Bunion. To get there, we left our packs on the trail proper and scampered over a narrow rocky loop. It was the first time I really realized how high up we were: My peripheral vision caught a glimpse of the way down, and my brain had to give my gut a fairly pointed talking-to. But the view was amazing. Nothing but green mountains as far as the eye could see — unless you counted my son, who was climbing all over a boulder outcropping thousands of feet in the air. (Despite myself, I launched into full mom mode.)

When we made it back to the trail, I realized that I hardly noticed my pack. That’s because my left ankle hurt. And trouble was afoot.

ALC

I have decided to take a step off the Appalachian Trail for a moment, shrug off the past, and write about the here and now. For both of you intrepid readers who have kept up with the AT saga, please keep reading; I will finish the story soon. But two recent unrelated events got me thinking about the importance of connection, especially in the never-ending battle of perception and reality.

I have been feeling recently that I know everyone, but I know no one: I have felt heavy on acquaintances and light on friends. I think anyone my age and in my circumstances can relate, what with children and work and home vying for attention. These are usually not unpleasant struggles — and all of them present their own set of pleasures — but they are time-consuming. Some days, and especially at the end of the school year, I feel lucky to have set aside some time to exercise and shower and sleep, and thus present myself to the world as reasonably fit, not stinky, and mostly rested. These are fine goals (especially the “not stinky” part), but I have keenly felt the lack of friendship over the past few weeks, So I spent a little time yesterday setting up lunches and issuing invitations for drinks and asking a dear college friend to walk with me this morning, which she did.

We walked for five miles in perfect weather at a decent clip, and it was nice to have her beside me. We talked about our families and friends and summer plans, both mindlessly and honestly.  And while I would not wish struggle or disappointment on (almost) anyone — and certainly never a friend — it was reassuring to hear that no one has a perfect life: We all try hard, we all muck it up sometimes, we all wonder how it has gotten mucked up, yet we all get out of bed every morning and try again. Seriously: You think you have problems? Yes, you do. You need some reassurance? We all have problems. You’re not in it alone, so take some of that horrible pressure off yourself and live your life, no matter how imperfect. If you need some comfort, here it is: Your friends probably think you have a perfect life free of struggle and disappointments. (Feel free to disabuse them of this notion and embrace your crazy life; they will probably love you more for it. And if you listen to their embracing their crazy lives, they definitely will love you more for it.) This morning, as always, it was good to have a friend.

But last night, I had to call in the big guns — my husband and children — for an unlikely source of horror:  An art student drew a caricature of me for $10.

I live in a town with an art school, and I like to support the young artists. When the school hosted a art market last night, with student work for sale, I was there. One table caught my eye: It had graphic Sharpie drawings of people and a sign that said “Caricatures on the spot! $10.” The artist looked lonely and bored — everyone seemed to be staying far from his booth — and given my love of immediate gratification, “on the spot” acted like a siren song. So I engaged his services, smiled at him as he smiled at me, and watched him draw.

This all sounds perfectly innocent, I know. You’re probably thinking that the artist exaggerated my already exaggerated glasses, turned my pointy chin into a needle-sharp protuberance, comically opened my open mouth grin. But you would be wrong. Because you, my friends, haven’t seen the caricature. And you never will.

As he drew, my first thought was when did I get four chins? My next thought was sheer relief that I would be visiting my dermatologist on Tuesday so that I could get her advice about injectable fillers — something I have studiously avoided — to help with the lines all over my face. My eyes disappeared, my nose because bulbous, and my ears were enormous. I stood there and watched the drawing unfold, and it looked for all the world like the Gargantua and Pantagruel version of me. Or perhaps Mrs. the Hutt, the little known wife of Jabba. It was not flattering, to say the least. And it momentarily subverted my sense of self and gutted my perception of my own aging (which I have viewed as generally good, with the dewiness of youth replaced with a certain swagger of middle-aged confidence). Did I really look like that?

Then the artist handed me the portrait and asked for $10. The lawyer in me momentarily wanted to counterclaim for damages for emotional distress, but I paid.

Chris shuddered when I showed him the drawing and grabbed it from my hand. When we got home, I told my children about the caricature, and my daughter ferreted it out of the trash. She shuddered. My son shuddered. (Yes, there was a whole lot of shuddering going on.) The children told me that the drawing did not look like me, although Chris elaborated that it looked like me through a distortion filter that no one would ever want to apply. But everyone agreed that desperate times called for desperate measures.

My daughter grabbed a box of matches. We burned the drawing in the fireplace. It was beautiful watching it burn.

At the art fair, the perfect drawings that the artist displayed clearly were not caricatures on the spot, but careful renderings made after discarded drafts. He put out to the world what he wanted the world to see. I know I’ve done the same thing at times, whether it resulted in actually fooling people, a moment of spectacular failure, or just a gnawing fear that I was secretly fouling everything up. I’ve muscled through, and along the way, I’ve probably left some pretty ugly mementos. But we all have to figure out our strengths and our weaknesses, and we all have to figure out how to navigate this life honestly. It’s a process, occasionally a chore, and sometimes leaves collateral damage (like a crestfallen middle-aged woman).

The walk and even the caricature reminded me of the importance in this process of having a posse, people who can put things in perspective, spring into action (and sometimes grab matches!) on your behalf, listen to your laments, remind you of the beauty of your imperfect life, and make you realize that we’re all in it together. Because it’s comforting to know that if you mess with me, you mess with the whole trailer park.

ALC

P.S. — If you want to grab a drink or have lunch, give me a call.

It was 4:00 p.m., and we were about to leave North Carolina. The next part of our adventure took us into Tennessee and the Great Smoky Mountains, where the terrain was entirely different.

For one thing, it involved asphalt: North Carolina ingloriously ended, and Tennessee began, at a paved road. We followed the road to an underpass of Interstate 40, with the familiar white blazes appearing on the metal supports of traffic signs. After walking on soft dirt, the asphalt hurt, and we had to wait for the road to clear completely before crossing. Scurrying was out of the question. A bus laden with inner tubes passed us, and a few minutes later, we crossed a wide and fast river. (After seeing only puny streams and not showering for a couple of days, it was hard not to make a detour.) And then the terrain yielded to signs: We were in the Smokies.

I wish I could tell you that the signs were figurative and meaningful — like a doe and her fawn leaping in a patch of sunlight and winking at me as a rainbow signifying peace burst out overhead — but sadly, I mean literal signs. Apparently the National Park Service, which manages the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, is crazy about them. Our entry into the Smokies was met with the photograph of a bear cub with this legend: YOU KILLED THIS BEAR. (To encapsulate: humans fed the bear; the bear got used to humans; the bear had to be put down; don’t feed the bears. Don’t worry.) Another sign told us DOGS NOT ALLOWED. HORSES PERMITTED. So while I didn’t get to pat strangers’ dogs, I had to step over horse dung — which hardly seemed like a fair trade. But the one most significant to our trip was the sign that said CAMPING IN SHELTERS ONLY.

We stayed in three shelters during our time in the Smoky Mountains. The shelters were about eight miles apart, and the shelters themselves were usually one-half to one mile off the trail proper, in a clearing by a water source. The were three-sided buildings with a wooden ledge about a foot off the ground, and another wooden ledge about three to four feet above it. Like sleeping bag encased books in a giant bookshelf, campers slept on the two shelves, with the shelter comfortably holding 12 or so hikers. Shelter camping was by permit only, secured in advance, and we kept our papers in a handy spot in our backpacks.

The shelter rule was a tough one, especially on our first night in the Smokies. As I mentioned, we hit the Smokies around 4 p.m., after a day that began around 7:30 a.m. As the afternoon wore on, I remember passing longingly a perfect campsite — a small clearing near a small waterfall, with the noise of the big river in the distance — and looking backwards until it was out of sight. But no luck. We kept walking and climbing uphill until we reached the turn-off for the first shelter, which was (naturally) another mile uphill. (Why was everything uphill?) Here is a photograph:

Even if you just casually glanced at the photograph, you would notice one thing: the chain link fence. If you bothered to read the sign, it would remind you that FOOD ODORS ATTRACT BEARS. And bears, my friends, were why a chain link fence appeared on this shelter. Shelters had log books (typically a wire bound notebook with a ball point pen stuck in the coil), and past an entry about a “small horse” traveling companion (read: a dog) and an entry about a terrifying encounter with a snake, there were stories about bears. Stories like how hikers had gotten stuck at the shelter for hours when a mother bear and her cubs stood outside the fence. Hikers cautioned you to secure the fence gate with the pin to prevent its opening and to use the “bear basher” — a large metal pole inside the shelter — if you needed it. It all felt like checking into a hotel, being handed a pistol, and reading the absentee owner’s sign wishing you good luck.

If you couldn’t read the other portion of the sign — the part under NOTICE — I will tell you what it said: We need your cooperation. Please use the privy where one is provided or dig a shallow hole well away from the shelter and spring area. This shelter will be closed to camping if human waste (feces) and toilet paper accumulate to an unacceptable level around the shelter area.

After I read this sign, I looked to down and to the right. There was a pole holding a small wooden rectangular sign with the words “TOILET AREA” and an arrow pointing uphill (always uphill). A shovel leaned against it. And since we’re all eight year-olds at heart, and since all of my otherwise civilized friends asked about toileting on the trail, I will tell you, too: Yes, I had to go to the bathroom in the woods. Although this shelter had the famous TOILET AREA and the shovel, we had a fluorescent orange plastic shovel, the size of a garden trowel, with a roll of toilet paper on the handle in its own giant Ziploc bag. Before leaving, I consulted my other wilderness expert — my daughter, also a veteran of many years of summer camps — who suggested two methods: something called the “orangutang hang” (which involved holding onto, and leaning back from, a tree, which seemed to require more flexibility and longer limbs than I had) and something akin to a wall sit. (And no, I didn’t practice these skills on my neighborhood training hikes. There was no waving from behind the azaleas while cheerily cautioning neighbors, “Don’t mind me!” ) Cheap toilet paper was preferred; flushable wet wipes were practically a capital offense. We stayed in two other shelters, both of which had privies built and maintained by volunteers: a raised, large, covered airy outbuilding featuring a five-gallon drum with a toilet seat attached and a mulch composting system in place. (Yes, you shoveled in mulch after you finished. No, it didn’t smell as bad as you thought it would. In fact, it didn’t really smell at all.)

But there was no privy where I was that night — in an active bear area, with a shovel and a hike up into well fertilized fields to use the loo. Needless to say, I didn’t feel the need to stay really hydrated at that shelter.

What I did feel was tired. We arrived at the shelter that night around 8 p.m., after twelve hours of hiking that day. My Fitbit registered over 23 miles. (That night, it died of an overuse injury, or committed hari-kari. I am not certain.) In a rarity of shelter camping, my son and I were alone. We ate dinner, hung our backpacks off the ground, and from our sleeping bags, listened to the mice invade the shelter and eat through the mesh pockets on our backpacks. I think it rained. I didn’t exactly sleep. I also didn’t have to go to the bathroom or use the bear basher in an epic mother and cub, human versus bear showdown — for which I am forever grateful.

Our best day on the trail was the next day, for which I am also forever grateful.

ALC

It was a good thing I slept like a log that night, because I would need it: The next day, my son startled a snake, and everything changed.

Change is a funny creature: You can never be certain if it’s going to be gradual or instant, something that you can adapt to over time or something that you have to react to immediately. The snake fell into the latter camp, for the day began just like the one before it. With gummy oatmeal, disassembling my tent, repacking my backpack in exactly the same way, filling up my water bottle, hoisting the giant pack on my back, lacing up my boots, and taking that first step. Whereupon my son quickly disappeared into the verdant green ether and left me all alone.

When I unpacked my adjectives in the last entry, I didn’t tell you the two adjectives that had best described my hike to date: lonely and scared. As in, very lonely and very scared. (To be fair, “very” is an adverb since it modifies an adjective. You are probably thinking now, “very nerdy.” Well, yes. Yes, I am.) My daily 10 hour hiking time on the trail consisted of cycles of my walking alone for about an hour; running across my son resting, snacking, and waiting for me on the side of the trail; and then watching him disappear on long, fast legs far in front of me. I rarely saw other hikers, and I walked on narrow trails on the sides of ledges where one false step would have meant curtains (or at least a compound fracture). If there is a state of readiness and anxiety above DEFCON-1, I was there. After all, here was my prior hiking and wilderness experience:

[Crickets]

We met up that day for lunch, which took us to a bald near an air traffic control tower. It was a futuristic white funnel-looking building that just appeared on the horizon, an awkward symbol of civilization and a stark reminder that there were far faster ways to travel than on foot. (At times during my hike, I felt like I was on a TV show like “Survivor,” where a camera crew lurked unseen to record all of my missteps and struggles, or unwittingly drawn into a zombie apocalypse film, where I had only my wits and my pack to save me. Seeing this crazy tower added to this feeling.) My son and I ate our lunches — peanut butter on tortillas, a coveted lemonade packet to sweeten the water — and listened to other hikers curse like sailors. I remember these hikers well. Most of the people that we passed on the trail were in their 20s, lean and in good health, appearing to subsist on granola and spring water. These hikers looked like they were escaping a motorcycle gang or their probation officers, what with their Marlboros and PBRs and indelicate language. They could have been 35, they could have been 65, they could have had shanks in their backpacks. And there I was with my 16 year-old son, ostensibly in charge. I employed my best array of mother tricks — a stern and disapproving stink-eye, a quick rearranging of the pepper spray in my pack, a confident voice, the placement of my body between my son and the Hell’s Hikers — and urged him to eat quickly (and apply more sunscreen). He did, and we took off.

Rather than finding him an hour later, I found him ten minutes later, as the bald turned back into woods. He was standing stock-still on the trail. Do you see it, mom? See what, son? He pointed: Look over there. It took me forever to see the timber rattler (Crotalus horridus) coiled in dappled sunlight in the grass on the side of the trail. My first thought was that C. horridus broke the rules of engagement: Snakes were supposed to be coiled in broad daylight, in the middle of the trail, under a flashing neon SNAKE sign, preferably with a red arrow pointing down. My second thought was the C. horridus was absolutely beautiful in a lethal way, like bourbon in the moonlight, Italian motorcycles, and that handsome man who broke your heart. But these were fleeting thoughts, since my brain shut down almost immediately and left me in the twitchy hands of my gut. Which paralyzed my feet.

Fortunately, my son was there to implement the agreed-upon snake protocol. He took my hand, led me well off the path in a giant arc, and deposited me back on the path well past C. horridus. And then he took off again, leaving me alone.

Are you sensing a theme? Me. Alone. Even worse: Me. Alone. After seeing C. horridus. (If I am ever in the market for a nom de guerre, I intend to be ALC horridus. Just so you know.) And even worse still: Me. Alone. After seeing C. horribus. In beautiful but isolating terrain that looked like this:

So I did something at that moment that was decidedly unmotherly: I fumed. I railed. I cursed. I cried. All at once, and all alone. It reminded me of a nameless movie that I had seen a long time ago, where Elisabeth Shue was driving her daughter home from soccer practice and telling her what it’s like to be a woman in general, and a mother in particular. I am botching the quote, but it went something like this: When you’re a woman, it’s like life sometimes hands you a crap sandwich, and you just gotta smile and take a big bite.

And at that very moment, I felt like I had been handed a foot-long sandwich of that very variety. (Smile!)

Fortunately, I had plenty of alone time on my hands to figure out what to do. And since I am a mother, and since I was with my son, I decided to suck it up and act motherly. (Accosting him on the trail and yelling about crap sandwiches would have scared him to death, and since he was the far more experienced outdoorsman among us, I really needed his help.) So at the next stopping point, I talked with him, and in my kindest, most dulcet mother voice, I told him that I didn’t offer to hike the AT with him to be this scared and this alone all of the time. And that since I apparently had done a good job of hiding my sheer terror from him, it was time to come clean. I was scared. Very scared. And that this was all very hard on me: the weight, the climb, the isolation, the unknown, the C. horridus. And that while I hated to put him out (which is a very un-mother thing to do), I needed him to slow down and stay with me.

My kind son, who loves me very much, had no idea that I felt this way, and he agreed to stay in sight for the remainder of the trip. As I started to walk behind him, comforted by his presence, I realized something important about the struggles I carried into this trip. It is my nature not to ask for help, to neglect to tell people what I need, to suffer in silence, and to wall up into Fortress ALC. And here, against my nature, and spurred on by sheer desperation, I had asked for help. To my surprise and delight, my son was only too happy to oblige. The ease of the solution — needing help, asking for help, getting help — made me ponder this question: If life sometimes had handed me a crap sandwich, was it fair to say that I sometimes had a hand in its making?

With these deep thoughts in my mind, we trudged on in companionable silence, stopping at a rare outpost just off the trail for Coca-Colas and junk food. (The treats were as delicious as you would imagine.) It was 4:00 p.m., and we were about to leave North Carolina. The next part of our adventure took us into Tennessee and the Great Smoky Mountains, where the terrain was entirely different.

ALC

And for a moment, I was happy.

But those mountains weren’t going to climb themselves, so I had to regroup — a significantly easier undertaking in the confines of civilization. By a small stream on the side of a hill on the Appalachian Trail, it involved a number of steps. There are no garbage cans, so you have to pack out your trash. Wool socks must be put on again, and hiking boots laced. Lipstick had to be reapplied. (Even in the hills, I gotta be me.) The pack finds its way onto the shoulders and hips, in a process that goes something like this:

Squat down.

Right arm in.

Kick out right hip to a hunched standing position.

Left arm through.

Stand.

Buckle waist strap.

Buckle chest strap.

Curse bitterly.

The weight of the pack never ceased to amaze me. (The only good thing about my later ankle injury — and here’s the power of positive thinking for you — is that that pain distracted from the pain of the backpack.) And the weight never ceased to amuse me. My time on the trail came at just the right moment, when I needed to sort out my life. I felt then that I had the weight of the world on my shoulders, that I was carrying my own personal bag of rocks. It was just like me, an inveterate overachiever, not to rely simply on a metaphorical weight. Oh, no! No, I had to I haul all of my burdens — and my camping gear, spare underwear, food, and personal effects — around.

But perhaps the most important step in the regrouping was water. My son and I were by a stream (really, a trickle), and using a leaf, he was able to partially refill our camel backs. We first had to treat the water using a chemical solution that came in two small plastic bottles, one with a white cap and one with a blue cap, that were fairly straightforward. The camel backs go into the backpacks, with the tube tacked to the pack’s straps. Unless you have had to carry water on your back, you probably don’t realize how heavy it is. And unless you haven’t had unfettered access to water, you probably don’t realize how precious it is. We were lucky that morning to have stopped by a stream, but otherwise, we had to rely on a trail map with water sources marked. Designated shelter or camping areas typically had a water source, but that could mean a round-trip of several miles, and occasionally a difficult hike, off the trail just to get a refill. Sometimes that map was not terribly reliable, and water was not where it was supposed to be. Indeed, we ran out of water later that day, and if there’s a more desperate feeling in the world, I have yet to feel it. We were rescued by strangers — in a bout of good fortune referred to as “trail magic” — who gave my son an extra 16 oz. Gatorade bottle filled with water. He saved some for me when I caught up to him, and I could still taste the grape Gatorade that had previously occupied the bottle. A mile and a half later, we found a stream, and crisis was averted. (We refilled the Gatorade bottle and kept it with us for strangers to pay it forward, just in case.)

But on the whole, that first full day was better than the last. It was the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, and I saw a few families and scout troops hiking around. (On my ramble, I became insanely jealous of slackpackers: day hikers, with small packs weighing between five and ten pounds.) I petted strange dogs. I made it to the top of my first mountain:

(And yes, I climbed the mountain — and walked the whole 87 1/2 miles — while wearing a hiking skirt. I gotta be me.)

As I walked, I became overwhelmed by the beauty all around me. The green was so vivid, so perfect, so lush. The weather could not have been better, and the shade refreshed me. When I could overcome my fear — and trust me, I couldn’t always overcome my fear — I actually enjoyed it. In the meditative surroundings, doing tiring physical activity, my problems unfurled; possible solutions occurred to me; and I began to make some progress. I began to feel at peace. . .

. . .Until a a song became stuck in my head. I have thought about telling you that I hummed along to Handel. I would like say that I was chanting Gregorian chants. I have even contemplated versions of events that involve show tunes, Al Green, the Rolling Stones, or Willie Nelson. These explanations would all be lies — lies! —  for the song that began to haunt me that day, and would haunt me for the remainder of my hike, was “Unpack Your Adjectives,” a School House Rock cartoon.

If you are around my age and watched Saturday morning cartoons on ABC during the 1970s, you are already singing along. But for those of you unfamiliar with “Unpack Your Adjectives,” it was a cartoon and song designed to teach impressionable young viewers about adjectives — you know, those words that really help you describe things. It did so in the context of a small freckled girl sporting large boots and an even larger backpack on a camping trip. Our plucky heroine ran into — and described — a man who still had a boyish face (which, frankly, describes my type to a T), a snake, and a bear — but not just any bear: It was a hairy bear, it was a scary bear, she beat a hasty retreat from his lair. And then she unpacked her adjectives. (If this description is not enough, here is a link.) So I would walk along singing this song, often aloud, and if I had to unpack my own set of adjectives, I would describe the experience as nostalgic, off-key, and funny.

But I fear that others may have used other adjectives to describe me: curious, awkward, smelly. For about the time that I began singing, I started walking up a very long brown thread of a trail through high grass, with the AT’s white blazes on pieces of lumber, not trees, to Max Patch, a grassy bald with beautiful views — and families out for a recreational hike — all around me. (The families brought picnic baskets, and for a moment, I wondered what would happen if I did my best Yogi Bear.) People gave me funny looks, and why wouldn’t they? A small freckled middle-aged woman sporting large boots and an even larger backpack was not a common sight. But I politely answered their questions and trudged on, down the path and through a parking lot. About ten hours after we left the intersection of old logging roads that morning, my son and I pitched our tents, ate our dinner, and fell asleep while it was still light out.

It was a good thing I slept like a log that night, because I would need it: The next day, my son startled a snake, and everything changed.

ALC

I found myself at an intersection of old logging roads, my son having pitched his tarp and cooking dinner, waiting for me. And so began my first night on the trail.

Dinner that night was a packaged rice mix supplemented with a small can of chicken, cooked over a small gas burner and shared by my son and me. In the fine form of mothers everywhere, I pretended to be not really very hungry at all and insisted that my son eat 75% of the food, which he did gladly. At that moment, I felt a keen kinship with my dog, who watches me with hungry eyes and great expectations every time I eat, and if my son had dropped even a morsel, I would have scraped it off the ground. As I surveyed the empty foil rice packet and the empty tin chicken can, I also understood why goats chew on the inedible, just to make certain that it is, in fact, inedible.

Food would be one of the great hardships on the trail for me. You have to carry what you intend to eat; you can’t carry a cooler; and stove fuel is in precious supply. When choosing food, you have to think about caloric value, weight, space, and ease of preparation. Note that taste is not a consideration on this list. So food went a little something like this:

Breakfast: package of oatmeal (mixed with hot water, eaten from the package) or Pop Tart (crushed, because it had been removed from the box to save space)

Lunch: tortilla shell with peanut butter

Dinner: package of rice, canned meat of some sort — if you’re lucky. (I will make a delicate suggestion here: If you are traveling with a teenaged boy, veto that package of red beans and rice. For the love of God, slap it from his hand if you must.)

Snacks: granola bars with peanut butter, trail mix, and Snickers(!)

Repeat.

In a fit of shopping brilliance, I suggested Crystal Light lemonade flavor pouches, and when I could add those to my water cup at meal times, it was a feast indeed. In fact, I would get a little obsessive about those flavor pouches — is it time for lemonade? do I have enough lemonade for two days in a row? will my son notice if I steal his lemonade? — just as I would get a little obsessive about food in general on the trail. I found myself one night having a vivid dream about rotisserie chicken, spinning all golden brown in space. (It’s not that I turn my nose up at rotisserie chicken in my day-to-day life, but it doesn’t even make my top ten list. Yet there it was, succulent and tantalizing in my dreams.) Over five and one-half days, I lost four pounds.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, for that night — and every night — I had to do the dishes. I am a reasonably tidy person, by no means a clean freak and with little philosophical opposition to the five second rule. This disposition served me well. Without a nearby water source, washing the dishes involved gathering leaves, wiping out our triangular mess kits and sporks with those leaves, and using a bandanna to get all of the leaf remnants and bits of dirt out. I tried not to think about it too much. With dinner done and the dishes put away, it was time for bed. I pitched my tent like a boss — a comment on the manufacturer’s savvy, not my own — and walked over to my son’s tarp to give him a kiss good-night. As I wandered into his area, I saw a familiar blue case on the ground. He had brought his retainer. I love my son with every ounce of my being, every moment of every day, but at that moment, if I could have loved him with every ounce of someone else’s being in addition to my own, I would have.

And then I faced my tent: a green single person pup tent, borrowed from my father-in-law, who had helpfully told me about the time a snake found its way inside.

I had not spent a night in a tent in decades, and I am not certain that I had ever spent a night in a tent alone. My family rarely went camping, but when we did, we used a two or three room brown canvas Sears tent sizable enough for an grand expedition involving staff, Land Rovers, and British accents. (I feel pretty certain that that tent’s square footage exceeded the square footage of my apartment in law school.) The last camping trip that I remembered with my family was inauspicious, to say the least. It began with bird droppings on my father’s beloved “Oh No! Mr. Bill” T-shirt, included an attack of sand fleas, and ended when my father, while eating pancakes at a picnic table, yelled at my brother and me to cut our toenails. The real problem became immediately apparent: Skunks were climbing my dad’s legs. (And my brother and I were wearing shoes, because who wants sand flea bites on the bottom of her feet?) With this proud family tradition in mind, I climbed into my tent and zipped every possible zipper shut.

I could not sleep. I do not think that my insomnia prevented a bear attack or snake incursion, but neither of those things happened. What did happen? After lying all night on the ground, after a half day of climbing uphill with a very heavy backpack, I felt like I’d been hit by a truck. Which could only be remedied by putting on that very heavy backpack again and climbing uphill, this time for an entire day.

But early on in the day’s walk, I found my son waiting for me at a perfect spot, a cool shady area on the side of a hill near a stream. I took off my pack, removed my shoes, leaned back onto all of my possessions, refilled my water pack, and ate the best-tasting pulverized Pop Tart that I had ever had. Here I am:

And for a moment, I was happy.

ALC