Contemplating, Counting Down, and Remembering Meredith

My initial plans for a fall AT hiking trip in 2007 got scrapped. Maria was having major ear trouble at the time, and we had a string of consultations with her ENT throughout the fall. Wouldn't you know, the culmination of it all - the ENT appointment that would determine whether or not she had to endure a routine but uncomfortable ear surgery to fix a problem with a tube in her ear canal - happened to fall smack in the middle of the week that I had planned to be on the trail. I spent several days weighing my options before finally cancelling my trip. As my friend Mary wisely said, you gotta just think about which thing you would regret missing more: the hiking trip or the medical stuff? And by far, it was the medical stuff. If I had gone ahead with my hiking plans that week, I just don't think I could've really gotten any wind in my hair, knowing that at the very time I was hiking, my girl might be getting prepped for ear surgery. So I stayed home. And her ear ended up being fine. No surgery needed, and no more ENT visits till summer.

I was totally okay with my decision to stay home, but it produced a major itch to get back on the trail, so Christmas week found me spending more than a few hours poring over maps and the AT data book and putting together plans for a spring trip.

A couple days into the New Year, I happened to be trolling http://www.whiteblaze.net/ for some details on the section I plan on covering in the spring, and I gasped right out loud to see the most active thread on the forum: a 24-year-old woman hiking on Blood Mountain on New Year's Day was missing, and it was eventually learned that she was murdered. My heart was in my throat as I read about how this terrible crime had been committed against a sister hiker in a place I knew and loved and remembered so well. I was sick. I could not stop crying for this woman and her family — people hundreds of miles away whom I don't even know but feel somehow connected with.

In the days after learning of Meredith's death, I was so shaken that I could not fathom returning to the trail, especially alone. I even said out loud the words "I am definitely not going back" when Jay and I were lying in bed one night and he asked about my plans for my next hike. Meredith's murderer had taken not only the life of a vibrant and strong young woman, but had violated the many, many other solo hikers — male and female — who now won't be able to venture out in the woods without at least a sliver of fear.

Fast-forward another week, and I'm out for a short hike with Buster in Hudson Mills, still ruminating on how my days of section-hiking the AT were probably over. The Huron River was wide and fast that day because of the thawing of a huge snowfall followed by several days of rain. As I neared the lowest area of the park, I was stunned to see that the river had not only risen unusually high, it had spilled out into a grassy area and completely covered the trail for about a quarter of a mile. I could see to the other side, and even started to cross the flooded area, thinking it couldn't be that deep, but soon realized the current would be thigh-high at the middle. I couldn't believe it. I had never seen the trail this way. All that grass, those trees — so much of the landscape harmed or even destroyed by all the flooding.

I checked my watch. I couldn't afford to turn back — I really needed to push on in order to make it home by the time the kids got home. But there was no way that I and the dog could get through all that water. So we scouted around for an alternative path and ended up taking a spongy walk through some not-very-promising-looking underbrush. We finally made it to the dry ground on the other side of the flooded area, a little muddy and burr-covered, but pretty happy to be where we wanted to be.

And I realized that maybe God's statement to me in all this was that I needed to view the Meredith incident the same way. To acknowledge it as an unexpected, terrible, destructive event, certainly — but to also know that I can't afford not to press on. That I just need to scout around and find a safe way through to the place I need to be. Because the place I need to be is on the Appalachian Trail; I do know this.

So I've changed my mind. I am going back, and I'm counting down the days till mid-May when my boots can hit that trail again. And like many other whiteblazers, on my pack will be this sticker (made in massive quantities by another whiteblaze member and distributed to every AT hiker he can find) to honor Meredith, and a green ribbon to memorialize all hikers who have died on the trail. These are small ways of commemorating these fellow travelers, and also a small way to take a stand and not allow fear to control me.