Be Careful What You Wish For

When Dave Blanchard sat in the Blue Ridge Comfort Inn—a weathered but accommodating establishment that boasted both sterility and staleness—he underestimated just how much he would miss the luxury of commercial down-alternative pillows and hot water. He used the hotel computer to finalize his plans of thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, and scheduled for a taxi to take him from the hotel to the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest, the last time he’d experience another human being for four to five months.

I’ll be at Mount Katahdin before Labor Day. Going dark. Will reach out again in two weeks. Wish you were here with me.

Dave clicked send on his cellphone. The recipient was Mary, his wife. Estranged. Soon to be ex. She filed because Dave wasn’t trying. He didn’t listen. He didn’t want to make anything of himself. Above Dave’s text were seven more of Dave’s texts—unanswered. He scrolled up to reveal another five texts, most pleading, some angry. He stopped at the last text Mary sent.

You undervalue yourself, and as a result, me. I’m sorry David.

He hated when she called him David.

The taxi driver stopped at the mouth of the park and popped the trunk. Dave paid, gave a polite, “Thank you,” and exited the vehicle. He secured his pack over his shoulders and clipped the chest buckle. Dave slammed the trunk shut with a clunk and gave it a hearty open-handed slap on the rear. The taxi driver took off at a careful pace so as to not stir up dust. Dave looked around and shuddered in the chill of morning. He shouldn’t have worn only a tee shirt, he realized—but coming from a lifetime in Northern Michigan, he assumed the South was always warm. A quick mental recap of the contents of his pack placed the sweatshirt near the bottom of his supplies and thus not worth disassembling his wares before he even set foot on the trailhead. He had to hike to the top of Springer Mountain, and then start his journey north. Weeks of research and experiential publishings that Dave found online suggested a NOBO trail was better than a SOBO trail.

He looked up to the sky and the orange-pink glow of morning—almost sunrise. If Dave was to hit his twenty-mile a day goal, there was no time for sweatshirts. He took off confident and spry, determined to prove his commitment. He planned to post on week three from the top of Tinker Cliffs. Word would get out to Mary eventually, and she’d have no choice but to investigate. Mary was always nosy. She loved to spy on the neighbors and call out to Dave in a harsh whisper. “David! Quick!” He hated being involved in her gossip, but missed that now.

The hike up to the top of Springer Mountain afforded Dave a good few hours to get out of his own head. He successfully did this by focusing on the crushing weight in his lungs and the drag of the forty-pound backpack he had strapped to himself. When reading up on the trails, Dave saw time and again the encouragement to have a pack of thirty pounds or less. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get it under forty. When he first loaded his pack, it was fifty-five pounds due to cooking materials like pots, pans, and butane tanks. This forced Dave to do several trips to the outdoor stores in Northern Michigan for more ergonomic—and expensive—materials. There were many outdoor retail establishments in Northern Michigan. In fact, everyone in Dave’s life was an avid outdoorsman or woman. From ice fishing, to camping, hiking, snowmobiles… It never appealed to him. This was a point of contention between Dave and Mary from day one, because she loved to hike, and would often go it alone or with friends. Dave was (up until he received the request for divorce), by and large, a homebody. He didn’t like to sweat, he wasn’t a fan of blisters on his feet, and as he reached the top of Springer Mountain he realized the views were what made people do crazy things like this. He felt high, not just in altitude, when he realized he was finally on the Appalachian Trail. Dave whipped out his cellphone, still in airplane mode, snapped a couple of pictures, and turned it off.

“Take that, Mary.” He took a few deep breaths and continued to bumble on along the trail with his hulking pack. Once the burning subsided in his lungs, Dave began to feel a new thing—a zest for life—and the motivation to prove to his estranged wife that he was not, in fact, undervaluing himself. If she could only see me now, he thought.

The first night of camping was unremarkable. Dave did make the effort to dig through his pack and find his jacket before it grew too dark to see. He learned all about how to start a fire before he left Northern Michigan—another sore point for Mary. It was merely a basic survival skill, but he didn’t need to survive; He worked in finance. Remotely and comfortably. Their fireplace was gas. When Dave made his stop to size down his cooking supplies, he splurged on an easy ignite as well. His fire went up without a hitch, and he sat in silence, alone, and the most at-home that he’d been in years. Maybe I don’t need Mary. A stiff breeze rolled through the treetops. Two people would lessen the chill. Dave decided to take it to bed and holed up for the night.

When Dave awoke on his first fully-committed Appalachian Trail morning, he emerged from his tent to discover a beautiful silence unlike anything he ever experienced. Mary was a stickler for weekend cleaning, daytime cleaning—all the time cleaning. She disturbed his peace, yet somehow he missed it. Despite the many frustrations in their home, his desire to prove himself to their marriage had not waned, and he ruminated with an inner monologue across craggy patches, uphill, downhill, over logs, around snakes—on alert for a bear that was responsible for the scat he stepped in while trying to avoid the snake. Before he knew it, even with his bathroom and snack breaks, Dave clocked eighteen miles.

The next several nights were perfectly average other than the fact that Dave hadn’t seen a single hiker. It wasn’t that the trail would be flooded like a city street, but he was completely and utterly alone. He thought for a moment that his readings were wrong. Maybe he should have run SOBO instead of NOBO this time of year. Of course he didn’t have his books on him to verify this information, and it didn’t really make a difference in the end. The trail was the trail, no matter how it was cut.

In his solitude, Dave’s inner monologue to Mary quickly turned outward. He spoke to the trees, the moss, and the craggy rocks that surrounded him. He told everything around him just how much she pissed him off, how much he had to prove himself to her, and how this stupid trail was supposed to take care of that. The words seemed to move the branches themselves, and there was a catharsis in telling something that couldn’t talk back. He also remembered in his readings that noise was beneficial in the event of a bear encounter; The bear would try and avoid the source of the sound altogether. And while Dave did generally enjoy his solitude, he felt a loneliness creep up on him that he hadn’t ever experienced before. While he and Mary grew apart in the years prior, there was something nice about knowing there was someone at home.

On the eighth morning, Dave woke to what sounded like a woman screaming. He jolted in his tent, imprisoned in his sleeping bag, and rolled to his knees in a sloppy and uncoordinated movement. If the screams were from a mountain lion—those he read about—he’d be dead shortly. From his understanding, they were solitary creatures and generally only aggressive if they had cubs, but Dave was essentially a man-burrito in a stay-warm container. Nevertheless, he tried to afford himself a fighting chance and emerged from the sleeping bag, grabbed the machete from the floor of the tent, and blindly lunged into the open air. The vivid contrast of the surrounding nature compared to the dull interior of the tent shocked his eyes. He tried to adjust as quickly as possible, ready to take on a mountain lion. That, he decided, would be photo-worthy—and Mary-worthy.

Once his vision settled, Dave dropped the machete to his side. There was nothing. No one. At least, as much as he could see. He scanned the perimeter; His food still hung high from a far away tree, the fire was extinguished, and there were no tracks or scat. He wondered, for a moment, if he dreamed it all, which would have been awful—going into the woods to find himself and possibly save his marriage, and losing his mind instead. Dave gripped the handle of the machete tight in his hand. The fake leather hilt squeaked under his clammy palm. In an unexpected fit of anger, Dave hurled the machete at the nearest tree. The butt hit the bark and it fell to the ground with a thud.

“Can’t even throw a knife right.”

Dave recovered his machete and began clean-up. He took the pack from the tent and began organizing the contents. Something was off. He did another quick search of his area for possible footprints, paw prints—something—to no avail. Burning daylight, he re-packed his pack and began walking north.

The violent wake up left Dave feeling uneasy. He didn’t want to talk out loud to the trees anymore. The trees either knew this or the weather turned, because they waved and wobbled, creaked and cracked for the rest of the day. When Dave looked up, he noticed they weren’t blowing in one direction, but swinging north towards home and back south again. He wanted to be home, in his cozy pants, with a hot shower and a tumbler of bourbon. He wanted Mary. He was mad at Mary, but he wanted to smell her perfume that got trapped in her short curly hair.

“I want Mary,” he mumbled.

The next morning was dead-quiet. Dave hated it. He unzipped his sleeping bag and ate his breakfast, dug a hole to have his bowel movement, packed his bag, and continued north. The trees did not blow, but he found himself preoccupied with his sudden ascent. Dave couldn’t tell where he was exactly—somewhere in North Carolina—but he found himself climbing upwards on a noticeable incline. He kept walking in calculated, languid steps to avoid over-exertion. An incline meant he’d hit an overlook soon. It wasn’t Tinker Cliffs; he was still days out from there, but it would be picturesque. Dave hadn’t turned his phone on since he texted Mary from the trail entrance in Georgia. If the views were worth it, though, he would take a photo and send it directly to her.

It was late afternoon by the time Dave reached the top of his destination. He was absolutely in awe of the views. A blanket of green trees cascaded across the earth before him. The sun was at a point in the sky where it began to emit rays of deep orange and pink. Everything around him looked as if it were intentionally placed there by a higher power. The world felt perfectly still. Mary would love this, he thought. He took out his phone and turned it on. Everything looked better from this distance, from far away. Dave opened his camera and began to scan the surroundings in search of the perfect shot, when a flicker of movement caught his eye.

Almost a hundred feet in front of him, through a small clearing and mostly hidden behind a boulder, was the unmistakable image of a woman. Dave zoomed in on his camera with shaky hands to get a better view. Her eyes were wild and horrified. Her short brown hair was ratty and full of twigs. She looked like she’d been dragged through the forest. He tried to steady himself even though the sight of another human—and one in such bad shape—caused his stomach to hurdle downwards.

He knew she saw him. She looked left to right in terror before placing a hand on the top of the boulder. Dave’s mouth went dry as soon as he saw the woman’s nail polish—a shade of pink that was not-quite salmon, not-quite coral. A shade that Mary, a creature of habit, got done every two weeks for the last decade.