Days 55-56: The Keffer Oak

Day 55: Wind Rock to War Spur Shelter (4.9 miles)

Day 56: War Spur Shelter to the Keffer Oak (9ish miles)

Day 55: June 6 Wind Rock campsite to War Spur shelter.

I wake up and cook a hot breakfast before anyone else emerges from their tents. I have no reason to be up so early, since I’m only going five or ten miles today, but I’m hungry. My oatmeal is unusually satisfying on this chilly morning, and I make myself some coffee too.

I’m at War Spur shelter, 5 miles from where I started the day. It’s nice out. Cooler than it has been in the last couple of weeks. I’m probably not going to see Etienne tomorrow like I was hoping, which has me feeling glum and lonely, even though it’s nice to hike an easy, relaxing day in such lovely weather.

Day 56:

I wake up early and pack with rare efficiency, leaving camp at 7:30am. I have 4.5 hours to hike eight miles to the road where I’m meeting my mom for lunch. I’m the first out of camp, but the silk-blazing isn’t bad because it’s so cool, and it’s a nice walk up a mountain, along the ridgeline, then a rolling descent through switchbacks of mountain laurel, pine forests where the needles make the trail springy and soft, and then sunny farmland. Bridges of split logs cross the marshy, muddy areas, and then I’m at the road.

Mom has come to see me because I found out last night that Etienne has been sick and was forced to zero in Pearisburg. When I hiked my twenty-mile day, I unknowingly doubled the distance between us, and now he’s unlikely to catch me until Sunday or Monday, and that’s only if he hikes big miles and I…don’t.

So Mom is helping me out by taking me to lunch in Blacksburg. We meet at the road near Joe’s Trees and drive to Panera Bread. In the three days since I last saw her, my mom has put a longtime plan into action: she’s decided to stop dying her hair, but instead of just letting it grow in gray, she has dyed it bright purple. She’s shy about it, but she looks pretty and fun, and she gets two compliments from strangers just at Panera. Then she takes me to resupply at Kroger, since I am stretching this section into six days instead of four. Mom suggests I come home for the night and then back to the trail tomorrow. My heart leaps—I want this, but I had been afraid to ask her to make the 45-minute drive twice. But then she assumes I’m hesitating because I’d rather be on trail, and says “It’s fine if you don’t want to. I don’t want to drive out here again tomorrow anyway.” So then, of course, I don’t ask to come home. It was already an unexpectedly nice day just seeing her, with her new purple hair.

Mom drops me off back at the trail, and I tell myself that I am happy to be there, even without Etienne. I start to hike. I’m slow, and my pack feels heavy. I planned to go to Sarver Hollow shelter but I know a climb is coming and even though I’ve only come eight miles, I feel tired from the hot sun. I’m used to walking in the shade, in the forest. Out in these open pastures, in my black t-shirt and shorts, I bake.

At the stream, I filter water, soak my feet, and eat four poptarts to lighten my load. Then I trudge uphill, since it’s going to get dark before the climb is done if I don’t get moving.

Then I reach the Keffer Oak.

The Keffer Oak is around 300 years old and 18 feet in circumference. The limbs reach out in every direction, each one itself as thick as a normal oak tree. I feel something when I reach out and touch the bark of that massive tree. It’s an emotion that feels like homesickness, that assured, heart-tugging connection I feel to the things I really love, like my faithful little horse Zee and hard-won mountain vistas and good books, like UCF and Parque Retiro and the beach in Casablanca, and even—occasionally—people.

There’s a beautiful grassy campsite below the tree, but suddenly in my indecision about whether to keep going, I am stricken with a deep melancholy and the frustrated, helpless wish that I had gone home with my mom. I don’t want to stay out here for hours of nothing, just waiting on Etienne. Dirty, sweaty, bored, awkward among all these strangers or else possibly alone for the night.

I drop my pack and wander around the tree, looking at it from all angles, sometimes stopping just to touch it. I do want to stay here, I realize, even if I’m all alone. Maybe especially. I’ve camped alone before and enjoyed it, and this ancient tree is inexplicably reassuring.

As soon as I make the decision, I feel better. I imagine that somehow, my benevolence toward this massive, beautiful tree is somehow mutual.

A few other hikers do eventually arrive. We chat briefly, but mostly I relax that evening, imagining all the other people who have rested under this tree in the last 300 years. At dusk, I retreat to my tent and go to sleep.