Just keep walking, p.1
Just Keep Walking, page 1
FOR HENRY, OF COURSE.
THANKS FOR STICKING IT OUT (AND KEEPING ME LAUGHING) FOR A FULL 100 MILES.
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Maps
Part One: Castle Danger to Bear Lake (39 Miles)
Chapter One: Just Keep Walking
Chapter Two: Chewed Up by a Beaver
Chapter Three: Morning Ticks
Chapter Four: Frozen Orange Juice
Chapter Five: Only Pee When You’re Downstream
Chapter Six: Clink!
Chapter Seven: Car Camping vs. Trail Camping
Chapter Eight: Sitting Out a Storm
Chapter Nine: I Am a Raisin
Chapter Ten: Bear Lake (Minus the Bear, I Hope)
Part Two: Bear Lake to Section 13 (16.5 Miles)
Chapter Eleven: Morning Mush
Chapter Twelve: A New View
Chapter Thirteen: The Drainpipe
Chapter Fourteen: Trail Angel
Chapter Fifteen: Bear for Breakfast
Chapter Sixteen: Section 13
Chapter Seventeen: Latrine of Doom
Part Three: Section 13 to Lutsen (55.5 Miles)
Chapter Eighteen: Alone
Chapter Nineteen: Eggo Lake
Chapter Twenty: Something Borrowed, Something Blue
Chapter Twenty-One: Rude Awakening
Chapter Twenty-Two: I’m an Athlete, Hear Me Roar
Chapter Twenty-Three: The Plural of Moose Is Run
Chapter Twenty-Four: Scout’s Honor
Chapter Twenty-Five: Alone, Again
Chapter Twenty-Six: Enough
Author’s Note
Appendix
Acknowledgments
Teaser
About the Author
Copyright
The toe of my shoe catches a gnarled tree root, my foot twists, and I quickly jab the tip of a hiking pole into the soft dirt at the edge of the path to stop myself from falling. I take another timid step, testing my ankle on the rugged earth.
Sore, not sprained.
Hurt, not broken.
Just keep walking, I tell myself.
I limp on, keeping my eyes on the trail, trying to hold back the tears that are already brimming. I promised myself I wouldn’t cry. Especially not on the first day of our hike. And certainly not after what Mom told me a few days ago, when we were pulling the tags and packaging off the last of our new gear. “I need to warn you,” she’d said, her smile just a weird, wiggly line that made her look like a Peanuts character. “I will cry when we’re out on the trail. Possibly every day.”
“Nope, I’m not okay with that,” I’d said, shaking my head. “I shouldn’t have to deal with a parent crying in front of me. That’s not normal.”
Mom had laughed, thinking I was being cute. But funny tone or not, I hope she realized I was totally serious. It’s awkward to see a parent cry. Wrong. More importantly, if Mom’s planning to cry on our hike, that means I can’t.
“I don’t expect you to do anything about it, Jo,” Mom had added. “Maybe you can just rub my back or give me a hug, sometimes. And try to remember that I do want to be out there with you. I’m the one who offered to do this hike, so that you’d still get to have your big adventure. I just know I’m going to get overwhelmed. This whole thing is a lot.” She’d looked at me seriously. “But even if I start crying, it doesn’t mean I want to quit. I need you to remember that, since I can’t promise that I will.”
I try to remember that now, but it doesn’t seem fair. Someone in our party of two needs to keep it together. But with each step, my ankle feels like someone is jabbing it with a hot poker. Maybe I should have gotten hiking boots, instead of quick-drying trail shoes, but it’s a little late for any shoulda-woulda-couldas. I pause, shift my body weight to my hiking poles, roll my foot around in the air, and remind myself to step more carefully from now on. There are going to be a gajillion bumps and roots and rocks ahead, and I’m going to have to figure out how to avoid them.
Just keep walking.
The trail slopes up suddenly, a sharp climb to what the Superior Hiking Trail guidebook promises will be a “rewarding view.” My pack pinches my shoulders. The skin on my neck stings. There are thirty pounds of food, gear, and my entire life-for-two-weeks crammed into the turtle shell house I’m carrying on my back. Inside the pack, there is a sleeping bag and a thin blow-up sleep pad, the poles for our two-person tent (Mom took the tent and rain fly in her own pack, arguing that because she’s bigger, she should lug the extra weight), five dehydrated packaged dinners Mom has promised will be both delicious and nutritious, a tiny folding camp chair, one change of clothes, rain gear, my brother’s Swiss Army knife, three water bottles, and a single paperback book that needs to last until we pick up our first food and gear resupply box five days and nearly fifty miles up the trail.
I chose The Hobbit.
Because just like Bilbo, I’m setting out on a quest. But unlike Bilbo, mine’s not an unexpected journey. In fact, I helped plan this adventure. Our trek wasn’t sprung on me by a wizard and a pack of dwarves; I chose to be here. But as I look ahead at the endless trail of rocks and roots that keeps climbing upward, like a never-ending mountain that’s been plopped smack dab in the middle of mostly flat Minnesota, I can’t help but wonder: Why?
“You holding up okay?” Mom asks, her breath ragged from the climb. “Do you want to lead for a while?”
“No, you can,” I tell her. “If I go in front, we’re not going to get anywhere fast.”
“It’s not a race,” Mom says. “Want me to walk slower? We have all day.”
“This is fine.” In time, I’m sure we’ll figure out the right speed, who’s a better leader and who likes to lag behind, which of us needs a break halfway up each hill and who only stops to rest once they reach the top. My older brother, Jake, told me that’s what happened when he and Dad took this same trip together eight years ago. You have almost two weeks to sort out the kinks, Jake said with a shrug when I asked him for advice. Just under two weeks, just over one hundred miles. Just a little farther up the trail than Dad and Jake made it … in part, to annoy Dad. In part, to prove we can.
My feet hurt.
My neck stings.
My legs burn.
I already want to quit. But we’re going to finish. If we don’t, Dad wins. He’s already taken enough from us, and I refuse to let him win by thinking we need him around to lead us through stuff like this. Mom’s better off without him, and so am I.
We can do this on our own.
We’ll survive, just the two of us.
Dad’s a quitter. Not us.
Mom and I walk in silence for a few more minutes, listening to the rustle of birch leaves in the trees overhead. For the past few weeks, I’ve secretly wondered if we would be stuck chatting about nothing all day—neither Mom nor I do well with awkward silence—or if we’d figure out how to settle into a comfortable quiet. Our house has been a lot quieter lately, especially in those rare times when Mom’s gone and I’m home alone. I never used to mind being home by myself; I even sometimes liked the space and quiet and responsibility of taking care of myself. But that was before.
Before Jake went back to college, and before Dad sidestepped into his new family.
After, there are way too many uncomfortable silences. Too much time to think about the way things used to be. Too much space to notice the holes in our life. Too many chances to wonder what else might break.
Now alone terrifies me.
Just keep walking.
Something shrill screams from the top of a tree just off the trail. I know that sound—a squirrel yelling at us for barging in on its turf and demanding a peace-food offering. I wave up into the trees, trying to be friendly. The squirrel yells again, warning me to move along or pay up. It’s not like a squirrel poses much of a threat to us, but there are plenty of other dangers out here: bears, moose, wolves, ticks, poison ivy, dehydration, heat, cold, injuries. I try not to think about those things. But as we settle into our silence, there’s too much room to think about everything that scares me.
We come around a corner, and the wall of trees to our left is split open by an enormous boulder jutting out into open sky. I lean against my poles and peer out at the view. It’s a sea of green: lime, pine, and emerald all mixed into a watercolor canvas of trees that stretches out below us for miles. “That view is pretty rewarding,” I grumble.
“Oof, I’m pooped already,” Mom admits, laughing as she grabs her water bottle out of the side pocket of her pack and takes a long swig. “How far do you think we’ve gone?”
We set out from the parking lot about an hour ago, probably. We got a lift to the trailhead from one of Mom’s friends early this morning. Regina dropped us and our packs at the edge of a gravel parking lot, took a couple quick pictures of us standing together next to the Castle Danger trailhead sign, and cheered as we set off on our merry way. “Maybe two miles?” I guess. We have ten miles planned for today. Ten again tomorrow. Same for the next day. I try not to think about the days of more miles after that, since it gets a little overwhelming when you stack them all up in a line.
Mom pulls out her cell phone, which is set to airplane mode to save the battery, and opens the app she’s using to track and map our route for the hike. She glances at the tracker and draws in a breath.
“I don’t like your cringe face right now,” I say, wiping my forehead. It’s only nine in the morning, but it’s so hot that a rivulet
Mom says nothing.
“Is it less than two miles?”
She won’t look me in the eye when she says, “Point six.”
“Point six what?” I ask. “What does that mean?”
“Six tenths of a mile,” she says. “Point six. We’ve gone just over half a mile. That’s it.”
“Are you kidding me?” I lift my eyebrows. “This is what half a mile feels like?”
Mom laughs, but it’s more of a choked gurgle.
“If this is what half a mile feels like,” I say, “I’m gonna need to start working on my will right now, because I’m definitely going to die out here.” Even though I’m kind of joking, the look on Mom’s face tells me this comment isn’t very helpful. It’s maybe not the right attitude to get us through day one. “Come on, we’ve got this,” I say, gently poking her in the butt with the tip of one of my hiking poles. “Let’s just keep walking.”
By the time we reach our stopping point for the night, I want to rip my feet right off my body and dump them in the garbage can next to the State Park’s visitor’s center. Feet are not supposed to feel like this—like they’ve been hacked at by an axe, chewed up by a beaver, and spit back into my shoes.
I’m pretty sure I’ve never walked nine and a half miles in a single day, ever in my life. None of the training hikes we did to prepare for this adventure were anywhere near this long. We never even went half this far with full packs on our backs. Mom did a few full-blown training hikes with her pack and poles on, but I mostly just got used to the feel of my hiking pack by wearing it around the house. There was no way I was going to be that person, a total nut walking around our busy Minneapolis neighborhood with a pair of unnecessary trekking poles and a giant backpack strapped over my shoulders. There’s an older couple who stroll along the creek near my house who sometimes use hiking poles on their walks together, but that’s because they’re old. I just couldn’t do it. It was way too embarrassing. But now, after nine-plus miles of extreme trekking, I wish I had.
I sprawl out on a wooden bench inside the park’s bustling visitor’s center, feet up, not even worried about all the people who are walking by and staring. I’m pretty sure I smell a lot like the inside of my brother’s hockey bag—the entire back and pits of my T-shirt are soaked through with sweat. And I’m guessing I look a little terrifying. You’re probably not supposed to lie on the benches in the visitor’s center lobby, but I really don’t care. All I want to do is curl up and moan, and everyone else is just going to need to be okay with that.
Tonight, Mom has reserved us a campsite in the Gooseberry Falls State Park campground, rather than having us sleep out in the middle of nowhere on the Superior Hiking Trail. All along the trail—which runs more than three hundred total miles from start to end, along the north shore of Lake Superior—there are dozens of backwoods campsites that you can sleep at for free. But for our first night out here, Mom and I both thought it would be best if we stayed somewhere with easy water access (yummy drinking fountains!), indoor bathrooms, and a place to shower.
I pull out the slim journal Mom bought for me to bring along on our hike, and glare at it. “You can reflect on your experiences on the trail,” she’d suggested, handing it to me as we were finishing up our packing. “Take notes on what we see and how you feel each day.” Mom is big on writing stuff down; she teaches fifth grade, and her entire class is forced to journal for ten minutes each morning. Also, she’s been seeing a therapist since Dad took off, and the woman she sees has her on some sort of write-out-your-feelings routine.
It’s not until I notice that the streak of sunlight has disappeared from the bench beside me that I wonder how long Mom has been gone. She set out to find a park bathroom right after we got inside the visitor’s center, leaving me alone with our entire wilderness world stuffed into the two packs perched on the bench beside me. But how long ago was that? I can’t help but imagine that the woods might have a side door that she could magically sneak out of to hail a cab home, leaving me stranded out here all by myself. Just like Dad did that day he bailed, but worse since Mom’s all I have left anymore.
Alone, with no idea how to set up our tent on my own.
Alone, with no clue about what comes next.
Alone, scared, sore, and tired.
Luckily, I’m pretty sure there aren’t any cabs just hanging around in the middle of nowhere, so hopefully she’ll be back soon. We can’t quit on day one. We can’t quit, period. I refuse to give Dad the satisfaction. With a sigh, I open to the journal’s first page and stare at the blank lines. I need to write something, anything, to keep my brain from going down the wrong path.
Day 1: Castle Danger to Gooseberry Falls State Park, I write, since those are simple facts about where we started and where we finished the day.
Miles: 10. We haven’t actually gone ten whole miles yet today, but there’s going to be another little walk from the visitor’s center to the campground. So I’m rounding up. It will be ten miles by the time we set up our tent tonight, and I’m planning to count every single step I take.
Smell Factor: Jake’s hockey bag-level bad.
“Guess what I found.” I hear Mom’s voice before I notice that she’s returned.
I look up and blurt out, “Did you fall asleep on the toilet or something? Where have you been?” But then I notice what she’s holding in her hand, and I immediately forgive her. “Is that … ice cream?”
Mom grins. “Hungry?”
“You’re a mirage,” I say, tossing the journal and my worries about being stranded alone out here to the side. “Is this some kind of trick? Like when people think they see water in the desert, and they run toward it, but when they get there, they get hit with a mouthful of sand?”
Mom pulls the wrapper off a Butterfinger ice cream bar on a stick and wedges it between my fingers. “It’s real,” she promises, laughing.
I take a bite and the cold, sweet rush feels almost as good as jumping off a dock into a lake on a hot day. There’s no better feeling in the world than jumping into water when you’re hot, except maybe the feeling of this ice cream bar, right this second. “Mmmm,” I sigh, sitting up. “True love. I’m pretty sure I could marry this ice cream. Josephine Butterfinger has a nice ring to it. Regal, even.”
The words are out of my mouth before I even realize what I’m saying. We don’t talk about marriage. We don’t say the words true love. Because those things are gone from our house now that the divorce is final. Dad ripped true love into pieces, then stitched the shredded bits back together to create a whole new family.
Mom schlumps down on the bench beside me and quietly bites chunks off her ice cream bar. “I’m sorry,” I say, scooting over to lean my head against her shoulder. I don’t even know what else to say. We mostly just avoid the subject of Dad, but whenever he does come up, I try to make a joke out of it. “I promise if I ever do marry someone with the last name Butterfinger, I’ll keep Conlan for myself, okay?”
She snorts quietly.
“If we have kids, they might decide they want to hyphenate their last name, but at least Butterfinger-Conlan works pretty well, don’t you think?”
Mom leans her head on mine and doesn’t say anything. There’s been a lot of saying nothing lately. We talk plenty, but don’t say a whole lot. It’s much easier that way. If you don’t dwell, it hurts a whole lot less.
When we’ve finished our ice cream, I grunt and push myself to standing. “How’s the bathroom in this place?” I ask Mom. “Was it worth the whole extra quarter-mile walk off the trail to stop by the visitor’s center for an indoor toilet that flushes?”
“Totally worth it. And we got ice cream out of the deal,” Mom says, plugging her phone into an outlet to give it a little juice. “Enjoy the privacy and a toilet seat while you’ve got them. After tomorrow morning, it’s gonna be nothing but open-air latrines for days.”
As I hobble to the bathroom, I realize every muscle in my body feels like it’s been chewed up and spit out by a beaver—it’s not just my feet. I’m not sure how I’m supposed to get up tomorrow and do this again.
But I guess that’s how it’s been for weeks and months. So many other peoples’ lives have just kept rolling along the past couple years while ours came skidding to a sudden stop. Yet somehow, every day, Mom and I both manage to get up and keep moving. At least, we have up until now.
