I had never backpacked solo before, but here I was hiking the entirety of Massachusetts alone. My husband no longer backpacked with me, and hiking with my New England hiking partner had ended for the season, but I had the chance to do this stretch of the trail with support from extended family and friends caring for my children. I picked this time of the year to go solo because I knew it would be relatively busy with north- and south-bound thru-hikers, so that I would be less vulnerable to a creepy hiker, or in the event of injury someone would likely pass by before too long. I aimed to hike the entirety of Massachusetts (with a bit of northern Connecticut), nearly 93 miles, in six-and-a-half days with the half day serving as a sabbath. On the fourth day of the most humid and loneliest hiking I had ever done, I almost quit in one of the more remote areas of the Berkshires.
My trek up to that time had its moments already. The first day faced me with my scariest moment on the trail. When I had reached my intended campsite much, much earlier than I expected and despite carrying my heaviest pack ever, I decided to press on to a shelter six miles farther along. The promise of a roof over my head in case of rain rather than a tent, and more miles under my feet sounded good.
A couple of hours later as I continued to hike, the sky grew pitch black and its deep rumbling sounded a warning. To make matters worse, I had just reached the open rock ledges called Race Mountain, and I could only think that the last place anyone should be when a thunderstorm broke was on an open rock face mountain top. I saw my first bolt of lightning in the distance. Race Mountain turned into the race for my life. I ran with a full pack across the ledges, the thunder already shaking the rock slabs. Finally I came to the trees on the other side: one was marked with two blue-blazes atop each other and a sign that said “wet weather trail.” I did not see an alternate route on my map, but I took it anyway, panting and semi-trotting, hoping that the trail would descend and get me off the mountain top. The trail sloped only slightly before the first splat of rain hit. I immediately took off my pack, yanked out my rain gear, and then, “Ka-Bam!” Lightning and thunder simultaneously. I practically threw my covered pack away from me—at least 10 yards—and then did as instructed in everything I had read: I sat on the ground with my knees to my chest, curled in a ball, making myself as small as possible. I sat that way for a full twenty minutes while the storm raged. Finally it passed sufficiently so that lightening no longer flashed and the sky grumbled a bit farther away. I donned my pack and headed off again, the rain still beating down. An hour later when I arrived at the shelter, a family was already there and, failing to follow trail etiquette, not-so politely informed me they had no room at the inn. Mercifully, in one of the few instances from Georgia to Maine, two shelters were within a tenth of a mile of each other, so I proceeded to the second one where I was literally welcomed warmly with a cup of tea by a fellow hiker and greetings from my fellow shelter mates. As night fell I made my dinner, and we all exchanged stories about what we did when the storm hit. Soon we were sleeping soundly even as the storm dripped its final drops on the shelter roof.
In the morning after a steep descent, I passed the monument marking the historic final battle in Shay’s Rebellion, an uprising led by Revolutionary War veteran Daniel Shays in late 1786 and 1787, among farmers and others in debt against the threat of foreclosures by the courts. Though Shays and his followers met defeat, his rebellion and its brutal suppression by a private militia prompted George Washington to publicly support a stronger central government and contributed to the calling of the Constitutional Convention of May, 1787. After I left the battle field and a fairly flat walk of three-and-a-half miles, the trail went up into the Berkshire Highlands, crossing a series of ridges that amounted to a 1,500’ elevation gain in two miles. The humidity stayed high, and the sweat poured out of me like squeezed sponge. By the time I reached the Tom Leonard Shelter at 14.3 miles for the day, my body thanked me when I took off my pack. My soul was starting to weary. I had not backpacked alone before, and I missed the companionship of a known friend.
Day three took me on one of my longest days ever—21.6 miles. When I awoke, I did not know if I would make it all the way, having plan B in reserve should I run out of energy or face a an immanent shortage of daylight. I arose before the sun for an extra early start. My only side detour of the day happened four miles later so that I could take a peek at Benedict Pond because my son is named Benedict and because pictures I had seen of it looked beautiful. Indeed, I passed it so early that mist still clung to the surface. A few miles later I came to my first beaver dam outlet. Up close, the dam made my jaw drop when I saw its ingenious construction and how much water it held back. Crossing the outlet, however, caused me far more fear than fascination. The maintaining club had placed boards over the outflow near the beaver sticks which was all well and good until I took my first step. The challenge was to balance with a full pack while crossing the wet, slick boards. Slowly and carefully I took measured step after measured step to the other side. Over the next couple of miles more beaver dams and their outlets posed the same challenge.
Around 7:30 that evening, I arrived at the Upper Goose Pond Cabin—alas, too late to take a canoe out on the pond. Run as a hostel, a couple of bunks remained, and I gratefully claimed one of the saggy mattresses. By the time I set out my sleeping bag and personal items for the night, I wound up cooking my meal by flashlight while several small groups of hikers played board games or cards in the common dining room. Tired to the bone, I soon made my way to bed for a read and then sleep, but my loneliness surfaced with such a fierceness that reading became difficult. Thankfully, sleep came quickly with rain tapping the roof. I was too tired and lonely to care about the snoring around me or worry whether the rain would continue into the next day.
There was no rain in the morning, and after some ooo’ing and ah’ing with other early birds at the sunrise over the pond, I got a jump on the day because I faced an eighteen-mile hike, a long trek by any standard but even more demanding because of the near marathon the day before. Somewhere around the fourteenth mile, my mind and body would go no further. The sky was overcast and the air heavy. Tall, leafy hardwoods surrounded me at the top of a mountain that I had reached by a straight up climb. Hobbits or elves could easily have inhabited the forest, but no fantasy or enchantment spellbound me. My pace had slowed over the preceding ten minutes to a foot drag until I finally stopped. Neither the positive thought of magical creatures nor the negative thought of not having enough water if I called it a day had enough motivating force to move me one step further.
Lots of people were hiking this section as I expected, but I had not seen anyone for a couple of hours. The young bucks had already leaped ahead to the next shelter only two-and-a-half miles away, or others had stopped at the shelter six miles behind. I stood stock still thinking of ways I could pull off camping at the spot for the night—it was beautiful despite no water—though I really hoped somebody would walk by and maybe encourage me on. I waited. No one.
My mind went back to the dark place of why I stood there alone. The loneliness that had dogged me since I left home finally caught up with full force. Before my departure, my husband and I had finished marriage counseling in an effort to save a marriage that had bewilderingly gone down the drain. Two weeks before my hike in Massachusetts, I had hiked a particularly difficult section in New Hampshire and Maine with my hiking friend from Boston, Karen, and been able to push aside the impending realization that I was about to be on my own not just backpacking but likely facing something far greater: divorce with two young children. I was backpacking Massachusetts solo in large part because I did not want to take the kind of vacations my husband considered fun, mainly going to large, noisy cities where we could hardly hear each other. My husband had hung up his hiking boots, no longer interested in hiking the trail or, what it boiled down to, me.
A year earlier I had hit rock bottom. Depression had reared its ugly head with a vengeance, but this time it led to debilitating, almost catatonic paralysis. Over the years alcohol had come to play a role, and I had to admit that I was an alcoholic. I found a therapist, went to AA, and promised that I would leave no stone unturned to prevent myself from ever becoming so sick again. One of those stones was my marriage. The companionship my husband and I had shared somehow disappeared, and I did not understand why, until one evening when we were talking about growing in a relationship, he declared, “I’m not changing and you can’t make me. I will not ‘grow’.” That shook me to my core, because I had believed marriage was all about growth—growing in our individual ways as well as growing together. At the same time, I had begun to question my sexual orientation—more like I revived a question that had lain dormant for over twenty-five years. On the mountain in Massachusetts, standing alone and exhausted I thought, “The jig is up.” Not only did I no longer have a hiking partner, I no longer had a life partner and my life in ministry was suddenly in jeopardy because if I were gay, my denomination did not allow gay clergy. Although I stood on solid, nearly billion year-old rock, my life was crumbling.
I leaned over my hiking poles and prayed for God to banish the darkness of that moment. I waited, simply breathing. I then talked myself into eight more steps, thinking that if I walked just a little more I could get some momentum going. Wearied to my soul, I stopped, motionless. I could not even bother to take my pack off or sit down. I leaned over my hiking poles again, emptied what thoughts remained in my mind, and closed my eyes. Darkness.
A slight breeze picked up, but I kept my eyes closed. In my mind’s eye, I glimpsed an image but it was approaching from such a distance that it would not immediately resolve, though I sensed it was a benevolent person. As the figure drew nearer from behind, I caught sight of her: a large, middle-aged black woman who approached deliberately, wearing a plain, floral-patterned dress, an apron, and flat shoes, her hair covered by a kerchief. She reminded me of the woman from my childhood whom my cousins and I called Aunt Doevie, the maid who worked for my father’s family and had a large hand in raising my father, the first black person I met when my father brought my Scottish mother and me from Scotland to live in his native North Carolina. She said she was happy to see me, and I knew she did just from the way she spoke and hugged me. On the mountain in Massachusetts that day, the woman in my vision came to me and embraced me like Aunt Doevie, her fleshy arms enveloping me in assurance and love. I have no idea how long she held me. Then, her arms transformed as she started to let me go. From the upper arms the black became burgundy became red, became feathers, became orange, became yellow, extended, became gold, became white, became wings. With the woman’s body still close to me, she pulled back her wings and then swept them gently forward, stirring a gentle wind that pushed me. “Go on, go on,” whispered the breeze that the beat of her wings made. Back and forth, “Go on, go on.” Then, as visions will, the image faded. Calmed and feeling my feet solidly on the ground, I breathed deeply, opened my eyes, looked around, took a candy from my pocket, and started walking. “[She] will conceal you with [her] pinions/and under [her] wings you will find refuge” sounded in my ear—Psalm 91. I hiked two-and-a-half more miles to the next shelter and over the next two-and-a-half days completed the hike as planned.
Seven years later, after I divorced, admitted to myself that I am gay, and resigned from the ministry in the denomination I had belonged to since childhood, the day had come for my ordination in the Episcopal Church. As I knelt before my bishop and closed my eyes while the congregation chanted “Veni, Sancte Spiritus” (Come, Holy Spirit), I prayed in thanksgiving for this moment, and I emptied myself as fully as possible to the presence of the Spirit. After a moment of contemplative silence in the midst of the chanting, I opened my eyes. What I saw was reds and golds flowing down from the outstretched arms of my African American bishop’s robe called a chasuble worn for such sacred occasions. I knew I had seen this or something much like this before but could not quite place it. As I closed my eyes again, I glimpsed the vision I had on the mountain in Massachusetts. Those glorious pinions were yet again enveloping me as a presence in my life’s journey and sending me on my way.
After that hike in Massachusetts, it took me two more years to complete the entirety of the AT. I still hike the AT and now maintain a section of it in the Shenandoah National Park. I also have the privilege of serving as a priest at a church while continuing to work full-time as a professor of religion. God’s wondrous pinions still enfold me, then unfurl and push me into the next step of my life even when I do not know exactly what it looks like. I can say with the psalmist, “under [God’s] wings you will find refuge; [her] faithfulness is buckler and shield” (Ps. 91:4).