In the past few weeks, one of the people I got to meet at camping sites was an author named Notebook. She was very intelligent and articulate. In my math brained STEM self, I was intimidated. But she was super kind and said a couple of things to me that really struck me at the heart.

One of the things she said was about my attire. It was very hot and I had taken my shirt off with just had my sports bra on when she met me. At 62, just wearing a sports bra and a skirt isnt really appropriate in our society. I am not a 20 something at the gym. She thanked me because she said it gave her the permission to do the same. It was very hot. That comment sat with me because many of the men I had been hiking with, of all ages, thought nothing of taking their shirts off. They didn’t have to feel weird or justify it to anyone. Huh.

The other thing that Notebook said and which I have thought about for over a week was that, for the real magic of the trail to hit you, you had to become feral.

At first, I likened feral to smelling bad and a lack of grooming. But then I realized that wasn’t even close. It wasn’t about societal conventions of what we are supposed to look or smell like. Feral was a feeling. Feral is that moment when you are sitting in a stream with a waterfall rushing by and the whole scene is a verdant green of lush plants. And you are sitting there with cold water pouring over you in your purple underwear and sports bra just embracing the experience of that  moment in your life when you are just… free. And actually, if I was all the way feral, I would have had nothing on at all.

So all week, I have been reflecting on ferality and what it meant. And how to live in that mode and moment. And last night, it kept me awake all night thinking of my mother.

My mother had seven live children. I am the youngest. She was first married to a hero from WWII, but who beat her. And, being the feral person she was, she divorced him with two young children, an almost unheard of occurance during WWII. After the war, when my dad got out of the Navy (this is the story HE told), he came back to my home town and this beautiful curly haired, red headed Irish girl was working in the coffee shop. He, the quintessential Italian, was smitten. They dated and then married. But at that time, no one would rent to them because they had kids. Discrimination was fine back then.

So they moved, with two small kids ages 5 and 2, to a cabin on a lake in Maine with no electricity and no running water. Water came from buckets out of the lake and, in winter, she had to chip a hole in the ice to get that water for cooking, washing clothes and diapers, and bathing. That’s feral.

My sister was born in that cabin on my parents first anniversary. My dad delivered her. Can you imagine how scared my mom must have been or even my dad for that matter? They just did what needed to be done to birth my sister and keep everyone alive.  My two other brothers were born one and three years later, also in that cabin.  Can you imagine 5 young children in a cabin on a lake in Maine with no electricity or running water??? Heat and cooking came from a fireplace and my dad cut over 20 cords if wood to heat it in the winter.

My mom epitomized the idea of feral. She was up in the woods, alone with her kids, hauling water, washing clothes and diapers (no pampers back then), and cooking over a fireplace and using a outhouse. With 5 small kids.

For years I have told that story with emphasis on how tough she was to be able to do those things physically. She was so strong. Yet I missed the important part. On the trail, I have suffered from a lack of women. There is no affinity group for me. The women I have met are section hikers. The only thru hikers are men. There is no place for a woman alone out here. You are an outsider, an interloper. You don’t belong. I have felt that very strongly.

I laid there in the shelter last night, listening to the snoring and farting and noises of men and thought of my mom. Thought of her getting divorced, thought of the brutal, yet joyful, life she had when she chose my dad and moved to that cabin. And for the first time, I thought about how lonely she must have been. She was alone up there at the lake with her children, no car because her husband had it at work, and no phone or electricity. She had no friends to talk to. Can you imagine how hard that must have been?

After my youngest brother was born, my dad got a job up at Ripogenus Dam. The men that worked there were given housing. There was a row of cabins, some connected and others seperate, but all close to each other that all the families lived in. So my mom moved there with 5 kids and all of a sudden, she could flick a light switch and had power to see and cook with. And she had running water. So many times on the trail, I have marvelled at having running clean water to fill up bottles, electricity, and flush toilets.

At Rip Dam, my mom bought a hand crank washing machine for laundry. She must have thought she had died and gone to heaven. Yet the real magic wasn’t the “modern” conveniences. The real magic was that this feral woman, who lived in the moment and did what needed to be done to take care of her family, had people nearby to depend on. The magic was that she now had a community of others who were like her. She had women nearby that she could share recipes with. She could share her struggles and hear theirs and relate to them. They could all share the burden of childcare. These women became her friends for their whole lives.

That’s the magic. Feral is when you just live. Society doesn’t matter. Grooming doesn’t matter. Relationships, helping each other, easing each other’s burden. That’s what being feral is all about.

My favorite poem by my favorite author, Mary Oliver, epitomizes the idea of being feral. It is important enough to paste the whole thing. This is for my wonderful, beautiful, amazing mother. I miss you and love you so much. Thank you for all you have given me.

Bee

Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

One of the best things that has happened to me on this trip was meeting Prophet (sorry I dont have a picture). He is a young guy who I met while we both were taking a rest at a shelter. He is an old soul who is very mindful and thoughtful. Super guy.

A couple of days after I met him, I was going along and had about 16.5 miles in and was just done. The next shelter was 4.1 miles away at a pretty steep incline so I opted to stop and camp by a stream. It was about 6:30 pm. Before I had even got my tent out, Prophet comes by and says “Bee, we have to go. It is going to rain and we won’t make it through the rocks on the next ridge in the rain.” When I was reluctant, the sun came out and he said “look Bee, the sun, it’s our sign that we have to go now”. So I said, “go on ahead, I am going to pull out my rain jacket and I will be right behind you”. Prophet took off and a couple of minutes later, I followed and hoofed it up this steep incline. When I got to the top, there was this boulder scramble. Like a “put your poles down and use your hands to get up the rocks” kind of place. And there, in the rocks, Prophet had waited for me. He is a good man.

For the next couple of days we talked about the trail and there were two areas in particular that he really helped me. The first was in lowering the weight of my gear. My pack wasn’t crazy heavy, but it was probably 28 pounds. I weigh 130 so I really don’t want to carry above 26 pounds (20% of my body weight). So we went through my gear and eliminated 3.6 pounds of extraneous stuff and then I switched out my bag and my bear can (THANK YOU SHAUN FOR THE MAIL DROP!!!!) and saved another 4 pounds, so 7.6 pounds in all. So my bag is now sub 22 pounds, fully loaded (food, water and base weight). And that is HUGE. It probably is the best thing I could have done to increase my chances of making it to Katahdin.

The second thing Prophet did was wax philosophical about the trail. He told me that there were 3 parts I would go through: body, mind, and spirit.

Body

The first few weeks on the trail, your body is going through a metamorphosis.  Your “trail legs” come in and become motors. For women, you gain weight in muscle. I have always been pretty athletic but my body is changing, it is become hard and the body fat is falling away. I am losing my soft curves.

And it is hard. There are so many days that my body is just wrecked, where everything hurts and I am wondering what to heck I am doing. The rocks in Pennsylvania (appropriately dubbed Rocksylvania) have been pounding the hell out of my feet and legs. So many days, I have doubted if I could go on. But as Prophet has said. “Bee you have to commit”. Sage words.

Our bodies are amazing things. They can do so much more than we realize. Like pushing 4 extra miles on a 16.5 mile day up a crazy incline and rock scramble. I just had to commit to it and once I did, I was there. And my 62 year old body was even keeping up with the youngsters.

Mind

I have only started experiencing the (in the words of Green Day) “subliminal mind f*ck”. One example, I had told myself I would give myself the day off when my mail drop came. But it ended up being a day later than expected and to try to get my body to behave and just walk on the day that was supposed to be my zero day (for zero miles) was like pulling out my teeth. It was crazy hard to convince my body to keep going. It didn’t help that on that day, I was climbing this stupid steep rocky section when the bottom dropped out of the sky and the rocks became slick as snot from the rain. I was cold, wet, struggling and just wanted to quit. I powered through another 20 mile day that day. I didn’t think I could do it.

But the real mind work comes after my body is conditioned, then the boredom and every day monotony of thru hiking sets in and I will have to convince myself to get up and walk. And I sing the same song to myself while I am  walking. For me, it is The Song that Never Ends. If that doesn’t drive me crazy, nothing will. But if I can overcome the mind play, the reward I will get is the spiritual part of the trail.

Spirit

After a couple of months, once my body becomes accustomed to what it is doing and I tame my mind, that’s when the rewards come. The trail “talks” to me. It gives me a problem that I have to solve to move on. Maybe it is a shelter where I thought I would stop that has a sign that says “large rattlesnake living under the shelter” which means I have to move on further than I wanted. Or maybe an area with no trees to do a proper bear hang of my food or a really long stretch with no water and I have to figure it out.

These things allow me to think flexibly, to overcome obstacles, and ultimately  succeed. It gives me space to think. It allows me to appreciate and be grateful for the beautiful world I live in. And to be grateful for this adventure I got to have. It calms my soul and helps me be more mindful and listen more. It allows me to ignore the cacophony of the modern world. I just put one foot in front of the other, one blaze at a time, one problem to solve, one crisis to avert. And there is a serenity that happens. Life takes on a different meaning than all the accolades, awards, titles, bank statements, etc that I chased in the “real” world. I realize that none of that matters.

At least, that’s what I think will happen. I hope the trail teaches me how to appreciate the people in my life in powerful ways. I hope it reminds me what is important. One thing it has already shown me is that the natural world that is our birthright is what I should be focused on not the crazy world that humans created with its virtual space, cars with drivers that have road rage, buildings to work in while people live on the street, etc. Every time I go into a town to resupply, I feel my anxiety building. That’s a weird, artificial world that is focused on the humans that created it rather than what I personally need to focus on which is the natural world we were born into. It is a different space to be. But that’s just what I am learning right now. Who knows what the trail will teach me or how long I can last? 

Bee (200+ miles and counting)

“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place in the family of things.”

Today’s quote comes from a poem call Wild Geese by Mary Oliver. Here is the whole thing if you want to read it. https://allpoetry.com/poem/15374223-Wild-geese-by-Mary-J-Oliver

I have to admit, even though it is hard, I am not sure when I was this happy. And I am learning so much. So let me break it down for you.

Kindness

The best part of the trail so far has been the people. My first night, I met three section hikers who I shared a shelter with.

Diet Coke and Wildflower met the first section they hiked on the trail in 2023 and have been friends ever since.  Every year they meet up for three weeks and hike another section with the plan to get it done when it is done. Snowball was out for a weekend of backpacking. They are three of the kindest people I have ever met. They gave advice, shared their stories, and just made me feel so at home. I got to camp with Diet Coke and Wildflower the first few nights.

On night two, I met Wolfpacker and he and I bonded over both being NCSU alums. He is a retired English teacher and we found a common love of literature and poetry, particularly dealing with topics of nature. He gave me a great reading list I am going to tackle. And he was willing to let me contact him to discuss what I read. I love to talk about books with people.

Wolfpacker will always hold a special place in my heart for his willingness to be vulnerable and authentic and share his story with me. I was touched and hope that my listening helped him a little. That’s what telling our stories allows us to do, it takes some of the pressure off and allows other people to help carry the load. I believe as humans, we are all here to ease each other’s burdens.

I hope Wolfpacker and I become great friends. He is a wonderful human being.

Trail Magic

I got a taste of my first trail magic also. When I was running out of food and needed to resupply, I met a couple in the park that was offering rides into town. Planning on spending a night to see the town of Gettysburg, I took them up on their kind offer. Shortcut (named because most of his shortcuts end up being longer) is a thru-hiker but I forgot the year of his hike. He and his wife Victoria picked me up, gave me cold beverages (I cannot tell you how much of a treat a cold beverage is) and then graciously gave me the most wonderful tour of the Gettysburg battlefield.

As we rode around, all I could think of is the tragic deaths of all the men who fought in a war over the ability of human beings to buy, sell, and own other human beings. Gettysburg is a powerful reminder of the worst and the best that humans can be. Every person in the U.S. should see it in their lifetime. It hits hard.

All of these people I have mentioned, and all the others I have met, have filled my soul with hope, something I have been missing for a long time. We don’t all have the same religious or political beliefs but none of that matters. They are kind. That’s what matters and it is restoring my faith in humanity.

Learning

When I decided to hike the trail, I needed a “why” to motivate me. I knew the trail would teach me a lot, but what I most hope to learn is how to ask for and let other people help me. Everyone who knows me well knows that I am fiercely independent. I don’t allow a lot of reciprocity in my relationships and that needs to change. By never accepting help, I take away from others the bonding and feelings of joy we get from helping others.

The trail taught me a huge lesson regarding this. There was a spot when climbing up in the rocks that I couldn’t see the white blaze that marks the trail. It was on a tree that had fallen over in a windstorm. I wasn’t sure which way to go, it was pretty steep and very rocky (hello Maryland and Pennsylvania).

I looked around on the ground and I could see where the fallen leaf litter was crushed by footprints. Those are the footprints of all who have come before me and they will be followed by all who come after. That’s how life works. We don’t walk this world alone. Lesson one hit me right where I needed it to. 

Trail Names

Since I started talking about this journey, everyone has tried to get me to pick a trail name. I resisted because I wanted the trail to give me a name. Usually it has a funny story behind it. Here is mine.

I have a good friend who is a beekeeper and he has been teaching me about honeybees.  I am terrified of bees. But I have been pretty excited about all I have learned. Every time on the trail that I was challenged or discouraged, I would see a bee. They seemed to be reminding me not to be scared. And in typical Robin fashion, I was ready to launch into my dissertation on all I know about honeybees when the trail gave me the name Bumblebee. Wait, is a bumblebee and a honeybee the same? Okay Honeybee. Wait no, Bumblebee. I didn’t know.  So I asked my friend and he said “Bumblebees are a big fat solitary creatures. They don’t make honey and they live in the ground. Honeybees make honey but are technically an invasive species of bee but they give us sweet stuff.”

And then he told me that, in Pennsylvania (where I was), there is a species of bumblebee named Bombas Perplexus which means perplexing bumblebee. Hmm. When I looked up the picture, sure enough, those were my bees. I was going to give my bee dissertation, which would have been completely wrong because they weren’t the same bees!! Who knew??

However, in my life, I have been solitary, sometimes fat, and always perplexing. But I am walking the trail in order to be be sweeter. So I guess I am a bit of all of those. So it’s just Bee.

I am having the time of my life.

Bee

“Life is not what you alone make it. Life is the input of everyone who touched your life and every experience that entered it. We are all part of one another.” — Yuri Kochiyama

And so it begins again. I am officially homeless with all my belongings in a 5′ x 10′ storage unit or in the back of my car. I performed my last work related task last week going to a workshop in Virginia. When that workshop was over and everyone prepared to go home, I realized, I didn’t have a home and the reality of sabbatical really hit me hard. This isn’t a bad thing, it is just a different thing. It unsettles me a bit. As a person who likes a routine, the thought of being adrift, living in other people’s homes and lives for over a year is a little unnerving. However, it is definitely an opportunity for growth and collecting stories.

When you are on the road, you have a lot of time to reflect in addition to listening to a lot of NPR. When I left Seattle, I had the privilege of having my adult son with me while I was driving across the country. It was wonderful to have an extra person to help with driving, bikes, and gear. We got to see some mountains, buffalo, the great plains, all while arguing the merits of the metric system.

It was also great just to get to spend some time with him. The older we get, we realize that the time we have with loved ones is finite and I will take every opportunity in my life to develop and foster my relationships.

Life takes so many twists and turns. Relationships begin and end and we have to appreciate what they give us while we have them. As I read through this blog, I realized how my relationships over the last decade since my last sabbatical have changed. Some have become stronger, others have faded, and some of them are no more. From all of them, I have grown and learned and become the woman I am today. The memories and knowledge of the love I have received are what makes it possible to face the unknown, the lack of routine, and the chosen path of homelessness I am embarking on. The love we have in our lives is the foundation of our strength and I will never take it for granted.