Trail Blazer Read online

  “I looked it up,” said Gretchen. “We could fly Traverse City to Chicago, Chicago to Bangor, Maine. Then we’d have to catch some kind of van to Monson, Maine where the trail starts.”

  “I just don’t know,” Naomi wavered once again. “It sounds cool, I’m just not so confident in myself that I could do it. Do you think we could even get the time off work together?”

  “I’m not worried about work at all,” said Gretchen. “Jim is cool, he’ll easily be able to get our shifts covered. And my boss Nick at the knife shop will be fine with it, too. That’s the best part of having these part-time lifestyle jobs. Easy to take off from if you need to.”

  “I’d really have to think about it,” said Naomi. She was obviously nervous about committing to such an adventure. “It’s way outside my comfort zone, you know? I don’t even have all the gear I would need, plus I’m sure the plane ticket will be expensive.”

  “I’ve got a ton of gear,” said Gretchen. “You won’t really need to buy much at all if you don’t want to. I’ve got technical clothes that would fit you, I’ve got a spare backpack. We might have to get a few things, but it won’t cost all that much. The flight will be a bit of money, plus we’ll probably end up spending the first and last nights in a hostel in Monson. But come on. It’ll be an amazing experience. You won’t regret it.”

  “You’re really giving me the hard sell here, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Gretchen admitted and smiled. “That’s because I want you to come.”

  “Ugh,” Naomi groaned, tossing her head back and looking upward as she considered it all. It did sound like a difficult hike, but it would be something that would certainly pull her out of the life she was used to. And to spend that amount of time alone with Gretchen, that would be a nice bonus as well. Naomi was eager to spend as much time with her friend as she could.

  “Pretty please?” begged Gretchen. “It’ll be your birthday present to me.”

  “Okay,” Naomi finally accepted. She looked across the table and smiled an agreeable smile, as though all her indecision had evaporated. “I’ll do it.”

  “You will?” beamed Gretchen. “That’s awesome, Naomi! Yes!”

  “My birthday present to you,” Naomi continued. She held up her beer can and hoisted it toward Gretchen.

  “Cheers!” Gretchen called, knocking her can against Naomi’s. They each took a gulp of beer.

  “Cheers,” Naomi said after swallowing, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “I’m going to start researching more tomorrow,” Gretchen said enthusiastically. “I’ll get everything planned out. You don’t have to do a thing. We’ll do a couple all-day hikes through Sleeping Bear as practice with our packs fully loaded. This is going to be great, Naomi. I am so excited!”

  Naomi gave her friend a reassuring smile, and she took another drink for courage. Though her own anxiety about agreeing to this adventure was converging with Gretchen’s excitement. This trip could actually turn out to be something very special.

  Gretchen began planning the trip right away. Her birthday wasn’t too far off—the middle of August—and the idea was that they would walk their last day of the 100 Mile Wilderness hike on her birthday. She wanted to remove any stress of planning from Naomi, and instead help her focus on the actual physicality of the adventure on which they were about to embark. It would be a test of both outward and inward strength. It would push both to their limits. The exciting part was discovering what might await them at those limits.

  To prepare, Gretchen and Naomi resolved to get outdoors and fit in a handful of hikes before tackling the 100 Mile Wilderness. Before any joint shifts at Dune City, Naomi would come by Gretchen’s apartment early and the two of them would head out on the trail system surrounding the complex. It wasn’t much of a distance, just a handful of miles, but it was an opportunity for them to test out the gear they might take to Maine with them. And it was an opportunity for them to talk further about the impending trek, and figure out how they might best navigate it together.

  It was a weekday morning, a day both of them had off from work, and they drove out to the Lake Ann Loop. It was only about a three mile hike, but it was a beautiful location among a thick forest, rivers, and lakes. The morning was warm, and the girls dressed accordingly in shorts and tanks. They both wore backpacks, though they weren’t as loaded down as they would be for the main event. Although they weren’t the only people traversing the trail, it wasn’t as busy as it might ordinarily be on a weekend in the middle of summer.

  “How are you liking those new shoes?” Gretchen asked. Naomi looked down at her feet as she walked.

  “They’re great,” she replied. “Much better than my sneakers. When I hit my toe on a rock or a tree root, it doesn’t hurt!”

  “Right,” said Gretchen with a short laugh. “It’s good to have shoes actually meant for hiking.”

  “They seem like they’ll hold up well,” said Naomi. With her hands gripping to the straps of her backpack, her eyes returned to the trail and she continued on.

  “We should also get you some sandals,” said Gretchen. “There will be some rivers we have to ford on the hike.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Naomi. “Ford?”

  “Just… hike through,” Gretchen clarified. “We’ll have to walk through the water. You probably won’t want to get your shoes and socks wet. So if we get some sandals, it’ll make it easier. Plus, I’m sure there will be times when your feet are really hurting and you’ll just want something lighter.”

  “You think it’s going to be bad?”

  “It could get bad,” said Gretchen. “Blisters. Cramps. I mean, we’re hiking a hundred miles in a week. Start preparing mentally for it now.”

  “Have you ever done anything this long?” Naomi questioned.

  “Never,” admitted Gretchen. “But that’s why it’s so enticing to me. It’s like a spiritual journey.”

  “I hope it is,” said Naomi. She smiled softly.

  “Another thing I wanted to mention,” Gretchen went on, a curious smile moving across her lips. “Is trail names.”

  “What?”

  “Well, a lot of hikers go by trail names when on the trail,” said Gretchen. “It’s a way to set you apart from others, and to show your personality. Some people just pick something to go by, others let the name come to them on the trail. It’s up to you if you want to come up with something or let it happen naturally.”

  “Do you have a trail name?” asked Naomi.

  “I’ve never really done a long enough hike for it to be a thing,” said Gretchen. “But I did have a nickname in college that a lot of old friends know me as. So I’ll probably go by that.”

  “And what is that?”

  “It’s kind of embarrassing,” Gretchen replied, laughing at the thought of it. “Piggy.”

  “Piggy?” said Naomi skeptically.

  “Yeah, Piggy,” said Gretchen. “Like Miss Piggy. Or just Piggy. Or whatever. I got the name when I lived in the dorms because I would absolutely scarf down my food at the cafeteria. I’ve always been pretty athletic, so when it comes time to eat, I’m ravenous. I don’t eat slow. And I’m blonde, like Miss Piggy.” Naomi couldn’t help but laugh.

  “That’s kind of mean, don’t you think?” she said. “Calling you a pig?”

  “I guess it carries a different connotation when the person you’re calling Piggy has abs,” Gretchen conferred, offering another laugh. “It wasn’t a mean thing. It was just some of my teammates teasing me a bit. I like it, actually. It’s accurate.”

  “Okay,” said Naomi. “So I guess you’re Piggy on the trail. What about me?”

  “I don’t know,” said Gretchen, carefully stepping over an exposed tree root. “Do you have a nickname or something you want to be called? It could be based on something you feel defines you, or where you come from, or a trait. Anything, really.”

  Just then, they came to a clearing that revealed a small lake. They steppe
d up as close as they could to the waterfront and paused in their walk, as Naomi maintained a plaintive look on her face, trying to come up with a name that might do her justice. Gretchen grinned and took a deep breath, scanning out over the calm waters in front of them.

  “How about Nova?” Naomi said finally.

  “Nova?” Gretchen replied. “What’s the significance?”

  “Sometimes I feel like I burn bright,” Naomi said. “Only to soon fade away.”

  “That’s a little sad.”

  “Maybe a little,” admitted Naomi. “I’m still figuring out how to stay burning bright. Maybe this hike will help me with that.”

  Gretchen slowly smiled, her head nodding as the idea sank in. Soon, her smile had gotten wide, her blue eyes twinkling.

  “Yeah,” she said with authority. “I like it. Nova.”

  “Piggy and Nova,” said Naomi. “Sounds like a couple of expert hikers.” Gretchen laughed.

  “It does, doesn’t it?”

  After they completed the loop, the girls ended up back in the parking lot at Naomi’s car. It was a small sedan, nearing a decade in age, and Naomi sat in the backseat with the door open, changing out of her hiking shoes and into some flip-flops. Gretchen stood near her, gulping water from a green-tinted wide mouth bottle. There was a oval sticker on one side of it, white with black lettering, that simply said, “TC.”

  Even this short hike in the summer heat had made them parched, and they worked up a nice sweat from it—especially so from carrying their backpacks. When Naomi stood up from the backseat of the car, now adorned in her flip-flops, she looked happily exhausted, her skin lightly dewy, her tank top rolled up a couple of times to expose her trim belly. Reaching out, she grabbed Gretchen’s water bottle from her and took a drink.

  Gretchen smiled blithely as she watched Naomi drink. She looked her up and down and felt happy. Naomi really had become her best friend. It had been a fast transition. They got along so well, they had a lot in common, and the attraction Gretchen felt for her was difficult to ignore. Although she knew nothing would ever come from it, there was always something in the back of her mind longing for more from her pretty friend. The pale face, those light freckles, that dark hair, and her big green eyes. Naomi was beautiful.

  After finishing with the water, Naomi sighed at the refreshment. She caught Gretchen looking at her, and she grinned. Sticking her arm out, she handed the water bottle back to Gretchen.

  “Thanks,” said Naomi. “I guess I should have brought my own.”

  “No problem,” said Gretchen. “If we don’t have enough, we can stop at a gas station on the way back home to pick up some more.”

  “That’s all right,” said Naomi. “I’ll manage. What are we going to do in Maine?”

  “We’ll bring water filtration with us,” Gretchen offered. “And we’ll filter water from streams.”

  “Is that safe?”

  “Oh yeah,” said Gretchen. “This is some pretty deep wilderness we’re talking about. Not a lot of civilization around. The water is clear and clean. And the filters will remove any kind of sediment or bacteria or whatever that could be in it. We’ll be good.”

  “Good to know,” said Naomi. “So we won’t have to worry about carrying a bunch of water with us.”

  “Nope,” said Gretchen. “That would be pretty rough.”

  “It was hard enough slogging through these woods with just that backpack on,” Naomi revealed. “I don’t know how I’m going to do with a bigger one. What is it, thirty or forty liters?”

  “Forty-five liters,” Gretchen corrected. “We’re going to have a good amount of stuff. Extra clothes, first aid, minimal camping gear, food.”

  “Forty-five liters,” Naomi repeated. She laughed. “Okay.”

  Gretchen grinned. Even though Naomi was often skeptical, she was agreeable just as often. She was game for whatever the plan happened to be. She had an open mind. Gretchen liked that about her. And she was certain an open mind would really help them on that arduous hike, a hike that was getting closer with every passing day.

  Naomi sat alone on the wood floor of her cottage. Spread out in front of her was an unfolded map of the 100 Mile Wilderness that Gretchen had given to her. Her eyes followed along the hiking paths, mentally making notes of the various points of interest. It seemed crazy to her that they would be hiking fifteen miles or more a day, through the dense woods, over rivers, and into the mountains. There would be thousands of feet of elevation gain. Gretchen had said that, if they hiked according to plan, on one particular day they would gain almost five thousand feet in elevation.

  But she also could feel the thrill and excitement of doing such a big thing overtake her. Perhaps her anxiety about it was just excitement. After all, she was fit enough. So was Gretchen, and additionally Gretchen had plenty of hiking and camping experience. She was confident and smart. There really wouldn’t be anything to worry about. Maybe bears. Naomi had seen bears a few times in her life around Traverse City. Bears, far out in the wilderness, away from civilization, were a more frightening proposition, though.

  It was starting to sink in that this was really happening. Gretchen had secured their plane tickets, and Naomi had already paid her back. They had gotten the time off of work. In fact, their manager Jim was enthusiastic about them going. He had always wanted to hike the Appalachian Trail himself, he knew about the 100 Mile Wilderness, and he said he was actually quite jealous that Gretchen and Naomi were doing it. All of this made Naomi’s head spin. There was no going back now. This hike was happening.

  Naomi rolled on her back on the floor and looked up at the ceiling, a calm smile on her face. She closed her eyes and she imagined what it would be like. In her daydream, she saw herself and Gretchen hiking along a rocky path, smiling and laughing, holding deep, meaningful, philosophical conversations. They would talk about everything. Even stuff that they had never talked about together. Really personal stuff. Secrets and inner desires. Nothing would be off the table. When you embark on such an onerous journey, you’re bound to grow much closer with your company.

  Further still in her day dream, Naomi imagined sharing a tent with Gretchen. It would have to be a small tent if they were to carry it on their back. Pressed up next to each other, sharing a sleeping bag, exhausted from a long day of hiking, Naomi pictured wrapping her arms around Gretchen and holding tight to her. Naturally, the two of them lightly kissed one another, but more than just a few easy pecks. The kisses felt emotionally powerful, despite their softness. And then, they would go to sleep in one another’s arms, longing for a rejuvenating slumber so that they could do it all again tomorrow.

  Naomi opened her eyes in a jolt, and she stared upwards at the ceiling once again. It wasn’t that she wanted to fight those kind of thoughts. It was more that they confused her. She had gone so long defining herself as one thing, all while constantly having these thoughts deep in her mind. It had started, she remembered, in high school. There was something about one of her good friends at the time, Lily French. Lily was pretty and outgoing and blonde, a lot like Gretchen. And back then, Naomi often daydreamed about what it might be like to kiss Lily.

  She kept it all bottled up. Back then, she was a lot more active in the church. She didn’t have a choice, really. Her parents made her go. And on some level, she embraced it. There was a lot of camaraderie and positivity around being active with the church’s youth program. They did a lot of events together, they took trips down to Grand Rapids to go to museums and concerts. But they also conferred onto Naomi that the kind of thoughts she had been having about Lily were wrong. And she took that as the truth.

  Some time in her early twenties, however, Naomi fell out of the church. It just didn’t seem to fit her anymore. Her parents were upset, but they allowed Naomi her freedom. Around that time, she moved out of the family house and into the cottage out back. With this move, this step toward independence, Naomi slowly dropped all the beliefs she had grown up with. She just let them go, withou
t any fanfare. It was a natural progression, but even as she approached thirty it was still something she wrestled with.

  Sitting up now, Naomi scooted over toward the small couch in her living room and sat crosslegged in front of it. On the cushion in front of her was her laptop, and she deftly opened up the screen and began to move her finger over the trackpad. At first, she brought up a search engine with the intention to suss out more information about the hike. But very quickly she found herself typing something completely different into the search bar.

  “How to tell if you’re bisexu--” Naomi typed. But then she stopped and she looked at the word she had half-typed. After another moment, she tapped the delete key a handful of times until that word disappeared. And in it’s place, she instead wrote out, “lesbian.”

  The search engine returned a whole host of results, many of them seeming a bit pithy or overly simplistic. On one particular web page, a list of “ten ways to know if you’re a lesbian” informed Naomi that if you find yourself wearing plaid and sneakers all the time you might be a lesbian. This made Naomi scoff. It felt so trite and superficial. Of course she wore plaid—the winters in northern Michigan were cold, and flannel shirts, often plaid, helped her keep warm. And sneakers, who didn’t wear sneakers?

  She then moved on to an online test to determine whether or not she was a lesbian, but she quickly gave that up. The first question, “Who do you find most attractive,” immediately put a sour taste in her mouth with the available answers. Things like, “What were you saying, I was thinking about boys,” and “Why would I find girls attractive, gross,” along with simply “girls” as the answer most in line with what Naomi was trying to determine. This test felt like it had an agenda, so juvenile and worthless. After that, the entire prospect of using the internet to figure out her feelings seemed like a lost cause.

  Perhaps these articles and questions and tests were geared for a younger audience, a crowd of girls who might need to ease into these nebulous ideas. Not a woman approaching thirty who should have a better grasp of herself. Then again, nothing about Naomi screamed adulthood apart from her age. Still living at home, still working a part-time job, still unsure of her emotions and feelings. It made Naomi feel stunted and small and alone.