After Erwin, the terrain is distinctively beautiful with windswept balds, spruce forests, sharp rock ledges, and deep, dark blue rivers running far below us. Crossing over Roan Mountain, there are still patches of snow covering the higher peaks, and at night a cold wind blows through the thin fabric of our tent making us shiver inside. At daytime, we walk on the vast, endless balds, scorched by the sun and surrounded by deserted mountains as far as one can see. I find this barren landscape beautiful but melancholic, strangely void of meaning in a way that I can’t explain.
A week before our departure, I sat in my office when it suddenly struck me that I could not remember the last time I felt happy. The days seemed to pass futile, and brought no purpose with them. It was that kind of half life that I had grown tired of, fearing death and yet not fully here. Perhaps this is what trauma does to people: it’s not so much a desire to die but an inability to be alive. Now as I walk through the silent forest, I ask myself whether I’m happy on the trail either?
With such thoughts stuck in my mind, I am particularly eager for distractions. When a hiker named JJ decides to tell us about what he calls ‘ramps’, I’m excited to learn more. “It’s a delicious plant”, he says, “and real expensive too if y’all go looking for it in the supermarket”. Determined not to be the kind of person who is too scared to eat anything not pre-packaged, I pick up few of the plants he shows us, and carry them back to the small campsite we are staying at that night. It’s a clear but windy and bitterly cold evening – we are the only people present at the campsite, apart from a shy teenage couple who quickly disappears inside an oversized yellow tent. Later that night, we watch a pale moon rise over the mountains, and while Hufflepuff is lighting up a fire, I carefully chop the ramps into our Alfredo pasta. To our disappointment, the taste is bitter, nothing like wild onions as JJ described. Hufflepuff refuses to finish their plate but I’m too hungry to throw away a whole portion of what is my favourite Knorrs pasta side.
I’ve barely eaten half of my plate when the first wave of nausea hits. It’s already dark – I run into the forest and bend over, nearly falling on my knees as the vomit rushes out. My stomach is burning and I gasp for air, suddenly certain I’m going to faint. It is hard to breathe, and I now find it nearly impossible to stay awake; I briefly wonder if this is what dying feels like. I try to remember when was the last time we passed a road but can’t – there is absolutely nowhere an ambulance could reach out here. Half conscious, I simply lie down on the ground as my body continues to retch and dutifully expel every piece of the poisonous plant I’ve just eaten. Hours pass and I lose track of time; I am only half aware of Hufflepuff leaving and then returning with the two nervous teenagers. The three of them grab me by the arms and legs and slowly carry me back to the tent. By then, I’m no longer vomiting, ready to let go and fall sleep. That’s when Hufflepuff starts vomiting, and so the night goes on.
The next morning, I wake up tired and slightly weakened, but to my surprise, I feel no signs of the mysterious poisoning. Hufflepuff is still feeling nauseous; wearing nothing but our pyjamas we stagger to a nearby stream and do our best to wash our clothes that are still covered in dried-up vomit. It’s nearly 11 am when we finally start walking, just as we hear the first sounds of thunder. Two things seem to occur nearly simultaneously: a text message alert informs us of a flash flood warning, and seconds later, it starts pouring. Soon, a dense white fog has descended over the forest and underneath our feet, the trail has turned into a roaring river. One of the streams we cross is so overflown that we are forced to remove our shoes and somewhat unsteadily wade through the murky, knee-deep water. It doesn’t take long until I am soaked underneath my rain coat, and water is also slowly making its way through my supposedly waterproof goretex boots.
Perhaps because of the storm (or the ramps), I don’t notice it before it’s right in front of me, a modest stack of sticks on the trail, neatly arranged in the number 400. I had compleptely forgotten we were passing mile 400 today! I abruptly stop in front of it, and then the tears come out of nowhere, inexhaustible. It takes me a moment to realize that they are not tears of sadness but of joy. I cry and cry until Ana shows up and then we laugh together in a moment of exhilaration, suddenly at utter disbelief at what our life has become.
The rain doesn’t stop the next day, or the day after that. On the third day, despite the fact it is mid-April, the temperature suddenly drops and the rain turns into snow. We have no other choice but to keep moving, setting up a wet tent at the end of each day, cooking dinner in the tent vestibule, and holding onto a futile hope that our clothes will somehow dry during the night. The wood is too damp to make fires at camp; instead, I wear every single item of clothing I have, grateful I didn’t decide to mail my winter clothes back home just yet. The morning we arrive in Damascus, the rain finally stops, as if knowing that soon we’ll be out of its reach. Exhausted and sleep-deprived, with every single item of my gear wet, I have never felt as relieved to arrive in town.
I used to imagine I was fragile, my body a ragtag doll that could too easily be pulled apart by the mundane forces of life. From the outside it looks the same as always – I have barely lost any weight, my hair still the same, if faded, red of the DIY box dye I bought in February. Looking in the mirror, it is hard to believe this person has walked 460 miles; patiently carrying my modest and not-quite-ultralight set of belongings across windy ridge lines and flooding rivers, long after my misshaped, swollen feet have gone numb. It’s hard to believe a couple of days ago I thought I was dying on the dark, damp forest floor, and yet here I am, still walking north. And then it occurs to me, if my body can recover from all of this, surely the mind and the soul can too?
(Later, it becomes clear that the plant we ate was indeed not a ramp. Comparing it to the images on google, there is in fact very little resemblance between the two plants. We even learn about another hiker who got sick as a result of eating the same plant as us after listening to JJ. Curiously, JJ himself disappears shortly after these events, and we never see him again. Perhaps he is on the run from angry hikers, or maybe he succumbed after a meal of ramps. Sadly as a result of all of this, I am never able to eat Alfredo pasta again.)
The Rainbow Blaze 