Two days before our backpacking trip, a box arrives containing my rush order supplies. Having given increasing worry thought to the prospect of staking out on the Appalachian Trail for three days with my son the wilderness boy, I’ve spent a fair bit of time online myself, researching and preparing for disaster adventure. It’s like Christmas at the dinner table, and even though Bill oohs over each item from the box, my trip planner just scoffs. “Bear bells, mom? Really?”

It’s actually the second time I’ve tried to pawn these off on my outdoor enthusiasts. The first was Sophie’s “Grand Canyon or Bust” trip last summer. She scoffed, too. What is it with my people? He is shaking his head while I demo the cool magnetic silencer and how you can clip it to your pack like this, right here…see…? (For the record, not one hiker we encountered on the trail was sporting a bear bell. I would have felt like a total dweeb.)

The rest of my loot is vetoed as well: an emergency whistle, a compass, a 120 decibel “survival horn” with guaranteed 1 mile output, and a waterproof solar-powered cell phone charger with 2 built-in LED flash lights. Mom, geeze! He’s in pain just surveying it all. To the pile I have added our already-in-house stash of pocket knife, bug spray and the Mace we overbought with Sophie’s little run in with two-legged animals at UVA. More on that never. But my guy is a hard-read these days; toys that I thought would delight and show him I’m no NPC have been met with disdain. Most of the contents of my ACME survivalist kit is rejected out of hand.

Instead, here is what I am hauling up the mountain on my back: a sleeping bag and a hammock, three T-shirts and a change of shorts, four pairs of socks. I take the socks part seriously, since all my guys (one of them a Marine) have talked about for weeks is boots and feet. Nevertheless, I wanna take “make-do” to the mountains—keep it real, right? So I guess these synthetic crew socks I bought Ellie when she was in middle school will do nicely. A kid’s Disney princess toothbrush (smaller/shorter—plus, it’s Jasmine) and a mini toothpaste. A rain jacket. An umbrella (!) At this one I have to laugh. I whipped out my polka dot umbrella for a rainy day hike with Sophie last summer and all but shamed myself down Lower Shamokin Falls. I should think but for its lightening rod properties at 4000 feet, an umbrella is a fine choice. In the mountains you never know, right?? Understatement of the century. But I am grateful for the common sense and comforting feel of a Totes pop-up, purse edition. Puts me way more at ease than the keg-sized “bear can” we apparently need to haul.

Some of my gear does pass muster: Three bandanas, a neatly packaged pair of spare bootlaces, a flashlight, a headlamp, the bug spray, a dollar store jack-knife and the compass, which Will begrudgingly allows. It’s pretty funny raiding your hall closet and laundry room drawer that have been catch-alls for family trips and outing these past 20 years: random cache of expired sunscreen, a greasy spray can or two of Cutter’s “Backyard Warrior” down to their last puffs, and a pair of scratched sunglasses. Nothing like we are going to need for this trip: ditty bag and a two-way GPS satellite communicator with emergency locator beacon.

Pulled from my pack and laid on the kitchen table like I’m trafficking contraband up the mountain: deodorant, hairbrush, Wet-ones, and any footwear besides the boots on my feet. All this in one lovely neopropylene “carry on” (I tell you what, whole new meaning of that term at 3600 ft elevation), plus 6 lbs of water—four that he filtered and filled for me into one of those Camelback bladder thingies I’m sure is going to leak or get punctured along the way and soak my meager packings, and two that I smuggle into my side pockets when I finally catch wind of the mileage between water sources on said hike.

Will is carrying considerably more, as he has our food supply loaded into the bear can—an impenetrable, indestructible black barrel (2 lbs dry weight) plastered with reflective tape because (and I quote) “sometimes the bears mess with it and move it around in the woods, so you gotta be able to find it if it holds all your food,” (!) plus the propane burner and cookware to feed us for three days. Our trail menu? Six PBJS, a package of trail mix, a Tupperware of cooked lentils, a packet of cooked rice, plus one can each of chicken, tuna, corn, and black beans, 8 packs of instant oatmeal and 14 cereal bars. Oh yeah, and 2 leftover packets of “Hammer Gel” from his bike racing season. Have I lost my mind?! I’m actually going to ingest chocolate-flavored pre workout rapid energy fuel? Now I really am a teenager. He also, I discover en route, is packing much of the weaponry he poo-pooed for me: a military grade compass and a 6″ switchblade. And more water than his stated allowance as well. His preparation going into this gives me both comfort and alarm.

After days of preparing and weeks—no, months—of talking about it, our mother-son hike is really happening. We haven’t discussed the details much. Read: at all. I’m not sure I thought it would actually happen. But the “now or never” reality that has propelled me onto more than one roller coaster and into more than one challenging sub classroom or even onto your basic commercial flight (“Dig deeper!” says life. “Outta the way of my shovel!” I yell back) took hold and I just never got off. And so the train stopped here: night before. Then it is day of. Then it is drive out. Then it is 8 am and we’re standing in a gravel lot by the side of the road where Skyline crosses the Blue Ridge Parkway watching cars buzz by on their way to work and Will hefts my pack out of the car and onto my shoulders, yanking and cinching onto my back what feels like a Santa sack filled with cinderblocks. How is it they say—? A journey of a thousand miles begins in a full sweat—I mean, a single. Step. With a glance up to the mountains that surround us and a squint into the morning sun, I lean forward, jump the pack up to a more comfortable position on my back, and fall in behind my hiking boy.

What got us here is part syllogism and part child’s story. First, the syllogism:

Major Premise: Backpacking alone is a bad idea.

Minor Premise: Will wants to go backpacking. (Like, desperately. Like, reading, researching and gearing up for months and cannot breath indoor air another minute.)

Therefore (ergo), Will needs to find a hiking buddy.

Actually that’s pretty faulty logic since it implies a host of other minor premises, not the least of which being that Will will logically want to avoid bad ideas. Or danger. But I am trying to convey the urgency, almost the logical necessity with which Boy must hit the trail this summer. He’s tried the “begging parents senseless for a solo mission” route. He’s tried the “talk somebody else into it” route. I even threw down one of my trusty Facebook posts on an Appalachian Trail group I joined (don’t tell him), asking for a partner or group going. He was registered for the most expensive but also most responsible method: Hiking expedition camp, a week in the George Washington National Forest, but that got pulled down last month. So basically the narrowing down of options in inverse proposition to the mounting desperation with which he wants to go, combined with the shot-from-a-cannon feel to this summer’s pacing is bringing the whole thing to a head: Mom will go. That’s right: Ergo, mom. I am the necessary conclusion.

In the story, a wonderful picture book by Margaret Wise Brown (of beloved Goodnight Moon fame), a little bunny hot to lit out on his own lists all the ways he’s going to run away from his mother bunny. She in turn, matches his mini mutinies with maternal comfort: “If you become a bird and fly away,” said his mother, “I will become a tree that you can fly home to.” The child listener is left wondering how a rabbit can turn into a tree or the wind or a tightrope walker, while the mother reader (I must have read this 5000 times to my little bunnies) knows exactly how. Because she knows in her heart she would go anywhere to be with her little bunny. There is no where you can run, basically is the message of this tale, to escape my desire for your wellbeing. And I will morph myself into anything to secure it.

I am in that place. I can’t tell you the number of amusement park rides, bike trails, boat trips, sled rides, ski slopes and other hair-graying missions I’ve been on with this kid, forty years my junior. Boy has had me in the deep end of life since his birth. His very first night in a hammock in our backyard a decade ago? Guess who was freezing her mother bunny butt off in the tree next to him?

Selfishly, secretly, I want this, too. For one, I’m curious. I’ve always wanted to hike on the AT, or I’ve always said I wanted to, two very different things indeed. I have no idea what it’s like, and my chance to find out is about to pound out some college essays this fall and be gone like them other traveler/wanderers I birthed. Oh, they go, all right. But they leave Mother Bunny home tending carrots.

Plus I’m curious about me. I want to know I can do it. A little mid-life check, you know? I’ve lived out of a backpack before—three months in fact, travelling via Eurail at their age after college. I’m familiar with that scrutiny of belongings with the single variable being weight. Whatchu want or need badly enough to carry it 14 miles uphill? I’m familiar with the freedom of casting it all off, of walking free of your trappings and possessions, with the no-bathe zone, and with the “come what may” mentality that sets in for the extended traveler. It’s pure freedom, that stuff-less-ness. But this here is the mountains, the wilderness, and the carefree escapes me. More than that, say the survival stories he’s been reading all spring: the carefree can kill you. No worries there – I’ve packed enough apprehension to weigh me down, had I packed nothing at all.

I don’t know what scares me more, the worry about what’s “out there” or, let’s be honest, what’s within. Will my knees make it? Will I have the strength? Will I manage the heat? The distances? The endurance? What about the lack of every creature comfort? Ain’t no “bathhouse” on the AT and the “shelters” have been known (and pictured) to have rattle snakes in them on account of the mice. I’m no over-packer and I love camping; even more than that I love the forest and being in it, but still…not alone, and not out of cellular range and certainly not a days’ hike from civilization, our car, or emergency services of any kind.

I know can hike for eight hours at a clip because I’ve done it in recent memory (See Ground– July 2020), but those eight hours included the last steps back into my waiting vehicle and a drive home to showers and dinner. Can I hike like that for three days straight in this heat, with 27 pounds strapped to my back? I know we won’t get lost, right? But what about the weather? The 30% chance of storms that has been part of the forecast for a week—what about that? It’s not like you’d know, up there completely disconnected from the known world. Maybe that’s the thing that bothers me most: the loss of cell service. It literally went out as he parked the car and turned off the ignition. I put the phone in airplane mode and buried it in a waterproof case in my pack. Adrenaline is overrated. This is not exciting to me at all.

At the end of day one I find out exactly what scares me the most. It is the darkness. And on the summit it comes on quickly, though you can see it settle into the valleys first before she gets to you. Through the low and windblown trees we catch glimpses of the setting sun, burning orange afire in a humid, overcast sky and then, at one vantage point, a bit of civilization—barns and patchwork fields, a few roads a church steeple—all laid out below like a postcard. Wish you were here. Camp is already made, thanks to my boy scout. Having secured a reasonable spot in a sea of ferns, we can tell it’s an “established” site by the loose circle of stones around a fire pit and some half-charred branches scattered about. With methodical intent, Will goes through the many, many steps to sleeping in the great outdoors, demonstrating and instructing me. Boy is in his element. It isn’t until I’m actually lying in the hammock I just slung that I look up and see all the dead branches on the trees directly above. The wind is already swaying them like stir spoons overhead and I am suddenly not okay with this. If you become a wild man and camp out back in your tent for seven weeks, I will become a request to your daddy to string up a military grade double reinforced tarp about 20 feet over you, ostensibly for rain but really to catch whatever falls from above.

As lovely the night and cool the breeze, I find myself suddenly terrified of being impaled in my sleep. “No worries, Mom, I got it…” and boy scales the two or three offenders to alternately chop, hack, and racket the deadest branches out of them. Then firewood rains down all around us, with me collecting it gratefully and also fretting he will fall and twist an ankle. An ankle you might need with nine miles more to go. Nevertheless, with enough field pruning boy is back on solid ground and coaxing to life a serviceable little fire, around which we eat the lentils I made ahead and a stabbed-open can of chicken. We have nothing to sit on and not much else to do. Turns out, our cruise director has remembered the pack of cards he recently bought while stranded at a hotel after a cancelled flight. Probably the most interesting game of gin rummy I’ve played in a while, discarding on a sweaty bandana laid out on the ground.

The night never darkens completely, and the air is scented with the ferns surrounding us. It is a cool night, super windy. I sleep fine, when I sleep, but every little crack or snap of branches pops my eyes wide open. Right before we sign off for the evening in our side-by-side hammocks, Will is still at his running tutorial: Now mom, animals and people sound different. So If you hear some heavy footsteps and a lot of breaking branches and some snuffling or snorting sounds, that’s probably a bear. So you just make some noise like this, see (he slaps the side of his hammock) and see, they’ll run away. But if you hear some footsteps, mom, and they’re steady, well that’s not good. If it’s a person walking around up here that’s not good mom, so you gotta grab your flashlight and get that light on in his face fast as you can…” I’m just laying in my hammock listening to all this, staring up at the starless sky, watching those silhouetted tree heads swirling over me, little tears of panic and resolve squeezing out the corners of my eyes. “Night, mom!” says the cheery voice from the hammock next to me. “Hope you sleep well…”

But day does come, and beautifully so—blissfully cool and fresh, urging us into it. Now we have the largest challenge ahead: the longest mileage and also a steep descent that is solid rock. The warnings online about the strain to knees and quads, and the all-out danger to ankles, are severe. Some people even hike this loop in reverse to avoid it. We break camp as systematically as we set up and are on the trail before 8. The day heats up quickly; I feel it already and during the night someone has clearly added a couple pounds to my pack, because I’m struggling more and stopping more often to make this “descent.” Keep in mind we are averaging no more than a mile an hour. Some hours pass with us not even making that. The steep is steep, going up or going down, and progress is laborious. It’s clear that Will could double his pace, maybe even more, but he assures me all along that we are fine, that I am doing fine. Really? My pace is like this: one foot, one breath, two foot, two breath. And the feet are literally heel-toe apart all the way down, taking care as we pick our way over the slippery rocks.

So I have to tell you about the bookends and the signs, because those matter to this mother bunny. The first was while stopping for lunch at a field shelter that first day…Will deep in instructor mode, prattling on about the gear, and the privy, and the water source, and the history of the Appalachian Trail…SO much of this hike, I realize, has been worked out on an upstairs laptop in the weeks and months before our feet even hit the ground. Suddenly his voice halts—he’s looking out over my shoulder—his chin nods in that direction. “Look Mom—over there, shhh, quiet…look…” It’s a mother deer and her fawn, making their way to the stream running behind the shelter to the south. They appear not to notice us or care, our big smelly backpacks propped on the picnic table, our talk, our very human presence; they pause only a second to grant us a look and then continue gracefully past, tails flicking, sleek velvet flanks moving through the vertical stand of trees almost like a Magritte painting. I have always found deer other-worldly. The little guy behind her is none too little—a teenager, maybe? He is frisking a bit, leaping and bounding behind to keep up with her steady stride, all legs and goofy tangle of tag-along. Tables turned, think I. We are so past that day it’s not even funny.

Finally we make the descent to the lowest elevation of our hike and our second camp for the night. On the map it’s not a shelter but it is a water source. Understandably, that’s where many people choose to camp. This one is literally at the bottom of a gorge. We have to hike down into it—hard packed ground, rushing stream, deep pools and a waterfall rushing noisily over the rocks. It’s utterly gorgeous and primeval. It’s also a little unnerving, in that rather than being able to see out in all directions (last night), you feel a little like a sitting duck as you can be seen from every direction. Huge rock walls and steep grades surround us on every side. Even a trip to the restroom (weeping smiley face emoji—there’s no bathhouse here, people) or to stash the bear can for the night involves an uphill hike too far from camp to leave behind knife, stick and emergency whistle. I will not be using the facilities more than once this stay.

He’s also grown silent as the obvious bears down on us: bad weather, comin’ in. It’s been growing increasingly dark all afternoon, and we can hear the thunder rumbling uneasily overhead. Will it blow over? There’s a lightness in the air that suggests it might, and could we see the skies I think I can discern a lighter patch to the west, but like I said it’s like bedding down for the night at the bottom of a well, so steep the walls around us. Think “Land of the Lost” meets “Last of the Mohicans” kind of terrain. Or “belly of the whale, pit of despair” sort of vibe. Will admits to having flashbacks from the night he and Sophie spent on this trail a month ago, making a test run and planning to make the same trek in two days only. They even tacked on a six-mile start. But they got to the first rock face overlook and sat a while, surveying and second-guessing a large cloud moving in. Whoever said “no it’s not” guessed wrong, for within minutes they were engulfed in drenching rain, while Will scrambled to set up camp and get Sophie squared away under her rain fly for a long, wet night. The experience, which turned them around and sent them home soaking, early, and sore of foot, was enough to resolve the boy: never again.

So, tonight, the transformation of my cheery, upbeat teacher into Mr. Military Ops is as disconcerting as is the knowledge that we cannot hike out of here to shelter. We wouldn’t make it in time. So I try to duplicate his focused and expedient steps: rope, two half hitch knots he taught me yesterday, rain fly, guy wires, tent stays. OK, now, pack underneath tarp in case skies open up. Then hammock straps, hammock. Preload the pocket with flashlight, head lamp, knife, whistle. Then come mat and sleeping bag. Bag ties to mat, mat ties to hammock so it won’t slip all over in the night. I don’t care if it slips out completely like a magic carpet ride outta here. The idea that we are basically pitching camp in the palm of a thunderstorm is unconscionable to me, and I’m trying not to think about it. The last thing we do before daylight ends is make dinner on his little portable propane burner and eat it silently under my tarp. No one feels much like cards tonight.

With nothing to do and no where to go, we retire to our hammocks which are further apart this time, there being fewer suitable trees by a river, go figure, and therefore too far for shouting over the rushing roar of the water. Alone in my little nylon banana boat suspended between trees and staring up at the underbelly of my rain fly, the helplessness descends upon me. I am literally camping out in the middle of a thunderstorm, 8.8 wilderness miles away from civilization. Is there anyone else in this mountain tonight? The feeling of being alone is overpowering. All I can think as I zero in on my exclusive terror is that this takes bears and snakes right off the list. I am praying every Psalm I know. There are a lot of storms in the Psalms. There are a lot of storms in life. And then I realize, wrong palm. It’s the storm that is in his. “If you lose your mind in middle age and chase after your little bunny in some nutty wilderness hike,” says my Mother Bunny, “I will send my angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.”

Three times in the night I awake to blinding flashes of lightening and the distant crack of thunder. I am relieved to no end that it sounds far away, but it certainly does not “blow over.” Instead the storms blow right through, and the rain comes in torrents over us, around us, everywhere but on. That little rain fly I had so fussed about when Bill bought them for the kids, that little scrap of nylon strung over me between the trees and staked to the ground, is my new best friend. I have never been so grateful in my life. I’ll trade you every last piece of gear in my pack for this one true essential. When I awake in the inky dawn it is quiet—save for the now crashing stream-full of rain. The sky clears and hope returns. I lay awake for a long time—apparently boy is sleeping in—awash with gratitude and relief. Nothing more comfortable than this warm dry sleeping bag in my dewy hammock and the sweeeeet sound of dry. Now let the thanking time begin. And just like that, what had appeared as a dark, damp pit of hell the night before now dawns as a soaring cathedral filled with mercy and light.

Today we have a time frame: we are only three miles from the car, a distance I could cover in 45 minutes flat in my home “hikes,” but is it is all uphill again. Will and I harbor no illusions: it will take us every bit of the three projected hours. For the first mile straight up, we hike along the rushing stream, (I say “stream,” but picture gorgeous terraced waterfalls spilling and gushing into half hidden pools in a wood) followed by steep incline up through punishing switchbacks, followed by gradual incline to the third ridge, followed by descent to the first shelter we lunched at, followed by yet another incline and then down all the way home, or rather to the car. It sounds so good on paper. Will shows me each time I ask. I have learned to read and understand the elevation map he made at home, and yesterday I discovered a duplicate neatly folded and tucked in my pack. Eyes-wide emoji here: Is that so if we got separated…?

I have realized over these days how much thought and planning Will put into this trip. He is checking his own copy every time we pause and whenever he thinks I’m not looking. Man, alive. I would go anywhere with this boy. Which is good, because if you have a son, a really good one, that is pretty much where you’re headed. One-way ticket to anywhere. Today, our last hurrah, I am determined to keep up with him. Nevertheless, as I plod my half-horsepower self up incline after incline, barely one foot down in front of the other, breathless and sweating while my pack of pure boulders pulls me down, I often see him standing still on the trail ahead looking out over the forest, hands hitched in his shoulder straps or folded gently together as if in prayer. And probably not as if. He is in sight, sure, but so very far ahead. Just like these days off mountain as well: So very, very far ahead.

The last leg of our journey comes quickly, and about a half hour earlier than he predicted, ramping up my joy from deep within and making my feet feel like they could levitate down the mountain, even with this “starts-with-D” backpack lashed to me. I am giddy with relief as I start to recognize bits of the trail and can see that yes, we are steps away from that field. And then, just like that, we emerge from the woods—meadow to our left, forest to our right, coming down a two-lane track lined in waist high grass, Black-eyed Susans, and Queen Anne’s Lace. My favorites. Just two hikin’ buddies here, come down out of the mountains. NBD right? But here it is, my other bookend. We been hiking for days, right? Minimal wildlife sightings (thank you, Lord) save the motoring chipmunks and one elegant heron. Now? Will turns back to face me, saying something, when over his shoulder ahead on the trail I see it: another fawn, just emerging into our path and looking our way up the trail. Instead of bolting or turning back into the thicket, I kid you not, this: He looks right at us, emerges fully, turns and begins loping down the trail in front of us, his tail flicking and flapping like a little white flag, leaping and leading the way home.

If you become a rock high on a mountain top, said the Mother Bunny, I will become a mountain climber, and I will climb to wherever you are.

Credit: The Runaway Bunny, by Margaret Wise Brown. Harper, 1942.