Chapter 1

April 14, 1999

Nantahala Outdoor Center, Wesser, North Carolina

The last sip of coffee in the Aladdin cup was getting pretty cold, but at least it tasted more or less like coffee. The pot would still probably be hot over in the office, she thought. She could put up the "Back in Five Minutes" sign and go over and tank up, but she couldn't make up her mind if she really wanted to. Actually, on a day like this, there wasn't much that she wanted to do, and it was hard to get up the energy to do much of anything.

It was not an impressive day. It was overcast and was raining off and on, which made riding her bike to work pretty nasty. It was only about a mile to the showroom from the little travel trailer she'd lived in for years, but this morning's trip had been less than fun, even for as much of an outdoorsman as she was.

Probably it was the weather that got her down as much as anything, but there was the same old "what the hell am I doing here" question that she'd wrestled with for several years now.

She glanced out through the window of the showroom -- raining again. Bleaugh!! She knew that if she stepped outside she would be able to hear the falls running, and the sound of the racing water usually picked her up. In another couple weeks, it would be May. The summer help would start showing up, and she'd be back out on the Nanty, in a raft, where she thought she belonged, not here in a salesroom on a slow, wet day, without even any customers around to shoot the bull with.

Even the Appalachian Trail thru-hikers had started to die out, now. That was one of the real bright spots of the job -- for about a month, maybe a little more, there'd be handfuls of thru-hikers coming through, usually two to four weeks out of the trail head at Springer Mountain. She'd been there and done that, and was always happy to introduce herself to them as "Scooter" -- her trail name, the one she'd used on the trail through three thru-hike attempts, one of which was successful. Even her work name tag read: "Rhonda Whitsell -- 'Scooter', AT '93". She thought of herself as "Scooter" anymore, still a dedicated long-distance hiker -- even though she'd learned years ago that another thru-hike attempt was probably doomed to failure. But, it was hard to let the thought go that the possibility was there. It was harder when the thru-hikers came into the salesroom at Nantahala Outdoor Center, where she was always ready to stop and trade trail stories, help out with gear problems, and pass along encouragement and advice from one whose heart was out there with every thru-hiker, even though she couldn't be with them anymore.

By the time the thru-hikers made it this far, it was usually pretty clear to her who was going to make it and who wasn't. While she had the best of wishes for the people who were going to make it, she knew the hurt of having to give it up when your body wouldn't take you where your mind wanted to go. She'd been there and done that, too.

Back two years ago, when she'd made her last attempt at thru-hiking the trail with Diamond, it had all washed out right here, at NOC; the first attempt years before had washed out here too, and led directly to this job. Sometimes, it made her wonder what she was doing, hanging around at the scene of two of the lowest points of her life. At least, she ought to have the sense to do something else.

But what? She was twenty-seven now, working at what anyone in creation would call a dead-end job, making a minimum wage in the winter -- although better than that in the summer, when she turned into a raft guide and climbing instructor.

Get married? Yeah, right, she snorted to herself. Now, that was a real dead-end job. At least, she could get outdoors some in this business. Rafting a few months of the year was enjoyable, and she enjoyed it, even though she'd run the Nantahala so many times she was dead sure she could do it in her sleep, Nantahala Falls -- the white water people called it "Lesser Wesser" -- and all. And, she could do some climbing, even a little hiking, if she took it easy and didn't overstress her knees. It was satisfactory -- barely. The odds were that if she found someone to marry, she'd have to have a straight job, doing straight things like having kids.

And that, of course, ignored the point that it had been years since she'd found anyone she thought might be worth marrying -- or who might be interested in marrying a solid, short, chunky, not-too-pretty raft guide with a serious case of being an outdoor nut. Tinman? Well, that was years ago, back on the first try at the AT, but he'd hiked out of her life, and she'd never heard from him again. There were some neat guys who ran rafts in the summer, but most were college kids, and she was getting a bit old for them, now -- ten years older than some of them. Face it, Scoot, she thought, those pickings are getting pretty slim.

Scooter didn't smoke very much, but she did like cigars, at least once in a while -- ever since she'd been at the University of Virginia-Roanoke, long ago. Actually, they weren't cigars, but cigarillos, the junior version. Leon would blow a fuse if she lit one up in the showroom, but the place was dead; maybe she could go outside, light one, and take a few drags, while leaving the door cracked so she could listen for the telephone. They did relax her, helped her mind roll back. Besides, it would help kill a few dull minutes.

There was a partly-smoked one in her daypack, stuffed into a plastic case. They did taste a little rank when they were stale and re-lit, but hell, for just a few drags, she could hack it, be worth putting up with the bitter smoke. No point in wasting a good one on a sucky morning like this. The rotten taste would just go along with her rotten mood.

Outside, hearing the sound of the falls made her think of the rafting that lay only a few weeks off. She lit the cigar with a kitchen match, drew in a puff of bitter, strong smoke, and let it drift down toward the river in a thick cloud. She remembered how bad she'd felt facing her second year at the University of Virginia-Roanoke when she realized that she was so sick of sitting in classrooms that she just couldn't take it anymore. You get right down to it, she thought, I feel just about as bad now, but at least, back then, she'd had an answer. That was eight years ago, and in the fall, instead of going back to UV-R, she decided to go to a different school -- the Outdoor Leadership Training Academy in Idaho.

She was still a little surprised at herself for having done it, even though it had changed her life. OLTA had a reputation for being tough, a real Marine boot camp of a place, and it earned it. OLTA liked to pride themselves on how tough they made things, so they could be sure that their students could handle situations when they came up in the real world. Historically, it had proven to be a philosophy that worked, although a lot of people learned they couldn't cut it along the way -- which was part of the idea, too. They worked her ass pretty good, but she'd finished the course, she remembered with pride, and she learned more there in three months than she could have learned in ten years on her own, being a city kid and all.

She really hadn't been an outdoor bum when she went out there, although she liked being outside, but by the time she finally left, when the snow was ass deep on a tall giraffe, she'd become one. And, she'd pretty much stayed one, even though she couldn't get outside as much as she liked.

Get right down to it, she thought, even as remote as they are for the east, the Nanty and NOC are still pretty civilized. What would it be like to get out into some real backcountry? Maybe she ought to say screw this job, go find something interesting and different to do in the outside. But, it would have to be working at something -- there were a few hundred bucks in her financial reserves, not much to show for eight years of being an outdoor bum, although an employed one for most of it. Not enough to finance a major adventure trip -- especially when she couldn't hike.

OLTA had really been what sent her down this road. She'd gone back to UV-R the following semester, and found herself hating it just as much -- the Marine boot camp atmosphere of OLTA had changed her. She stuck it out through the semester, but spent most of the time looking for a reasonable outdoor job -- and found it, as a raft guide on the New River in West Virginia. She'd stuck the season out till the river got too chilly to run, then went home, took a square job for a few months with her mother bitching in her ear every minute about how she really ought to go back to college. That only lasted until the following March. She'd been writing back and forth to Tinman, a guy she'd known at OLTA, and between them they decided to try the AT. Together, they hitchhiked to Amicola Falls State Park in Georgia, and she started up the 2000 miles of Appalachian Trail to Maine with him.

OLTA had turned her into a pretty good hiker, and it was on the AT that she'd picked up the trail name of 'Scooter' -- she tended to hike pretty fast. She was a pretty muscular kid back then, anyway, and a summer of running thrill rides down the New had just added to it -- and to a desire to push hard, be something of a cowboy. But, she'd overdone the hiking, she realized now to her sorrow.

She and Tinman were still in their first weeks on the trail when her knees began to bother her, and she was really dragging her ass when they descended into Wesser, North Carolina and the Nantahala Outdoor Center. She decided to lay over a few days here, just to rest up her knees. While her knees had been healing, she'd gotten to talking with the NOC staff. Leon told her if she couldn't go on and finish the trail, on the strength of her summer on the New and her being an OLTA graduate, she could have a job here, running a raft down the Nantahala, and doing some climbing instruction.

It had been a trap, she realized now. A bad one, a mistake. She took one last drag on the cigar and set it on the window ledge to burn out while she went back inside to get out of the dismal rain. It had hurt like hell to have to leave the trail, to watch Tinman walk up the hill and what turned out to be out of her life, but she took the NOC job. She spent the summer rafting and hiking as much as she could, to try and build up her knees again. When fall came, they offered her a job inside, in the salesroom, since the kids who ran it in the summer had gone back to school. She took it, on the understanding that she'd be trying the trail again come March. That winter, she'd rented a little travel trailer in the back of a summer campground that was nominally closed for the winter, and had stayed there, trying to conserve her funds. She didn't have a car, then, or even now; she walked or rode a bicycle everywhere she went, trying to build her knees up again for the trail.

When March came, she quit NOC, and everyone there wished her luck and told her there'd be a place for her still, if she needed it, so apparently she'd done a good job for them. This time, she started up the trail solo, with her knees in better shape than they'd been a year earlier. And, she took it a lot slower, with hiking poles to help take the stress off her knees.

Between the hiking poles, knee braces, taking it easy and plenty of what the hikers called "Vitamin I" -- ibuprofen -- she'd made it to central Pennsylvania before her knees caught up with her. It was pretty damn painful, and she'd hobbled the last few miles before she realized she was going to have to take a break. With no idea of what else to do, she caught a bus back to NOC, and they were glad to put her in a raft while her knees recovered. In a month, she was back on the AT, knowing easier trail was ahead. She finally made it to Mt. Katahdin in Maine, the end of the trail, as the snow flew in late October -- no great time, but at least she'd finished the AT! That was something to be proud of, perhaps the high point of her life, standing there on top of Katahdin with the tears of joy running from her eyes.

A quick phone call from Millinocket, Maine, a couple days after she'd finished the trail, told her there was still a job for her in the salesroom at NOC, and that's where the bus took her. She rented the little travel trailer in the campground outside Wesser again and spent the winter, glad to have an outdoor job in hand, and not realizing that having that job would make it hard to get out and do anything like the AT again.