Page 62 of Wild About You

Feels like I should close this with a “Do you like me?” and checkboxes for yes or no. But how about when you’re ready, you come tell me. You can write it down if you need to—I’ll let you borrow Zeke’s pen.

Yours,

Finn

P.S. (update as of this morning—while you’re pacing + distracted + letting me repack stuff) You might have noticed I switched our e-readers. I hope you see this note and read it in our day/night apart. I also hope you might feel inclined afterward to read about Grandma Gatewood—I finished the book and left it back on pg 1. Thought you’d find her comforting and/or inspiring, or at least see I’m not bullshitting you about her badassery. I stole your e-reader because I started Hot on Her Trail by Donna O’Hare (per your rec) and don’t want to stop—just got to the part where she meets the handsome ranger. But if you don’t want to read about GG you’re welcome to anything else on mine.

Still yours,

Finn

As soon as I finish reading it, I go back to the start and read again. Then one more time, by the end barely able to make out the words through tear-filled eyes. I’m careful not to let any of my waterworks spill onto the envelopes, though, since they’re now among the most valuable things I own. I’ll probably need to invest in a museum display case when I get home.

I try, in my rereads, to actually digest Finn’s words. To not just read like I’m committing a script’s lines to memory, but to take them to heart. He still cares about me, even knowing all he knows. I’ve let him in on thoughts and feelings I’ve kept from every other person in my life, and instead of my messiness putting him off, it seems to have drawn him in even closer. He wants to be with me, walk with me, help each other carry the heaviest, hardest stuff together. My heart feels ready to burst with the amount that I want that too. If I had even half a clue where he is right now, I’d run across mountains to fling myself at him and never let go.

As a warm, hopeful giddiness settles in my chest at Finn’s romantic declarations, I let myself sit with everything else he wrote. Granny Star used to tell me that was an important skill—to own it when someone says something kind to you. So if Finn says she’d be proud of me, I know she’d want me to own that. She’d want me to try believing everything he said—reminiscent of what she used to say—about my strength and persistence and Grandma Gatewood badassery. Especially knowing that this is what he was up to in his hammock last night, when we weren’t talking and I thought he was still furious. If he can believe the best in me, even when we’re in a rough patch, well, it means all the more.

I hear the dull tapping on the tent ceiling and realize the rain has resumed. Light but steady, it’s enough to deter me from wanting to go outside again, even as I feel my appetite making a slight comeback and the bear canister with all my food is sitting under a tree a safe distance away. I can wait.

Besides, it’s not just me and my thought spirals anymore. I have Finn, at least in spirit and handwriting form. And I have Grandma Gatewood.

I lie back on my sleeping bag, swipe the tablet screen open, and start to read.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Morning comes around, sunny and beautiful, and I’m beginning to think my mood controls the weather.

From the outside, not much has changed from last night. In fact, some things are objectively worse. Like the tent, which, after I fell asleep mid-book with the e-reader open on my chest, continued to collect rain in a gigantic puddle on its roof. When I went to dump it out upon waking up, water soaked not only the rain fly, but a bunch of the regular tent material, which isn’t as quick to dry. I’ve left it lying in a patch where the sun shines through the treetops, hoping that problem will work itself out.

Then there’s the stove I still couldn’t get to work this morning, hoping I could boil water for oatmeal. I ended up reading late into the night until I passed out and woke with a stomach very mad at me for its emptiness. So I’ve had a couple protein bars and might opt for a third.

Also, my eyes. Or the skin under them, which is so puffy from all the crying that I can see it in my normal line of sight. I’m almost too scared to check my compact mirror—key word being almost. I have some kissing and making up to do today, and I’m not about to do it with my eyes swollen half shut. Except for the kissing—eyes fully shut for that part.

Fortunately, I have masks for all my facial skincare needs, and I’m hella stocked up on inspiration. As I use the mirror to apply two shiny, gold gel under-eye masks, I think about Grandma Gatewood. She would probably laugh me off the trail right now for being enough of a diva to even own these things, let alone bring them backpacking on the AT. But superficial differences aside, Finn was right about our kindred spirits.

I’ve never been so pulled into a nonfiction book as I was by the story of this woman’s life and experiences on the trail. The AT of the 1950s was not the AT of today, well-maintained and with easy enough access to shelter, water, and towns that can provide anything you need. Easier still if you happen to be walking a small part of it on Wild Adventures, where your nightly accommodations are preplanned for you and a whole crew shows up most nights with a hot and ready dinner. I don’t think I would have made it past the first day, doing what she did with the lack of preparation she had.

But she pushed on. She slept on strangers’ porches, in ramshackle shelters. Ate whatever she could scrounge up or connected with other strangers who offered to share meals with her. Got all kinds of blisters, bruises, and other aches and pains in her flimsy sneakers and worn-out clothes. Two thousand miles on foot, sixty-seven years old, and she fucking made it.

She’s everything Finn said she was. Said I am, which I’m still not sure is fully deserved. But if he sees that much Grandma Gatewood in me, then it’s in her spirit that I’m gonna finish this thing.

I’ve just decided this when a producer noiselessly appears at my campsite and gives me a heart attack.

“Oh my god!” I gasp and yell at the same time. The young, nerdy-looking guy whose name I still haven’t learned is a little earlier than the time we were told to expect anyone this morning. He didn’t actually provoke cardiac arrest, but he did scare the ever-loving shit out of me. It appears to be mutual, at least, as he jumps back a foot when he sees my masked face.

“What’s wrong with your skin?!” he asks, in my opinion, rather foolishly.

“It’s called Rumpelstiltskin Disease. This monster cursed me with it, making all the skin on my body gradually turn gold until I have a firstborn child I can give to him. Normally you just see me when I’ve covered it with makeup.”

The guy is frozen, arm half extended with the envelope he brought, presumably containing my next map and go time. I roll my eyes as I snatch it from his hand.

“Calm down, buddy. It’s a face mask.”

He doesn’t linger after that, and I tear into the envelope and scan the contents before packing up the rest of my small camp with twenty minutes until my go time. I have a map that shows Finn’s campsite and mine, and a spot where we’re supposed to meet up roughly in the middle and race the other teams to the checkpoint. Partners have to arrive at the checkpoint together, so if yours isn’t at the meetup spot right away, you have to wait for them.

I’m eager to get back to Finn, to tell him how much his letter meant to me, say my own apologies, and fix what’s broken between us. I’m also eager to get to the checkpoint and know we’ve made it to the final challenge. But the tent is the last thing to pack, and it hasn’t dried out yet. I don’t want to fold it up and stow it in my pack to accumulate who knows what kind of gross mildewy growths. But I can’t hold up our team.

In the end, my method is unconventional, but will hopefully allow our primary shelter to keep drying out even as I hit the trail again. I have the large expanse of fabric draped over my pack like a massive cape, folded in on itself only once so it doesn’t quite drag on the ground, and won’t get torn or collect a bunch of twigs and leaves. I feel a little like a menacing forest creature ensconced in this near-literal wet blanket, but I’ll be sure to tuck it away before anyone else’s camera is on me.

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