The Lost Daughter: A Memoir (18 page)

In Vermont I left them, and briefly left the trail, to attend Troy’s wedding in New York City. It was an intense shock to my system, after 134 days on the trail, to find myself battling my way through throngs of people on the streets of New York.

At the wedding, I was surprised to learn how much my time on the trail had changed me. I felt like a fish out of water as I watched the celebrity guests looking gorgeous in their designer gowns. Though I was squeaky clean and well dressed, I couldn’t shake my laidback, grungy hiker state of mind. I loved being with my family but I also missed the trail.

After the wedding, I decided to pick up the trail on Mount Katahdin, in Maine (5,267 feet), and hike back toward Vermont. This is called flip-flopping, and is a great alternative when you find yourself hiking late in the season. I wanted to relax and enjoy my last weeks on the trail. I didn’t want the pressure of hiking long days to reach Mount Katahdin before mid-October, when bad weather closes in.

But Katahdin, I learned, is tricky to climb no matter the season. The 5.2-mile climb to the summit began uneventfully enough. The first three miles meandered through a dense spruce forest. Birds sang, the sun shone. I passed streams and rivers, and even a cascading waterfall. Then the ground transformed to bare granite, with brutal gains in elevation. Huge boulders blocked the trail. Soon I realized the boulders
were
the trail. I was nearly rock climbing. The temperature began to drop and the wind picked up. I hadn’t believed the ranger when he told me that the summit had its own weather.

At the crowded peak, I took my photo with the sign that marks the northern terminus of the AT. I was cold, tired and pissed off. I wasn’t alone. I overheard several novice hikers asking if there was some other way to get down besides on foot.

At the bottom, I found a shelter and slept like the dead. I woke up refreshed and ready to take on Maine’s hundred-mile wilderness, the most isolated section of the trail.

Most hikers get through this section in ten days or fewer, but I spent two weeks there. I saw moose every day and slept near glassy ponds. I nearly ran out of food twice, but I met northbound hikers who were happy to feed me.

It was during this time that I realized, after months of hiking, I’d only seen one other black person on the trail. A bearded, smelly fellow who I believed was a myth until I ran into him eating alone in a McDonald’s during a quick foray into town. We chatted about how unfortunate it was that more people of color didn’t get out to enjoy the great outdoors. After I had finished the trail and was back home, I found myself donating money to organizations whose missions included getting more people of color and women involved in wilderness activities.

Two weeks was the longest I had gone without access to modern comforts and world news. When I emerged from the wilderness in Monson, Maine, I checked into Shaw’s hiker hostel, cleaned up, ate and planted myself among my fellow hikers on the couch. They were watching the film
300
. I had seen it, so I reached for a newspaper. A headline struck me dumb. There was a story about a young African-American woman named Megan Williams. Six people in West Virginia had kidnapped Megan, raped her and tortured her. They held her captive for a month. Finally, the police mounted a rescue. The details were shocking. In addition to sexually assaulting her, the kidnappers forced her to eat dog feces, to drink from a toilet and stabbed her multiple times. She was lucky to be alive.

In the following weeks I could not forget Megan Williams. I wondered what would make people want to treat another human so cruelly. I also wondered if I were being sent some kind of a message—an African-American woman with the same last name as mine had met the fate I’d cavalierly decided couldn’t befall me. Whenever I got off-trail to resupply, I collected newspapers and searched for coverage of the story. I realized there was another reason Megan’s story affected me so deeply. Megan reminded me of Deborah.

I could see my sister’s beautiful caramel-colored skin, white teeth and large brown eyes, the spitting image of our handsome father. She was physically perfect except for a mass of melted skin that spread from below her right buttock to just above the crook of her knee. She got the burn before I was born, when her nightgown caught fire on a space heater. She was never ashamed of her scars, and wore shorts and bathing suits every summer. As a child, she loved to play the trombone. She was a member of the first graduating class of the Black Panther elementary school. When asked by a reporter on graduation day what she had learned, she proudly said, “One of the most important things I have learned . . . is what freedom means.”

Deborah had been the mother of three children. She spent years as a prostitute and developed an addiction to crack. Through it all, she carried a yellowing, tattered copy of that newspaper article with her quote about freedom. Through years of homelessness, it stayed carefully wrapped in plastic.

I went online to research the exact circumstances of my sister’s death. I found several newspaper articles. One night she was doing drugs in the hallway of an apartment building. One of the tenants, a nineteen-year-old woman named Stacey Lee, got angry and demanded she leave. When Deborah refused, they fought. Stacey drove Deborah out into the street and pursued her, wielding a kitchen knife. Fifteen bystanders on a nearby corner saw Deborah running toward them. They knocked her to the ground, taunted her, stomped on her, kicked her and hit her in the head with a wine bottle. She lay curled in a fetal position over the grate of a storm drain. Stacey Lee attacked Deborah again while the bystanders cheered her on. To shouts of “Kill her! Kill her!” Lee stabbed my sister three times in the chest, ending her life.

A street-hardened homicide detective said that he had never, in his long career, witnessed such a callous and cold-hearted slaying.

Deborah and Megan weighed heavily on my thoughts during the final weeks of my hike. I carried them through the White Mountains and to the peak of Mount Washington. I was more exhausted than I had ever been. I also had a chance to rethink why I’d come out here in the first place.

I thought I hiked the Appalachian Trail because I wanted adventure. I knew then that I hiked it for other reasons as well. I did it because my mother stopped loving me. Not because she was a bad person but because she was tired. I did it because my adoptive mother saw greatness in me. Not because it was there but because it could be. I hiked the trail because my sister’s life was taken. Not because she deserved it but because she lost her way. I hiked the trail in order to free myself from those things in the world that made me tired, overwhelmed me and led me astray, in order to see clearly these women to whom I owed so much. This in turn helped me clearly see myself.

I chose to end my hike in Crawford Notch, New Hampshire, in a beautiful valley at the entrance to the White Mountain National Forest, just as the leaves were beginning to turn colors. I sat in a deck chair and watched the sun set, the clouds spilling over the mountains. I wished Deborah could have been there to share it with me. I felt her presence as strongly as I did when we were girls, crammed into a little green car, looking up at the blank screen, waiting for a story to begin.

AFTER COMPLETING THE AT
in early 2008, my relationship with Jane was strained. She had become, unfairly, the reason for everything that was wrong in my life, for my growing feelings of disconnect that filled me with anxiety. I began to reject her advice and support. I pulled away from her even as she struggled to reel me in. At the same time, my Oakland family was weighing heavily on my mind. A small, newly discovered place in my heart believed I needed to reconnect with my Oakland family; a much bigger place was as opposed to the idea as ever. I had already invested so much energy in becoming a badass who didn’t need anybody. I didn’t need my family in Oakland, nor my family in Atlanta. And in my mind there’s only one place real badasses went when they wanted to leave everything and everyone behind: Antarctica.

My love affair with Antarctica began unexpectedly some years before in an IMAX theater in Atlanta, watching
Shackleton’s Antarctic Adventure
, a film about Captain Ernest Shackleton, one of the greatest figures of the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration. He set sail on the vessel
Endurance
with a crew of twenty-seven to attempt the first crossing of Antarctica from sea to sea via the South Pole. But an early spring brought icy seas that froze his ship fast for ten months in the frigid waters of the Southern Ocean.

With the advent of spring, the men were hopeful that the climbing temperatures would release the sea’s grip on their vessel. But the spring brought heartache not hope. Instead of releasing them, the fracturing ice put tremendous pressure on the hull of the ship, eventually crushing it and leaving the men stranded on an ice floe. And so began a two-year, seemingly insurmountable struggle that would end with all the men rescued and Captain Ernest Shackleton being hailed as one of the greatest leaders under hardship the world had ever seen.

I sat in the dark, mesmerized by the grand, otherworldly beauty of Antarctica rolling off the screen like so much confection. How could a place be so beautiful yet so alien? So peaceful yet foreboding? I completely understood Shackleton’s desire to insinuate himself into Antarctica’s good graces despite the fact that to nestle close to such a place, for many in his day, was to welcome in heartache, hardship and often death.

In my eyes, Shackleton was the ultimate badass. And what girl doesn’t love a badass? Sure he could use a bit of a makeover. The greasy slicked-back hair with a part down the middle reminiscent of Alfalfa from
The Little Rascals
did little to highlight his hotness, but still I was smitten. After the film, I headed to my local bookstore and bought everything I could find about Shackleton and Antarctica.

The opportunity to visit the continent did not present itself for several years. It was during some random Internet surfing that I stumbled across a Web site looking for people interested in working in Antarctica. I applied immediately. Several months later, I was hired, pending a very intense physical qualification process in which I would have every orifice poked, prodded and critiqued like a baked squab at the judges’ table on
Top Chef
. In the end I passed with flying colors.

I was hired as a general assistant. A GA, in addition to being one of the lowest-paid positions, is a jack-of-all-trades post that also has the added perk of lots of travel on the continent. Antarctic jobs are very competitive and I couldn’t believe I’d made the cut on my first try. I had done it. I was now a participant in the United States Antarctic Program.

As with my decision to through-hike the Appalachian Trail a few years before, some of my friends and family were a bit baffled by my decision to work in Antarctica. While it is true I am not a fan of the biting cold (biting cold being anything below 50 degrees), I was willing to endure the hardships of Antarctic weather in order to walk in the steps of my hero.

•   •   •

I stepped out of the secure confines of the C-17 Globemaster III, a large military transport aircraft operated by the United States Air Force, into the tail end of winter on the world’s highest, driest, windiest and coldest continent.

The day was clear and sunny but a marrow-freezing -28 degrees in September. Brutal. My forehead and ears felt like high-powered blowtorches were burning them. My lungs rebelled against the chilled air, and within seconds I was wheezing and coughing like a two-pack-a-day asthmatic. It had been 110 degrees when I left my apartment in Tucson, Arizona, over a week earlier.

My first steps onto the frozen continent brought to mind something I’d read somewhere about hell. Turns out the prophets’ original depiction of hell was not fire and brimstone. It was a frozen wasteland. A place where a snowball would feel right at home.

Despite being dressed from head to toe in specialized extreme cold weather gear (ECW), I was still cold. I took a few obligatory photos, then made a beeline for the large orange (unheated) bus that was waiting to take us to McMurdo Station, which would be our home on the ice for the next five months.

McMurdo Station, also known as Mactown, looked like a small, rundown mining town—not the space-age research base I’d envisioned. There was a fire station, a small hospital, a power plant, dormitories and many other utility buildings in dire need of fresh coats of paint, scattered around in a seemingly haphazard fashion. The roads were unpaved.

Soon after arriving, I met my new boss, Jesse, a funny, sweet-faced young beauty with long brown hair. Our workplace was easygoing and a lot of fun. We listened to music all day as we went about our duties. Our workspace was in an old building that looked like a funky New York loft inside. Our second-story window provided a majestic view of the sea ice and the Royal Society mountain range.

My job involved preparing gear packages and survival bags for the scientists and workers to use in the field. I also scheduled training sessions for them on topics such as how to safely drive across a crack in the ice. I learned that safety in the field all boils down to the Boy Scouts’ credo: Be Prepared. The gear packages we prepared consisted of tents, sleeping bags, stoves, survival bags, first aid kits, tools, extra clothing and food. The survival bags had enough food for two people to survive for three days. There was also reading material in each bag. My coworkers competed to imagine the most twisted books to include:
Alive
,
The Donner Party Chronicles
and
Into Thin Air
. In reality we stuffed bags with Sudoku puzzles and Larry McMurtry westerns.

The most important piece of gear issued to every United States Antarctic Program participant is Big Red: a seven-pound, goose-down-insulated parka with a fur-lined hood, thirteen pockets and a gray patch on the back that reflects radar. The patch comes in handy should Search and Rescue need to find you (or your corpse) in a whiteout.

Big Red’s
raison d’être
is to keep you alive. But after a few weeks on ice, you quickly learn its limitations and advantages. Physically overexert yourself in the field in Big Red, on days that are relatively warm, and you are in danger of overheating and committing one of the cardinal sins of cold weather survival: sweating. Sweating in cold weather can be deadly because it can quickly lead to hypothermia.

These ubiquitous coats are reused every season, and many show the wear and tear of years of hard use: torn cuffs, frayed collars, stains, patches, faded color. But as with a good lover with a wild past, you quickly come to overlook these imperfections.

Since everyone wears the same coat nearly every day, a Velcro name tag is adhered to the front pocket in order to distinguish one from another. But in Antarctica, opportunities for entertainment are limited. Thus some folks took great joy in switching the name tags on the coats. So every once in a while someone goes to retrieve their coat from the coatroom after lunch only to find that they have either lost twenty pounds or Big Red has gone through a miraculous growth spurt. And with over a thousand coats on base, it will be a bitch to track your coat down. Ha. Ha. Hee-fucking-larious.

So how did one improve the odds of not losing one’s coat? You must bond with it. You must become intimately familiar with the myriad characteristics that make your coat unique. Scent, texture, battle scars. Everything. Some became so bonded with their coat that they could walk into a full coatroom and in seconds, like a mother penguin searching for her lost chick among thousands, distinguish their coat from dozens of others.

I had such a relationship with my Big Red. My coat was one of a few in nearly pristine condition, its only issue being a sticky zipper. Such coats are highly sought after by some Antarcticans. I loved my coat. It got me through Happy Camper hell and any number of forays into the field relatively unscathed.

One afternoon, I decided to wash my beloved coat. While it was in the dryer, I made the foolish mistake of leaving the laundry room for ten minutes to go to the restroom. When I returned, the dryer was empty and placed on top of it, like some sort of sick offering, was a strange, mangy Big Red. I had fallen victim to the switcheroo. It’s a harsh continent.

•   •   •

The work of the first month centered on getting the station ready for main body. Main body is the group of contract workers and scientists that descend on McMurdo Station a month after the early birds. The season began with 320 of us. It felt fairly crowded at that number. When main body arrived, our ranks swelled to 1,100. Gone were the days of long showers, short lines for meals and relative quiet in the dorms.

McMurdo Station felt like a big polar summer camp or frat house. Many rooms even had bunkbeds. Most of the residents were outdoor types who had climbed mountains and traveled the world. Many were social outsiders who found it difficult functioning in the rat race.

Every day the air was charged with excitement as we adjusted to the fact that we were actually “living the dream.” But walking around in a state of wonder is not the safest state of mind for life on the ice. There was a spate of injuries that first month. We were all trained and given the proper gear to work with and live safely, but accidents happened. A friend of mine broke her wrist after flipping a snowmobile. Another sprained an ankle playing soccer; another sprained a wrist after slipping on an ice patch. And yours truly strained her back while shoveling snow. I was promptly put on muscle relaxants and painkillers. I was back to work in a day or so.

A lot of the injuries can be directly attributed to the cold. Muscles are tenser in cold environments and, when injured, heal slower. Because I often worked outdoors, I suffered from some new ache or pain each day I was on the ice. My knees swelled up for no apparent reason. My neck decided the weight of my head was just too much to support. Some days I felt as if my body had been switched out with that of an eighty-year-old ex-football player with arthritis.

I held on to the advice from others that my body would eventually acclimate. I had serious doubts. The cold is relentless in its assault. It envelops you like Saran wrap. Insinuates itself into any opening in your clothing. It is like a hungry vampire, but instead of blood it wants to suck all the warmth from your body. All the vitality from your muscles. All the swagger in your step.

Luckily our station was nice and warm inside. This wonderfully warm space can make you forget you are on the coldest continent in the world. Like the time I wanted to go to the library, which was housed next to my dorm. I grabbed my coat and strolled outside without a hat or gloves. It felt like an invisible ice giant was trying to kill me by strangulation. Within less than a minute my forehead, ears and fingers were screaming for mercy. I had to turn back.

During the worst of the cold in those early days, I spent all my free time indoors. Those days while I sat on the couch I was perfectly happy to acknowledge my defeat and watch a DVD on my laptop. I was Antarctica’s bitch!

When I initially told Jane of my desire to work in Antarctica, her first question was a very baffled, “Why?” I told her that, among other things, it would give me the chance to confront my fear of the cold. I promised I’d stay in touch via e-mail, which I did. I wrote lengthy missives each month, entitled “Soul on Ice,” which tickled Jane immensely.

•   •   •

Despite Antarctica’s claim to fame as the highest, coldest, driest and windiest continent, it is surprisingly rich in wildlife. There are seals, penguins, birds and whales. There is nothing living on the continent that doesn’t have the ability to swim or fly away when the katabatic winds start blowing and the temperature begins to drop.

A katabatic wind, as defined by Wikipedia, is “an Antarctic wind that carries high-density air from a higher elevation down a slope under the force of gravity. The density of cold air over the ice sheets and the elevation of the ice sheets brings into play enormous gravitational energy, propelling the winds well over hurricane force.”

In Antarctica, it’s all about the weather.

We were all interested in what the weather was doing. A good day and a bad day can mean more than just being cold. It could determine if we worked or not. Recreated or not. Got trapped in buildings. Got physically cut off from the outside world. We learned quickly that we were at its mercy.

So we all became obsessed with the weather. We wanted to know more than if it’s cold. We asked questions about wind chill. Because if the temperature was a balmy -3 degrees, wind chill could make it feel like -50. Was it snowing and if so what was the visibility? If visibility was less than a hundred feet, you could get disoriented and lose your way. What was the wind speed? Was it strong enough to blow doors off vehicles, blow in windows or blow you across the sea ice like a lost rag doll? Enquiring minds wanted to know.

Throughout the day we were kept updated on the weather. McMurdo Station categorized the weather into three Conditions.

CONDITION 3
is observed when all of the following is true:

wind speed < 48 knots

visibility > ¼ mile

wind chill temperature > -75F