90 Minutes on the Appalachian Trail

I wish you could meet my mother. On first sight, she looks like any Mennonite housewife who bakes killer cinnamon rolls, keeps her house spit-shined and spider-free, and quilts by the mile. But it doesn't take long until you find a fun, unorthodox woman lurking behind the stereotype. 

She's the one who asked a cashier if his green hair was natural, and didn't bother explaining that she already knew it wasn't. The poor cashier probably still thinks Mennonites believe green hair happens to the babies of kale-eating mothers.

Mom also was the leader in our family's legendary Follow the Leader game. I'll preserve the remaining shreds of the participants' dignity by not disclosing names and details--except to say that somewhere beneath the neighbors' trees, my sister had enough and ran for home. But the grandchildren loved it and still laugh over the fun of the memory. Not, I say, a boring grandmother. 

I haven't heard that hiking the Appalachian Trail reached the bucket list of Mom's peers, but it was on hers. She wasn't interested in doing the whole thing, but dearly wanted to hike at least a section of the trail. "It has to have rocks," she told us emphatically. "I want to clamber over rocks." 

Fortunately for her dream, three of her daughters live in Pennsylvania near a rocky section of the AT. It wouldn't be difficult to give her the experience she desired. So, late in September when she came to visit us, we went on a mother-daughter hike.

The trail was all she hoped it would be with rocks to pick your way across and good views to stop and enjoy. 

Standing on the trail itself. Rocks? Got 'em.

We spent part of the hike finding the perfect rock she could add to the collection she has gathered from significant destinations. She has a rock from an Alaskan glacier, for example, which my son has had his eye on. And now she has a rock from the Appalachian Trail which looks exactly like the shape of Pennsylvania if you squint one eye, close the other, and hide part of the rock in your skirt. But it is small enough to fit in one hand, unlike the boulders that were suggested to her along the way, and it comes from the right trail. 

We didn't meet any through-hikers but we did meet a seedy character who added interest to our experience and speculation to the rehashing of the hike on our way home. Why was he concealed by the rock when we came around the corner and met him for the second time? And why did he act so surprised when he realized there were four of us? "Oh," he had said, straightening, and abandoning the fumble in his backpack. "There are more of you than I thought."

Back home in Indiana, Mom told her family doctor that she hiked on the Appalachian Trail. Most doctors like knowing their patients are staying fit and healthy while fulfilling dreams, and this doctor was appropriately impressed.

"How many days did you hike?" 

I wish I could have watched this conversation. I know the look Mom gets when she is trying to keep her face straight, the way her eyebrows raise. "Days? We hiked for 90..." She paused, she said, hoping he would be thinking miles. "...minutes." 

The good doctor threw back his head and laughed with pure enjoyment, then turned to his nurse. "She didn't hike the AT. She just looked at it." 

His long-standing relationship with my family allowed him to get away with laughing at Mom with no offense taken. But regardless of what he called the hike, Mom's feet walked the Appalachian Trail. 

I call it a dream fulfilled. 

My mom. One of the World's Best People.