Date: 2004-12-31
To: View Entry
Miles today: 0.0

When I met Kamillia for the first time, she had just arrived in Allenstown, New Hampshire off a bus from Baxter State Park. She didn¢t know it then, but it¢d be thanks to her that I¢d find myself attempting the AT four years later.The way I tell it, she¢d arrived at our camp two days late because she was busy summitting Katahdin. By the time she arrived, the other 17 of us were all punch drunk on inane getting-to-know-you icebreakers like trust falls and Birdie on a Perch, so when she walked into the dining hall on a rainy night during dinner, the entire group of us half rose in our seats and cried out in unison and welcome, ¢Kamillia!¢The way she tells it, she was so tired she could barely see straight; she¢d just spent six months on the trail, reached her goal, and gotten on a bus to go serve a ten month term of volunteer service with a group of strangers, without any transition time at all; and her mother, who was supposed to have sent Kamillia¢s belongings to our camp ahead of her arrival, had failed to do so, so the only clothes Kamillia had at all were the rain pants, shorts, and polypro shirt she was wearing. She stumbled into the dining hall, wet and exhausted, and suddenly this great mass of zombie arms reached towards her, and a chorus of disembodied voices boomed ¢KA¢¦MILL¢¦IA,¢ deeply pitched and weirdly timed, like running a tape recorder back in slow motion.Regardless of whose version you give precedence, the Undead became the unqualified living in fairly short order. Kamillia¢s best friend in the group was a girl named Kristen, whom she had originally thought of as ¢the mean-looking bald girl with the quilting supplies,¢ but in whom she quickly discovered a kindred spirit. Both of them ¢ indeed, most of the others in the group ¢ were several years older than I was, and out of school rather than running away from it. I was a bit of the younger sister. I relished it.¢Hey, what¢s the AT? Hey, what¢s a trail name?¢ (Hers, for those of you who might know her, was Amaranth, AT ¢01. It was originally Helena the Reindeer Princess, but as nobody could remember the whole thing, she decided something more concise was in order.) ¢Hey, what¢s the story behind your trail name? Hey, what¢s stealth camping? Hey, what¢s giardia?¢My eagerness for conversation couldn¢t quite compensate, though, for what I did not know, and so I sat back and listened while they carried on heated discussions about the relative merits of ¢ecoterrorism¢ as a political label, literary representations of Guatemalan freedom fighters, and the feasibility of going entirely off the grid. Kamillia told me once, with characteristic zeal and outrage, that if she could trade in her college degree for a 50% return on investment, she¢d take it in a second. ¢Give back that piece of paper for sixty thousand bucks? Hell yeah, I would.¢ I was much impressed.I was a fast learner, though; by May I could discuss calcium absorption, vitamin K, and the vegan diet with the best of them. Sadly, I¢m still slightly fuzzy on the internal workings of credit unions.Though I¢ve been teasing, Kamillia had a work ethic, a powerful confidence, and a social conscience like few others I¢ve ever met. You simply believed she could do anything, and her practical passion made you believe you could do anything, too. I¢d heard of the AT before, and had even thought of doing it, in the sort of vague way that you think about curing cancer or climbing Mt. Everest when you¢re eight years old. I¢d never met anyone before who¢d actually done it, though. She made it real and practical and funny and enormously compelling. It had never occurred to me before that there could be a hikers¢ community; I¢d always supposed it must be a necessarily solitary thing. And she was a woman, too, and the first to tell you that of course a girl could go, solo or otherwise. She was ¢ there is no other way to describe it ¢ totally and completely badass. I was hooked.So it wasn¢t very long before I told myself I was going to hike the AT, too. There was school to finish first (I didn¢t even HAVE a piece of paper to hypothetically trade in, for fifty cents on the dollar or any other amount), and so a little bit of time has gone by. But here I am now.It¢s been at least seven or eight months now since Kamillia and I last spoke, and I¢m not sure whether she knows I¢m leaving soon for the trail. She¢s off managing trail crews in Arizona, and doesn¢t (I don¢t think) get online terribly often. But she told us a story once of a girl on a trail crew she led who listened to Kamillia talk about her life and later wrote her a letter saying, ¢You¢ve changed my life; I¢ve run off to be a traveling photographer backpacking across Europe.¢ So she is no stranger to inspiring people, accidentally or otherwise.