Not Without My Father: One Woman's 444-Mile Walk of the Natchez Trace Read Online Free Page B

you’ll call the National Park Service before you leave. If you let them know, I’ll be happy.” His left hand fiddled with a pen, but his eyes held my gaze.
    My husband. He straddled an impossible white line. Support my insane dreams? Or protect me? If something happened to me, everyone would blame him.
    I forced my lips to say what he wanted to hear.
    “Okay.”
    But I never made that call.
    As I sidled up to a truck with the logo of the United States Government emblazoned on its door, I cursed myself. Michael was always, always right. Why didn’t I call them? At least put my blasted walk on their radar?
    “What’re you doing?” A peach-fuzzed guy smiled. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-five.
    I relaxed into the cool metal of his door. “Walking to Nashville.”
    “Walking the whole Trace? Really?”
    “Yeah.”
    He shifted his truck into park. The smile slid from his face. “Nobody does that.”
    “I’m doing it.”
    His fingers tapped along the dashboard. After a few beats, he turned to me. “Well, just be careful. Congress cut our patrols to nothing out here. I’m part of a skeleton maintenance crew. I’ll send word up the line, let everybody know what you’re doing.”
    “Thanks.”
    He started to roll up his window before throwing out a last “Good luck!”
    A deadlocked Congress cut funding to non-essential government programs like the National Park Service. When I planned my walk of the Natchez Trace Parkway, I didn’t know I’d face diminished ranger patrols, shuttered points-of-interest and barebones maintenance. I arrived thinking if I got in trouble, I could summon a ranger anywhere along the route. But with next-to-no government employees on the Trace, I was even more isolated.
    As I huffed into my third mile, my feet tingled. I picked up speed into my first easy hill. At the top, I celebrated milepost 3 with a smashed can of Miller High Life, empty trash from someone else’s party.
    The sun blistered the brim of my hat. My cheeks burned after one hour of walking. Three miles. Ten degrees warmer. I shifted my backpack to let air nibble my sweaty shirt. “Making good time.”
    Like making good time negated discomfort.
    When I was growing up, making time was Dad’s catchphrase on long road trips. “Gotta make good time, Linda. Can’t stop for nothing, not even to pee.” I remembered pinching my crotch together to keep from soiling myself while Dad drove past exit after exit. When we got to our final destination, I could barely walk through bladder pain, but I still made it to a real bathroom. Ladies didn’t pee on the ground.
    Familiar heat fired through my loins, my first experience with discomfort on the Natchez Trace.
    I jogged past milepost 4. Another slight incline. A tunnel through trees. To shift my attention from the mounting insistence of my abdomen, I snapped pictures. Of baby wildflowers, infant heads a first homage to spring. Of rocks, strewn across another bridge. Of moss, clinging to the white edge of a road sign.
    Jackson 90 .
    Mileposts 5 through 7 blitzed through the blur of photography. I stopped once to sip water, hoping deprivation would help with my urgent bladder. In four miles, I hadn’t seen a single vehicle.
    I shuddered and pressed onward, certain my father would be proud of the time I was making. After all, I was already at milepost 8. Two hours and thirty minutes from the starting line. I squinted up an embankment.
    Elizabeth Female Academy .
    “I can’t believe I’m already here.”
    The first stop on my Natchez Trace book tour, Elizabeth Female Academy boasted the title “First Female College in the United States.” While I wasn’t sure that was true, I knew John James Audubon taught there in 1822. I imagined the Frenchman, lecturing about birds to full-skirted, corseted girls.
    A sidewalk snaked through trees. I hovered there, afraid of ghosts another visit might conjure. Undocumented souls were slathered across the Natchez Trace.