The Distance from Me to You by Marina Gessner

depending on how her knee felt. By the next day, she felt sure, she would be able to take another picture—of the sign warning hikers coming from the south of the 100 Mile Wilderness. Those hikers would end their journey with the hardest stretch. McKenna had begun with it, and now it was nearly over. She had done it.
    She fell asleep smiling, her headlamp still on, shining a tiny circle of light, all night long, on the side flap of her tent. Luckily she could get extra batteries in Monson.

A good ten days later, McKenna sat on the stoop of the general store in Andover, Maine, with Linda, an ex-Marine who’d started the trail in Georgia back in March. Linda was in her midthirties; she’d come home from Afghanistan four years ago and enrolled at the University of Texas. The hike was her graduation present to herself, and, as she told McKenna, she was pretty stoked to have only one more state to go before getting her certificate signed at Baxter State Park. McKenna was beyond thrilled to meet another woman going it alone. As Linda showed her the various stamps in her passport, McKenna admired her powerful biceps, covered with tattoos. Linda wore a bandanna over her cropped graying brown hair. McKenna wondered out loud if as many people asked Linda if she felt safe on her own.
    â€œProbably not as many as ask you,” Linda said, giving McKenna a quick once-over. “But you’d be surprised. People don’t like to see a woman doing something like this alone, no matter how strong she looks. People were less antsy about my goingto war than about me hiking by myself. This doesn’t jibe with their vision of the world. It makes them nervous.”
    Linda tried to teach McKenna how to use her compass, the Cammenga that she’d spent seventy dollars on back in Connecticut, and couldn’t figure out how to use to save her life, literally.
    â€œNo matter which way I hold it, it points north. And then it just kind of quivers. Two mornings I’ve set off in the wrong direction. It’s easier to just use the one on my phone.”
    â€œYeah, they should have different-colored blazes for southbound and northbound,” Linda agreed.
    Every few hundred yards, trees on the AT were marked with white paint to let hikers know they were still on the trail, the same color in both directions. It seemed like it should be the simplest thing in the world—north or south. But on misty mountain mornings after a cold and lumpy sleep in your tent, it was easy to point your bleary-eyed self in the exact wrong direction.
    This morning, though, McKenna was well rested. Amazingly rested. Last night, for the first time since beginning the trail, she’d slept in a bed in her own room that she’d rented at Pine Ellis Lodging. Not only had she taken a shower, shaving off an impressive amount of growth since her stop in Monson, but she’d also done laundry, eaten pizza, and guzzled down a Coke. Back at home McKenna hardly ever drank soda, but on the trail it turned out to be the thing she fantasized about when she reached the end of her stamina, those tiny little old-fashioned glass bottles of Coke.
    And the most decadent thing she’d done: her southbound guidebook included the name and phone number of a massage therapist. McKenna wondered briefly what her parents would think when they saw
that
charge on their statement. She decided they’d be happy to see signs of her doing something so civilized. Thinking of her parents made her realize they were due for a text. She dug out her phone.
    â€œHey,” Linda objected, tapping the compass. “You’re not watching.”
    â€œI think it’s probably hopeless,” McKenna said, quickly texting that she was alive and almost in New Hampshire.
    Linda shrugged. “I didn’t bring a phone,” she said. “Just wanted to be totally cut off. You know?”
    â€œYeah,” McKenna said. “I wanted that,