Free The Distance from Me to You by Marina Gessner

Back home, she’d read a blog by one regular thru hiker who said he never bothered purifying water from running streams in Maine. But a bacterial infection like giardia could destroy her whole trip, and that was another chance McKenna wasn’t willing to take, no matter how pristine and cool the water might seem.
    She carefully used her filter to purify a fresh supply into both water bottles. Then she spent a few minutes hunting around for a good strong walking stick. She’d hoped to find one she liked well enough to keep with her, but that hadn’t happened yet—the last stick she’d been very confident with had broken mid-ford, almost sending her and her pack downstream with the current. So far, crossing rivers was the scariest part of the trip. When her stick had broken, her feet lost their grip on the rocky bottom, and something like panic had risen up in her.Knowing that panic was a hiker’s worst enemy only made her freak out more. Truthfully she wasn’t exactly sure how she had righted herself and continued to the opposite bank.
    Now she found another decent stick—a gnarled birch branch that was half wet. Possibly someone coming from the opposite direction had used and discarded it earlier today. She took a mental inventory of the people she’d passed who were walking northbound. She ran into at least a few people every day, and she had yet to reach an empty campsite. Everyone was friendly and openly concerned about her being alone on the trail. But at the height of summer, there were enough people around that she didn’t
feel
alone, not really. Even now, in the thick of wilderness with no human in sight, she felt sure that if she were in trouble and called out, people would come running from both directions.
    When she leaned on the stick to test it out, it held firm, with just enough springiness that she doubted it would snap. So she traded her hiking boots for her more water-friendly Keen sandals, loosened the shoulder straps of her pack, and pulled it back on, leaving the waist belt unbuckled. Then she placed the stick into the water and started to wade across. The water rose around her to about mid-thigh, and she planted the stick firmly, remembering that she’d made it across a much faster river than this one.
    One foot in front of the other,
she told herself,
same as on the trail.
She just had to be a little more careful.
    She was almost to the opposite bank when the rubber soleof her left sandal lost its grip on a flat, mossy rock, pitching her forward, landing her right knee on a rock that was so sharp, McKenna wondered if it was in fact an arrowhead.
    â€œOw!”
she said aloud, tears of pain springing to her eyes. She was close enough to shore that she could reach out her hands and grab hold of the dry ledge, pulling her legs carefully after her. Miracles do happen, because her pack had managed to stay dry—at least from stream water. The jury was still out on whether the steady, misting rain had managed to infiltrate the interior.
    Safely back on shore, McKenna threw off her pack and inspected the damage. The rock had made a triangular flap of flesh on her knee, blood bubbling beneath it. She touched it gingerly and winced. If she were home, she guessed her mother would make her go for a neat round of stitches. Now she had to settle for butterfly bandages and probably a lifelong scar.
    â€œOw,” she said again as she pulled out her first-aid kit. She swallowed a couple ibuprofen before getting to work patching up the damage. From where she sat she could see the East Branch shelter, but injury or not, she was determined to make it at least a couple more miles before stopping for the day.
    Anytime anything interfered with the mileage McKenna planned to cover, she was overtaken by a surge of adrenaline, making her more determined than ever to keep going. Back in her old life, a cut like this might have taken her out of the game for a day or more. Here