Free Called Again by Jennifer Pharr Davis, Pharr Davis Page B

was a puddle of water at the bottom. I pulled out my collection of zipper-lock and “waterproof” bags that were supposed to keep my gear and food dry, but everything was wet. I started to cry. I didn’t have any dry clothes, I was cold and wet, and my down sleeping bag was compressed and dripping with water, which meant it wouldn’t keep me warm.
    I started shivering. Brew’s sleeping bag was damp, but much drier than my own. He instructed me to take off my wet clothes and crawl inside. He then laid down beside me and started rubbing my back with his hand to try and warm me up faster. I looked up at him sitting beside me.
    â€œAre you going to quit?” I asked.
    â€œNo way,” he replied. “I don’t care if it rains like this for the next ten days. I’ve given too much to this trail to give up now,” he said.
    That night, lying on the cold dirt floor of a barn that must have been several hundred years old, I had two revelations. The first concerned the Virgin Mary. I had heard the Christmas story dozens of times, and I had even played a shepherd in a church pageant, but I don’t think I had ever stopped to think about how Mary must have felt going into labor with Jesus. That night, it occurred to me that if I had been in Mary’s shoes and had known that God had the power to create a divine conception, yet had overlooked a reservation at the inn, I would have been pretty frustrated.
    Second, I decided that I really did want to go back and try for the overall record on the Appalachian Trail. I had given too much to that trail to give up now.

    I was wrong when I thought that it would be difficult to convince Brew to return to the Appalachian Trail. By the end of ourEuropean hiking trip, we both had committed to attempting the overall record the following summer.
    After having almost a year to think it through, Brew said that he would support me in whatever decision I made. On the same note, he made it very clear that if it was up to him, he would not choose to go back to the trail and run support because it is difficult, because there is a lot of pressure that goes along with it, and because it is not the most relaxing way to spend his summer vacation. But, he said, if it was important to me, then he would be fully supportive.
    I was thankful that Brew was so honest and realistic about his participation. Unlike 2008, this time my husband knew exactly what he was agreeing to. That transparency gave me the confidence to look him in the eyes and reply, “It’s important to me. It’s really important to me.”
    After we made our decision, we started to tell other people about it. At first, it went well. I told Warren and Horton that I wanted to try for the overall record, and they not only thought I had a chance at succeeding, but they both agreed to help me in the endeavor. Then I wrote a lengthy email to Andrew Thompson, who was still the overall record holder. He responded graciously and with encouragement, offering to provide any of the daily mileages from his record and saying he would try to come out and hike with me when I passed through New Hampshire. However, after those three interactions, the responses became increasingly negative.
    My mom argued that I would wreck my body and not be able to have children. I had close friends who said I would tarnish my women’s record if I failed in an attempt for the overall record. And the majority of the hiking and trail running community thought that I was conceited or delusional for thinking I could break a record that had been held by elite male trail runners for the past thirty years.
    Some of the online hiking and running forums that I belonged to began to show a flurry of unkind comments in response to my announcement. Most of the runners thought I didn’t have the ability to set the record, and most of the hikers thought that wanting to set the record meant that I didn’t truly appreciate or