This story was originally published in the Winter/Spring 2024 issue of Appalachia Journal. If you enjoy this story, please consider subscribing to America’s longest-running journal of mountaineering and conservation.
A raging monster reared its ugly head during 2020, stealing whatever it could as it ravished the earth. Lives, comfortability, and jobs were snatched from those who simply lived their lives to the fullest, with hopes and dreams of the future. At home in New Jersey, we were confined to walls, a reality that caused panic and mental health crises. I was one of those people whose mental health plummeted. The pandemic obliterated and burned my dreams to the ground and sent me into a four-hour-long hospitalization. All was lost . . . or so I thought. But it turned out that 2020 was the year of me—Dragonsky.
Losing my job during the COVID-19 lockdown had left me, like so many others, wandering in a tunnel with no light. I had been diagnosed with treatment-resistant depression and generalized anxiety disorder, so structure and routine were my core. Everything turned black, and I just wanted to vanish into the vast nothingness. Thankfully, I reached out to my therapist and started attending intensive outpatient group therapy, meeting five days a week by phone. I found this to be helpful but not sufficient. My cup was still empty, begging to be filled. One day, for reasons unknown, I was driving around with my former partner. We stumbled upon a man who would transform me into who I am today. I doubt he knew how important he would be to my life.
“Behind me is the Appalachian Trail,” he said. “It runs 2,000 miles or so from Georgia to Maine.” His voice creaked like the trees, tossed about in the wind.
“You ladies are nice,” he said. “I hope you find nice husbands.”
We snickered. We are lesbians. But we didn’t tell him that; instead, my eyes focused on the unseen—a trail whose white blazes captivated me. When I returned home, a switch turned on in me, one I had never known. I caught the “AT bug” and dived into copious research about the trail, seeing if any Black people had done it. Rutgers University had taught me well. I was a natural geek, learning all that I could about gear, bear safety, base layers, and more. Hiking was a foreign world to me, not one that I was accustomed to growing up. When seeking out other Black people who had done the Appalachian Trail, I came across two. In my research, I stumbled upon Akuna and Chardonnay, the only Black people who have completed the “triple crown” of hiking (the Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, and Continental Divide Trail).
Inspired, I knew right then and there that I was going to triple crown. I didn’t know how I would afford it or what those trails were. I just knew that whatever challenge it was that I could tackle it. All my life I had been climbing mountains with mental illness; those mountains had nearly cost me my life. But I never stopped believing that if this was my destiny, that things would fall into place. Representation and diversity on the trails were lacking, driving me toward deeper questions. Why weren’t there many Black people, especially women, in the outdoors? Why haven’t I known about this? Do Black people do this?
Then, in late April 2020, the public learned that Ahmaud Arbery had been murdered in late February by two white men while jogging down a road outside Brunswick, Georgia. In early May, the police arrested two men who had shot Arbery because they concluded he was a burglar. Chills ran down my spine. Concerned about my safety, I joined an Appalachian Trail group on Facebook and asked if I would be safe on the trail as a Black woman. I knew how many thousands of Black people had been lynched in the South, even after the civil rights era. The online hiking group was mostly white. The responses to my question were comments such as, “You’re not special because you’re brown. In this group, you’re just another hiker.”
I now understood the stakes but didn’t understand the hate that was targeted at me. Some people told me I was being political. More comments came: “Leave politics out of the group,” or, “The trees don’t see any color.”
I slammed my fingers down on the keyboard, tears flowing down my face. Encountering hate had been the least of my expectations. I felt hurt—I knew that as a Black lesbian, I was not just another hiker. I decided that I was going to take my power back by writing an article called “Not Just Another Hiker.”
My pain was heard. A stranger who worked at the Appalachian Trail Conservancy headquarters in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, contacted me after someone had contacted them.
“Your story really resonates with me. I was an Indian man thru-hiking in 2001 and endured racism, Islamophobia, and hate,” he said. “So many hikers think that racism doesn’t happen on the trail, that somehow once on the trail, it vanishes like the leaves in winter,” he went on, his voice cracking through the phone.
“So we’d like to sponsor your thru-hike,” he added.
“No freaking way!” I screeched like a child.
Those words—“So we’d like to sponsor your thru-hike”—propelled me into a new hobby, hiking. There was nothing that I couldn’t achieve now. The Appalachian Trail became tangible. A tiny stream now flowed into a mighty river. The possibilities were endless and my dreams, limitless. With a new confidence, I sought out hikes nearby. I thought I knew New Jersey—after all, I was born and raised here. Right? Wrong. All I had known was what everyone perceived my state to be—this filthy, city stacked, smelly wasteland with beaches and fabulous diners. What I didn’t know was the beauty of nature within the Garden State: glacial lakes, lush green fern forests, and tunnels of blooming rhododendron, their pink and white flowers the epitome of early summer. In the greenery of the trees, I discovered a new paradise to explore. I had never known there were mountains in my state. It was like falling in love, first slowly and then all at once. Mountains became my sanctuary, a place where I could authentically be me.
With the Appalachian Trail ahead of me, training was paramount. I would not be one of those women who couldn’t stand on her own two feet. Never would I be a damsel in distress. After purchasing my gear, I challenged myself to do the unthinkable: an overnight backpacking trip, alone with my dog Meraxes, in Worthington State Forest in New Jersey. Sweat poured down my face. The sun simmered like an egg in the sky.
With each new step, I found myself dancing along to my own tune, determined to experience my first night in the wild. Once I arrived at the campsite, my mind swirled with thoughts.
Would I survive? What about bears? What about strange men?
Meraxes would protect me, I reasoned with myself. We were safe, we could do this together. Terrified of the dark, I trembled in my sleeping bag as tears stained my cheeks. Choirs of bullfrogs croaked loudly, their symphonies the ballad of the night. My ears were like my dog’s, turning with every bit of noise, expecting the worst. But the worst never came. Exhausted from the hike, my weary body sank into the earth and I drifted away under the sea of stars. Golden threads of morning light transformed my dreams into a new reality. I survived. I had survived once, and I could survive again. The only way to get comfortable with being alone and relying on myself was to keep at it. And so, I kept on keeping on.
On February 21, 2021, I started my thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail. I set off to do it alone as a gay, Black woman, to find myself, and to see if I could do it—despite depression, despite the thoughts that told me I was worthless, despite all the odds that were against me. A journey of 2,1933 miles showed me the heart of a warrior, a woman I had never known existed. Her name was Dragonsky, and she had a fire that burned deep in my soul.
New Hampshire is where my fire ignited into a raging wildfire. The Wobanadenok, the land of the Wabanaki (White Mountains), threw elements at me that would make a grown man cry. It was here nature taught me to rely on and trust my intuition. Many have lost their lives on Agiocochook (Mount Washington), Mountain of the Great Spirit, but I wouldn’t be one of them.
On the morning of September 27, 2021, I lay hunkered down in the Lakes of the Clouds Hut’s infamous “dungeon.” I glanced at my phone. It was 7:15 a.m. The clouds that had lingered were increasing. The Mount Washington Observatory predicted rain, a temperature of 40 degrees, windchill factor of 20, and wind gusts of 65 mph, all starting at 9 a.m. I bid farewell to the southbound hiker who’d stayed there. I looked north. It was go time. I threw on all my layers: rain jacket, puffy, balaclava, top and bottom fleece layers, gloves, and my Garmin, hoping for the best but expecting the worst. From Lakes of the Clouds to the summit of Agiocochook, it was only 1.3 miles. Giant cairns marked the trail, their silhouettes a sliver in the blanket of ghost-gray mist.
Weather was the great humbler, one that I couldn’t tame. The wind roared with the intensity of seven freight trains, boldly announcing its presence in my vicinity. I grew strong against it, instinctively driving my right shoulder into the wind, my feet firm like pillars.
Dragonsky was born.
SHILLETHA CURTIS, a native of Jersey City, New Jersey, was trained as a social worker at Rutgers University. Her memoir, Pack Light: A Journey to Find Myself, is now available.