And how could several leeches sucking puss from the blisters that now replace his six dead toenails possibly lead a child to say,
“I never knew I could love something so much” ?
I met Jake Brenner when he was 17, and I was 22 – not technically a child, but five years hadn’t made me much more of an adult than Jake. I was fitting a 70 pound backpack to Jake’s back in preparation to backpack the Maine section of the Appalachian Trail.
Jake has known he is transgender since he was nine years old: a difficult thing to know in rural Maine. Like many of us, he lacked parental support, and queer representation was an elusive fantasy in his community. And it is hard to find space in your head to consider the enormous, expensive task of transitioning when you think each day about how to put food on the table. Thus, Jake spent his childhood navigating a deadly paradox: he must transition in order to live in his own skin, but he also has to keep himself alive long enough to do so.
For Jake, a wilderness tripping camp in Maine offered acceptance and escape. There, he met Lily, Wavus’s first transgender trip leader. Lily put a tangible face to the amorphous concepts of queerness in Jake’s brain. That year, he started puberty suppression treatment and became the first openly transgender camper at “Wavus Camp for Girls.” Within three years, other kids who looked up to Lily and Jake came out, and the summer camp changed their name to simply “Wavus.”
“I’ll never forget the absolute brutality of that first night on the trail,” Jake told me. We had slogged over three mountains in a downpour. At each bald mountain top, panoramic views were shrouded by a dark gray mess of clouds and lightning. My backpack bore a gaping, bloody hole where a tramp stamp might go. I carry a scar the size of my palm there to this day.
“I cried a lot, puked a lot, I doubted myself, and I wanted to go home because I thought this trail was crazy and everyone choosing to do it daily was crazy,” Jake said. I remember him collapsing, screaming “fuck the AT” over and over in my arms when we finally reached the campsite at 1 am.
Ironically, it was Jake that made me stay on the trail. My backpack clawed deeper into my back hole (which he lovingly called “the b-hole”) with every step. Jake planted himself behind me at the end of the line to tell me stories. He endlessly poured out details of his life at the expense of his own breathing while I cried for eight hours straight. This was especially kind, given that his breathing was already restricted by his chest bindings. He had packed KT tape to bind and cover himself so he could swim shirtless on the trail. He gave it all to me so that I could bandage “the b-hole.”
On day four, a woman brought me a new backpack. “I distinctly remember her saying she was almost in tears because she was going to be able to see a “white blaze” (the paint markers of the AT), because she had just finished the trail a month before,” Jake said. “I was honestly thinking that she could take my spot if she wanted to, and really I would pay her a good sum of money to do so.”
“But what I realized is the days do get easier, your pack gets lighter, you get stronger, and the fun moments on the trail would drown out the hateful, negative thoughts in my head. I never knew I could love something so much. I love the smell of Maine pine trees, I love the natural air conditioning at the top of a mountain, and I love the feeling of my own strength.”
Jake endured testosterone injections through his dirt-encrusted thighs every week. Each time, it opened conversations about gender and sexuality in our group. On the trail, there are no secrets. My co-leader, Hadley, and I are both queer and nonbinary (though I hadn’t yet expressed my gender identity to anyone). Our presence established an oasis for unabashedly queer existence. The nature of talking while backpacking, with no distractions or agenda, let our conversations go deeper. We relied on the Maine woods and each other for every facet of life – medical attention, emotional support, food, water, laughter, willpower, a place to sleep. Being so utterly tied to each other creates the most unlimited empathy and capacity to learn I have ever experienced. Jake became more confident, pushing me to consider my own identity. Our pride multiplied like mirrors facing each other, reflecting infinitely.
In his journal, Jake wrote, To be near the end of my backpacking journey and feel more like myself is all I could ever ask for. I’ve never felt like I truly belonged anywhere, but you have become my family, and I’m grateful for you every day.
Queer solidarity on the trail is the embodied feeling of being understood, down to Jake’s KT tape on my back. The unique and extreme physical challenge the trail presents offers the most euphoric joy.
Jake is 18 now, and working at Wavus with me. He told me, “The best moment of my life [was] when we summitted our final peak. Now, without a doubt, I would cry at the sight of a white blaze, and I would do anything and everything to set foot on the trail with my best friends one last time.”
The last line in Jake’s journal reads: The 9 year old little girl is so proud of the 17 year old boy who did everything she never thought he could, so thank you Wavus, for always accepting me.
Jake Brenner (he/him), 17; Hadley Ball (they/them), 22; Page Proctor (she/they), 22
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