WESTBROOK – Dressed in lightweight workout clothes and sneakers, Denise Scales looked like any other patron of Obie’s Fitness in Westbrook, striding on a treadmill and marking time on a digital readout during a recent gym session.
Except, of course, for the 30-pound pack strapped to her back.
While it may look unusual, Scales has gotten used to wearing the pack during exercise, and she had better be used to it, because she’s going to be spending the spring and summer carrying it.
Scales, 49, of Gorham, and Susan Lessard Twombley, 49, of Scarborough, will both be wearing packs when they set out to walk the Appalachian Trail together later this month.
The trip represents a spiritual healing of sorts for both women. It also represents a celebration of a reunion, as both Scales and Twombley were galpals as children, growing up together in Portland. They were separated at age 13, when Scales’ father moved to another part of the state, taking the family with him.
“We met last year on Facebook after 35 years,” said Twombley.
Less than six months later, the pair began planning the 2,200-mile trek together, as though the old friends were never apart.
“We were in the same class, and we got into stuff, both good and bad,” Scales said. “Look at us now. Nothing changes.”
At a recent visit to the gym, owner and trainer Obie Philbrook said a request for training to walk the Appalachian Trail was a new experience for him, but the key thing for both women to remember is endurance, the “slow and steady” approach.
“I’m just trying to incorporate moves where they spend a long time in the exercise,” Philbrook said.
That, and making sure they wear the packs, especially during walking exercises. That helps train the body to carry the weight over long distances, he said.
As for what’s in the packs, both Twombley and Scales are, as one might expect, packing light. There will be no heavy cans or bottles. Their two tents, which Twombley said are large enough for two people each, look about half the size of a traditional tent when packed away. They each have their own sleeping bag, which looks like a cocoon with a small hole for the head. A foam sleeping pad folds up accordion-style and attaches to the bottom of the pack.
Inside are the bare essentials for an extended hike, and little else. There’s a first-aid kit, packed into a blue plastic zippered bag smaller than the average woman’s purse. Twombley showed off her food, which was packed in individual foil packages, including freeze-dried morsels of all kinds, along with packaged tuna and other proteins. All of it fit in a bag which, when she held it up, contained the food in a bulge the size of a basketball.
Other essentials include two liters of filtered water, packets for filtering more water when necessary, and even a tiny chemical stove.
Twombley also said she plans to bring a satellite locator, so followers on a blog she is setting up on the trip will be able to track her progress. She said she has read extensively on the trail, and how most people who walk it emerge changed.
“I’m hoping to emotionally heal on the trail,” she said.
Twombley declined to discuss details, but said she has issues left over from her childhood, which she hopes to resolve, both through the journey and in blogging and writing about the experience.
“Everybody has skeletons,” she said. “I think it’s just (about) whether you’ve dealt with them or not, and I haven’t.”
Twombley said walking the trail was initially her idea, citing it as a longtime goal of hers. Like most people, she made various excuses, that she was too busy to take the estimated six months it will take to walk the trail. Even when she was able to find the time, she said, she couldn’t find anyone who had the time to go with her.
Walking it alone, she said, was also not an option. Twombley’s husband, Alan Twombley, a former Westbrook police officer and now a police officer and harbormaster in Falmouth, supported her interests completely, but asked her not to go alone for safety.
So she put it off, along with similar goals she had, such as climbing New Hampshire’s Mount Washington, the state’s highest peak, which stretches over 6,000 feet. While she had time to hike that mountain, Twombley said, she routinely talked herself out of it, claiming she was in no shape to do it.
“I just woke up in August of 2011 and said, ‘I’m going to climb that mountain, whether I’m in shape or not,” she said.
By then, Twombley had already rediscovered Scales, purely by accident, through Facebook in March 2011. Last summer, while Twombley was trying to find mountains to climb and battling old emotional demons, Scales was being confronted with new ones. For over a year, she had been trying to cope with her father’s death in December 2008.
“He was my hero, still is,” she said.
That tragedy was compounded last summer, in August. Around the same time Twombley was conquering Mount Washington, Scales received the shocking news that her brother, Philip, 52, died after being struck by a car.
The losses left Scales needing to mourn and heal. She, too, had heard that journeys can heal wounds, and contemplated traveling the world, but she didn’t know how long she’d be gone, and like Twombley, Scales couldn’t find anyone able to commit to being away for any length of time.
Then, out of the blue, Twombley wrote Scales an email, asking if she wanted to walk the trail. Scales’ response was, “OMG Yes!”
“I couldn’t believe it,” Twombley said. “I was in shock.”
Since then, the pair has been working out together, training for the trip. On Feb. 27, they will fly from Portland to Atlanta. Then, they will travel to Amicola Falls, Ga., where they will begin the trek on Springer Mountain on Feb. 29.
After a few weeks, the women are setting a goal to travel roughly 15 miles a day, taking periodic stops along the way at marked locations for rest and fresh supplies. They expect to spend the next six months working their way northward, ending the trip at Mount Kathadin in Maine at the end of August.
Scales said she will bring her brother’s ashes, which she plans to scatter along the way, as part of the healing process. Despite the lapse in their friendship of 35 years, Scales said she can think of no better companion for the trek than her childhood friend.
“I know it’s going to be phenomenal with Sue,” she said.
Denise Scales, left, of Gorham, and Sue Twombley of Scarborough,
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