“Im quite a rarity,” she said. “I’ve never really hiked with someone. Of my 16,000 miles of backpacking, only a couple hundred miles have I kept hiking with someone for even a few days. Mostly, I’ve wanted to do more miles than they did.”

She’s lucky to be hiking at all. In 1975, she was thrown through the windshield of a car in an accident on Interstate 95 in Connecticut. “I came within a half inch of being killed,” she said. As it was, she fractured her spine. Although she is proud of overcoming her disability, she still cannot do certain things, like standing in one place for long. “When I’m hiking, I don’t carry as much weight as some people.” Weighing 120 pounds, she tries to keep her pack under 40 pounds. But she’s carried more than 50 pounds in the High Sierra of California, where resupply points might be 100 miles off the trail.

After the accident, her doctor told her she wouldn’t walk again. “Walking with a pack was the last thing I had on my mind,” she said. But walk she has. Starting in 1983, Wanda has hiked all of the A.T. three times; she’s working on her third hike of the PCT; and she has done many shorter trails, such as the Wonderland Trail in Washington State, the Long Path and Finger Lakes Trail in New York, the Colorado Trail, and Ozark Highlands Trail in Arkansas. “I wanted to hike every single trail I could find, and I enjoyed them all,” she said. In one “peak experience,” on the Wonderland Trail, she saw a whole field of purple lupines in bloom surrounded by snow. “I live for those special moments. Of course, there’s some drudgery in it, but the special moments make it all worthwhile. I like the simple lifestyle.”

She began hiking as a teenager at summer camp, when she took a day trip to Mount Moosilauke. “It made such a big impression,” Wanda said. “It was my first time out in the woods, smelling the pines. It’s still one of my favorite mountains.”

After finishing graduate school in 1982, Wanda hiked from Monson to Katahdin. “I ate nothing but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for six days,” she said.

From the beginning, she fast-hiked. “This was before speed-hiking was common,” she said. “Back then, it was a big deal.” One time, she did three straight weeks of 25-plus-mile days. “I was on a roll. I don’t know why I did it. People would say, ‘Wow, a woman doing that.’ I don’t know why. I just could do it. I did aerobics, and I was in generally good shape, but it’s mental more than anything. A lot of times I’d just ignore the pain.”

She believes that a hike should reflect a hiker’s capabilities and inclinations. “I want the individual experience to be right for them,” she said.

Wanda is also an avid student. “I collect college credits like I collect hiking trails. I have 400 credits from 12 colleges.”

A linguist who speaks a dozen languages, she went to an Army language school in Monterey, Calif., in 1974 and was the first woman there to get the top award for language skill. She’s continued studying Slavic languages, including Russian, Serbo-Croatian and Polish. “During a hike I always carry a book. You never know when you’re going to have time to read.” Mostly, she prefers good classical fiction.

Her 1975 car wreck destroyed her “worldly ambition. I’ve had little jobs since then, but the pursuit of money or career does not interest me. I’m cursed with a high I.Q. but not the ability to do much with it.”

Why spend so much time in the woods? “The gentler lifestyle,” she said. “I turned down a Fulbright scholarship to Russia for the A.T. the year after I got my master’s. I didn’t stop backpacking, as some people do after they accomplish their goal. I somehow kept going.

“On my hikes, I’d get enough confidence and strength to come back to society. I love the simplicity. You have just what you need. I don’t need a lot of money. It’s unusual for a woman to get into this lifestyle, where you’re at a different place every night.

“After I got off the trail in 1983, it was a failure to find a place in society and a desire to see the western trails that brought me back out. I had sent my name to a dozen colleges to teach Russian, without success. If I had gotten a position, it might have changed my life. Instead I thought, ‘Spring’s here and I don’t have a commitment.’ I was a substitute teacher and could leave when I wanted. Sometimes I hiked till November. Now I take classes from September to May, so it limits my season.”

“In 1986 I did my second A.T. I wanted to see it without the standard crowds, see things at different seasons, see the relocations, see the views that had been socked in.” She flip-flopped to avoid crowds. “There weren’t too many backpackers. I liked it,” she said.

Throughout her hiking career, Wanda has had to deal with adversity. “On my first A.T. hike, my toes got infected just outside of Damascus. My toenails got ingrown. I had to have surgery that winter. I did half the Pacific Crest Trail to Canada, but I had to go out late in the season because I waited for my toes to heal. Then all of my gear was stolen. I just wouldn’t give up. In Southern California, they called me ‘the stubborn one.’

“In 1986, I had Lyme disease and liver disease. I had to come back for my liver scans every few months. I hiked through a lot. I also had major depression. But as long as I was in motion, I felt better. Pumping out endorphins while walking made me feel better.”

Is she afraid of hiking alone? “I like the night noises. I haven’t been afraid of animals, just strange people. A man came to a shelter with a gun on my third A.T. hike in 1987. He left and came back several hours later. Meanwhile, three guys had showed up. I probably wouldn’t have stayed if the other hikers hadn’t come so soon.

“I met other weird guys. I found talking firmly kept them in check. I’m shy, but I’ve come out of my shell in the last few years. One time on the trail, I met a guy who growled, and I growled right back.

“I’d hiked on the A.T. and then on the PCT with a guy I had trusted. But once he was smoking dope and tried to choke me. It hurt enough that I had to go to the hospital. I got some therapy and did the same stretch of the PCT again to overcome it. He was a Vietnam veteran suffering post-traumatic stress disorder. I feel for him.”

Wanda believes that hiking is therapeutic for some people with serious mental problems. “Hiking helps them in some way,” she said. “But the trail can’t heal everybody. There’s a point of diminishing returns. I might have reached that, too. Now I have a balance in my life.”

In her first relationship after so many miles, her boyfriend put a lot of pressure on her to stop hiking. “For one year, I was in bad shape,” she said.

“In 1991, I came within a week of being married. I ended up going into the Grand Canyon on what would have been my wedding day. A part of me was relieved. I had lost who I was.”

Then she met and married another man. He day-hikes but doesn’t backpack. “My husband got me back into hiking,” Wanda said. “He got out the maps and encouraged me to hike.”

In the summer of 1993, she was planning to do the rest of the Finger Lakes Trail, then go to Russia to study language for a month (her master’s degree is in Russian), followed by a month hiking the Colorado Trail. She’s also working on her third PCT trek and is planning to hike in Oregon and the High Sierra. “Now, I’m hiking a month at a time, not all summer,” she said.

Like most backpackers, Wanda has difficulty describing what she thinks about during those long hours alone on the trail. “I spend time to acknowledge God. I’m not a terribly religious person, but I’m very spiritual. On the trail, you can be at the mercy of the elements. It humbles me and uplifts me at the same time. I also think a lot of mundane thoughts. Can I afford a little, itty bitty snack now? I play word games.”

She’s had good luck and some unique encounters with animals. Once, she woke up nose to nose with a bear. “I’ve had deer walk right along with me. I walked with a mountain lion. He could sense I wouldn’t harm him. Another time, I awoke where elk were mating.”

The trail and hikers have changed in the years Wanda has been hiking. “Now, so much money is being spent along the trail,” she said. “I never went to any motels or ate in restaurants. I believed that if you go there with any money, you’re not accessing the complete wilderness experience. That’s not what I wanted. I didn’t care what I ate.”

“I did lose a lot of weight my first hike. I got down to 112 pounds. I carry more food now and treat myself better. I have a great metabolism. My mind retains calories. Guys get ravenously hungry. I have even seen someone on the PCT eat a quart of mayonnaise. He was a skeleton. Women have an advantage over men in retaining calories.”

Despite her vast backpacking experience, Wanda still finds it difficult to adjust to the trail each year. “It doesn’t get easier the more you’ve done. I still feel it. The first week is the worst. You feel better by your third week. If you don’t stay out for more than a week, you never get to the point of enjoying it or being in shape. My knees hurt when I go down hills. I realize other people’s don’t. It’s more difficult now than when I was in my heyday. I take it a little easier. Now I’m carrying more food, more warm clothes, a Therma-A-Rest. I’m not as willing to suffer as much anymore.”

As with many strong hikers, Wanda never hits the trail early. “I’d start at 8 or 8:30 and do 10 miles by noon,” she said. I’d have my big meal at lunch. You need calories more to hike in the afternoon than you do to sleep at night. A lot of times I’d eat my main meal when I got to water.”

Wanda sees backpackers as a breed apart. “There’s something poetic about them. They’re more sensitive than most people. Even the ones who joke around, deep down they’re poetic.” She added, “We’re all searching for something. Some of us are striving for what Thoreau called living authentically.

“I’ve never thought of backpacking as a perpetual vacation. I have thought of it at times as a perpetual punishment. You see teenage delinquents sentenced to backpacking, and sometimes I wonder, did I get a life sentence? But more than anything, I’ve enjoyed it.”

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