The group of was hiking much deeper into the Appalachian forest than they had ever been before. They had decided this was the weekend to hike in and stay they night so they had brought sleeping bags, camp food and even a small stove to make soup,for dinner and coffee for dinner. There were four of them, longtime friends who had met in college and remained steadfast to each other over the last decade. The annual hiking vacation was always a reconnection of their bond.

“This looks like a good spot”, Marni said throwing her pack on the ground next to the stream. “Flat ground and good water. What more could we want?”

Sally threw her backpack and bedroll next to Marni’s and stretched. “God but it feels good to get that off”, she laughed.

Within a few minutes, Krissy and Linda were busy spreading out their bed rolls and setting up the camp stove along with a campfire. It was warm now, but the group was experienced enough to know as soon as the sun set it would be chilly this far up the mountain. It was a gorgeous spot and the mountains stretched up,and away all around them. They sun was setting and the stars popping out along with a huge full moon.

Linda reached into her pack and pulled out a box. “Tada! Special treat to celebrate our 10th reunion! Boxed chardonnay!”

“Only you would haul that all the way up here, but YIPPEE!” Marni fished in her pack and pulled out her collapsible cup as did the others and they were soon settled with wine, cheese, and a camp soup starting to bubble on the stove. Laughing and talking over each other they were catching up on the past year, they were totally taken by surprise when a woman walked out of the dark woods and approached their campsite.

“I mean ye no harms,” the woman had her hand in front of her showing the women she as carrying nothing. “Your joy called to me through the trees. It is happiness ye seek?”

They were all in shock, staring at the woman who seemed to have materialized from nothing. Sally was the first to find her voice.

“Well hello there. We’re longtime friends visiting here. Uh, do you live here? “

“I does. With my own sisters. We also comes together at times of the full moon and have done so for many years. We don’t wish to bother yous, but just to talk. Be it okay?”

“Uh....well...I guess. How about it, girls? You all okay with a visit from some locals?”

They all nodded, and the odd woman turned and walked back into the woods.

“Well this is weird,” Linda said. “What strange speech she has. Some kind of dialect? I have never heard anything quite like it.”

“My guess is this is a kind of mountain family. Just be on guard, ladies. Do all of you have your trail knives handy? I’m just saying to be prepared.” Krissy stuck her knife into her heavy socks and the others did the same.

They heard a rustling, and were shocked to see the woman coming back followed by a line of other women. They were different ages, and the leader, the first woman they had met seemed to be the oldest, somewhere in her sixties. The others ranged from a young girl in her teens to several in their 40’s. The group totaled six women and they all came into the firelight smiling and finding places to sit.

The old woman smiled broadly. “We is grateful for the fire and the talks. We brought gifts to share.” She nodded at her group and one by one the women pulled out biscuits and cakes and fruit and set the food on the tarp next to the stove.

“Wow. That looks wonderful,” Marni said, meaning every word. “I am so sorry we don’t have enough soup to share but we can add the rest of our cheese and meat and we can have a feast. And you can tell us who you are. We are just old friends who live in different states now, but who meet once a year to talk and enjoy each other.”

“That be a good thing,” the old woman said. “We be some the same but we lives together. We be sisters of the Goddess and all have chosen to be of one group. We lives in the forest and live from the good of the land. We is also healers and hags.”

One of the other women, a beautiful woman with long black hair and strange, deep black eyes continued. “Our purpose in life is to do good. Many have called us witches but we are merely followers of the Goddess. People in these mountains come to us for potions and lotions and midwifery. I used to be a doctor in the other life but left to join the Sisterhood. It is a joyful, purpose driven existence.”

There was a lot of talking that night. The four hikers were astonished to learn that these women were a motley group. There was the doctor, another a former herbalist and one a businesswoman who had walked away from the madness of consumerism to live a simpler life. At one point, the forest women stood and began a slow, beautiful dance to an ethereal song that they sang together is perfect harmony. They reached down and pulled the four hikers into their dance and it was wild, and free, and freeing to dance under the full moon with this group.

Suddenly the old woman, the obvious elder, clapped her hands and the forest women stood in a circle around the hikers, laying their hands on them.

“Do you feel that?” Sally whispered. “That....power....or something.”

“There’s a strange buzzing in my head,” Marnie replied.

They stood that way for several moments and then the Elder said, “We does that you for the gift of your joy and we leave you with a bit of our spirit. Come again to us. We will always find you if you come. Join us if yous wishes. We are in you as you is in us. “

As silently and suddenly as the women had come, they disappeared into the forest.

The hikers crawled into their sleeping bags. There was little conversation because they fell deeply, so peacefully into sleep. The next morning and all the way through their hike out, their conversation was quiet, gentle, and deeper than ever. They shared things they had never shared with each other before and they felt their sisterhood in a deeper place. Love surrounded them and would ever be so over the next decades. They had become their own sisterhood of the goddess.