Untamed: The Wildest Woman in America and the Fight for Cumberland Island Read Online Free PDF

collapsing wooden porch and rusted metal roof. The yard was littered with tires and scrap metal, and a pit bull was chained to a stake. The dog barked and lunged at Carol as she passed.
    It was getting dark, and she still had several miles to go. She had already missed five o’clock drinks, and her dad would be boiling mad. Suddenly, she heard clanking metal behind her. The pit bull had ripped his stake from the soggy ground and was charging her.
    Catfish dove at the pit bull before it reached Carol, and the dogs tumbled, jaws at each other’s necks. Carol shouted at the dogs and tried to kick them apart. Her pants got shredded and her legs were gored. The pit bull slashed at Catfish, but Catfish pounced and momentarily pinned the pit bull, baring her gums and teeth. Carol grabbed the pit bull’s chain and dragged him back down the road. He cowered under a pickup truck, licking his wounds.
    Then a light clicked on inside the trailer. A shirtless, beer-bellied man wearing cut-off jean shorts and cowboy boots stomped down the wooden steps. A wad of chewing tobacco was tucked beneath his lower lip. His bloodied pit bull limped over to him, panting heavily. He grabbed a rod of steel rebar from his front yard and walked toward Carol and Catfish.
    “I’m gonna beat the shit out of your dog,” he said.
    Carol picked up a big stick. “No you’re not.”
    The man stopped a few feet from her. Carol stood her ground. He eyed her closely: a scrappy teenage girl, wearing tattered, blood-soaked jeans, hammer-gripping a sharp stick.
    After a long silence, he dropped the rebar, spat his chew, and clunked back to his trailer.
    Carol confounded the boys in high school. They didn’t know whether to fight or French kiss her. She was a hard-bodied hellion who dressed ruggedly, but beneath the jeans and flannel, she was sun-kissed and sensuous. Carol had developed into a natural knockout, a drop-dead gorgeous girl with curves and confidence. Lean and athletic, with fawn eyes and long, raven hair often braided down her back, she wore no makeup and rarely brushed her hair, yet she was radiantly beautiful.
    Her reticence only added to her intrigue. Several boys had crushes on Carol, but few could break through her steely silence. Despite her confidence in the woods, she felt vulnerable and shy around people. No one had taught her how to chitchat, flirt, or gossip.
    She knew that boys liked her and figured out quickly what they wanted. While playing tackle football, she felt the neighborhood boys groping for more than pigskin, and she had enjoyed getting tangled up in the surf with the Hawaiian natives.
    But in high school, the social scene became more complex. Neighborhood boys became varsity lettermen with frilly-dressed girls tucked in their arms. Nevertheless, they were still intrigued by the mysterious, dark-haired nature girl who was smarter than her teachers but barely attended class. She could outdrink and outcuss even the toughest punks.
    She liked the boys’ attention and craved their touch. But for her, it wasn’t worth painting her face and dressing like a princess. So she remained an outsider. Her classmates called her a tomboy, and in the 1950s tomboys were stigmatized and scorned, even when they were as sassy and sexy as Carol.
    Two million years of evolution had hard-wired human beings—male and female alike—to explore nature, Carol reasoned. Why, then, was outdoor play still considered boy behavior?
    Certainly, physiological gender differences exist between men and women. On average, women tend to be shorter and carry more body fat to aid in childbirth. They typically have fewer oxygen-carrying red blood cells and smaller hearts. Because they have far less testosterone, women tend to have less body hair, a much smaller Adam’s apple, and less muscle mass.
    But when it comes to endurance, women close the gap and even surpass men. On average, women can walk, run, and swim for longer periods of time than men. That’s