Grandma Gatewood’s Walk
How exciting to hear about this history made on the AT by a grandmother carrying her own small sack of supplies from Georgia to Maine. The cover photo on Ben Montgomery’s Grandma Gatewood’s Walk shows an unathletic looking elderly woman with swollen feet and bunions, as revealed in the first chapter and cover subtitle, “The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail.” What?
My reading friend in San Diego, quite a hiker herself, said yes, this unlikely person saved the famous east coast AT…and she did it ALONE. Not even telling her eleven children back in Ohio. What?
When I inquired at my local public library, the librarian became quite animated about this story from seeing a documentary on this special, famous grandma hiker. She ordered the book through inter-library loan and I had it in my curious hands in a week or two. Maps everywhere so the reader can follow easily her progress from the top of Mt. Oglethorpe in Georgia to the top of our hazardous Mt. Katahdin in Maine.
Of course, I quickly skipped to the last 100 miles of the AT, notorious for its difficulty, and quickly find out that Grandma Gatewood’s exact trail trod was difficult to decipher because this part of the AT has been constantly changed and improved through the years. She did it somehow, thirty pounds lighter since Georgia, and everyday walked and fell and broke her glasses — she is blind without glasses — and twisted her ankle or knee…
Back to the beginning:
She stood finally, her canvas Keds tied tight, on May 3, 1955, atop the southern terminus of the AT, the longest continuous footpath in the world, facing the peaks on the blue black horizon that stretched toward heaven and unfurled before her for days…she was 67 years old. She stood five feet two and weighed 150 pounds and the only survival training she had were lessons learned earning calluses on her farm. She had a mouth full of false teeth and bunions the size of prize marbles. She had no map, no sleeping bag, no tent…She had started walking in Jan. while living with her son Nelson in Dayton, Ohio. She began walking around the block, and extended it a little more each time…By April she was hiking ten miles a day.
Brave and/or stupid? Her years of raising eleven children and caring for numerous grandchildren, beyond an abusive husband, drove her to walk out and about, knowing all her children were grown and independent.
“Her legs were sore when she set off a few minutes after 9:00 a.m. on May 5…a picnic table for a makeshift bed,” after a long day’s hike and swollen feet. The second day of hiking through Cherokee country began before daylight. Grandma sighted coiled up copperheads and wisely gave them “wide birth”. She spent her second night at the Doublehead Gap Church where a nearby neighbor provided a satisfying meal of warm cornbread and cold buttermilk.
Along the way doors opened like this often, but not always. She still had not informed her family what she was doing. Really?
Read about her daily ventures and I will skip to “ Boonesboro, Md., July 8 — (AP) — After 66 days and nearly 1000 miles, Mrs. Emma Gatewood is still pretty determined to become the first woman ever to hike the 2050mile AT alone…Lugging a pack of about 35 pounds…she has worn out two pairs of shoes but none of her enthusiasm”.
Photos along the way have the lovely sticker corners, for scrapbooks, page 152, and many more following pages with black and white photos of daily ventures.
She does reach the top of Katahdin alone. In 1955 that was her first claim to fame. “In 1957, she became the first person — man or woman — to walk the world’s longest trail twice”. Two times!!
Exhausted yet, dear reader? So Grandma also did a trek west following the Oregon Trail. Yes, she did! The $1.50 umbrella on the cover photo featured that challenging walk with highway trucks’ speedy whirlwind almost ripping the open umbrella out of her hands. She hung on…
The Duncannon, PA walk caught my eye as well, since I used to live near those mountains. Grandma’s 1958 hike in sections of the AT, the way most hikers manage to do it, took her to Adams, Mass.
Her 1959 hike from Ohio to Portland, Oregon was followed by press everywhere. Quite different from the AT, alone and quiet path. A Groucho Marx interview took place at the end of this hike with jokes about Gallipolis, Ohio farm and grandma giggles on TV. At 72, the grandma for everyone hiked 2,000 miles and Groucho wondered why? “Well, I like to walk…”
Then she shared another hike with the captive audience: from Centennial up to Portland from Independence, Missouri, “the audience turning to each other mid-gasp,…the woman who now had a small smile on her lips.”
I am a reader in mid-gasp by now: if this story were fiction we would all be laughing — can’t be true — by now, but this is history. Can not make “this stuff up“. There is a trail named for this accomplished woman. Read the rest of the book to find it. Maybe you will hike it, too, along with crowds who honor her memory every year on an annual trek, along her favorite walking path.
Better yet, hike The Mountain Trail here in Rome today and see your friends and neighbors from around the beautiful Belgrade Lakes. I bet you all are a lot younger than Grandma Gates? Maybe some strong old ones out there are her vintage too? Let Esther Perne know, please!
P.S. Art Linkletter also had Grandma on his TV show.
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