Grandma Gatewood's Walk by Ben Montgomery

Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than two hundred dollars. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, sixty-seven-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. By September 1955 she stood atop Maine’s Mount Katahdin, sang “America, the Beautiful,” and proclaimed, “I said I’ll do it, and I’ve done it.”

            Driven by a painful marriage, Grandma Gatewood not only hiked the trail alone, she was the first person—man or woman—to walk it twice and three times. At age seventy-one, she hiked the 2,000-mile Oregon Trail. Gatewood became a hiking celebrity, and appeared on TV with Groucho Marx and Art Linkletter. The public attention she brought to the trail was unprecedented. Her vocal criticism of the lousy, difficult stretches led to bolstered maintenance, and very likely saved the trail from extinction.

            Author Ben Montgomery interviewed surviving family members and hikers Gatewood met along the trail, unearthed historic newspaper and magazine articles, and was given full access to Gatewood’s own diaries, trail journals, and correspondence. Grandma Gatewood’s Walk shines a fresh light on one of America’s most celebrated hikers. @goodreads 

This book was a great inspiration!



For those of you that actually read my reviews =) there will be some spoilers on down the line because I just have to talk about Emma's horrific husband for a minute.

Anyway, at one time me, my dog, my dad, my ex-boyfriend and dog were going to hike a portion of the trail and I wanted to spend one night and hike back. But, we never did and then I became home bound so that's never going to happen. We used to pass this sign showing the trail when we were going to one of our places down the road.

There were so many references in the book to some of my old stomping grounds, Fort Oglethorpe, Gatlinburg and others.

I CAN'T believe this woman set out at 67 years old and did a thru-walk all by herself for 2,050 miles on the AT. She just had some tennis shoes, a sack and a walking stick. Dude, she was hardcore! She was a pioneer woman that was brought up with hard work all of her life so this was nothing. 




Here are some of her things at the AT museum.

She pulled from the box a drawstring sack she'd made back home from a yard of denim, her wrinkled fingers doing the stitching, and opened it wide. She filled the sack with other items from the box: Vienna Sausage, raisins, peanuts, bouillon cubes, powered milk. She tucked inside a tin of Band-Aids, a bottle of iodine, some bobby pins, and a jar of Vicks salve. She packed the slippers and a gingham dress that she could shake out if she ever needed to look nice. She stuffed in a warm coat, a Swiss Army knife, a flashlight, candy mints, and her pen and a little Royal Vernon Line memo book that she bought for twenty-five cents at Murphy's back home.

Emma didn't tell her children where she was going. They never worried about her because she was a tough woman. She was a pioneer woman. She was raised on a farm where she worked hard.

She got married to a jerk of a man who beat her all of the time and at times she was unrecognizable. He needed a bullet to the head in my opinion. She finally divorced him years later. She had 11 kids and tons of grandkids and great-grandkids.

She was the first woman to do a thru-hike of the trail. And she walked it again. She also did it a third time in sections. She also walked the 2,000 mile Oregon Trail. She was 77 years old and still hiking. God, I miss hiking and I would have loved to have met this woman. She was born Oct. 25, 1887 and died June 4, 1973. I was only a year old.

She has different monuments about her. I'm sure glad for that because she is a warrior/trouper/inspiration for women.

"After the hard life I have lived," she said, "this trail isn't so bad."

This woman had all of these children by an abusive man, she worked their farm and took care of the kids and everything else that had to be done.

I loved that her kids were started out working at a young age. I think all kids should have to do this and maybe the world would be a bit better. I soooooooooooo wish my parents would have done that with me. We had a house and they could have figured something out but when we traveled to my grandmother's farm we could have worked hard in their acres of gardens. But none of us kids were made to do that.

The children all worked hard, too. By two years old, they were sweeping floors and gathering eggs. By three they were collecting kindling for the potbellied stove. By four they were washing and drying dishes. By five they knew how to wash their own clothes.

And that's not all, they worked on the farm with their mom too. Dad worked sometimes. He did some teaching jobs too. Weird that.

The story tells about Emma's time on the trails, things she ran into, people, the weather, etc. But the book also tells the story of her home life and other little tidbits.





This woman was amaze balls and she's an inspiration to me. I hope she's an inspiration to many more. Well, she was as she got many woman, kids and even some men to hiking more. I just love her. She's going in my book of people I look up to.

Mel ♥

GOODREADS REVIEW:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2115896469