Grandma Gatewood's Walk
The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail
Ratings4
Average rating4.5
15
The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail
Ratings4
Average rating4.5
Winner of the 2014 National Outdoor Book Awards for History/Biography 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, 67-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. And in September 1955, having survived a rattlesnake strike, two hurricanes, and a run-in with gangsters from Harlem, she stood atop Maine's Mount Katahdin. There she sang the first verse of "America, the Beautiful" and proclaimed, "I said I'll do it, and I've done it." Grandma Gatewood, as the reporters called her, became the first woman to hike the entire Appalachian Trail alone, as well as the first person—man or woman—to walk it twice and three times. Gatewood became a hiking celebrity and appeared on TV and in the pages of Sports Illustrated. The public attention she brought to the little-known footpath 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 was given unprecedented access to Gatewood's own diaries, trail journals, and correspondence, and interviewed surviving family members and those she met along her hike, all to answer the question so many asked: Why did she do it? The story of Grandma Gatewood will inspire readers of all ages by illustrating the full power of human spirit and determination. Even those who know of Gatewood don't know the full story—a story of triumph from pain, rebellion from brutality, hope from suffering.
Reviews with the most likes.
I enjoyed the recounted walk(s), how primary sources like interviews, correspondence and journal entries, become a cohesive narrative of Emma's experience. I understand the inclusion of times from Emma's life before the walk to acquaint the reader with her, but the amount of time spent on her experiencing an abusive relationship, though it did take up a large portion of her life, the pacing of it, perhaps to build tension, when we're taking about a real person who experienced abuse, even without grisly details, still feels gratuitous. And speaking of gratuitous, maybe it's my recent read of the Appalachian Trail A Biography, but there seemed to be a lot of digressions that felt superfluous to actually telling either Emma's story or the story of her walk specifically. I have a feeling this could have been an engaging 100 page book about her struggles both on and off the trail without the filler. Not certain the addition of the author's own trail moments and talks with one of her descendants added to versus dragged out the message. Given how often the author felt the need to discuss larger historical events going on simultaneously with her original trail walk, it felt a bit like he was sidelining the main narrative, like he didn't think her story was interesting enough to stand on its own. 🫤
⚠️Domestic abuse, physical abuse, SA
