Grandma Gatewood's Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail

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Chicago Review Press, Apr 1, 2014 - Biography & Autobiography - 288 pages

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.

 

Contents

1 Pick Up Your Feet
1
2 Go Home Grandma
13
3 Rhododendron and Rattlesnakes
31
4 Wild Dogs
45
5 Howd You Get in Here?
57
6 Our Fight
69
7 Lady Tramp
79
8 Attention
89
15 All by Myself
169
16 Return to Rainbow Lake
183
17 Aloneness More Complete than Ever
201
18 Again
209
19 Pioneer Woman
219
20 Blazing
231
21 Monuments
245
Epilogue
261

9 Good Hard Life
99
10 Storm
107
11 Shelter
117
12 Ill Get There
127
13 Destruction
135
14 So Much Behind
149
Acknowledgments
267
Bibliography
269
Index
271
About the Author
279
Back Cover
280
Copyright

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About the author (2014)

Ben Montgomery is a staff writer at the Tampa Bay Times and cofounder of the Auburn Chautauqua, a Southern writers' collective. He was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2010 and has won many other national writing awards. He has worked at newspapers in Arkansas, Texas, New York, and Florida. He currently lives in Tampa, Florida.

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