Description
2014 Nationwide Outside E book Award Winner in Historical past / Biography
Emma Gatewood instructed her circle of relatives she used to be happening a stroll and left her small Ohio homeland with a transformation of garments and not more than 200 bucks. The following anyone heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, sixty-seven-yr-vintage nice-grandmother had walked 800 miles alongside the 2,050-mile Appalachian Path. By means of September 1955 she stood atop Maine’s Mount Katahdin, sang “The us, the Gorgeous,” and proclaimed, “I stated I’ll do it, and I’ve performed it.”
Driven By means of a painful marriage, Grandma Gatewood now not most effective hiked the path by myself, she used to be the primary particular person—guy or lady—to stroll it two times and 3 times. At age seventy-one, she hiked the 2,000-mile Oregon Path. Gatewood turned into a climbing superstar, and gave the impression on TV with Groucho Marx and Artwork Linkletter. The general public consideration she dropped at the path used to be unheard of. Her vocal grievance of the awful, tough stretches resulted in strengthened upkeep, and really most probably stored the path from extinction.
Author Ben 1st viscount montgomery of alamein interviewed surviving members of the family and hikers Gatewood met alongside the path, unearthed ancient newspaper and mag articles, and used to be given complete get admission to to Gatewood’s personal diaries, Path journals, and correspondence. Grandma Gatewood’s Walk shines a contemporary mild on one among The us’s so much celebrated hikers.
