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

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

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As a child, I loved the outdoors. I still love going outside to "commune with nature," as my mom used to say.

Early on, I'd heard about the Appalachian Trail and, after asking my parents about it, thought that walking the A.T. sounded like a great adventure. I thought it would be fun. My parents looked at me askew, hoping I'd forget about such fun.

I never did get around to walking the A.T.; there's a probability that I never will. But that's where reading comes in: one can live vicariously through other people's adventures, whether in fiction or non-fiction.

Grandma Gatewood's Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail by Ben Montgomery is one of the wonderful books dealing with one's adventures hiking the Appalachian Trail. Emma Gatewood, a 67-year-old mother of eleven, loved to walk. In 1955, after divorcing an abusive husband, she told her grown children she was going for a walk and left home with $200. The walk was along the then 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail, where she encountered not only breath-taking scenery, but two hurricanes, survived a rattlesnake strike and, at one point, spent the night with Harlem gang-members.

Unlike AWOL On The Appalachian Trail, by David Miller and Dennis Blanchard's Three Hundred Zeroes, Grandma Gatewood's Walk was written by someone other than the A.T. thru-hiker. It also moves at a slightly slower pace than the latter two books. Part of the slightly slower pace comes from introducing history and what was going on in the world at large during Emma's first thru-hike. The history part was both Emma's personal history - her marriage to P. C. Gatewood and, years later, her divorce from him, her relationship with her children, and why she decided to hike the A.T. - and history of the A.T. The book also weaves the outside world into Emma's walk, telling of the two hurricanes that, unbeknownst to Emma, were heading up the Eastern United States and would affect part of her hike. Also mentioned after her first hike, which takes up the majority of the book, are her second A.T. thru-hike (she was the first person - man or woman - to walk the trail more than once, going for three trail walks), as well as other walks, and mention of her guest appearance on Groucho Marx's You Bet Your Life.

While Grandma Gatewood's Walk takes a different look at the Appalachian Trail than either AWOL or Three Hundred Zeros (both reviewed here on June 6, 2013), Ben Montgomery wrote a totally engrossing book about Emma Gatewood and the Appalachian Trail. It should be noted that Montgomery was a finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize. I highly recommend picking up a copy and hiking through it.

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