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

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 chance I might never get around to it. But that's where reading comes in: one can live vicariously through other people's adventures, whether in fiction or non-fiction.

Ben Montgomery's Grandma Gatewood's Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved The Appalachian Trail is one of the latest in 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.

Note: You can also read a review of Cheryl Strayed's Wild: Lost To Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, posted here on May 14, 2014.

Also reviewed here at Goodreads.

Wild: From Lost To Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, by Cheryl Strayed

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Many of us have, at one time or another, wondered what we would do if we had several months of free time. I had thought it might be interesting to walk the Appalacian Trail; Cheryl Strayed decided, instead, to walk the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), which she chronicled in her memori Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.

In her early twenties, Strayed went through a rough several years: the death of her mother to a recently diagnosed cancer, the slow drifting away from her step-father and siblings, and the end of her first marriage. Needing to get away and find her center, Strayed decided to hike the PCT, a feat made even more remarkable when one considers that she had not hiked any distance prior to starting out.

Wild is, for the most part, an intense, quick read. The beginning of the book describes her mother's relatively sudden death after an advanced cancer diagnosis and how Strayed cares for her mother is slightly reminiscent of parts of Anna Quindlen's novel One True Thing. While this section seemed to drag a little, as well as the break-up of Strayed's marriage, both sections are needed to help the reader understand her state of mind and why she felt the need to get out and hike the PCT. Her descriptions of the trail, the people she meets along the trail - who are somewhat few and far between and predominantly men - and the sense of peace the hike gave her make the book an interesting read.

There were only a few places in the book that, I felt, Strayed could have condensed. One place was when she and her brothers had to put down her late mother's old, sick horse, Lady. It was obviously quite traumatic for Strayed. However, she goes into way more detail of the horse's death than is necessary. Also, near the end of the book, she met up with a man working at a bar who she got to know very intimately during the few days they were together. That section, too, could have been condenses; suffice it to say that what she's written of the encounter would have made a fantastic erotic short story. Then there's the heroin experimentation. Those three sections - or, rather, the elaboration in those three sections - make Wild questionable for very young or very sensitive readers.

This is not to say that the book should be ignored. It is, for the most part, a truly amazing memoir, one that should be read more than once.

View all my reviews Note: To read my review about two books on hiking the Appalacian Trail, click here. There, you'll read aboutAWOL On The APpalachian Trail, by David Miller, and Dennis Blanchard's Three Hundred Zeros.

Two Appalachian Trail Books

Ever notice how you can go through life without reading a book on a particular subject, then suddenly find yourself reading several books on that subject in a short period of time? I've been doing that with books about the Appalachian Trail; more specifically, books by people who have walked the A.T.

Several years ago, I'd read a short article about someone who'd walked the A.T. and was immediately intrigued. Since then, I've periodically thought, If only... Many of us have dreams of what we'd do if only we didn't have a full-time job, mortgage, etc. That is where books come in; we can live vicariously, whether through a good novel, an interesting memoir, or whatever genre we've chosen for our next read.

Recently, I finished reading AWOL On The Appalachian Trail, by David Miller. I'd stumbled onto it while trying to find books for a Kindle, then started reading it when nothing else grabbed my attention. After finishing AWOL, I was excited enough about the whole A.T. experience to jump into reading Three Hundred Zeroes, by Dennis Blanchard. (My next read will probably be A Walk In The Woods, by Bill Bryson; it's been sitting on one of my book shelves for a while...) But getting back to AWOL and Zeroes...

In 2003, David Miller walked away from a job as a computer programmer to hike the Appalachian Trail. "...I broke the news to my boss. He said, 'If you need to have a midlife crisis, couldn't you just buy a Corvette?'" According to Miller, several thousand people decided to walk the Appalachian Trail (the AT) in 2003; eighty percent didn't make it. The trail's length (2,172 miles) undoubtedly had something to do with that.

Miller left Florida the end of April, 2003 to walk the trail, leaving his wife and three daughters for several months. Throughout the book, the reader learns many things about hiking the AT. First off, there are several kinds of hikers on the trail: thru-hikers, who walk the entire length of the trail at one time; section hikers, who walk a particular section of the AT; and day hikers, who simply walk a day's-worth of trail. Miller spent a good portion of 2003 as a thru-hiker.

Another thing one learns is that most hikers end up with trail nicknames. Miller nearly chose Corvette as his trail name (after his boss's comment), but decided on AWOL. (Apparently, there were other AWOLs at other times on the AT.)

Throughout, the book, AWOL/Miller describes his trip in descriptive detail; the reader gets a sense of travelling with him, experiencing what he experiences...except, maybe, the blisters which threaten to end his hike about half-way through it. Fortunately, a visit to a doctor, followed by a round of antibiotics and several days' rest (known by hikers as zero days, since they put zero miles on the trail). Miller also introduces the reader to other thru-hikers: Superman and Torch, Stretch, Tipperary, Elwood, Doc and Llama, Ken and Marcia, as well as several people in different towns and hostels who interact with thru-hikers.

There are many reasons why AWOL On The Appalachian Trail is the perfect AT book. At the beginning of each new section, Miller has a map showing the section of trail included in the chapter ahead so that the reader has a clear idea the section he's describing. He has also included numerous photos throughout the book, giving us a better look at the area. His descriptions of the trail, his exhaustion, the side trips into different towns, the other hikers, the entire experience, give the reader the distinct feeling of being there with Miller.

The second book, Three Hundred Zeroes by Dennis Blanchard, is also a very readable book, though not without a few minor problems.

The first problem - and the one that probably worked my last nerve - was Blanchard's habit of reducing people to objects. "I met a woman that was a thru-hiker; she was married to a man that was only a day-hiker." Objects are that or it; people are who or he/she.

Another problem was that Blanchard started the book by describing hooking up with an Appalachian Trail group in Florida, then wrote about the meeting, buying gear, how much some of the gear cost...While it was nice having a little background, this section seemed to slow the book down a little.

Also, where AWOL seemed to go in depth into the experience and nuances of hiking the Appalachian Trail, Blanchard seemed almost to skim through places. But that may simply be that I'm comparing two different styles of writing.

At first, I had wondered about the book's title (Three Hundred Zeroes). Part-way through Blanchard's hike during 2006, he had to head home; it turned out he needed artery bypass surgery, which lead to 300 days of recouperating before going back to complete his hike, hence 300 zero-miles days.

While some of Blanchard's book seems to wander away from the trail, giving the reader too much non-AT information (as well as the whole "that" rather than "who"), there are good points to Three Hundred Zeroes. First of all (I loved this from a personal point of view), Blanchard's home base is from Florida, and does write about places I'm familiar with. When he and a friend flew back in 2007 to finish the hike he'd started the year before, they flew out of St. Pete/Clearwater Airport. It was here that one of the funnier episodes in the book took place. (Blanchard's writing - at least in this book - shows off his sense of humor.)

When Blanchard describes getting to the St. Pete airport with his soon-to-be hiking partner, the reader is liable to laugh out loud. He describes "[going] through the usualy gyrations involving the Homeland Security shakedown...All we had were carry-on items. At the peek-a-boo bag inspection machine they found that Brendan had a serious terrorist weapon, a 20 oz. jar of unopened peanut butter. This was serious cause for alarm and it seemed that at any minute Brendan wouldbe whisked away to Guantanamo...As his accomplice, the staff took a dim view of me as well...[The] jar of peanut butter was a security risk...I was carrying my hiking pole, a potential deadly weapon...and nobody looked twice..." It gets even funnier before they get around to leaving the airport.

While I definitely found Miller's book more descriptive about the AT hike, both books had definite merits and are both worth buying. If, like me, you are unable to hike the Appalachian Trail, grab hold of these two books for the vicarious pleasure of hiking through them.