I mentioned awhile ago in this post that I was planning on reading a copy of Grandma Gatewood’s Walk by Ben Montgomery. I finished it back in December, and it did the trick of inspiring me to get outdoors. This could be why I’ve spent more time hiking and skiing than I have blogging these past few weeks. Now, since we have no snow, only what Spokane Public Radio this morning called “frizzle,” something between fog and drizzle, I figured it was as good a time as any to revisit my reading list. On it is one book I thoroughly enjoyed, and that I will not soon forget.
Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman who Saved the Appalachian Trail is a story that inspires you to get outside, to push the limits of your comfort zone, and realize that there is so much more to life than the everyday struggles that dominate our attention. More than anything I found myself reevaluating the need for material objects, and basking in the determination and lack of ego of a woman who hiked more than 8,000 miles between the ages of 67 and 76.
Montgomery’s book is very straightforward in style. It would be easy to dramatize the tragedies and triumphs of this woman’s life but Montgomery refrains, giving a factual account that very much fits with his background as a newspaper reporter. This historical and almost understated approach makes the book more powerful at points, allowing the reader to insert the empathy and emotion instead.
From all accounts, Emma Gatewood was a straightforward type of woman. At age 67, she told her adult children that she was going for a walk. She did not tell them she planned to hike over 2,000 miles on her own. Even she did not know that by the end of her trip she would walk through two back-to-back hurricanes that would devastate the East Coast and kill hundreds in New England, or spend the night in a hut with several New York gang leaders.
After raising 11 kids, helping run a farm, and fighting back against an abusive husband who repeatedly bloodied her face for 30 years, Grandma Gatewood was the first woman to solo thru-hike the Appalachian Trail, and the first person (male or female) to do it twice, and then a third time in sections. She carried a homemade knapsack filled with all the things she thought she needed to survive alone in the woods, which totaled a little over 20 pounds. Nope, there wasn’t a map, a sleeping bag, or a tent. It’s easy to think her decision to hike light was the result of naivety, or lack of experience. Yet according to her children, Emma spent time testing herself on overnight excursions into the woods near her house in Ohio, refining the list of what gear would be essential and what was just extra weight. The National Geographic article that inspired her hike assured readers that the trail was well-maintained with good signage; the reality was far from this, and Grandma Gatewood’s accounts to newspapers went a long way toward improving the trail and popularizing it.
Her amazing story is common knowledge for anyone who has ever thru-hiked the AT, but this is the first time it has been written down in book form. Grandma Gatewood’s Walk was published last April, and by September it has made it #15 on the New York Times Travel Bestseller List. Though it was featured in a review by the Washington Post earlier this month, you won’t find too many book reviews out there yet outside Amazon and Goodreads. However, the Utne Reader has posted an excerpt from Chapter 1 if you’re interested in reading a portion of it.
Ironically, when I returned Montgomery’s book to the library, I picked up Cheryl Strayed’s book Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail thinking another thru-hike book sounded good. I had no idea about the movie hubbub or that it was #1 on the NYT’s bestseller list during that same time period. I have some thoughts about that book as well, but I’ll save them for another post.
In the meantime, here are a few pictures of our adventures before all the snow disappeared. Oh, how I wish for snow! (I’m looking at my garden and happily thinking of what I want to plant, the new beds to be made, the rock that still needs to be moved . . . I feel a bit torn, but I would still rather be kicking and gliding across a bright expanse of snow!)
LuLuBean’s class went snowshoeing this last week and hiked 3 miles round trip. Man were those kids tired! In and effort to get Lil’Moose more comfortable on skis we’ve enrolled in a cross-country ski program (Nordic Kids) that runs every Saturday for 6 weeks. We’ve been up on the mountain every weekend this month and though we’ve gotten somewhat used to the routine it still has us running. It feels like a familiar tale at this point: “We’re learning so much,” “This is fun,” “Oh my goodness, when did life get so busy!”
Duck Duck Moose 
