Healthy Foot Notes

Contributing writer: Carmen Thorpe ––

According to the Appalachian conservancy website, the Appalachian Trail is one of the longest continuously marked footpaths in the world, measuring roughly 2,180 miles in length. The Trail goes through fourteen states along the crests and valleys of the Appalachian mountain range from the southern terminus at Springer Mountain, Georgia, to the Trail’s northern terminus at Katahdin, Maine.

A tough and long trail that many have failed to complete –once, but a woman by the name of Emma Gatewood was the only person (in 1955) to have walked the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail not once but three times! In an excerpt of this amazing biography of Emma Gatewood, called Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story Of The Woman Who Saved The Appalachian Trail written by Ben Montgomery, we catch a glimpse of who Emma was, the power of walking, nature, and how the two merged two create a since of clarity for her on her hikes –at age 67!

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.”

The story of Grandma Gatewood will inspire readers [and hikers] 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. This was a quote from Ben Montgomery.

This book is the Winner of the 2014 National Outdoor Book Awards for History/Biography, and definitely worth a glance in our book!