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

by Montgomery, Ben

  Despite Old Leatherman’s mystique, Edward Payson Weston was probably America’s most famous pedestrian. In 1860, he bet his friend that Abraham Lincoln wouldn’t win the presidency. In 1861, he walked nearly five hundred miles, from Boston to Washington, DC, for Lincoln’s inauguration, arriving a few hours late but in time to attend the inaugural ball. He launched his pro career a few years later, walking thirteen hundred miles from Portland, Maine, to Chicago in twenty-six days. Two years later he walked five thousand miles for $25,000. Two years after that, the showman walked backward for two hundred miles. He competed in walking events against the best in Europe. Once, in his old age, he staged a New York to San Francisco one-hundred-day walk, but he arrived five days late. Peeved, he walked back to New York in seventy-six days. He told a reporter he wanted to become the “propagandist for pedestrianism,” to impart the benefits of walking to the world. A devout pedestrian, he preached walking over driving. Unfortunately, he was seriously injured in 1927 when a taxicab crashed into him in New York, confining him in a wheelchair for the remainder of his life.

  Weston wasn’t the first long-distance walker who gained attention for his physical feats. Many came before him, including Lieutenant Halifax, who walked six hundred miles in twenty days. Foster Powell walked two hundred miles from London to York, England, and back in five days. In 1932, a man seen walking backward in Berlin turned out to be a Texan attempting to walk around the world backward wearing special glasses affixed with mirrors.

  Later, in 1951, a New York couple claimed they had spent the previous twenty years walking city streets for a total of more than fifteen thousand miles. They said they had walked every single street of the five boroughs of New York City and had walked the varied boulevards of cities like Pittsburgh, Boston, Baltimore, and Denver. They became known as “America’s Walkingest Couple.”

  The celebrated Captain Robert Barclay, a Scot, deliberately walked a mile in each of one thousand successive hours. The challenge took six weeks in 1809. If a normal human walks three to four miles per hour, then Barclay’s attempt to walk just one mile per hour for one thousand hours stood apart for the sheer difficulty in pacing. Once every hour, he walked a mile, and stopped to rest. Huge crowds came to watch, and journalists wrote of the event as though it were edge-of-your-seat entertainment.

  Whether it was on a bet or to gain fame, to challenge oneself against nature or to pay amends for a lost love, those noted walkers—most all of them—had a purpose. In most cases, they let it be known. Mildred Lamb even wore a blue tunic that said PEACE PILGRIM on the front and 25,000 MILES ON FOOT FOR PEACE on the back. But the cases in which the motivations were held secret—as with Old Leatherman—observers, by nature, had to create a story to understand why one would set out on foot, leaving the shelters we build to plant us in civilization and set us apart from the world, the cars and houses and offices. To follow a path great distances, to open oneself to the world and a multitude of unexpected experiences, to voluntarily face the wrath of nature unprotected, was difficult to understand.

  Emma Gatewood was coy when people asked why, at her age, she had decided to strike out on the long trail. As America’s attention turned more toward Emma in her final days on the A.T., as newspaper reporters ramped up their dispatches to update the public on her condition and whereabouts, she offered an assortment of reasons about why she was walking. The kids were finally out of the house. She heard that no woman had yet thru-hiked in one direction. She liked nature. She thought it would be a lark.

  I want to see what’s on the other side of the hill, then what’s beyond that, she told a reporter from Ohio.

  Any one of the answers could stand on its own, but viewed collectively, the diversity of responses left her motivation open to interpretation, as though she wanted people to seek out their own conclusions, if there were any to be made. Maybe each answer was honest. Maybe she was trying to articulate that exploring the world was a good way to explore her own mind.

  On the morning of September 3, a man appeared on the mountainside, east of the Maine state line. He was out of breath, and looked exhausted. Emma introduced herself. The huffing man asked how far away he was from the nearest lean-to, and she told him not too far. He said he was pooped from crawling through and climbing over rocks. He was carrying a large pack on his shoulders and he told Emma she was lucky hers was small.

  She soon found out what he meant. Before her was Mahoosuc Notch, widely regarded as the most difficult mile on the Appalachian Trail. The narrow notch was hemmed in between two rocky mountain walls, clogged with cabin-sized boulders and gnarly root clusters, and speckled by deep caves. She climbed slowly, carefully, over and under the slippery, moss-covered boulders, and at times she had to lumber her pack through tight crevices and climb through behind it. It took two hours to make it out of the notch, and she was worn out by the time she got through, but still she continued on a few more miles.

  She slept the night at the shelter by Speck Pond, the highest lake in Maine, and woke the next morning to cold rain, pattering at first, then turning to fat, freezing, percussive drops that would make sane people scramble for shelter. She had blown out another pair of shoes, the side of one and the toe of the other. She had mended them with some string, but they wouldn’t hold much longer, and they did nothing to protect her feet from the wet or the biting cold. She wasn’t near any town, so she had no choice but to deal with the misfortune.

  She pushed over Old Speck Mountain, the state’s third-highest peak and rough up and down, then through Grafton Notch and up Baldpate Mountain, which is topped by a slippery sheet of rock. Near the peak, at 3,662 feet, the cold rain turned to sleet, and she had to crawl on her hands and knees to keep from sliding off the face. To make matters worse, she was nearly blind. The only pair of glasses she could find had one lens, and it was fogged over. She cleared it constantly with her fingers or sleeve, but the world through one blind eye and one fog-tinted lens was an unusual and treacherous place. A misstep on much of the trail would’ve meant an injured ankle, but here on the sheer rock that was quickly accumulating ice, it could have meant plummeting to instant death. Or maybe that—instant death—would have been better than, say, winding up debilitated at the bottom of some hole, exposed to the elements, freezing or starving to death. She stepped carefully.

  She came to a rock ledge about eight feet high, where she had to toss her sack to the ground below and climb down on a wet rope. She gripped it firmly, like she had held a thousand hoes, and slowly worked her way down. A little later, she arrived at a menacing crevice. The trail went straight across and, realizing she’d have to actually jump to the other side, she peered over the edge. Down in the pit, someone had painted a sign that read GO FAST. Emma tossed her sack across the gap and took a quick few steps on her bad knee and jumped, a great-grandmother aloft, then landed safely on the other side.

  It was dark by the time she came upon an old shack near Frye Brook. The placed looked to be an abandoned sporting camp. It was nice and clean, so she climbed in through a broken window and made herself at home. She spread out old magazines on the floor and lay down atop the thin pallet of pictures and words, bundled against the cold night.

  She walked across a paved mountain road the next day and noticed a man mowing along the shoulder on a tractor. Emma walked right up to him and introduced herself. He was Mr. Reed. She asked him how far it was to the nearest town where she could buy a new pair of shoes. He looked down and noticed the strings holding hers together.

  Six miles that way, he said, pointing, or twenty miles that way.

  She didn’t want to walk that far for shoes, even if the pair on her feet wouldn’t last much longer. The two talked for a while, and Emma explained what she was doing. Mr. Reed told her he had a pair of sneakers at his house that he’d let her have, but he lived twenty miles away himself. Reed figured that if she could make it to the next road that intersected the trail by evening, he could have his wife meet her with the sneakers. Emma was g
rateful. She said goodbye and headed off, over Wyman Mountain and Hall Mountain, down through Sawyer Notch and up over Moody Mountain. When she appeared on the road, there sat Mr. Reed’s wife and daughter. They’d gone into town and bought Emma a brand-new pair of white sneakers. Emma loosened the laces and began to slide in one foot, but the shoes were much too small. Somehow Mr. Reed had misunderstood and given his wife the wrong size.

  Mrs. Reed apologized profusely and insisted Emma come to their home for the night. She said they’d bring her back to the trail in the morning, so Emma agreed. Mrs. Reed did Emma’s laundry that night in their electric washing machine. The daughter called her friend, an avid hiker, and they made plans to accompany Emma the next day.

  They made it back to the trail later than Emma would have liked on September 6, but she had enjoyed the company, and a warm place to sleep, so she didn’t complain. The daughter and her friend set off with Emma, who was wearing new shoes, and took turns carrying her pack. They ate lunch at a shelter on Elephant Mountain, then hiked on, and though the trail was covered with blowdowns and obstacles, they all had an enjoyable day, putting in about ten miles.

  Mrs. Reed met them to fetch the girls. She had brought a camera along and took pictures of the girls with Emma beside an Appalachian Trail sign. Emma walked on, alone, to Sabbath Day Pond, where she slept inside a lean-to, then shot across some hilly terrain to the Piazza Rock lean-to, then, on a knee that was really beginning to ache, she leaned into the tiresome, steep climb up Saddleback Mountain, 4,120 feet high. The cold wind blew through her layers of clothing, but she sat anyway to eat a snack on Saddleback and absorb the incredible view from the open crest. She saw on the dark horizon the Boundary Mountains, dividing the United States and Canada. She sensed a storm moving in, and as the sun fell the cold hung hard around her. She made it to a lean-to at Poplar Ridge and hunkered down against the bite. She didn’t know what the stretch just ahead held for her, but it had been damning to previous hikers. Not long before, the entire section had been closed, marked with a sign that warned, TRAIL CLOSED, IN BAD CONDITION TO BIGELOW. TRAVEL AT YOUR OWN RISK. This had been the last remote stretch of trail to be completed on the entire A.T.

  In fact, the trail through Maine almost ended before it was started. By 1933, construction and linkage of the trail was under way in most areas, but not northern New England. Some thought the trail should end at New Hampshire’s Mount Washington because blazing the A.T. through Maine’s rugged wilderness would make it difficult to access and maintain. After a two-year study, a proposed route for the trail appeared in a 1933 issue of In the Maine Woods, and Myron Avery began convincing volunteers and the Civilian Conservation Corps to help. They measured the trail, built campsites, and drew maps. However, much of their work was done hastily in an effort to extend the trail through to Katahdin.

  In August 1937, the final section was completed on the north slope of Spaulding Mountain, but the problem of maintenance would persist. Through the 1940s, hurricane blowdowns and new logging operations caused the trail to fall into disrepair. Many of the trail volunteers were sent off to war, so it stayed in bad shape until the 1950s, when efforts to restore the path began anew.

  Earl Shaffer, the first thru-hiker in 1948, experienced much of that difficulty. He wrote that the terrain in spots had been wrecked by a hurricane, with summer growth and brush pushing through fallen trees, and another stretch was “on corduroy,” left from winter logging operations. Cross logs were suspended across the trail, on stumps and slash, and the snow had melted, leaving them exposed and rotting. “How hazardous this was can be imagined,” he wrote.

  And here came Emma, six years later, plodding along through stones and stumps, her knee getting worse with each footfall, up 4,250 feet of rock called Sugarloaf, past the ski lift, then down the other side and out onto the highway. There she met Mr. and Mrs. Richard Bell, who were spending a week at a friend’s cabin and invited Emma to sit down for some breakfast. Her knee was throbbing and swollen. After breakfast, Richard Bell positioned Emma and his two young daughters by a trail sign and snapped their photograph before Emma cut away.

  A fall storm was moving in as Emma hobbled on. She couldn’t make it far. Her leg was hurting so badly. She stopped early, at Horns Pond, and ducked into a log shelter built by the Civilian Conservation Corps. It would have to do for the night. She couldn’t walk any farther.

  The next day was the same, only now she was fully limping, trying to keep weight off her knee. And the gray sky had opened, dumping rain on the wilderness, which was followed by a bitterly cold wind. She’d only made it a few miles, but Emma stopped at a shelter on Mount Bigelow to attempt to dry her things and thaw her fingers and toes. She tried to build a small fire near the shelter, but each time she made a little progress the strong gusts of wind blew most of the precious heat away. She tried again and again until she was frustrated. She gave up and was stomping out the few embers when a man walked up behind her. His presence startled her.

  The man was the forest warden for the region, Mr. Vose, and he’d been looking for Emma. There was an item about her from the United Press in the newspaper:

  FARMINGTON, Maine (UP)—A 67-year-old grandmother from Gallipolis, Ohio neared the end of a [2,050] mile hike on the Appalachian Trail today.

  Mrs. Emma Gatewood, the hiker, is within 110 miles of her destination—Mt. Katahdin, Maine. She expects to reach the mountain in a fortnight.

  Mrs. Gatewood, a sturdy five feet, four inches, started from Oglethorpe, Ga., on the Appalachian Trail last May 2. Mt. Katahdin is the end of the trail.

  Mrs. Gatewood carries a light shoulder pack with a raincoat, blanket and enough food to last her between stopovers. She walks only about eight miles a day now because of a lame leg.

  Why the long walk?

  Mrs. Gatewood, who has 11 children, 23 grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren, put it this way:

  “After 20 years of hanging diapers and seeing my children grow up and go their own way, I decided to take a walk—one I always wanted to take.”

  The warden invited Emma to his cabin not far away. It was warm inside, and the fire felt good. She was happy to get out of the rain and cold, to have a chance to dry her belongings and give her knee a rest. There was still plenty of daylight left, but the warden advised Emma against going out on the trail again. The rain and cold were too much, and the stretch to the northeast was still damaged from a hurricane. He told her she couldn’t get through the blowdown before nightfall.

  She took his advice. He left the cabin to finish his shift, and while he was gone, Emma busied herself with chores. She washed the dishes, washed and dried her clothes, and fetched two buckets of spring water from a stream down the mountain a piece. She mopped the cabin floors and made biscuits and popped a skillet of popcorn over the dancing fire. The smell hit the warden when he came in from work. He was surprised and happy to see his place tidy and his supper made. He pulled a spare mattress from under his bed and made a pallet on the floor. The two strangers slept soundly to morning.

  15

  ALL BY MYSELF

  SEPTEMBER 12–24, 1955

  It was hard to believe she’d come so far. A little more than one hundred miles left to Katahdin. She’d be doing just fine if her knee wasn’t slowing her down, but things could be worse.

  Emma started to climb Mount Bigelow about 8:00 AM, leaving the warden behind, and was approaching the fire tower on a patch of jagged rock when a raging gust of wind ripped over the bald, caught her, and tried to dislodge her from the mountain. She held firm, let the gale pass, and kept climbing.

  She reached the stretch through which the hurricane had passed, and the toppled, tangled trees made hiking miserable. She struggled all day, climbing over splintered forest and corrupted stone. She found a used mattress at a shelter near Jerome Brook and made a bed for the night. A heavy frost set in the next day, and she wished she had something heavier to wear. She tried walking faster to keep warm, but the cold persisted. S
he stopped for breakfast the morning of September 14 at the West Carry Pond sporting camps. The proprietor, Adelaide Storey, gave Emma some snacks for the trail and took a few photographs. By now, Storey was used to ragged hikers schlepping through, as she’d met most of the thru-hikers who had come before and often housed the volunteers who worked on the trail.

  Emma walked on to the East Carry Pond camps and rented a cabin. Franklin Gaskell ran the camps and his wife was out of town, so Emma cooked a biscuit supper for the man and his son. The next morning, Gaskell knocked on Emma’s cabin door and told her she should join them for breakfast. He had a surprise.

  She sat down at the table and he scraped several small fried trout onto her plate. The pond was thick with them. Emma had never eaten trout before and she loved the meal, devouring each one.

  She followed a tote road past Pierce Pond and on a few more miles to the Kennebec River, arriving in the afternoon. There was no bridge across the swift-flowing, rocky stream. A forest warden, Bradford Pease, met her there with a canoe. He handed her a fat life preserver and she climbed aboard, bundled in a head scarf against the cold. Pease paddled Emma across the river to Caratunk, where a small crowd was waiting. Chief Warden Isaac Harris tugged the canoe onto the bank and greeted Emma. A reporter snapped her photograph as she climbed out of the canoe and stepped ashore, clutching her walking stick. She remembered then that she had dropped her raincoat on the far shore, so the warden started back across to fetch it.

  Emma told the reporter she was determined to finish, but her pace had slowed from twelve miles a day to eight. “I’m having a little difficulty with my knee,” she said. “Thought I’d rest overnight.”