Grandma Gatewood's Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail by Ben Montgomery Page A
Authors: Ben Montgomery
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that would soon change. Advertisements for Old Crow bourbon and the Stetson Playboy were surrounded by those for Quaker State Motor Oil and B. F. Goodrich tires.
The rise of the car in the 1950s was accompanied by the rise of television. At the beginning of the decade, only 9 percent of American households had a TV set. More than half had one by 1954, and 86 percent would own one by the end of the decade. Americans began to experience life not by the soles of their feet, but by the seat of their pants.
And along came a startling discovery. In March 1955, two months before Emma set out, a convention of family doctors assembled in Los Angeles to talk about a new generation of surprisinglylethargic children. Two emissaries from the athletic world broke the news: American young people are forgetting how to walk.
So said University of California football coach Lynn “Pappy” Waldorf and US Olympic trainer Eddie Wojecki in the keynote address to the seventh annual assembly of the American Academy of General Practice. Children, the men testified, would rather jump into a car to go a block than walk. And shockingly, the trend had already produced conspicuous changes in the physiques of kids.
The men both spoke of the sudden need to strengthen rather than loosen the muscles of athletes. They ascribed the change to a severe decrease in walking brought about by the habitual use of cars. And they pointed to a simultaneous decline in hiking.
America, it seemed, was at a turning point. When given a choice, Americans preferred to grab the car keys. Streets and cities were being designed for the automobile, rather than the pedestrian. This should have come as no surprise.
Henry David Thoreau predicted as much ninety-three years before Emma’s journey, in June 1862, when
Atlantic Monthly
published one of Thoreau’s essays, called “Walking.”
At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure-grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only, when fences shall be multiplied, and mantraps and other engines invented to confine men to the public road, and walking over the surface of God’s earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman’s grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve our opportunities, then, before the evil days are upon us.
Anthropologists estimate that early man walked twenty miles a day. Mental and physical benefits have been attributed to walking as far back as ancient times. The Roman writer Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD ) described walking as one of the “Medicines of the Will.” Hippocrates, the Greek physician, called walking “man’s best medicine” and prescribed walks to treat emotional problems, hallucinations, and digestive disorders. Aristotle lectured while strolling. Through the centuries, the best thinkers, writers, and poets have preached the virtues of walking. Leonardo da Vinci designed elevated streets to protect walkers from cart traffic. Johann Sebastian Bach once walked two hundred miles to hear a master play the organ.
William Wordsworth was said to have walked 180,000 miles in his lifetime. Charles Dickens captured the ecstasy of near-madness and insomnia in the essay “Night Walks” and once said, “The sum of the whole is this: Walk and be happy; Walk and be healthy.” Robert Louis Stevenson wrote of “the great fellowship of the Open Road” and the “brief but priceless meetings which only trampers know.” Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche said, “Only those thoughts that come by walking have any value.”
More recently, writers who knew the benefits of striking out excoriated the apathetic public, over and over again, for its laziness.
“Of course, people still walk,” wrote a
The rise of the car in the 1950s was accompanied by the rise of television. At the beginning of the decade, only 9 percent of American households had a TV set. More than half had one by 1954, and 86 percent would own one by the end of the decade. Americans began to experience life not by the soles of their feet, but by the seat of their pants.
And along came a startling discovery. In March 1955, two months before Emma set out, a convention of family doctors assembled in Los Angeles to talk about a new generation of surprisinglylethargic children. Two emissaries from the athletic world broke the news: American young people are forgetting how to walk.
So said University of California football coach Lynn “Pappy” Waldorf and US Olympic trainer Eddie Wojecki in the keynote address to the seventh annual assembly of the American Academy of General Practice. Children, the men testified, would rather jump into a car to go a block than walk. And shockingly, the trend had already produced conspicuous changes in the physiques of kids.
The men both spoke of the sudden need to strengthen rather than loosen the muscles of athletes. They ascribed the change to a severe decrease in walking brought about by the habitual use of cars. And they pointed to a simultaneous decline in hiking.
America, it seemed, was at a turning point. When given a choice, Americans preferred to grab the car keys. Streets and cities were being designed for the automobile, rather than the pedestrian. This should have come as no surprise.
Henry David Thoreau predicted as much ninety-three years before Emma’s journey, in June 1862, when
Atlantic Monthly
published one of Thoreau’s essays, called “Walking.”
At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off into so-called pleasure-grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and exclusive pleasure only, when fences shall be multiplied, and mantraps and other engines invented to confine men to the public road, and walking over the surface of God’s earth shall be construed to mean trespassing on some gentleman’s grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us improve our opportunities, then, before the evil days are upon us.
Anthropologists estimate that early man walked twenty miles a day. Mental and physical benefits have been attributed to walking as far back as ancient times. The Roman writer Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD ) described walking as one of the “Medicines of the Will.” Hippocrates, the Greek physician, called walking “man’s best medicine” and prescribed walks to treat emotional problems, hallucinations, and digestive disorders. Aristotle lectured while strolling. Through the centuries, the best thinkers, writers, and poets have preached the virtues of walking. Leonardo da Vinci designed elevated streets to protect walkers from cart traffic. Johann Sebastian Bach once walked two hundred miles to hear a master play the organ.
William Wordsworth was said to have walked 180,000 miles in his lifetime. Charles Dickens captured the ecstasy of near-madness and insomnia in the essay “Night Walks” and once said, “The sum of the whole is this: Walk and be happy; Walk and be healthy.” Robert Louis Stevenson wrote of “the great fellowship of the Open Road” and the “brief but priceless meetings which only trampers know.” Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche said, “Only those thoughts that come by walking have any value.”
More recently, writers who knew the benefits of striking out excoriated the apathetic public, over and over again, for its laziness.
“Of course, people still walk,” wrote a
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