Grandma Gatewood's Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail by Ben Montgomery Page B
Authors: Ben Montgomery
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journalist in
Saturday Night
magazine in 1912. “That is, they shuffle along on their own pins from the door to the street car or taxi-cab…. But real walking … is as extinct as the dodo.”
“They say they haven’t time to walk—and wait fifteen minutes for a bus to carry them an eighth of a mile,” wrote Edmund Lester Pearson in 1925. “They pretend that they are rushed, very busy, very energetic; the fact is, they are lazy. A few quaint persons—boys chiefly—ride bicycles.”
“But to dyed-in-the-wool walk-lovers the car has proved a calamity … because unless we be strong as steel, our lazy and basernatures yield to the temptation of time-saving when a ride is offered us,” wrote Mary Magennis in 1931.
Thoreau’s “evil days” had arrived, and the country, keys in hand, was making a dramatic move from feet to tires. The resulting death toll was astounding. By 1934, as the road-building programs gained steam, it was expected that two thousand pedestrians would be killed and eight thousand more injured. Fifteen years later, those numbers had skyrocketed. Cars were killing nearly thirty people a day and injuring seven hundred. A journalist for the
Saturday Evening Post
called it “a feud” between man and automobile. The pedestrian, he wrote, “literally would be safer on a lion-infested African veldt or in man-eating tiger territory than he is crossing a downtown street at dusk.”
And at that moment, among the confluence of mechanical engineering and highway building, the Appalachian Trail—the People’s Path—was fully blazed and opened to the public. You could set out for a day or a week or a month and lose yourself in the wilderness.
A man named Harold Allen summarized its appeal:
Remote for detachment,
narrow for chosen company,
winding for leisure,
lonely for contemplation,
the Trail leads not merely north and south
but upward to the body, mind and soul of man.
In 1948, Earl V. Shaffer became the first person to hike its entirety in a single trip, the first thru-hiker, and when he was finished, he wrote: “Already it seemed like a vivid dream, through sunshine, shadow, and rain—Already I knew that many times I would want to be back again—On the cloud-high hills where the whole world lies below and far away—By the wind-worn cairn where admiring eyes first welcome newborn day—To walk once morewhere the white clouds sail, far from the city clutter—And drink a toast to the Long High Trail in clear, cold mountain water.”
She came down out of Carver’s Gap, near Tennessee’s Roan Mountain, on June 4, and she was having no luck finding a place to stay. It seemed the bigger the house, the less likely she would be welcome. One woman was terribly snooty and acted as though she was insulted that Emma had even come to her door. Tired of searching for charity, she checked into a motel on the highway. She washed her hair and some clothes, took a welcome shower, and got a good night’s sleep on a soft bed.
The next day’s hike was nearly all on paved road and she grew tired quickly. When she could go no farther, she stopped at a little house to ask if she could rest a while on the porch. The man who answered thought she was a government agent who had come to spy on them. He stayed inside with the door latched and asked her all sorts of crazy questions through the screen. She tried to explain who she was and what she was doing, but the man was still suspicious. He asked her if she was with the FBI. When she realized she was making no progress, she stepped off the porch and walked on and finally found a family with seven sons, all at home, who let her stay the night.
She left at a quarter to six the next morning and followed the trail up an Appalachian gorge carved out by the swift waters of Laurel Fork. At the end of the gorge, past eastern hemlocks and sycamore trees, she found a majestic waterfall, the most beautiful she’d ever seen, cascading over moss-covered stone.
She
Saturday Night
magazine in 1912. “That is, they shuffle along on their own pins from the door to the street car or taxi-cab…. But real walking … is as extinct as the dodo.”
“They say they haven’t time to walk—and wait fifteen minutes for a bus to carry them an eighth of a mile,” wrote Edmund Lester Pearson in 1925. “They pretend that they are rushed, very busy, very energetic; the fact is, they are lazy. A few quaint persons—boys chiefly—ride bicycles.”
“But to dyed-in-the-wool walk-lovers the car has proved a calamity … because unless we be strong as steel, our lazy and basernatures yield to the temptation of time-saving when a ride is offered us,” wrote Mary Magennis in 1931.
Thoreau’s “evil days” had arrived, and the country, keys in hand, was making a dramatic move from feet to tires. The resulting death toll was astounding. By 1934, as the road-building programs gained steam, it was expected that two thousand pedestrians would be killed and eight thousand more injured. Fifteen years later, those numbers had skyrocketed. Cars were killing nearly thirty people a day and injuring seven hundred. A journalist for the
Saturday Evening Post
called it “a feud” between man and automobile. The pedestrian, he wrote, “literally would be safer on a lion-infested African veldt or in man-eating tiger territory than he is crossing a downtown street at dusk.”
And at that moment, among the confluence of mechanical engineering and highway building, the Appalachian Trail—the People’s Path—was fully blazed and opened to the public. You could set out for a day or a week or a month and lose yourself in the wilderness.
A man named Harold Allen summarized its appeal:
Remote for detachment,
narrow for chosen company,
winding for leisure,
lonely for contemplation,
the Trail leads not merely north and south
but upward to the body, mind and soul of man.
In 1948, Earl V. Shaffer became the first person to hike its entirety in a single trip, the first thru-hiker, and when he was finished, he wrote: “Already it seemed like a vivid dream, through sunshine, shadow, and rain—Already I knew that many times I would want to be back again—On the cloud-high hills where the whole world lies below and far away—By the wind-worn cairn where admiring eyes first welcome newborn day—To walk once morewhere the white clouds sail, far from the city clutter—And drink a toast to the Long High Trail in clear, cold mountain water.”
She came down out of Carver’s Gap, near Tennessee’s Roan Mountain, on June 4, and she was having no luck finding a place to stay. It seemed the bigger the house, the less likely she would be welcome. One woman was terribly snooty and acted as though she was insulted that Emma had even come to her door. Tired of searching for charity, she checked into a motel on the highway. She washed her hair and some clothes, took a welcome shower, and got a good night’s sleep on a soft bed.
The next day’s hike was nearly all on paved road and she grew tired quickly. When she could go no farther, she stopped at a little house to ask if she could rest a while on the porch. The man who answered thought she was a government agent who had come to spy on them. He stayed inside with the door latched and asked her all sorts of crazy questions through the screen. She tried to explain who she was and what she was doing, but the man was still suspicious. He asked her if she was with the FBI. When she realized she was making no progress, she stepped off the porch and walked on and finally found a family with seven sons, all at home, who let her stay the night.
She left at a quarter to six the next morning and followed the trail up an Appalachian gorge carved out by the swift waters of Laurel Fork. At the end of the gorge, past eastern hemlocks and sycamore trees, she found a majestic waterfall, the most beautiful she’d ever seen, cascading over moss-covered stone.
She
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