Grandma Gatewood's Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail by Ben Montgomery Read Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Ben Montgomery
world’s largest ship, the
Vaterland,
which had taken cover in an American port when Great Britain had declared war on Germany.
They were no ordinary prisoners of war. The men wore suits and ties and the women were fantastic dressmakers. They set about building a village on the hotel lawn using driftwood and scrap lumber. They built a chapel from flattened Prince Albert Tobacco tins. The townspeople developed friendships with the enemy aliens, and each Sunday afternoon they sat together for a concert from the prisoner orchestra. After the war, the prisoners from what had been the largest internment camp in the United States were transported to Fort Oglethorpe, in Georgia, where Emma had started her journey. But many of them had found their nineteen months of captivity so enjoyable that they returned with their families and settled in Hot Springs.
Emma sensed that brotherly love. The folks in the area were awfully nice, and just about everybody she bumped into insisted on feeding her and giving her something to drink. One woman gave her a glass of buttermilk and a piece of cake, her first on the trail,and she enjoyed it. She heard the locusts sawing for the first time all year. On May 29, she came upon a small store and intended to buy some food for the desolate walk ahead. All the store had was a can of black beans and a box of raw prunes. She bought them anyway, and chewed the dry, hard prunes all afternoon until they were gone.
The sun was hot as she made her way up Turkey Bald Mountain. The climb was slow and Emma was lost in her thoughts when she heard something strange. It sounded like some kind of bird at first, a low sort of hiss, and she kept walking, unafraid, until she felt something strike the leg of her dungarees. She glanced down and there beside the trail was a rattlesnake, coiled and ready to strike again. She slammed the tip of her walking stick toward the snake and jumped sideways. She darted by, her adrenaline surging, her ribs rising with each short, sharp breath. The snake stayed coiled and Emma was soon yards past it, thankful, reminded of the danger of a single misstep.
4
WILD DOGS
JUNE 1–8, 1955
She’d been gone nearly a month.
Emma’s children hadn’t heard from her, had no idea where she was or what she was doing, but not one of them was worried. Their mama was raw-boned and sturdy, and despite her absence, they knew she’d be all right, whatever her ambitions. It wasn’t rare for her to be gone for long stretches, so if they gave her disappearance a passing thought, it did not dwell in their memories.
She zigzagged between North Carolina and Tennessee, thirsty, sore, tired, over roads of cut stone and up mountainsides steep and tall, sleeping outdoors more often than in, giving herself to the wilderness, planting a crop of memories, exploring the world and her own mind, writing in her little notebook of the challenges and rewards, the wild dogs that came in the night, the cozy fire thatmade a campsite more cheerful, the magic of campers who shared their sausage sandwiches across picnic tables.
“My feet are sore,” she would write.
“I did not find any water,” she would write.
“I kept a fire for company as well as protection,” she would write.
“When I could not locate the trail after an hour, I was so near out of food,” she would write.
Occasionally, when she’d slip off the path, the woman who wouldn’t let a passing tramp go hungry back home in Ohio now gladly accepted invitations to rest or eat from the members of the long, linear neighborhood that was slowly, hiker by hiker, getting acquainted with the new Appalachian Trail.
The trail itself was the product of a dreamer, a man named Benton MacKaye. He said he had been inspired during a six-week hiking trip after graduating from Harvard, when he stood on Vermont’s Stratton Mountain and imagined a ridge-top trail running through wilderness across the entire distance of the range.
In 1921, when the idea had
Vaterland,
which had taken cover in an American port when Great Britain had declared war on Germany.
They were no ordinary prisoners of war. The men wore suits and ties and the women were fantastic dressmakers. They set about building a village on the hotel lawn using driftwood and scrap lumber. They built a chapel from flattened Prince Albert Tobacco tins. The townspeople developed friendships with the enemy aliens, and each Sunday afternoon they sat together for a concert from the prisoner orchestra. After the war, the prisoners from what had been the largest internment camp in the United States were transported to Fort Oglethorpe, in Georgia, where Emma had started her journey. But many of them had found their nineteen months of captivity so enjoyable that they returned with their families and settled in Hot Springs.
Emma sensed that brotherly love. The folks in the area were awfully nice, and just about everybody she bumped into insisted on feeding her and giving her something to drink. One woman gave her a glass of buttermilk and a piece of cake, her first on the trail,and she enjoyed it. She heard the locusts sawing for the first time all year. On May 29, she came upon a small store and intended to buy some food for the desolate walk ahead. All the store had was a can of black beans and a box of raw prunes. She bought them anyway, and chewed the dry, hard prunes all afternoon until they were gone.
The sun was hot as she made her way up Turkey Bald Mountain. The climb was slow and Emma was lost in her thoughts when she heard something strange. It sounded like some kind of bird at first, a low sort of hiss, and she kept walking, unafraid, until she felt something strike the leg of her dungarees. She glanced down and there beside the trail was a rattlesnake, coiled and ready to strike again. She slammed the tip of her walking stick toward the snake and jumped sideways. She darted by, her adrenaline surging, her ribs rising with each short, sharp breath. The snake stayed coiled and Emma was soon yards past it, thankful, reminded of the danger of a single misstep.
4
WILD DOGS
JUNE 1–8, 1955
She’d been gone nearly a month.
Emma’s children hadn’t heard from her, had no idea where she was or what she was doing, but not one of them was worried. Their mama was raw-boned and sturdy, and despite her absence, they knew she’d be all right, whatever her ambitions. It wasn’t rare for her to be gone for long stretches, so if they gave her disappearance a passing thought, it did not dwell in their memories.
She zigzagged between North Carolina and Tennessee, thirsty, sore, tired, over roads of cut stone and up mountainsides steep and tall, sleeping outdoors more often than in, giving herself to the wilderness, planting a crop of memories, exploring the world and her own mind, writing in her little notebook of the challenges and rewards, the wild dogs that came in the night, the cozy fire thatmade a campsite more cheerful, the magic of campers who shared their sausage sandwiches across picnic tables.
“My feet are sore,” she would write.
“I did not find any water,” she would write.
“I kept a fire for company as well as protection,” she would write.
“When I could not locate the trail after an hour, I was so near out of food,” she would write.
Occasionally, when she’d slip off the path, the woman who wouldn’t let a passing tramp go hungry back home in Ohio now gladly accepted invitations to rest or eat from the members of the long, linear neighborhood that was slowly, hiker by hiker, getting acquainted with the new Appalachian Trail.
The trail itself was the product of a dreamer, a man named Benton MacKaye. He said he had been inspired during a six-week hiking trip after graduating from Harvard, when he stood on Vermont’s Stratton Mountain and imagined a ridge-top trail running through wilderness across the entire distance of the range.
In 1921, when the idea had
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