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

by Montgomery, Ben

  When her husband walked in the front door, he shook Emma’s hand like he knew her. She didn’t know why until he fetched his copy of Sports Illustrated. She had not yet seen the story, so she read it there. The man, Dr. Lord, phoned a friend who belonged to the Dartmouth Outing Club and asked if Emma could stay in one of their cabins along the trail. His friend was receptive. He said the trail was clean most of the way to the cabins and that she’d find them easily.

  After lunch, Dr. Lord drove Emma back to where she had left the trail. When she got to the outskirts of town, a woman and some teenagers were there, waiting to meet her. They visited for a while and when Emma decided it was time to press on, the teenagers, two girls and three boys, rode their bikes beside her down the road for two miles. One of the girls insisted on carrying Emma’s sack in her bike basket.

  Emma never found the “clean” trail that Dr. Lord’s friend had mentioned. Instead, she hiked through weeds that stretched well above her head. When she came to a clearing, she noticed that an envelope had been pinned to a post beside the trail. Upon closer inspection, her name was written on the envelope. Inside was a note from a woman who lived in a red house just off the trail. The woman wanted to invite Emma in for tea.

  The invitation made her happy. She felt like a dignitary. She joined the woman for dinner, then the woman’s husband, George Bock, told Emma how to get inside the Dartmouth Outing Club cabins. She arrived before dark and got a good night’s rest on a real mattress.

  At noon the next day, as she came to a highway, she spotted a man waiting with camera gear.

  You boys always seem to find me, she said.

  He introduced himself as a photographer, Hanson Carroll, from the nearby Valley News. He had been trying to track her down for a few hours. He first heard she had come through Hanover that morning, so he talked to Burdette Weymouth at the Hanover Information Booth, who showed him where the trail went up and over Moose Mountain. Not being endowed with the same energies as Emma, Carroll drove around Moose Mountain and waited along Lyme-Dorchester Road for her to come out of the woods. Within an hour, she came down the hill and into the road, tan and smiling.

  He asked Emma whether she would mind if he took a few photographs and filmed her hiking. She said she didn’t. He took what must’ve been a hundred feet of film, shots of Emma eating lunch by the trail sign, walking along the road with two little girls and a boy, walking alone. She told him she had already worn out five pairs of sneakers. She was wearing her sixth. They talked about all the attention she was receiving and he asked her if it bothered her. She explained that she was not adverse to publicity, so long as the reporters didn’t take up too much of her time.

  He got the hint, but he asked her one more question.

  Why are you doing this?

  Just for the heck of it, she said.

  Hanson Carroll’s story ran in the Valley News on Monday, August 22, 1955. Its place on the front page was a curious, haunting reminder of how close Emma Gatewood had been to danger.

  The bold headline at the top of the front page read: PESTILENCE THREATENED AS FLOOD’S TOLL IS COUNTED. The smaller headline read: DAMAGE THOUGHT TO BE MORE THAN $1 BILLION; EIGHTY-SIX KNOWN DEAD.

  Below the headline was a photograph of Emma, smiling, sitting in the grass and touching a sign that said APPALACHIAN TRAIL. Below the photograph was another headline: GRANDMA WALKS APPALACHIAN TRAIL FOR “THE HECK OF IT”

  14

  SO MUCH BEHIND

  AUGUST 22-SEPTEMBER 11, 1955

  Emma woke in the dark atop Mount Cube, its open ledges offering spectacular views both back down over the valley toward Hanover and to the north toward Mount Moosilauke and the White Mountains. She stood atop the pinkish-gray quartzite, which reminded her of granite or marble, and looked out upon what many hikers considered the most rugged part of the trail.

  Besides the dangerous terrain, the White Mountains—and the Presidential Range in particular—were famous for unpredictable, erratic, wicked weather. The range was the collision point for several valleys that funneled winds from the west, southwest, and south. It was also at the center of multiple storm tracks that brought weather from the Great Lakes, the Appalachian Valley, and the Atlantic.

  “The Highlands of New Hampshire have a bleak ruggedness that commands the respect of the hardiest mountaineer,” wrote Earl V. Shaffer, in Walking with Spring, his book about his inaugural thru-hike in 1948. “Some of the worst weather on earth occurs here, with winds of more than gale velocity and temperatures of polar intensity. Freezing weather is possible in midsummer and a snowstorm can follow hot weather within an hour…. The results can be overwhelming. Many people have died because they didn’t know or ignored these facts. Precautions should be taken. Scanty clothing should never be worn above timberline and emergency rations and gear should be carried.”

  Emma looked out on the horizon, toward Mount Washington, the highest peak in the northeast at 6,288 feet. Though not impressive compared to the world’s tallest peaks, the mountain’s blustery weather—with year-round temperatures averaging below freezing and average winds blowing at thirty-five miles per hour—had caught many hikers off-guard. The highest wind speed ever recorded—231 miles per hour—was atop Mount Washington, twenty years before. Winds blew so steadily stiff that shelters had to be chained and anchored to the earth.

  Hikers there had died from hypothermia, drowning, falling ice, avalanches, and falls. Two men, one in 1890 and the other in 1912, left the mountaintop on hikes and were never seen again. The year before her hike, two men died of hypothermia. The year after, two men would fall to their deaths, and one would be killed by an avalanche. By the time she arrived, some twenty-five people had perished on the mountain and scores of others had to be rescued.

  Emma didn’t have any of the proper gear that Shaffer referred to, but what she brought in her sack had served her fine so far. She had been able to wash out some things the night before. She had also been greeted that night by a porcupine, a big thing, which came sniffing around her feet. She gave it a kick and thought it was gone, but a little later the porcupine climbed up and got right in her face. She switched on her flashlight and he scooted away, never to return.

  She set out that morning, coming down off Mount Cube on a series of shaky ladders, a new experience for her, but she managed just fine. She walked to a farmhouse near the base of the mountain and knocked on the door. Peter Thomson was eleven at the time, but he’d never forget the experience.

  “My mother came and opened the door,” he’d recall fifty-seven years later. “She said, ‘Hi, my name is Emma Gatewood and I’m the first woman to walk the entire Appalachian Trail by herself.’” His mother invited the old woman in. Emma washed her hands and face and sat down to a home-cooked meal with the family. The two women would become good friends and pen pals, and Emma would visit several times in later years. She would inspire the elder Thomsons to take up hiking, and the couple would eventually summit all forty-six of the major Adirondack peaks, often accompanied by state troopers, for Meldrim Thomson Jr. would serve three terms as the mountain-loving governor of New Hampshire. His political success aside, for years to come he would open his home to Appalachian Trail thru-hikers, and his children would do the same, sending hikers on their way with maple syrup and a box of their mother’s famous pancake mix.

  In 1955, the man who would become governor took some pictures of his sons with Emma, and the boys followed her for quite a way down the trail to pick blackberries. She spent the night at Eliza Brook Shelter and hiked along a difficult, challenging stretch of trail the next day, climbing Mount Kinsman, then Mount Moosilauke, the most southern of the four-thousand-foot peaks in the White Mountains, where she came out above the timberline. The trail was marked by cairns, and the view across the bald boulder field was incredible. She didn’t see a place to stay, so she followed a steep side trail that ran off the ridge, alongside Beaver Brook, and took her down seven treacherous ladders. She spent the night at a motel.<
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  Emma with Thomson brothers (from left) Tom, seven; David, nine; and Peter, eleven; near the Thomson home in Orford, New Hampshire, on her first thru-hike in 1955. Courtesy Peter Thomson

  She climbed back to the trail the next morning and walked over Cannon Mountain, where she saw the Aerial Tramway gracefully whisking loads of people from bottom to top of the magnificent peak. A few of the tourists waiting in a small park at the summit gaped and snapped Emma’s photograph, as if she were an animal from the wilderness, as she walked through. She climbed down to Franconia Notch in the evening, dropped her sack on the porch of the only house she could see, and walked to a nearby restaurant for dinner. When she returned to the house for her sack, the folks there had gone for the evening, before she could ask permission to stay. A boy had mowed the lawn earlier and had raked the grass into a big pile by the road. Emma waited until dark before she hustled over and carried three big loads of grass to a secluded spot by some bushes, where she fluffed it into a bed. She was one hundred feet from the road, at least, but she didn’t want anyone to see her sleeping outside like a vagrant, so she pulled her blanket up over her body and covered it with grass for camouflage. She was warm on a cold night and slept well.

  On August 25, she hiked to Lafayette Campground, then walked back a little ways on the highway for a good view of the Old Man of the Mountain, a set of granite outcroppings on a mountainside in the shape of a man’s face. The great orator and statesman Daniel Webster once said about the outcropping, “Men hang out their signs indicative of their respective trades; shoe makers hang out a gigantic shoe; jewelers a monster watch, and the dentist hangs out a gold tooth; but up in the Mountains of New Hampshire, God Almighty has hung out a sign to show that there He makes men.”

  The old woman of the mountains kept climbing, up and up the steep ascent of bald rocks, and finally came to the Greenleaf Hut on Mount Lafayette, where she got a bite to eat before continuing on to Galehead Hut, kept tidy by two college students, caretakers there, who kindly prepared her dinner.

  She walked to Zealand Falls Hut the next afternoon and got some food and raisins for the trail. She started again down the slope and walked a while before she realized she was lost. The trail was unmarked but clearly a trail, and so she kept going for several hours until she came to a little campground just as the sun was sliding behind the mountains. A man had set up camp there. When she explained her predicament, he offered to drive her back as far as he could, and she accepted. She walked a little farther in the night and slept beside the trail.

  She made it the rest of the way back to the path the next morning and walked through a boggy plateau to Wiley House Station, then toward Mount Webster. The climb, from the beginning, was steep and rough. She came to a ladder where the rungs were so far apart that she had to plant one foot on the cliff face and pull herself up until she could get her knee over the next rung, then get her foot on it. It was difficult climbing.

  A few miles later she came to a spot where the trail stretched alongside a bluff, so close to the edge of a cliff that she was afraid she’d fall off. Falling happened to be the number one cause of death in these parts. The wind was strong, too—giant gusts of cold air coming up the face of the cliff. She tried to time the gales, waiting for a break so she could shimmy across. She worked up her confidence and then went for it, between gusts, and she made it behind a clump of pine trees to safety.

  She climbed Mount Jackson that afternoon, where she misread a trail sign and again took the wrong path. A woman she met on the trail put in a good word with the forest warden at Crawford Notch, and he let Emma stay the night with him.

  The next morning, her knee was causing her pain, and though the days were bearably mild, the cold was slicing through the mountains at night. Emma knew she’d need extra provisions as August faded toward September. She made it to the scenic Lakes of the Clouds Hut, on the southern shoulder of Mount Washington, where she had lunch before summiting. The sky was bright and clear at the top and a large number of tourists had gathered to take in the sights. They gaped at the wrinkled, trail-stained woman suddenly in their presence. She wouldn’t return the favor. Two boys walked up and sheepishly introduced themselves, then asked her questions about the trail.

  She set off again for Mount Adams, following the trail as it bent along the crest of the Presidential Range, above the trees. Her knee was still bothering her and the trail was rugged. In the evening, as she approached Madison Spring Hut, she heard a group of men, women, and children talking and laughing. When she got close enough she could make out about fifteen people in the group. She knew they saw her, and suspected they had been waiting for her, but she sat down on a rock behind some evergreens, being coy. She decided she’d make them come to her, and before long, they did. They had been expecting her, and they brought out their cameras to take her picture.

  One of the women, Ruth Pope, gave Emma a bandage for her knee. Another, Jean Lees, gave her some wool gloves and a ski hat, which Emma stowed in her sack. They made her feel welcome and treated her with respect and kindness. The hut master didn’t even charge her the six dollars for a bunk, and she thanked him by giving him her green eyeshade, autographed.

  She wrapped her knee in the morning, and the two women she met the night before volunteered to carry her sack. They broke off at Pinkham Notch and took a trail through Wildcat Mountains. When they found Emma again they were arguing about which one of them had carried the pack the longest. Emma reached Carter Notch after dark and accidentally stepped on her glasses. The frames were broken but she had brought along another pair, a lesson learned from her experience in Maine the year before.

  She tackled another mountain the next day, twice, because she misread signs; she blamed her own ignorance and a poorly marked trail. Her mileage had slowed considerably as she neared the Maine state line on account of her injury, the brutal climbs, and the occasional misdirection. A boy in the woods set her on the right path that day, and by then it was raining again.

  When she reached the hut in the evening, she couldn’t believe her eyes. The hut master had made a huge meal, and she was hungry. On top of that, they didn’t charge her anything for the meal or the bunk. All her clothes were wet, so she made a dress from a blanket by forming pleats with safety pins. She made it work and dried her clothes by the fire. She topped Carter Dome the following day, August 31, and found Imp Shelter, which had a stove and made for a nice place to spend the last night of August.

  The next day she walked over Mount Moriah, onto the highway, and followed it into Gorham, New Hampshire, for supplies. She found supper and a nice bed at Androscoggin Inn, where Mrs. Tanner kept the big and beautiful white house.

  She left Gorham early and walked over jagged and rocky trail the next day, over Mount Hayes and Cascade Mountain, by Passage Pond and Moss Pond, up over Mount Success, and then, without any fanfare, she crossed the state line into Maine, climbing Mount Carlo. As the sun faded, she realized she had missed the shelter down below. She found two boys on the top of the 3,565-foot peak, sitting on rocks, but as darkness fell they descended toward the shelter she must have missed. The night was pleasant, so she scouted out a place to sleep outdoors and found a thick bed of moss that was perfect, the kind of soft a rich man with a trick back would pay to have made. She stretched out facing the sky.

  The night was clear and the moon seemed close enough to touch. Its light fell on the short pines and the mossy bald around her. The stars were millions of pinpricks of light in a blanket of darkness.

  So much was behind her. So many memories and trials and miles. She’d made it into her fourteenth and final state, where September snowstorms weren’t rare, where freezing temperatures could make even the heartiest mountain men call it quits and head for shelter. Maine was rugged. Maine was wild. In forty years, Maine would still have more uninhabited forest than any other continental state.

  She couldn’t have known it then, but much of America was pulling for her, clipping newspaper articles at
kitchen tables and watching her traipse across the evening news on television, wondering whether she’d survive, this woman, in so mean a place. She carried their hopes along with her, but hers was a solitary walk—for peace, for serenity, for herself.

  She stood that night, all alone, just 280 miles from that little brown sign atop Mount Katahdin, her chest full of crisp air and inspiration, her feet firm atop a forgettable mountain where the stars make you feel insignificant and important all at once.

  And she sang.

  In the late 1800s, just before Emma was born, an old man began walking clockwise on a nonstop 365-mile ovular route between the Connecticut and Hudson Rivers, a trip that took him precisely thirty-four days to complete. And then he did it again, and again— for more than thirty years. He was clothed entirely in leather. He had hand-made a suit, jacket, pants, and hat out of hide, and he came to be called “Old Leatherman.” He slept in caves and natural shelters along his track where he kept gardens and stored food. Though he walked through dozens of towns, garnering enough attention after a few cycles that people set their watches by him, no one knew who he was. Although he was friendly enough to occasionally sit for a photograph, he didn’t speak, and only once in a while grunted something low and unintelligible. Some thought he was French.

  A myth developed about his origins, one that was never proven. The story had it that he was born Jules Bourglay, in Lyons, France, and that as a young man he had fallen in love with the daughter of a wealthy leather trader. He asked the merchant for his daughter’s hand, and the merchant struck a deal: if Bourglay would work for him for a year, he would give his blessing to the marriage.

  Bourglay agreed. But the business soon failed, due mostly to several of Bourglay’s bad decisions. The wedding was off. Crushed, the young man went into hiding, then disappeared to the United States, where he set out on his continuous trip to walk his lover out of his mind, or assuage his guilt, or maybe none of that. Who is to know? Every eccentric needs a story, and if one is not provided, one will be created.