Grandma Gatewoods Walk, Ben Montgomery
Grandma Gatewoods Walk, Ben Montgomery
18 Rating(s)
List: $16.99 | Sale: $11.89
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Grandma Gatewood's Walk
The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail

Author: Ben Montgomery

Narrator: Patrick Lawlor

Unabridged: 7 hr 54 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 12/16/2014


Synopsis

Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than two hundred dollars. The next anybody heard from her, this genteel, farm-reared, sixty-seven-year-old great-grandmother had walked 800 miles along the 2,050-mile Appalachian Trail. And in September 1955, atop Maine's Mount Katahdin, she sang the first verse of "America, the Beautiful" and proclaimed, "I said I'll do it, and I've done it."

Grandma Gatewood, as the reporters called her, became the first woman to hike the entire Appalachian Trail alone, as well as the first person—man or woman—to walk it twice and three times. The public attention she brought to the little-known footpath was unprecedented. Her vocal criticism of the lousy, difficult stretches led to bolstered maintenance and very likely saved the trail from extinction.

About Ben Montgomery

Ben Montgomery is an enterprise reporter for the Tampa Bay Times and the founder of the narrative journalism website gangrey.com. In 2010, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in local reporting and won the Dart Award and Casey Medal for a series called "For Their Own Good," about abuse at Florida's oldest reform school. Ben lives in Tampa with his wife, Jennifer, and three children.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Ugvaja on April 21, 2024

This is a truly inspiring tale that touched my heart in more ways than one. As I listened to the audiobook, narrated with warmth and reverence, I was transported to the rugged beauty of the Appalachian Trail and felt as though I was walking alongside Emma every step of the way. Her resilience and ten......more

Goodreads review by Miranda on April 21, 2021

Her chest full of crisp air and inspiration, her feet atop a forgettable mountain where the stars make you feel insignificant and important all at once.Emma Gatewood is many things - a wife, a mother, a grandmother and a world-renowned walker. When she was sixty-seven years old, she told......more

Goodreads review by Candi on September 26, 2017

"She stood, finally, her canvas Keds tied tight, on May 3, 1955, atop the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, the longest continuous footpath in the world, facing the peaks on the blue-black horizon that stretched toward heaven and unfurled before her for days. Facing a mean landscape of ang......more

Goodreads review by Sharon on March 23, 2024

Wow! Simply amazing! True story about Emma Gatewood who chose to walk the entire 2,000+ miles on the Appalachian Trail at age 67. She had 11 children and 23 grandchildren. She carried a homemade knapsack that did NOT include a tent or sleeping bag. She was the first woman to thru-hike the entire tra......more

Goodreads review by Hank on May 12, 2014

A gentle and nearly perfect tracing of steps of a determined woman who was among the first to simply walk the Appalachian Trail from one end to the other, in the middle of the 20th century, when she was 67 years old. It's also a book about the emotional and physical journey that was her disastrously......more