What a blow! – When a wooden broom snaps over your head. And yet 27-year-old Perry Clayton Gatewood had seemed a pleasant, hard-working young man. He'd been to college and, before taking up farming and growing tobacco, he taught at a primary school for a while. When they met, Emma was nineteen. Her father – a drinker – had lost a leg to the Civil War, his mind to alcohol and his money to gambling. So by eighth grade she had already had to swap her pen holder for the wooden handle of a hoe, because the family farm needed watering with human sweat.
At home she and her thirteen siblings had to squeeze into four beds, and marriage to Clayton was supposed to bring a bit more comfort into her life. But after just three months of living together, instead of calluses on her hands Emma was tending the first bloody gashes on her face.
Over the next thirty-three years Clayton – among other things with that cursed wooden broom – knocked out several of her teeth, broke her ribs and finally almost beat her to death. When she threw a sack of flour at him in self-defence, the lawmen burst into their home and slapped a shiny but cold bracelet on her wrist. She was arrested. But at the same time she was set free.
The bloody gashes, scars and bruises all over her body made it clear who the victim was here. The town mayor took Emma Gatewood under his protection, and in 1941 she managed something unheard of for the time – she divorced Clayton. And she raised three of her eleven children as a single mother.
A few years later another man shook up her life. His name was Earl Shaffer. In 1948 the Second World War veteran became the first person to walk the entire Appalachian Trail in one go. A 3,500-kilometre trail that had taken shape in Benton MacKaye's head back in the 1920s. A utopia at the time! Walking from Georgia to Maine and crossing fourteen American states along the way! Nonsense! But Earl Shaffer pulled it off after all. And when Emma Gatewood read about his journey a year later in National Geographic, a thought flashed through her mind:
"If men can do it, so can I."
After all, she had always fled into the woods of West Virginia to escape a raging Clayton. The Appalachian Trail could just be a slightly longer escape. From what, this time?
This time, more towards something.
When she set off from Mount Katahdin in Maine in June 1954, Emma was sixty-six. And she soon got lost. After bathing in a pond she trod on her glasses, got tangled in thick undergrowth and vines, was constantly bitten by pesky, almost invisible midges, ran out of food and finally, after three days and two nights of wandering, ran into four rangers who were already out looking for her. They took the heavy sack off her shoulders and told her:
"Go home, Grandma."
She went. But a year later she returned to the Appalachian Trail. Better prepared, and this time she started from the south – to avoid the rangers who had sent her off the trail the last time.
Her eleven children thought she had gone off on another of her usual walks in the countryside. She did that all the time. Until they read in the papers that Mum had just crossed the Virginia state line. News of a 67-year-old grandmother striding across America in Keds sneakers, with just a blanket, a shower curtain, a mug, a canteen, a mess tin, a teaspoon, a Swiss Army knife, a first-aid kit, safety pins, a torch, a piece of rope, a raincoat and a warm coat in a sack over her shoulder, spread fast. It was quite a sensation, after all.
146 days on the trail. 145 nights outdoors.
Emma spent many of them wrapped in a blanket and a plastic shower curtain on picnic benches, abandoned porches or simply in the leaves beside the trail. Now and then, though, she was reminded how nice it is to sink into a soft mattress and clean sheets – whenever people living along the trail opened the doors of their homes to her.
On the trail she ate raisins, nuts and chicken bouillon cubes – mostly things that could be eaten cold. And she also learned which plants growing along the trail could liven up her menu.
By the time she reached Maine – the last of the fourteen states on the route – just about every media outlet was writing about the journey of old Grandma Gatewood from Ohio. The big national ones and the small local ones alike. And her old acquaintances the rangers even helped her across a flooded river. They didn't send her home any more.
But on the second-to-last day! – All she had left was to scramble up Mount Katahdin. And Emma fell.
She broke her glasses again, bashed her face and sprained her ankle. Her feet were so swollen they barely fitted into her sneakers, whose soles had almost vanished, so she felt every pebble underfoot. On top of that, the end of September was exceptionally cold and windy. But taking blows was something Clayton had taught her to do. He had trained her well. And she wanted to finish. In fact, by now she had to finish:
"I said I'd do it. And I did it."
But when, a day later, up there – on the bare, wind-scoured top of Mount Katahdin – she signed her name in the register of those who had completed the Appalachian Trail, she suddenly felt lonely. So terribly lonely. As never before. It was over. It was all over. Five months of daily toil and pushing through. Of aching legs, bloody blisters, bruised shoulders, a rumbling stomach, sleepless nights, soaked clothes and sunburnt skin.
Those five months of life, of real life, were now in the past.
Maybe that's why Grandma Gatewood returned to the Appalachian Trail two years later. And then once more – by then she was seventy-six.
In 1955 Emma Gatewood became the first woman to walk the entire Appalachian Trail solo in one go. She covered an average of 24 km a day. In 1957 she became the first person in the world to walk the trail a second time – reportedly just to enjoy it. And in 1964 she walked the Appalachian Trail a third time – this time in sections.
In 1959 – at the age of 71 – Emma Gatewood became the first woman to walk the 3,200 km Oregon Trail. She covered an average of 35 km a day.
From 1967 Emma Gatewood led a six-mile hike through Hocking Hills State Park in Ohio every January. More than 2,500 people took part in her last hike in 1973.
By the end of her life Emma Gatewood had walked more than 23,000 km. She died on 4 June 1973 at the age of 85. Her funeral was attended by her 11 children, 24 grandchildren, 30 great-grandchildren and one great-great-grandchild.
