«Grandma Emma Gatewood»

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.

And she sang.

( Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail)

Ben Montgomery

I get faster as I get older.

Emma Gatewood

“If I’d been afraid," she said, "I never would have started out in the first place."

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

Ben Montgomery

Hippocrates, the Greek physician, called walking “man’s best medicine” and prescribed walks to treat emotional problems, hallucinations, and digestive disorders.

( Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail)

Ben Montgomery

There were a million heavenly things to see and a million spectacular ways to die.

( Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail)

Ben Montgomery

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.

(Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail)

Ben Montgomery

She had told her children she was going on a walk. That was no lie. She just never finished her sentence, never offered her own offspring the astonishing, impossible particulars.

( Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail)

Ben Montgomery

The sum of the whole is this: Walk and be happy; Walk and be healthy.

( Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail)

Ben Montgomery