Valerie B., Dec. 12, 2023
In April 1955, a 67-year-old great-grandmother named Emma Gatewood told her family she was going for a walk. She took a hand-woven sack and filled it with a change of clothes, some food, a Swiss army knife, some band-aids, a pen and notebook, and a shower curtain to keep the rain off. In her pocket she tucked some spare cash. Then she set out from her farm in rural Ohio.
Without telling anyone where she was going, she caught a plane to Georgia, then a bus, then a taxi. Finally, she stood at the trailhead in Mount Oglethorpe, GA, hoisted the sack over her shoulder, and started walking.
And walking.
And walking…
By the time anyone had heard from her, she had already walked 800 miles of the over-2,000-mile Appalachian Trail, which traverses the eastern US from Georgia to Maine. She took almost none of the essential hiking gear, instead sleeping wherever she could find a suitable place, be it a stranger’s spare bed, a disused cabin, a picnic table, or a pile of leaves. She ate what she could forage on the trail, or meals from generous strangers. She wore out seven pairs of canvas shoes, often got lost on the poorly maintained trails, was bitten by a snake, spent a night with rival gangs, hiked through two hurricanes, was helped across a rushing river by two fellow hikers, and made friends everywhere she went.
Finally, 146 days later, with her glasses broken and knee throbbing in pain, she stood alone on the cold, windy summit of Mount Katahdin in Maine and sang the first verse of “America the Beautiful.” She had become the first woman to have thru-hiked the entire Appalachian Trail solo, and returned home a hero.
But she wasn’t satisfied, and the trail was still calling.
Two years later, without telling anyone, she took another plane to Georgia, back to the trailhead, and started walking again. Soon, she was standing again on Mt. Katahdin and became the first person, male or female, to have thru-hiked the trail twice.
Then, just for the heck of it, she walked the trail a third time, this time in sections. Then she walked over the Adirondack Mountains and thru-hiked the over-2,000-mile Oregon Trail. Her rugged determination inspired generations of hikers, who affectionately called her “Grandma Gatewood.” She continued hiking well into her 80s, and helped establish the 1,400-mile Buckeye Trail, which loops around her home state of Ohio.
The big questions on everyone’s mind were how and why. Reporters often stopped her on the trail, and she always gave the same vague answers: “Because I thought it’d be a lark.” “Because the trail was there.” “Because I wanted to.” Her family had known her as a tough woman who’d worked a farm all her life and often suffered severe beatings and broken bones at the hands of her husband. She knew some basic survival and foraging skills from the times she escaped into the woods, and she walked regularly, but until the Appalachian Trail, she wasn’t known as a hiker. No fancy equipment, no specialized background. Just the ability and determination to put one foot in front of the other, five million times.
We don’t owe anyone, including ourselves, any explanations for the goals that we set. “Because I wanted to” is a valid-enough reason, valid enough to block out any excuses we might have. Grandma Gatewood had a hundred excuses to give up: she was too old, she wasn’t a hiker, she was alone, she was a woman on a trail dominated by men, she’d already had a hard life, she lived in a different part of the US, she didn’t have the right equipment or shoes, she didn’t know anyone, she was blind without her glasses. The trail wasn’t well-marked, there weren’t many good shelters along the way, not many places for food, there were dangerous animals. People weren’t always friendly, the weather wasn’t always cooperative. But those were all the more reason for her to keep going, and to finish what she’d started.
Sometimes we wait too long for the perfect conditions to appear before we’re able to reach the goals that we set. We hope that some day the excuses will one by one melt away, and we finally have nothing holding us back. But if we had no excuses, what kind of success is that? Success comes from achieving despite the excuses life throws at us. Just have the courage to take that first step. And then to take another.
(For more about Emma Gatewood’s story, check out the book Grandma Gatewood’s Walk by Ben Montgomery.)