Between eleven children the clothes to wash the cow to milk the garden to tend the occasional tramp passing through to feed and one husband Emma Gatewood rarely got a break But sometimes she found a way to escape A long ramble through the hills behind the farm was all Emma needed to set her heart right again
In the spring of 1955 when Emma was sixty-seven years old and her children had all grown up she left her home in Ohio and set out to walk the Appalachian Trail
Called the longest footpath in the world the trail stretched along the mountaintops from Georgia to Maine Emma had read about it in a magazine The magazine said no woman had ever hiked the entire length and that it was easy Besides it was what she wanted to do Emma didn’t tell her family where she was going but no one worried After years of hard work on the farm they knew that Emma could take care of herself
