At Long Trail Lodge near Killington, Vermont, staff connected Emma with a reporter. An Associated Press dispatch reported she had walked 1,700 miles with 350 remaining, losing 24 pounds and wearing out five pairs of shoes. The narrative warns that ahead lay the trail’s most difficult sections: the White Mountains, where temperatures could drop below freezing and daily mileage would plummet.

Emma hiked to Gifford Woods State Park, where ranger Grace Barrows reluctantly charged her one dollar but eased her conscience by bringing a large meal. Emma shared food with Bell and Sargent, who were also staying at the park. When rain began, they all moved to a porch, eventually sleeping on tables to avoid the wet floor. As they dried clothes the next morning, Hurricane Diane was moving into the East Coast far to the south, still underestimated by forecasters.

A volunteer informed Emma that flooding from a beaver dam had made the next section impassable, so he drove her around the two-mile stretch—the only part of the trail she would miss. On August 18, she walked toward the Connecticut River, stopping in Hartland for supplies. Mrs. Ruetenik, whose Ohio family had read about Emma’s journey, found her and offered lodging in a cabin they were house-sitting. Emma spent the evening with the family while Hurricane Diane’s outer bands began dumping rain on New England, though late-afternoon flash-flood warnings went largely unheeded.

The narrative flashes back to 1940. After Emma was jailed following a severe attack from P.C., the mayor of Milton, West Virginia, recognized that she had been badly abused and did not belong in jail. He took her into his home, finding her restaurant work. Back at their farm, Emma’s children discovered P.C. had abandoned them, taking most of the furniture but leaving half a butchered hog. Fifteen-year-old Nelson called his mother, who returned immediately, put the meat away, organized the house, and resumed caring for the family. She hired a lawyer and filed for divorce on September 6, 1940. Five months later, on February 6, 1941, the judge granted the divorce, awarding Emma custody of the three youngest children, alimony, and the farm. She wrote that she had been happy ever since, finally free from P.C.’s violence, though he would continue to cause financial difficulties by failing to pay alimony.

Returning to 1955, Emma crossed into Hanover, New Hampshire, hoping to avoid reporters. She was annoyed that CBS News had incorrectly broadcast she would square-dance at trail’s end. Unknown to her, Hurricane Diane was causing catastrophic destruction to the south: Flooding in Connecticut destroyed homes and swept families into rivers, and in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, the Brodhead Creek rose 30 feet in 15 minutes, collapsing a house at Camp Davis and killing 31 people. President Eisenhower would declare six states disaster areas. By August 20, the flooding subsided, not reaching much north of Massachusetts.

In Hanover, Emma invited two tennis-playing girls to hike; they followed and asked if she was the Georgia-to-Maine hiker. One girl’s mother made lunch, and the father, Dr. Lord, recognized Emma from Sports Illustrated—her first time seeing the article. He arranged accommodation at a Dartmouth Outing Club cabin and drove her back to the trail. Another woman and teenagers were waiting to meet her; several teenagers rode bikes alongside her for two miles.

Continuing on, Emma found an envelope pinned to a post with her name on it—a tea invitation from a nearby homeowner. After dinner with the woman and her husband, George Bock, Emma reached the cabin and slept on a real mattress. The next day, photographer Hanson Carroll from the Valley News tracked her down for photos and film. She told him she was wearing her sixth pair of sneakers and agreed to publicity as long as it didn’t delay her progress. When asked why she was hiking, Emma said she was doing it simply for the fun of it. On August 22, Carroll’s story ran in the Valley News, with Emma’s smiling photo juxtaposed against headlines about flood deaths and destruction.

Emma woke atop Mount Cube and observed the rugged White Mountains ahead, particularly the Presidential Range, notorious for unpredictable, deadly weather. Mount Washington had recorded winds of 231 miles per hour and year-round freezing temperatures. Over 25 people had died on the mountain. Emma lacked proper gear but continued with what she had. The previous night, she had kicked away a porcupine that returned to her sleeping area.

After descending Mount Cube via shaky ladders, she stopped at a farmhouse where the Thomson family invited her in. Eleven-year-old Peter Thomson would remember the encounter five decades later. Emma and Mrs. Thomson became lifelong friends and pen pals, and the family would later encourage the father, Meldrim Thomson Jr., to take up hiking and, as New Hampshire governor, to welcome thru-hikers into their home. The Thomson boys walked with Emma to pick blackberries before she spent the night at Eliza Brook Shelter.

After climbing Mount Moosilauke, she followed a steep side trail down seven treacherous ladders and spent the night at a motel before climbing back to the trail the next day. After crossing Cannon Mountain, where tourists stared at her, she reached Franconia Notch. Unable to secure shelter, she made a camouflaged bed from a large pile of freshly mown grass so passing motorists would not see her sleeping outdoors. On August 25, she hiked to Lafayette Campground and viewed the Old Man of the Mountain formation. She got food at Greenleaf Hut and dinner at Galehead Hut. The next day, after stopping at Zealand Falls Hut, she got lost on an unmarked trail. A man at a campground drove her partway back; she walked farther in darkness and slept beside the trail.

She regained the main path and climbed toward Mount Webster via a steep ascent. On a narrow cliffside path, she timed her movements between powerful wind gusts to avoid being blown off. After climbing Mount Jackson, she misread signs and took a wrong turn, but a forest warden at Crawford Notch let her stay. Her knee hurt the next morning, but she had lunch at Lakes of the Clouds Hut before summiting Mount Washington, where tourists gaped at her and two boys asked about the trail. Near Madison Spring Hut, Emma suspected that the crowd gathered was waiting for her. Two women, Ruth Pope and Jean Lees, gave her a bandage, gloves, and a ski hat. The hut master let her stay free; she gave him her autographed eyeshade.

The next morning, Ruth and Jean carried her pack part of the way. At Carter Notch, she accidentally broke her glasses but had a spare pair. The following day, she climbed a mountain twice due to misreading signs, and a boy redirected her as rain began. At a hut that evening, the master provided a free meal and bunk. She dried her wet clothes by the fire after fashioning a dress from a blanket with safety pins. On August 31, she climbed Carter Dome and stayed at Imp Shelter. She walked into Gorham, New Hampshire, for supplies and stayed at the Androscoggin Inn. Leaving early, she crossed jagged terrain and, on September 2, crossed into Maine at Mount Carlo. After missing the shelter, she found soft moss on the summit and slept under the stars.

With 280 miles remaining, Emma stood alone on the mountaintop and sang, reflecting on how far she had come. The narrative discusses famous pedestrians throughout history—Old Leatherman, who walked a 365-mile loop for 30 years; Edward Payson Weston, who walked backward for 200 miles; and the Peace Pilgrim, who wore her mission on her tunic. When asked why she was hiking, Emma gave various answers: her children were grown, no woman had thru-hiked in one direction, she liked nature, she wanted to see what was beyond the next hill. Montgomery wonders whether each answer was honest, or if perhaps exploring the world was her way of exploring herself.

On September 3, she met an exhausted hiker before reaching Mahoosuc Notch, considered the trail’s most difficult mile. For two hours, she climbed over and under cabin-sized boulders. She slept at Speck Pond and woke to freezing rain. Another pair of shoes had worn out; she mended them with string. She pushed over Old Speck Mountain and up Baldpate Mountain, where rain turned to icy sleet on the bare rock face. With only one working lens in her fogged glasses, she crawled on hands and knees to avoid sliding off. She descended an eight-foot ledge using a wet rope, then jumped across a crevice marked “GO FAST.” At dark, she sheltered in an abandoned sporting camp shack, sleeping on old magazines.

The next day, she met Mr. Reed mowing a roadside. Learning her shoes were falling apart, he arranged for his wife to meet Emma later with sneakers. Mrs. Reed and her daughter brought new shoes, but they were too small. Mrs. Reed took Emma home, did her laundry, and arranged for her daughter and a friend to hike with Emma the next day. On September 6, now wearing new shoes, Emma hiked 10 miles with the two girls carrying her pack. Mrs. Reed photographed them before Emma continued alone to Sabbath Day Pond. With her knee aching severely, she climbed Saddleback Mountain. Sensing a storm, she pushed on to a lean-to at Poplar Ridge.

The text notes the Maine section of the A.T.’s troubled history—hastily constructed in the 1930s, then falling into disrepair through the 1940s. Earl Shaffer found the trail wrecked by hurricanes and logging in 1948. Emma struggled through the damaged terrain, climbing Sugarloaf before meeting Mr. and Mrs. Richard Bell, who gave her breakfast and photographed her with their daughters. In severe pain from her knee, with a storm moving in, she stopped early at Horns Pond. The next day, limping through cold rain and wind, she stopped at a shelter on Mount Bigelow and tried unsuccessfully to build a fire against strong gusts.

The forest warden, Mr. Vose, found her—he had been looking for her after seeing a newspaper article. He took her to his warm cabin and advised against continuing due to weather and hurricane-damaged trail ahead. While he worked, Emma cleaned the cabin, fetched water, mopped floors, made biscuits, and popped popcorn. The surprised and grateful warden made a floor bed for her.

With just over 100 miles to Katahdin, Emma left the warden’s cabin on September 12 and climbed Mount Bigelow, where a fierce wind nearly knocked her from the mountain. She struggled through hurricane-damaged forest and slept on a mattress in a shelter. Heavy frost the next morning made her wish for warmer clothing. On September 14, she had breakfast at the West Carry Pond sporting camps, where proprietor Adelaide Storey gave her snacks and took photos. At East Carry Pond camps, she rented a cabin and cooked supper for Franklin Gaskell and his son. The next morning, Gaskell surprised her with fried trout—her first time tasting trout—which she loved.

She reached the bridgeless Kennebec River, where forest warden Bradford Pease ferried her across in a canoe. In Caratunk, Chief Warden Isaac Harris and a reporter met her. After Pease retrieved her forgotten raincoat, Emma told the reporter her pace had slowed to eight miles daily due to her bad knee. The reporter informed her that recent nighttime temperatures had been well below freezing. Her story appeared on the AP wire nationwide. The reporter took her to the Sterling Hotel, where Emma fashioned a skirt from a blanket while her clothes dried.

The next day’s brutal hike into the 100-Mile Wilderness in Maine involved tangled brush and poor visibility through her broken glasses. After 15 miles without finding shelter, she slept on the ground by a fire she tended all night, rotating to stay warm. The next morning, she walked to Blanchard for breakfast, then to Monson—the final town before the wilderness—where she bought supplies and stayed at Sadie Drew’s motel. At Bodfish Farm, a young couple let her stay free. On September 19, she fought through dense berry bushes and climbed five peaks in the Barren Chairback Range before reaching Long Pond Camps exhausted after dark.

She climbed White Cap Mountain, from which Katahdin is sometimes visible 70 miles away. The trail worsened through a burned, poorly marked area. She went two miles off-trail to stay at West Branch Pond Camps, owned by Robert Tremblay. The next day she fell, spraining her ankle, bruising her eye, and breaking her spare pair of glasses. Nearly blind and limping, she reached Nahmakanta Lake, where she removed a dead fox from the lean-to before settling in. After lunch at Nahmakanta Lake Camps the next day, she walked the final 10 miles to Rainbow Lake in the late afternoon, Katahdin visible across the water. Men at the camp, whom she had met during her failed 1954 attempt, were thrilled to see her. They washed her clothes and treated her like royalty. She slept in the same cabin as the previous year.

The narrative flashes back to Emma’s life after her divorce. Her children noticed she was happier than ever. When a deputy came to arrest her son Robert for disturbing church peace, Robert escaped through a back window and joined the army. Nelson also enlisted after turning 18. Robert became a German POW, returning gaunt and pale. Nelson was wounded in the Philippines. Their cousin Tommy Jones later remarked, “They were tough, that family. Every last one of them” (176). In 1944, Emma sold the farm and moved to Ohio. With her children grown, she moved frequently for work, renovated a house, and wrote poetry that she self-published. In 1949, she moved to Gallipolis to help her daughter Louise, and they bought a house together. A letter Emma wrote to the newspaper in 1951 about rabbits eating her peas showcased her strong opinions, humor, and close attention to the natural world. When Louise married and moved out in 1951, Emma lived alone for the first time in decades.

While working at a Columbus hospital, Emma first saw the 1949 National Geographic article portraying the Appalachian Trail as easy and well-maintained. In July 1954, inspired by the article, she attempted a southbound hike from Katahdin, got lost, and was rescued by rangers who told her to go home. But in 1955, she returned.

Men at Rainbow Lake told Emma to wait for a warden to ferry her across the Penobscot River, but after waiting until nine o’clock, she continued hiking east on her own. After hiking 10 miles before noon, she reached the river but again found no one waiting. She sat on a rock to eat lunch. Unbeknownst to Americans, President Eisenhower was suffering a heart attack in Denver. Two cars soon arrived carrying a warden, Mary Snow from Sports Illustrated, and Mrs. Dean Chase from United Press. The warden ferried Emma and Mary Snow across in a small motorized boat while Mrs. Chase photographed them.

As they hiked together toward Katahdin, Emma recounted the many hardships she had faced since they had first met on Bear Mountain. She said she slept anywhere she could lay her bones—porches, tables, lean-tos, logging camps. Regarding animals, Emma explained that most people panic and fight unnecessarily; she never even saw a bear because she made so much noise.

At York’s sporting camps, Snow called Chase to arrange pickup. When asked for her impression of the trail, Emma stated that the magazine article had been misleading, as she had encountered terrible conditions like fallen trees, poorly marked sections, and filthy or nonexistent shelters instead of a beautiful, easy path. She admitted she would never have started had she known the difficulty, but she couldn’t and wouldn’t quit. After Chase arrived, Emma walked the rest of the way to Katahdin Stream Campground in rain. A warden built her a fire and brought a lamp. Snow and Chase visited briefly and gave Emma leftover food before leaving. Emma chatted with campers at their fires, feeling important on her 144th day.

Montgomery, the narrator wakes at Katahdin Stream campground on September 25, 2012—57 years to the day after Emma’s summit. His goal is to retrace her final climb to understand her better. Over five months, he has researched extensively: hiking sections of the trail, interviewing Emma’s surviving children and grandchildren, reading her journals and correspondence, and holding her walking stick. He reflects on the idea that following another’s path can be a way of entering another’s experience.

To ensure historical accuracy, he and his wife Jennifer have hired Paul Sannicandro, Baxter State Park’s trail supervisor, as their guide. The park is a gift from former governor Percival Baxter, who wanted it to remain wild. The day before, they hiked Emma’s route to the campground. At 5:50 am—Emma’s departure time—they begin climbing the Hunt Trail. The narrator carries a walking stick like Emma had, imagining her solo climb with her bad knee, broken glasses, and worn shoes.

He compares his journey to Henry David Thoreau’s 1846 ascent, when Thoreau felt like an intruder in wild, inhuman nature. He connects this to Emma’s statement about finding an aloneness more complete than ever. While most thru-hikers are introverts, Emma was sociable but valued solitude equally. Above the timberline on Hunt Spur, intensely cold wind batters them. Emma’s journal noted she had worn every layer she brought to stay comfortable. While climbing metal rungs embedded in boulders, Jennifer twists her ankle. Paul has her switch to more supportive boots. They continue, amazed by the views.

On the tableland plateau, the narrator learns about fragile alpine vegetation: diapensia and Bigelow’s sedge, which support the rare Katahdin Arctic butterfly, found nowhere else on Earth. This small, dull brown butterfly has a two-year life cycle and was once targeted by poachers. When a hiker tramples off-trail plants, Paul warns him sharply, making Montgomery feel like an interloper disturbing sacred ground.

At Thoreau Spring, he reflects that climbing a mountain means following water against the hydrological cycle back to its source—to youth and birth. He recalls a friend’s story about finding a memorial on Pikes Peak to 88-year-old G. Inestine B. Roberts, who died on her 14th ascent, prompting reflection on older climbers’ attraction to mountains.

At Baxter Peak, they find about 35 euphoric thru-hikers celebrating their journey’s end. Statistics show that of 2,500 who started in Georgia in 2012, only one in five reached Katahdin. The number of completions has grown dramatically from 14 in the 1950s to thousands in the 2000s. Montgomery discusses long-running controversies within thru-hiking culture: skepticism about Earl Shaffer’s 1948 thru-hike, claims of an earlier 1936 completion, and the philosophical divide between trail purists and the hike-your-own-hike camp. Every hiker Montgomery speaks with is at least aware of Grandma Gatewood. Many were inspired by her. When the trail got hard, they thought of her and persevered.

On September 25, 1955, Emma reached Baxter Peak alone after 146 days on the trail. She had lost 30 pounds and was wearing her seventh pair of shoes. Standing in her bulky red mackinaw, she declared that she had done what she set out to do. By the summit sign marking the trail’s northern terminus, she sang the first verse of “America the Beautiful.” As she began signing the register, a gust of wind nearly knocked her down. After she regained her balance, the sun briefly broke through the clouds.