Unable to find the trail through Harpers Ferry, Emma learned from a man in Sandy Hook that it had been rerouted. She hiked to Weverton along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. At Washington Monument State Park, a fire warden invited her to sleep on a cot and put her on the phone with a newspaper for another interview. On July 8, an Associated Press dispatch about her journey was published nationwide, though it contained inaccuracies, exaggerating aspects of her equipment and preparation.

The narrative describes 1955’s unusual weather patterns, foreshadowing the destructive hurricane season. Emma, unaware, continued hiking. Three boys arrived at her shelter around midnight; she invited them to stay. In Pennsylvania, a bird-watcher named Warren Large found her on Chinquapin Hill. They talked for three hours, causing him to miss church. Emma received lettuce from Mrs. Meisenhalter and reached the halfway point at Pine Grove Furnace. After the state park superintendent arranged an appointment for her with a reporter, Emma started out early the next morning but got lost on a side trail and arrived hours late to meet Conway Robinson, a Baltimore radio and newspaper reporter, who photographed, filmed, and recorded her before treating her to supper.

The narrative shifts to November 1937: Emma, having fled to California, wrote to her daughters Louise and Lucy, expressing her anguish and determination never to return while P.C. was there. The girls, used by their father to lure her back, understood her pain.

Returning to 1955, Emma hiked over the Pennsylvania Turnpike and, exhausted, sat uninvited on the McAllister family’s porch. Initially wary, they invited her in when she explained who she was. The next day’s hike was over sharp, jagged rocks. On the outskirts of Duncannon, a little boy shouted that there went a “lady tramp.” Unfazed, she crossed the Susquehanna River and enjoyed a sandwich and banana split. Unable to find water that night, she flagged down a car. Two women drove her fifteen miles to lodging. On July 15, after being turned away at eight consecutive houses, a woman’s children prepared a cot in an outbuilding, but Emma preferred the front porch swing, where she fell asleep while the woman washed her clothes.

Pennsylvania’s sharp rocks caused Emma severe foot pain. For arch support, she taped a discarded rubber heel to her instep. In Port Clinton, Mrs. Swayberger recognized her from the news and took her photograph. Emma’s fame had spread; her hometown paper interviewed her son Monroe. A Reading Eagle columnist reported on her encounter with Boy Scouts. In New York, Sports Illustrated reporter Mary Snow became intrigued and wondered how to find the hiking grandmother.

On July 19, Emma was denied a hotel room in Palmerton. A young woman from the hotel picked her up and took her to another hotel. At Sally’s Restaurant, the waitress called Ralph Leh, a 70-year-old retired hiker who invited Emma to his house. They talked late, and he called the Allentown newspaper. The next morning, he took her to Grant’s store. Her feet had swollen beyond women’s sizes; she bought men’s size 8.5 shoes, socks, and hairpins. The clerk gave her three packages of Life Savers. Leh drove her back to the trail, impressed when she scaled a steep cliff without help.

The narrative shifts to February 1938: Emma wrote to her daughters from California, describing her pain from P.C.’s injuries and her consideration of returning home so he would pay for her medical care.

Returning to 1955, Emma slipped near the Delaware Water Gap and sprained her knee. That night, she slept on a picnic table as cars repeatedly pulled in, saw her, and sped away. On July 22, a police officer approached and asked for her name, making Emma fear she was in trouble before he informed her that Mary Snow wanted to speak with her. Emma talked to Snow, who asked to tag along for a profile. In the following days, the trail was difficult on her injured knee. She slept beside the path, where a deer snorted at her, then in the High Point Monument, and at a rest home. On July 26, she arrived at the Appalachian Lodge in Vernon, New Jersey.

Emma entered New York and headed toward the Palisades Interstate Park. At Lake Mombasha, Emma was showing newspaper clippings to a man she had met when Mary Snow approached and introduced herself. Emma climbed the difficult Agony Grind on her injured leg. At Route 17, Snow waited with a police officer’s wife; they drove to lunch before returning to the trail. Walking together, Emma told Snow about her journey and revealed she planned to sing “America, the Beautiful” atop Mount Katahdin. They reached a shelter on Fingerboard Mountain. After making plans to meet the next morning at Bear Mountain, Snow departed. Emma slept outside but moved into the filthy shelter when rain started.

The narrative shifts to 1938: Emma returned from California to find P.C. had ruined the farm financially. They moved to a smaller property where his abuse continued. Her only respite was taking her daughters on wildflower hunts. Emma would later write that P.C. severely abused her 10 times that year.

Returning to July 28, 1955, Emma arrived four hours late at Bear Mountain. Mary Snow and a policeman arrived; they took photos, and Snow treated Emma to a meal and paid for a cabin. The next morning, Emma crossed the Hudson River on the Bear Mountain Bridge. She roused sleeping Girl Scouts at a camp and visited the Lost Village museum, which she suspected contained fakes. On July 30, she arrived at the Ludington Girl Scout Camp, where she told stories and signed autographs.

On August 1, she crossed into Connecticut. That night, a man who appeared intoxicated insisted on taking her to his sister’s house. Mrs. Charles Moore would not let Emma continue. The next morning, Emma walked back to where she had been picked up to maintain trail continuity. She tried calling a local man, Patrick Hare, but got no answer. She had dinner with Mrs. Clarence Blake, a newspaper correspondent. The next day, the Waterbury Republican ran a story noting she had lost 24 pounds, stating that her only hiking preparation was the hard work of raising 11 children on a farm.

On August 3, as Emma left Eva Bates’s house in Amesville, Connecticut, Hurricane Connie began forming off French Guiana. Emma encountered thick mosquito clouds and walked into Salisbury to buy repellent. In town, she was recognized by a woman, a photographer, and a reporter. She climbed Lions Head and Bear Mountain, Connecticut’s highest summit, before crossing into Massachusetts. Unable to find shelter on Mount Everett, she made a bed of leaves. After a group of Boy Scouts stopped to camp nearby, a scout leader later found Emma while searching the mountain for the missing boys. She offered water to the thirsty boys, but they refused.

On August 5, rain began. Emma met Joe Seifert, a southbound thru-hiker, and they talked until the downpour became too heavy. After being turned away by three houses, Mrs. Norris took her in. The next evening, a man named Moore had no room but offered his car. In Washington, Massachusetts, Mrs. Fred Hutchinson invited her in.

On August 8, Hurricane Connie reached maximum intensity with 135-mile-per-hour winds. Navy pilots called it the biggest storm they had seen. The National Weather Bureau issued warnings. In Dalton’s post office, the clerk recognized Emma. A second storm began forming behind Connie. Emma checked into Leroy’s Tourist Home in Cheshire.

On August 9, Emma climbed Mount Greylock, Massachusetts’s highest point, which inspired the writing of Herman Melville and Henry David Thoreau. She ate at the mountaintop restaurant. The next day, high school students joined her for a walk; one girl wished her grandmother was like Emma. At dusk, the boys in the group made her a bed of leaves before leaving.

That night, Hurricane Connie made landfall in the Carolinas, causing massive flooding and tornadoes. The second storm was officially named Tropical Storm Diane. On August 11, Emma woke to rain and crossed into Vermont. The muddy Long Trail was difficult. She hiked with Boy Scouts; one leader complimented her determination. She arrived at a shelter occupied by Harold Bell and Steve Sargent, former Navy men who were surprised to see an elderly woman on this rugged section. They invited her in and hung blankets to divide the room, feeling foolish with their 55-pound packs compared to her small sack.

On August 12, Hurricane Connie caused New York City’s rainiest August day in recorded history, killing ten people. The storm had wrecked the schooner Levin J. Marvel off Maryland, with 10 bodies recovered. Behind Connie, Hurricane Diane intensified rapidly overnight, with winds jumping from 50 to 125 miles per hour. Rain saturated New England, rapidly filling streams and rivers.

Emma woke in the cabin with the former Navy men and left in light rain, immediately getting wet crossing a swollen bridge. She hiked all day, thinking about a well-kept shelter she had heard about on Bromley Mountain. When she arrived, the shelter was abandoned, dilapidated, and leaking badly. She washed her clothes in water pouring through roof holes, but sleep was difficult.

The narrative shifts to July 1939: P.C. sold their farm and moved the family to Barkers Ridge, West Virginia. Emma got a job as a government tobacco monitor and wrote poetry. P.C. disappeared every weekend with his friend Armster Kingery. In early September 1939, Emma was attacked by P.C., which left her with broken teeth, a cracked rib, and severe bruises. Her son Nelson, now 15, physically pulled his father off her and told her to run. When P.C. threatened Nelson with an iron poker, Nelson told him to make his first swing count. P.C. backed down. He returned with a deputy sheriff. As P.C. entered, Emma threw a five-pound sack of flour in his face. The lawman arrested Emma and drove her to jail in Milton, West Virginia.

Returning to August 13, 1955, Hurricane Connie moved over the Great Lakes, but rain continued saturating New England. Emma waded through the flooded trail. After lunch at a shelter, she arrived at Griffith Lake shelter, occupied by young Black men and their two white leaders from a Harlem parish. The narrative contextualizes the encounter within the racial tensions and desegregation conflicts of 1955 America. Emma enjoyed their company but decided to press on because the shelter was crowded. She found a log to cross a rushing creek but was forced to return when the trail itself became knee-deep with fast-flowing water.

The group was baking cornbread; they ate one loaf and saved the other. At bedtime, Emma squeezed into a corner. The young Black man next to her repeatedly slung his arm across her in his sleep; she repeatedly moved it back. The narrative contrasts this moment with recent and upcoming murders of black men: Reverend G. W. Lee was killed six days earlier, Lamar Smith was shot to death that very day, and Emmett Till would be kidnapped and murdered seven days later. The chapter ended with Emma, an old white woman, falling asleep under the arm of a young Black man from Harlem.