Emma Rowena Caldwell, born in Ohio in 1887-1973, was one of fifteen children in a poor family.

They married her at the age of nineteen, hoping to save her a hard life. But, instead of a fairy tale about a happy family and love, her life turned into an everyday battle with a violent, uneducated and stubborn husband, with whom she gave birth to eleven children.

One evening, the violence culminated: Emma was left without teeth and with a broken rib, barely alive. But instead of a bully, the sheriff arrested her, and she spent the night in prison. By a happy coincidence, the next day, the mayor of a small place in West Virginia where she lived saw her bloody face and black bruises around her eyes, so she was released. Thanks to his testimony, she managed to divorce and, unmarried in those days (1930s), raised her last three children alone.

Sometime in the mid-fifties, Amy came across a copy of "National Geography" with an article about the Appalachian Trail - the longest marked hiking trail in the world, which stretches along the east American coast from Georgia to Maine, through a total of fourteen countries, 3,489 km long. According to the testimony of Emma's daughter, the fact that no woman had walked that path until then, was a challenge for Amy. She allegedly said: "If these people could cross it, then so can I."

It was the year 1955, Amy was sixty-seven and had eleven children and twenty-three grandchildren. She set off in canvas Coverse sneakers, with minimal luggage packed in a plastic shower curtain: a pair of clothes and a military blanket, carrying no tent, no sleeping bag, no compass or map. She relied on the hospitality of the people she would meet along the way, as well as on her own resourcefulness. She slept on the front porches of houses, under picnic tables, on a leafbed when she was no better. She didn't even carry a burner, but mostly ate canned Viennese sausages, raisins, peanuts, and along the way she collected greens along the way. She later told a reporter: "I would never have started this time if I had known how difficult it is. But then I couldn't and didn't want to give up. "Her witty statement about how the hiking trail was designed was also noted:" For some incomprehensible reason, they always lead us over the highest rock on the highest mountain they managed to find."

Emma walked 146 days, from May to September. Journalists discovered her even before she finished her walk, and her feat caused a great deal of public attention. Thanks to that, until the end of her tour, she enjoyed the hospitality of a large number of people, the so-called ‘angels of the path’, who invited her for accommodation and gave her food.

When asked by journalists why she decided on such an adventure in those years, risking sleeping in the open, exposed to bears, snakes, wild boars and other dangers in the wild, Emma gave different answers. But perhaps one of them best reflects her condition and mood. "Because I wanted to," Emma said.

She was alone, she was free and she could do whatever she wanted.

But the story of this woman, who will soon be called Grandma Gatewood as she is known today, did not end there. Two years later, she walked the entire Appalachian Trail again, becoming the first person, either a man or a woman, to successfully mountaineer twice. She was sixty-nine then. She said she returned to the trail to enjoy the hike this time. And he will return to her for the third time, five years later, in his seventy-fourth, when he will walk her in stages.

Thanks to Emina's feat, the Appalachian Trail has come to life again and today is one of the most popular trails (along the Pacific Crest Trail) for lovers of hiking and so-called "thru-hikers". And Emma herself became a pioneer of a style called "ultra-light hiking", which includes equipment lighter than five kilograms for several months of hiking. Today, mountaineers set aside thousands of dollars for such equipment, obsessively measuring every gram they will carry on their backs. And before her death at the age of eighty-five, Grandma Gatewood, when asked by reporters about ultralight equipment, answered succinctly: "Make a raincoat that will cover your luggage and buy a pair of sturdy sneakers. Get groceries along the way, in small shops: buy canned Viennese sausages, and you can find most of everything else along the way. Wild onions are especially good. ”In 2014, Pulitzer Prize-winning Ben Montgomery published a book, Grandma Gatewood’s Walk: The Inspiring Story of the Woman Who Saved the Appalachian Trail. “) Which reached the New Yourk Times bestseller list in just a few months.

A year later, a documentary entitled "Trail Magic" was filmed, on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Emma's feat.

"Only those who cross or try to cross that path are actually fully aware of everything that this woman had to endure," said the director of the documentary.

And it's hard to imagine ...

So, hats off to Grandma Gatewood, a woman who dared to go after her dream, even under old age.