Dear Editors,
As a Long Trail hiker for the last 50 years I enjoyed the essay, “Then Again: Treasuring the trail” about the “Three Musketeers” — Catherine Robbins, Hilda Kurth and Kathleen Norris — hiking the Long Trail together in 1927.
It’s a great story about a great adventure, but I would like to take issue with one topic. The author, Mark Bushnell, makes the statement that, “Womanhood wasn’t widely seen as being compatible with such rigors as outdoor adventure.” He also mentions a story in a San Francisco newspaper titled “They Carried No Firearms, and Had No Male Escort.”
If you were to look at the 1924 Long Trail guidebook or the 1926 book “Trails and Summits of the Green Mountains,” you would see that both documents anticipated women hiking on the Long Trail. Both books mention that “women trampers shall wear either knickers or riding breeches. Skirts are out of place on mountain trails.” There is no mention of male escorts needed, and one book flatly states “No guides are needed.”
As for the story title in the San Francisco newspaper, I would just like to say that just because they say it’s so, don’t make it so. Women were always anticipated and welcome on the Long Trail and that’s worth mentioning.
Mickey Nowak
Wardsboro
Read the story on VTDigger here: Mickey Nowak: Even early on, the Long Trail welcomed female hikers.