Publisher's Synopsis
This is the story of my sister, blind hiker Sue Ellen Lockwood. It describes her battle with the complications of diabetes as a former physical education teacher and her adventures backpacking. It covers the final twenty-five years of her life while I was her caregiver and our adventures on the southern Appalachian Trail with her 80-year-old mother, hiking to the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon with her Leader Dog for the Blind, helping to support Karen Berger on her first long-distance backpack, a trek of the Continental Divide Trail, hiking with crutches on the Pacific Crest Trail after breaking a leg in the High Sierras, and accompanying Ed Talone on the first single-season thru hike of the North Country Trail while doing dialysis four times a day. Also included is her transcontinental hike with Ed after her second kidney transplant and riding across the Olympic Peninsula in a wheelchair after toe amputations on both feet. Her final seven years dealing with an above-knee prosthesis, annually attempting the five-mile Labor Day Mackinac Bridge Walk, and then a series of mini-strokes resulting in nursing home living before her peaceful death round out the story.
