Paralee grew up in the country, one of twelve children and spent a lot of time in the outdoors. She found hiking or backpacking the perfect way to surround herself with the great outdoors and went for a very long hike.   Hayward started reading the journals of hikers as they traversed the Appalachian Trail, and felt the tug to be part of it all. After raising three children she retired at the age of fifty-seven, and succumbed to white blaze fever as she began her hike along the Appalachian Trail. Paralee, also known as Pearl by her friends and Trapper Lee on the Trail, is one of the many sixty plus adults who attempt to hike the entire Trail each year, and even in her sixties she is still hiking. Dawson is a non-fiction writer, specializing in her adventures along the Appalachian Trail. She is a native of New Windsor, Maryland, but now makes her home in Murphy, North Carolina.    

Writer and self-publisher of outdoor adventure books specializing in the Appalachian Trail.