Up on Cove Mountain

<p><b>"An extraordinary portrait of the AT." —<i>Outside</i></b></p><p><b>34 years after hiking the Appalachian Trail, Earl Swift returned, haunted by a tragedy that befell two of his fellow hikers . . .</b></p><p>"A deeply personal meditation on death, aging and nature." —<i>New York Times</i></p><p>"A masterpiece of the trail." —Radical Grammar</p><p>“A helluva book.” —John Grisham</p><p>In 1990, a youthful Earl Swift backpacked the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia, a transformative experience that colored every aspect of his later life. He emerged from his hike across the rugged, sky-high roof of fourteen eastern states a sharper and more organized thinker, a better problem solver, and a committed outdoorsman.</p><p>But he also left the AT with baggage: Early in his odyssey, he spent time with a couple of other southbounders, who were friendly, capable, and doing everything right, but who were nonetheless murdered weeks later at a mountaintop campsite in Pennsylvania—a fit of violence that the killer never explained.</p><p>Half a lifetime later, Swift returned to the trail to find out whether he was still, in his sixties, equal to the AT’s roller-coaster terrain. Driving him, too, was a quest for answers that had nagged at him since that first hike: What had happened at that campsite to turn two smart, bighearted people into prey? Why had fate chosen them, when other hikers—Swift included—seemed more likely candidates? And how could such a grisly episode have unfolded in the backcountry’s sylvan loveliness, not to mention one of the safest places around?</p><p><i>Up on Cove Mountain</i> is the arresting account of Swift’s 2024 trek through the AT’s enduring wonders and the ghosts of its past, a chronicle of swashbuckling adventure coupled with a meditation on the nature of risk and the risks of nature.</p>