Earl Swift and Dan Rodricks: UP ON COVE MOUNTAIN: ADVENTURE, TRAGEDY, AND A QUEST FOR MEANING ON THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL

You might know longtime journalist Earl Swift from his wonderful book Chesapeake Requiem, one of the bestselling books in the Regional section of our bookshop. Now, Earl Swift returns with a poignant and thoughtful new volume on the nature of risk and the risks of nature: Up on Cove Mountain.

Join us at The Ivy as Earl Swift and fellow journalist Dan Rodricks, discuss the heart of this book, which chronicles Swift’s 2024 trek through the Appalachian Trail – and reckons with a horrible fact: Early in his odyssey, Swift 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.

As he traces his return to the trail– and to this memory– half a lifetime later, he invites us to join him in contemplation and commemoration.