Part memoir, part trail guide and part true crime tale, Earl Swift’s enthralling Up on Cove Mountain: Adventure, Tragedy, and a Quest for Meaning on the Appalachian Trail conveys the unquenchable lure of the titular North American trek’s beauties and dangers.
It’s a tale of two hikes. In 1990, Swift first sets out to walk the 2,200 miles of the Appalachian Trail on the southbound path from Maine to Georgia. With disarming humility, he doesn’t elevate his journey above the ordinary, testifying that “the path was already there. I merely followed it.” As a result, he “emerged with a new sense of the vastness, beauty, and hospitality of a country I thought I knew.” Already an ardent lover of nature, Swift develops an even more expansive passion for the wild. He also learns to be more self-reliant, discovering that he can accomplish anything as long as he breaks it down into “manageable fragments.”
During that first hike, Swift learns that Molly LaRue and Geoff Hood, experienced hikers whom he met early in his journey, have been murdered at a shelter on Cove Mountain near Duncannon, Pennsylvania. Their deaths set off a panic among hikers, and the mystery surrounding the murders grows more unsettling as the killer remains at large for several weeks. Stirred by the violence of their death, Swift reflects on the ugliness of such episodes, rare as they may be.
Thirty-four years later, in 2024, Swift returns to the trail. He writes, “Alongside my memories of sylvan bliss lurk the discordant effects of terrible violence in a place that almost never sees it.” While he admits that it’s much easier to hike the A.T. in your early 30s than in your mid 60s, on his second hike Swift nevertheless swells with love for the trail and marvels at this “epic resource.” Despite his being no closer to understanding the violence committed against LaRue and Hood, he’s reminded of “the inherent goodness of my fellow human beings” in other hikers and “trail angels” who provide food at road crossings and shelter on off-trail nights.
Swift’s colorful and careful descriptions sing in exultation of the untrammeled wonders of the trail just as much as they lament the wet boots, unexpected encounters with rattlesnakes and hunger hikers might experience—or the possibility of unspeakable violence. The author of the Edgar Award-winning Hell Put to Shame and bestseller Chesapeake Requiem, Swift serves as a passionate and illuminating guide to one of America’s treasures in his most personal book yet.