Five million steps. 157 days. 22,000 miles. From the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Chesapeake Requiem comes a gripping rumination on life, nature, and tragedy as the author recounts his two through-hikes—33 years apart—of the Appalachian Trail and a haunting, life-changing encounter with two fellow hikers who were later murdered.

In 1990, at age thirty-two, Earl Swift backpacked the entirety of the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia, a transformative experience that colored every aspect of his later life. He emerged from his five-month 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.

But he also left the A.T. with baggage: early in his odyssey, he spent three days with a young through-hiking couple who were later murdered at a trailside campsite in Pennsylvania—a crime that was never fully explained and has haunted him ever since.

Half a lifetime later, in 2024, Swift reprised his journey, hoping that another end-to-end hike might put this tragedy in perspective. How could such a grisly event have occurred in a sylvan bliss? Returning to the trail, Swift found that walking the crest of these ancient mountains—with elevation gains equivalent to climbing Everest from sea level sixteen times—is a hell of a lot easier at thirty-two than at sixty-five. But he also came to understand, through his own close calls with disaster, that life isn’t always fair, nature doesn’t care, and the events that shape us often arise without reason or a lesson to offer.

This is the arresting account of Swift’s two end-to-end hikes of the Appalachian Trail, and a narrative that hauntingly weaves his own time on the trail with that of fellow hikers and adventurers. It is a rumination on fate, nature, and time’s effects on the environment, our bodies, and our remembrance of both joy and tragedy.