Transcript
Speaker: Hey, why not? I'm going to start promoting this now, okay? Saturday, October 24th. Gratitude Brewing, 1 Chuck Klosterman. You heard it right.
Speaker: Chuck Klosterman is coming to town for a live recording of the podcast. We'll be talking about his new book, Rock, a mainstream alternative history of alternative mainstream music and his book, Football and Writing and Voice and Style. He is singular and you can see him in person. RSVP with a free ticket.
Speaker: at the link in my newsletters, in my Instagram profile, at Creative Nonfiction Podcast. And i will continually promote it on Instagram for a while, for the next two months.
Speaker: The place will be packed. Secure your free ticket. It's only for a headcount. You don't need to show the ticket. I hope to see you there. Utterly diabolical. obviously I don't know what kind of sadist designed the trail up there, but it's...
Speaker: You know, it stops being hiking for for long stretches and becomes mountaineering. ah And ah I didn't sign up for that. I signed up to carry a backpack on the hike, you know, and then you're confronted with these these insane near vertical climbs where you have to go handover hand over hand.
Speaker: Oh, hey, CNFers. Are we doing this again? Yeah, looks like it. It's Creative Nonfiction Podcast, a show where I speak to tellers from true tales about the true tales they tell, the art and craft of telling true stories. We've been doing this since 2013, right around the time I met your mom. Who do we have today? It's Earl Swift with his 10th book.
Speaker: He's the New York Times bestselling author of Chesapeake Requiem. And he makes his fourth trip to the podcast to talk about Up on Cove Mountain, adventure, tragedy, and a quest for meaning on the Appalachian Trail.
Speaker: It's published by Mariner Books. And what a book it is, as it recounts Earl's first hiking of the AT in 1990. and the happenstance, devoid of reason tragedy that befell two fellow southbound hikers, and Molly LaRue and Jeffrey Hood.
Speaker: In that quest for meaning, Earl, now in his 60s, hikes the trail again to ponder the meaning of reason, luck, chance, and the enduring allure of the trail.
Speaker: Hey, show notes of this episode more are at brendanomero.com. Hey, there you can find blog posts and links to the vast evergreen backlog of hundreds of conversations on this podcast. You can also sign up for the monthly issue of Pitch Club, my forever free sub stack that helps you get better at selling stories.
Speaker: or my flagship Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter, which publishes at the dawn of the full moon. It literally goes up to 11. Make 10 louder and make 10 be the top number and make that a little louder.
Speaker: These go to 11. You may also elect to become a patron at patreon.com slash cnfpod to help with the show's ongoing operational costs as well as get perks like the Sunday writing sessions or one-on-one calls with me to help you think things through. For as little as a dollar an episode, you can help me out. patreon.com slash cnfpod.com free ways to support the show, or just leaving ratings and reviews for the podcast. You can always use them.
Speaker: Always. And also ratings and reviews for the frontrunner, The Life of Steve Prefontaine, which comes out in paperback in November. You can pre-order that now, just in time for the holidays. What a joy.
Speaker: To welcome Earl back to the show, this is a toe-tapping good time. The toes were tapping. We started the conversation with how to handle a book advance and continue by asking what drove Earl to return to the AT, how flip-flopping the trail reflected the structure of the book, making the AT Chronicle feel fresh, trail angels, narrative wormholes...
Speaker: The people he relies on for story help, luck, how hiking the AT is like reading and writing. Hiking your hike? How he kept track of the things on the trail, proportionality in the story, getting the reader to the last word, and how nonfiction is a construct. You can learn more about Earl at earlswift.com and follow him on Instagram at earl.swift.
Speaker: swift Parting shot and a great way to think or not think about sacrifice with audio I scrubbed from the internet. Ooh. Here's Earl Riff.
Speaker: Does everyone know I'm a fucking genius? Thank you, everybody. Remember what Brendan said. got it because we're sadistic motherfuckers. Go lemurs. Yeah. This is gonna have to interest somebody somewhere other than me.
Speaker: I just wanted, for you, just like broadly speaking, you know when you get, let's say, that advance payment and how you're thinking of, like oh, I've got to sock away this for like taxes. like I can't like dip into that. And then you've got to like spread that out. and like you've done it so You've clearly done it so well over the years because of the nature of the books you've written and how you're able to space it out. So how are you thinking that through?
Speaker: Well, ah usually in a ah a mild state of panic. level that I've never been comfortable with with my financial st you know standing. It's always an exercise in terror to just ah look ahead you know ah at a book project and try to figure out exactly how you're going to make ends meet while you're researching it mostly. Yes. And, yeah know, I've been lucky ah in that I did a back-to-back books for 10 years, basically.
Speaker: that I was able to ah have some overlap so that I was getting the last payment on one book while I was getting the first payment on another. And ideally that's what you have to do because one of the dirty little secrets, I guess, of of the business is that when you get a book advance, you of course don't get it in a lump sum. You get it doled out to you according to your meeting a number of tripwires. You know, you have to show progress in certain ways for you to get the next check. And, And often those checks are pretty pretty small pieces you know of of the whole.
Speaker: So over the course of of of writing that the 10 books, I've seen ah kind of the standard go from three payments to constitute an entire advance to to five or more now.
Speaker: and And so you're right. i mean the the The balancing act is is just trying to time it so that you don't have a huge gap between payments at any one point.
Speaker: yeah And even so, even when you carefully carefully do it, taxes will always ah throw a wrench into a carefully devised plan you know and ah and always feel that your plan, make you feel like your plan catch up. I've only been feeling, I've only felt fat and happy a couple of times while doing it. And frankly, ah having hit 65 and qualifying for Social Security has been like one of the biggest stress relievers of my life. It's ah just to have that guaranteed payment every month is is a game changer. It's Yeah, that's huge when you think about it because as ah as a freelancer or like as a book writer, you probably haven't had that degree of like regular payment since you were like newspaper reporter, where you had like your biweekly check. And to have like that thing that you can actually kind of rely on, it's like, okay, yeah this is going to cover some some basic stuff. I'm going to be able to pay the mortgage or the rent or whatever, you know maybe off of this or most of my groceries off of this. And then...
Speaker: Yeah, it takes, i imagine, a lot of the strain off the finance. Yeah, and yeah, the other thing is you – If you've structured your advance payments so that you're getting one towards the end of the year, a couple of, man, it can be tough to have very carefully engineered your whole year around the expectation that you'll have a certain amount of money you have to pay taxes on and then get a payment like on December 28th.
Speaker: And it screws up everything. And you realize damn near half that payment's going to go to taxes because it fell three days earlier than $1,000. it would have been nothing but a glide.
Speaker: to to Oh my gosh. so Yeah. It's what like what with, um, you know, with the front runner and the way my advance was structured, uh, it was three payments, but I had such a short runway, uh, to, I had like 14 months to basically research and write the book, the rough draft. Um,
Speaker: um and But ah you know I got my first lump, you know you know let's say right away, and then i was under the impression that when I met my deadline and submitted, that would be my next one.
Speaker: And it wasn't until it passed legal that I would get the next payment. That was news to me, and then suddenly i was I was a whole year without a payment. Thankfully I didn't need it, and my wife has a steady paycheck that allows us, we can kind of we can pretty much live off of her salary.
Speaker: so And I didn't dip too much into my book advance because she was worried I was going to miss my deadline and have to pay it all back. So she's like, don't spend it. She's like, I have a little faith in you making the deadline. And it did anyway. But that was illuminating for me. i was like, oh, I was expecting that next payment then. And it didn't come. And then I got like two in quick succession the following year. So I went like a whole year without one and then got hit with two.
Speaker: Bang, like almost back to back. Right. it's one of those things that people don't talk about and I'm, I'm just grateful that you're sharing yeah your experience. oh it's Yeah, it's, I'm not ah a great businessman. I'm not great running my own business. It's a necessary evil. But I've gotten a little savvy over over the years just thinking about – this book here is the second book of a two-book deal.
Speaker: I'd have to think long and hard about whether or not I want to do another multi-book deal. On the one hand, it's enormously flattering. to to get ah a multi-book deal from a publisher that you've worked with for a while and that you really like and respect. And and that's certainly the case with with me and Harper Collins.
Speaker: um But man, all the complication that comes with having ah an advance broken down into bits gets amplified a hundred times when you've got two books and you're getting certain chunks of that advance credited to one book and not to the other. and, and you have no idea when the hell you're going to be paid. And it it just, it just becomes up a complete mess.
Speaker: And, uh, so I'm, I'm now, I just received my last payment on the two book deal. So I'm, I'm done with that. And, uh, Yeah, time to start completely over from scratch. Yeah.
Speaker: Get this whole thing again. Oh, my gosh. Did it feel – I feel like the the AT book was probably something – not that you had it in your back pocket for a while, but I imagine with your experience in 1990, what happened there and then having hiked it basically in 24. This was – even as you were working on the other book, like this one probably felt like – in terms of a story or a book idea was kind of like in the, in the bank, so to speak. Did it feel good that, that this was the second book of your, uh, of the two book deal, so to speak? Well, it wasn't it wasn't going to be ok initially.
Speaker: I have another book that I'm convinced is a great story. That was not a universal opinion. you know The people who really count in in that decision-making process did not share that view with me, and at least not in its present form.
Speaker: I think if I went back and reframed it, maybe it would have a a chance at at a go. So, you know, mike when I finished that first hike in 1990, I had no intention of writing about my experience at all. I went into the trail, having worked for newspapers at that point for ah about 10 years.
Speaker: full-time and uh and resolute that that was going to be an experience i kept for myself that i was not going i was not going there as a reporter i knew that if i did i'd have a very different experience you know i'd be there looking for story instead of just hiking the trail and uh and so that and and that remained my m mo right even after Molly and Jeff, the news about Molly and Jeff came to us, you know, I still was was resolved that this was going to be a solitary personal experience. And and that changed, I guess, in it to a slight degree,
Speaker: when I found myself struggling to find an answer for why it had happened, why their killings happened. And and that that struggle persisted for months past the end of my hike. I didn't i had not expected that.
Speaker: and um And when I went to the trial and I met their families, so um there were so many fellow hikers, southbounders there at that trial, and it was kind of like this weird, unhappy reunion.
Speaker: It occurred to me, okay, there's there's probably a story that needs to be told here. And so i ah I told a very early version of it for for the newspaper, for for the Virginian pilot, and and then told ah a more ah meteor and ah A story that that a version that had the advantage of of time behind it on the 25th anniversary for Outside and um and thought that was it.
Speaker: I really kind of walked away from that outside story saying, OK, I've exercised that demon to the degree I can. I'm done with the story. But, you know, ah yeah I got to to the beginning, I guess, of working on ah or or to the beginning of actually writing Hell Put to Shame in 2022.
Speaker: And I, at that point, was hiking almost every day on the trail, ah banging out five miles every morning. And I got the itch to hike it a second time. And part of what really drove that itch was this continuing lack of resolution, this this uneasy feeling that I didn't understand the world as well as I wanted to or should.
Speaker: And the the deaths of Molly and Jeff stood as evidence of that, you know, that here here was this this huge um the thing that had happened to people who I did not know well, but but whose deaths really affected me at the time and and and continue to do so. And, you know, there was this this big question mark attached to this this episode, and it just, it tapped into...
Speaker: all of the questions I had about faith and about our place on the planet, you know, as a species, it seemed worth exploring. It seemed worth investigating.
Speaker: And so i I undertook the second hike both with a book in mind, that's why I structured it the way I did as a flip-flop, but also not sure that there was a book there.
Speaker: I basically went in not knowing whether I'd be able to pull off a book. So that's the groundwork for for how I got to to be there. that you know It was very much, though, a a ah hike engineered to reflect the structure of the book.
Speaker: you know yeah and and And that came after I really did a lot of thinking, mostly while day hiking, about how how do you structure this story so that it makes sense? How the hell can you write about this so that it has any immediacy? you know and ah And that was a real challenge with this one. The structure was – it's an unusual structure and it was hard to get to it.
Speaker: Yeah, and yeah you bring up the term flip-flop. So for people who are unfamiliar with that, what what is a flip-flop when it comes to hiking the AT? Like the PCT, ah most people start at one end and they hike to the other on the AT. The lion's share, 9 out of 10 people start down in Georgia, they hike to Maine. It's a 2200 mile trail. It takes five, six months to hike it for most people. ah The first time I hiked it, I hiked it from Maine to Georgia. So I was going against the grain. It was part of that 10% of hikers who do it that way. Well, in the years since my first hike, a a third option has kind of emerged, and that's the flip flop in which you start in the middle.
Speaker: You hike to one end. In my case, I hiked from Duncannon, Pennsylvania down to Georgia. Then you flip up and you either go back to the middle and hike to the other end or you go to the other end and hike back to the middle. And I did the latter. I flipped up to Maine and hiked back to Duncannon, Pennsylvania.
Speaker: And it it's being encouraged by trail stewards because it helps alleviate some of the overcrowding that comes every spring when people start from Georgia to Hype North. You have a mob scene down there. So this just kind of relieves the wear and tear on the trail.
Speaker: yeah Yeah. Oh, yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense from, yeah, logistically, ah from a traffic point of view, too. Yeah, and beating the trail up. Because i made like I imagine that first stretch in Springer Mountain where a lot of people start and a lot of people stop, it gets the shit kicked out of it right ah right away. Absolutely. It's, yeah, ah like a war has taken place on the damn thing. And and um i make I liken that...
Speaker: northbound horde army ants in the book. and And that really is kind of the effect that they have. They trampled flat. they they Yeah, good luck trying to find a hostel, an open bunk in a hostel during those you know that first couple of months of the the hiking season.
Speaker: Yeah, it just gets overrun completely. Yeah. Well, and there's been a lot written about the AT over the years. and And, you know, of course, you're able to bring a different kind of sensibility to it. so But what were some of the apprehensions that you might have had? being like How do I make this fresh and, to your point, like kind of immediate and to sit alongside all the other titles about the AT? t Well, you I mean, i'm ah I'm lucky in the sense that probably the two best...
Speaker: books based on a trail journal, you know, that recount a hike on the trail were written by people who did not finish their height. You know, Bill Bryson being one and Cheryl Strayed being the other. And ah most of the trail accounts that you read are self-published, unedited,
Speaker: you know ah written by folks with with relatively little writing experience. And not to sound highfalutin, but it shows. you know that they're They're tough to get through.
Speaker: and And so I thought there was some room there for someone to come in and do a to a trail, a chronicle. But you know the other thing is that ah I knew I had a story to tell with with Molly and Jeff and what had happened there. and And the only person who had really done much writing about that in the past was me, who were outside. yeah And so it seemed to me I was pretty well suited for to be the guy who told that story.
Speaker: The danger, of course, is that... that um The book will will wind up just one among 100 titles that recount trail journeys. yeah But the opportunity was to to be that one rare book about a trail journey that stands apart. And so I figured was worth the risk to to try to write that book.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. and And take us to, you already kind of alluded to it that, you know when you were hiking in 1990, you know, it was just a kind of a personal thing and you weren't looking for a story, but in in effect, the story found you. yeah And, ah and then, you know, the, the person hiking at 33, 34 years later, you know, what, uh, you know, what's the, the connective tissue you're seeing and your connection to the trail over that generation.
Speaker: Well, after I i finished, of course, when I when I hiked the first time, I did not live alongside the trail. I lived three hours away in Norfolk. And and and so after that first hike, I did not come back. I i made a few weekend trips, you know, backpacking trips onto the trail. ah But I didn't have a way to ah to get out onto it on any sort of regular basis.
Speaker: And so I substituted all sorts of kind of low country excuses you know for for the same sort of experience. And I did a lot of bicycling, took up paddling, kayak paddling, did a lot of kayaking.
Speaker: But, you know, that always always kind of pined to to return to the the rhythm of ah of a long long hike on the AT. And then in 2012, I ah won a fellowship, earnt a got a fellowship at UVA with Virginia Humanities, ah basically a writer in residence gig.
Speaker: And that brought me out to to Charlottesville, which is 20 miles from the trail. And I started hiking about three, four mornings a week. And pretty soon it had become the one part of the day that was, you know, inviolate. I started every single day with a hike.
Speaker: And ah to the point that I decided to move closer to the trail. So I moved about 15 miles, 12 miles to the west to a little town called Crozet. Lived there for a couple of years.
Speaker: moved closer still to the trail after that. And so now I live at Rockfish Gap. um You can practically see the trail from place. And and it's, you know, it's kind of driven. It's it's been the organizing principle of my my daily life is being close to the trail.
Speaker: There is something about being on a footpath that you know stretches 850 miles in one direction and 1,350 in the other. then you can step onto it and not get off if you, you know, organized yourself correctly.
Speaker: For all of those miles, you can just cruise. ah it's It's weirdly alluring to me, and I wish I could explain to you why it is that I find it so alluring. I'm not sure I i know, but...
Speaker: um But I do know that that when you have everything you need, not only to survive, but to live pretty damn comfortably on your back, that's that's a level of freedom that that you don't experience every day. It's just enormously liberating.
Speaker: Yeah. Well, there, a moment in the book, you were like, one of my chief objectives out here is to escape my complex, harried life or a simpler, more deliberate form of existence. A goal I can't very well achieve without loosening my tether to the grid. And I so i love that that sense of reorienting yourself and letting the trail defrag you from the modern life. Yeah, yeah. And it does ah ah unfortunately, a lot of people don't take advantage of that.
Speaker: You know, you see a lot of especially younger hikers out there who are as married to their phones as they ever were back in in the city. but The first thing you have to do is put that damn phone away.
Speaker: i mean thats That's key. Yeah, as you were hiking south and getting getting into Georgia, where a lot of where you were starting to experience a lot of the congestion of people starting there northbound, then you also write like a generational divide is afoot at low gap and other campsites manifested by the fact that younger hikers seem predisposed to tenting no matter what. Even the middle of a downpour, they'll choose their individual shelter over ah the communal. And then there's the the isolation in the phones that you were noticing as well. So it's like that's something maybe 30 years ago you didn't see. But now in this age, it's probably like, oh, wow, that's a that's ah illuminating in its own right. Yeah, well, of course you didn't see it 30 years ago because there were no phones. yeah so We forget that the ah the smartphone didn't come along until 2007. So it was a full 17 years after I had that first hike. I mean, it was a very different environment back then. This is eight years before Bill Bryson wrote The Walk in the Woods.
Speaker: And The trail did not occupy a a spot really in the collective consciousness at all. It was not part of American culture the the way it has become since. And so it was you were dealing with people who were ah drawn from a much narrower bandwidth of society.
Speaker: you know there were people who were already outdoorsy. And that's not necessarily the case now. You have people on all walks who attempt to thru-hike these days. but But back then, it tended to be people who were already part of the the fraternity.
Speaker: And yeah, I mean, if you wanted to make a call, you hitchhiked to nearest town went to a payphone. mean, there was no option. That was what you had to do. If you wanted a pizza, you had to hitch into town. You know,
Speaker: And now you have people who will get on their phones when they're two miles from the nearest road crossing, and they'll arrange for a pizza joint to deliver a pie at the road crossing at the same time that they get there, which would have been – that was science fiction 1990. It wasn't even anyone's radar that that would be a possibility, let alone kind of standard operating procedure a certain point down the road.
Speaker: Yeah, and I love the your chronicling of so many of the various trail angels and the and the people who offer rides and the willingness of people to offer just hitchhiking. and it's It's so like almost anathema to what we experience day to day, but in the trail ecosystem, that is par for the course.
Speaker: Yeah, it would be a much tougher experience. trip without that incredible support network that has sprung up along the the trail's flanks and you know i've i've thought about well what motivates people to to do that you know to and i think that a big piece of it is that there's there's great romance attached to the idea of taking this journey and and rightly so it's it's a pretty cool thing you know but the um
Speaker: you know the vast majority of Americans will not be able to take six months off from their work to to go do something like this. It's enormously self-indulgent. that you know Most people don't get anything tangible out of it. They get a lot ah spiritually and mentally and ever you know certainly physically out of it. But you don't come out of it necessarily you know richer in any sort of material way for the experience.
Speaker: And so it's it's hard for a lot of people to justify taking the time to do it. But that does not take a away at all from their appreciation of the romance of of the endeavor. and And so I think ah a lot of trail angels experience the hike vicariously by by you know by having just a little piece of it and getting to to help the people who are out there doing it. And ah and and thank God for them.
Speaker: Yeah, there's a number who experience a trail themselves, be it a full through hike or through various section hikes. But then some of them have like purchased certain hostels that maybe they stayed at along when they hiked it 40 or 30 years ago, 40 years ago. And that that's their way of staying connected and bound to it and then paying forward what the trail gave them to other people seeking that same kind of enlightenment.
Speaker: Yeah. yeah Well, you've got people like Elmer Hall in Hot Springs, North Carolina, who's in his 80s now, who hiked the trail, I think, in 1976. I may be off by a year or two on that, but ah bought a mansion at the edge of of Hot Springs, its downtown area, in 1978, I think, and opened a hostel. And he's operated it since. And now the fact that Elmer was a thru-hiker at one point is almost lost.
Speaker: He is the guy who runs the inn at Hot Springs and has run it. wonderfully for you know half a century near. And I would be surprised if he considers it giving back to the trail. I think it's just that he tapped into something while he was on the trail that he recognized was was really important and and has devoted his life to it since.
Speaker: Yeah, and so integral to your telling of ah of this book, too, is is Molly and Jeff and almost their the the ghosts of them. It's almost like a ghost story in that sense. that Not in that they're haunting, but their presence is very much with you, certainly in 1990. And now what you carry you know with them, the fact that you were just ahead of them before they were tragically killed.
Speaker: it's ah it would When you were conceiving of this and their presence of it, you know how like to what extent did you yeah just feel them with you, certainly in the hike, but also in the writing?
Speaker: I mean, and they they drove the whole story. The reason I did a flip-flop was so that I could start at Duncanon. And I had to start at Duncanon because that's where their trip their hike ended.
Speaker: And also there was no other way to tell the story as as near as I could tell. If I started it, if I did another southbound through hike, started in Maine and just went straight to Georgia, um I could recount their story pretty well.
Speaker: But I'd run out of of story. Their story would end halfway through the hike. you know I mean, that's that's where their hike ended. And so what I realized I had to do was to somehow structure this thing so that I could use geographic waypoints along the trail as wormholes between past and present. So I get to a certain geographic point where something happened in 1990. This is on my 2024 hike now.
Speaker: I get to to this significant place and I'd be able to drop back into 1990 and then reemerge into 2024 and keep going to the next waypoint.
Speaker: um And then when I – so what that what that would do was would I'd be able to – with the southern half of my hike, the first half of it, I'd be able to tackle ah everything that happened to them, the crime itself, because that was not dependent on geography except for my beginning point in Duncannon.
Speaker: um which is four miles from where they died. And then with the second half of my hike, where the geographic stuff did mount matter because that's where i overlapped with them back in 1990, I'd be able to use the wormholes you know pretty pretty steadily as a really reliable way to flip back and forth toggle between past and present.
Speaker: It took a while to to figure out exactly how to to make that work. Hopefully it does. I got to the point where I was i was comfortable with it.
Speaker: But the and you know the enduring question mark for me, having having written the book and sent it into the world, is will others find that structure works for them as well as it works for the guy who wrote it? and yeah ah I hope so.
Speaker: It certainly feels ah cohesive in that way that you're able to do that. I love that this that wormhole imagery that you're able to like just drop through to a different like a time machine. And like this is where it's congruent. And ah you've worked with Peter Hubbard on ah several of your books. And I imagine you guys were having ah a dialogue around that. yeah What were those conversations like?
Speaker: Well, interesting because Peter peter and i had lots of dialogues, but we we never really talked. We never talked about the internal workings of of a story while I'm working on it. It's, um you know, this is my fifth book working with him.
Speaker: and he And he's a great, super smart guy to work with. ah we talked in general terms about backpacking, about about the story in very, very kind of broad strokes. Now, he he got the backpacking bug while I was working on this and and took a backpacking himself.
Speaker: And in fact, we ah when I went in a year after him, The 2024 hike went back to Massachusetts to look for the little memorial to Molly and Jeff that the ATC put just off trail, and which I could not find on my my hike.
Speaker: He went with me. we We did that as a, you know, we hiked together to to find it. And he actually took the picture of the blaze, the trailblaze that appears on the cover of the book. Oh, cool.
Speaker: We did that on his first backpacking trip. in connect He did the state of Connecticut on the AT. and And that tree is somewhere in Connecticut. But we' never really we never really did have a, ah we we don't get into the internal mechanics of a story unless I bring up a question.
Speaker: for him and I've never felt the need to do that. i have um I have a couple of people, old friends, who kind of play that role with me.
Speaker: One is my my story doctor slash um stern taskmaster, Laura Le Fay, who lives in Richmond, she's about two hours away. and who was my desk mate at the Virginian Pilot when I got there in 1987. Oh, wow. Spectacular writer, scary smart, just a really, really well-read person who has a great sense of story, what works, what doesn't.
Speaker: She is probably the person I take conversations like that to the most often, followed very closely by my friend Mark Modley, who lives down in Athens, Georgia,
Speaker: And Mark is, ah you know, laura larel Laura will get down to the the level of the sentence with me. Mark is kind of more of a big, holistic, the view from 10,000 feet kind of guy to to consult with. And so between the two of them, I've got great fonts of ah feedback, you know, and ah and if I'm dealing with a really thorny question structurally or or otherwise, they're pretty reliable.
Speaker: And a big element of ah your book as well is this ah ah is luck in general. There are so many close calls that you experienced in 1990 and in even in yeah in the 24 hike. I mean, that that element of luck you wrestle with, I mean, just compounds all the questions of why things happen to other people and not yourself. And I kind of i really like that element of it as well.
Speaker: yeah That's kind of the central thesis right there, is that luck figures into our lives to a degree that we'd be really uncomfortable about if we gave it a lot of thought, I think. yeah yeah Just to get through the day, to survive the day, involves a pretty heavy measure of luck.
Speaker: And, yeah, I'm no better example of that. I'm the best example of that, rather than yola you'll you'll find. it's um i'm i I'm an incredibly lucky guy.
Speaker: and Yeah, I mean, gosh, that in 1990, there's the big tree that split you and and Greg, like that would have just pancaked one of you yeah into the ground. And then even on your 24 hike, there was just like you were just avoided a kind of a widowmaker limb fell out of a tree. And it's. All all these things and you want it's if you you leave five minutes earlier, or if geez you roll over one particular way in your tent and then suddenly you're in the yeah path of a tree limb or a full tree. It's like my gosh, it's. ah yeah And then, you know, what happens with Molly and Jeff that it was just a nonsensical killing.
Speaker: It could have been anyone, but it was them. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it will exactly. i mean, that first tree fall. Greg Hammer and I made camp in at Crawford Notch, we were camping illegally, and I guess this is payback for that. But, you know, of all the trees in the forest that could have fallen, it happened to be this tree at the edge of our campsite. And of all the ways that tree could have fallen, it it performed a surgical strike. So it fell in exactly the way it had to, to not kill us.
Speaker: and And any variation of that exact way by more than inches would would have done the job. i mean, it would have either crippled Greg or smashed my head flat. And yeah it still boggles my mind. It still gives me the creeps to think about waking up to that concussive thud, the loudest sound I've ever heard to this day.
Speaker: and sticking my head out of the tent and seeing this, seeing having my view blocked by something lying just outside. was big, you know. It was crazy.
Speaker: And also, um you know, about two thirds of the way through the book, you know, you do you just remember um comment on like not remembering a certain Baroque struggle that you, you know experience, say, in 1990 versus 24. And it just seeing that like it reminded me of just like rereading a book and how sometimes you're oh, I don't remember that. But like we kind of age around something that is static.
Speaker: And. you notice new things or new things take on different meaning based on your distance from having that original experience. And i I, kind of, I love some of these little grace notes that I was like, Oh, hiking this trail is a lot like writing and reading too.
Speaker: It really, that's, that's a great point. Uh, yeah. I mean, people ask me, well, when when they find out that I was thinking about, uh, hiking the trail again, well, Don't you want to do a different trail?
Speaker: Why go back to something you've already done? And I was like, it's not the same trail because I'm not the same hiker. You know, it's a completely different experience when you do it 34 years later. It's not the same trail. You don't remember. You remember some highlights, but they strike you in a different way the second time around.
Speaker: They're not highlight highlights in the same exact way. So, yeah, it's ah it You know, i I remember I've had books that changed my life at the time i I read them, and then I go back and reread them years later, and they don't have nearly that profound an effect. They they just kind of leave me feeling lukewarm about them, and and it's not because the books change. it's because the reader has, and and the drill kind of works that way, too.
Speaker: Yeah. and ah there are fundamental ways that the trail has changed in the last you know generation and a half. And a lot of that we can credit to yeah climate change and climate catastrophe to a lot of the streams that you were expecting to fill up your bottle and filter water are like bone dry, experiencing wildfires in places where you you expect that in the in the West, but not on the East Coast and certainly not in the Smoky Mountains in that area. Of the country. So yeah, just what did you noticed that climate changes, know affect on the environment?
Speaker: Well, I mean just the summer trying to day hike. has has been a challenge because you know we've had just scorchingly hot days. And it's just, I have a hard time getting motivated to get out there among the rattlesnakes when it's 100 degrees out. Give me yeah would be one hazard at a time, please, and I won't be comfortable. but But you know the any year, and this goes back to World War II and beyond, I mean, any any any year ah you get to September and springs and streams and in parts of Virginia and all through Pennsylvania are going to be dry. I mean, that's always been the case. they
Speaker: They dry up. i don't know if it's because the aquifers are pretty close to the surface and you know they're not all that robust, even in their wettest conditions or what. but But those two places, that mid-Atlantic stretch of the trail is always susceptible to a late summer drought.
Speaker: And I experienced that in 1990. This is different. This time I had trouble finding water from Great Barrington, Massachusetts, all the way to the end of the the trail, now the end of my hike.
Speaker: And that's pretty doggone unusual. Streams and springs that are viewed as fail-safe were were completely spent. and ah And so that's that's a that was a pretty telling indication to me that there's something afoot.
Speaker: you know And and of course, the wildfires that you mentioned, I five of them, I think, that ah that I had to to dodge on this hike. Didn't have any in 1990. you know And at the same time then, ah halfway through my hike, Helene hits the southern half of the trail and and just completely does a number on it. yeah Wrecks Asheville and and Irwin and Hot Springs, the tavern that Greg and I celebrated our successful hike through the Smokies in. One month gets completely flooded neck deep you know by the French Broad River a couple months later. It's...
Speaker: It's an issue that's going to get more pronounced, you know, clearly as time goes on. And through hikes are going to become more challenging and and a bigger logistical hassle.
Speaker: You know, when by ah a certain point in the mid-summer now, there's no water to be found in the whole middle 700 miles of trail. I don't know how you get around that exactly. Yeah, the other you know bellwether of it also is the the death of moose in North Country. They were ravaged by ticks that I think tend used to die off during the winter, or they didn't they weren't born as late hatching is ah as early as they do. And you you know you note that there there have been moose with 100,000 ticks on their bodies. It's like, God, just getting bled to death.
Speaker: Hard to imagine a 1,200-pound animal. being being killed by tiny little pinhead insects, but but yeah, arachnids rather, but they, ah that's what's happening.
Speaker: They're, in parts of Maine, there are, there's a 90% die-off rate among calves. know, they're just not surviving to adulthood.
Speaker: And it's because climate change has affected the poles to a degree that it hasn't the middle of the planet yet. And, uh, and Maine is experiencing warmer winters. and And so that not only is doing a number on on a moose, but it's you know probably the number one health hazard for through hikers, for human through hikers, is tick-borne illness right now. Hikers are loath to carry a liquid
Speaker: bug repellent that weighs know a few ounces, it's hard to get them to do it. And so picaridin and DEET that would protect them from from Lyme disease, that gets left left behind and they go out and they wind up sick, six months after they finish their hikes.
Speaker: Now we've got another tick-borne illness that's running rampant through the population, alpha-gal, which is carried by the the Lone Star tick, you probably don't have it in Oregon yet, but here in the East, it's become a real problem. And it leaves you with an allergy to mammalian meat and mammalian byproducts like anything dairy.
Speaker: My daughter has it. My daughter has it. And it's been, she's had to really adjust her, kind of rearrange her whole life around the fact that she can't, for instance, she can't go to a football game where people are tailgating by grilling burgers because the smoke contains enough juice that it can set off her, her allergy. Oh my gosh, gosh, a little, it's yeah. like Not that there are bugs, but like a little bug.
Speaker: imagine setting off a cascade of hell like that's that little, little thing. Yeah. And you talk to people who don't treat Lyme disease right away and hell is what it is. I mean, it's, it's a bad, bad illness to, to acquire.
Speaker: Yeah, well, Victoria Stopp, a Goucher alum. That's what always think of. Yeah, she's been wrestling with the effects of Lyme disease for, gosh, almost as long as I've known her for the last 10 or so years. it's a Yeah, it can be debilitating. Yeah, she's a total athlete.
Speaker: You know, she's a a great runner, laid low by it for a good while. She's back to pretty much back to fight and trim now, but that was that was tough going. Yeah.
Speaker: When you bring up Maine, uh, talk about Maine and, you know, the hundred mile wilderness Katahdin. And it's a pretty harrowing part of the book. Cause you really feel the weight in the, uh, just how, how punishing Maine can be in your, in your telling.
Speaker: Utterly diabolical. I don't know what kind of sadists designed the trail up there, but, uh, it, um, you know, it stops being hiking for, for long stretches and becomes mountaineering. ah And I didn't sign up for that. I signed up to carry a backpack and a hike, you know, and then you're confronted with these, these insane near vertical climbs where you have to go handover hand over hand.
Speaker: And which would be a lot of fun if you didn't have 40 pounds of pack on your back and throwing off the balance and, you know, raising hell in all kinds of ways. Yeah. mean, I'm, i'm actually just went back in in June and re-hiked a chunk of the Mahusiks, which are, i for my money, the the toughest part of the whole trail.
Speaker: I came away thinking, God, you know that I don't want to hike that again. That would that was hard. it was And we're talking, you know, once you get through the Of course, Maine contains the end of the trail, which is Katahdin, this mile-high mountain that stands off by itself in the middle of a a vast, very primitive state park in inland Maine, up in the North Maine woods.
Speaker: And then, so if you're a southbounder, you hike Katahdin, and then you your second day after you've hiked Katahdin is a 4,000-foot punishing climb. you enter the 100-mile wilderness.
Speaker: And so for the next week to 10 days, you are incommunicado for all practical purposes. um And you're really without an easy way to get the heck off the trail. yourre youre You're glued to it.
Speaker: For the first 50 miles or so of that 100-mile wilderness, you're in mud slog, ankle-deep mud and roots, just slippery,
Speaker: It's a slippery, messy bog. And then for the second half of the 50 miles, you're just getting pounded continuously by these crazy vertical climbs and and going over just nutso country. Then you get out of the 100-mile wilderness and you think, boy, am I glad I'm done with that. And then comes Western Maine. And everything you've done so far turns out to be just an easy warm-up for Western Maine because...
Speaker: Man, the big lows for the Mahusiks are where it gets serious. and And yeah, it just... but 282 miles of, of toil. Yeah. And you feel every mile of that for sure. That, that particular section in the book has my favorite sentence of the book. um you You write, yeah know a great unbroken sweep of woodland stretching 50 miles or more sprinkled with ponds that reflect the sun and sky and glow like sapphires and a carpet of deep green. And I did, I just love that sentence. Oh, oh thank you. That's the view from Katahdin. It's, uh,
Speaker: You know, katain is climbing Katahdin is entirely, the the kind of experience you have is almost completely dependent on the weather. You know, it hangs off by its itself, kind of creates its own weather and in a way. it it The first time I climbed it, ah I did it in 1990 on my first day.
Speaker: And ah I don't really have much recollection of of the climb, which tells you that I didn't find it you know life-threatening or life-changing in its difficulty.
Speaker: But it was also like 70 degrees and sunny without it without so much as a breeze. It was a perfect day to climb a mile-high mountain. this This last time, it was about 65 degrees down at the bottom of the mountain.
Speaker: and ah And as we started up, the weather started to go south, and it was 18 degrees with a very, very almost hurricane-force wind blowing up at the top at times. it would move gust to that.
Speaker: It was white-knuckle, terror-filled ride all the way. i just I honestly thought that I might be swept off the mountain as I was climbing up over the boulders on the on the Hunt Spur.
Speaker: And that was not an idle worry. I mean, that the wind was strong enough that I really thought that could happen. So it's ah ah so much about the trail experience varies by the hour. And, you know, the people who hiked it it a day after i did had a completely different experience maybe.
Speaker: And so, you know, the the every through hike is is a unique thing unto itself. It's everybody who does it has a very different experience.
Speaker: Not only because of you know they're processing it differently internally, but because the trail looks different day-to-day, hour-to-hour. yeah and it It can morph completely in the space of minutes.
Speaker: Yeah. And I love, you know, ah some conversations you have throughout with various passerby about, you know, maybe there's a purist who thinks you you can't, you can't really deviate from the trail or or, some people who are against section hiking or however, and you're always just, or someone asking advice, like if I do this, does it count? you're like, hike your hike. Like, that's the thing. Like you you hike your hike. And I love that sentiment.
Speaker: Even as a means of a writer writer and a writing career, it's like, our paths are so weird and divergent to get this work done. Like, so in what way how would you counsel or even in your own experience of like, even in a writing career that you got to just like hike your hike, run your race.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. That's it Any advice that I could give about a writing career would be almost worthless because I can't explain how the hell like yeah I can. I feel the same way, too. yeah i mean ah there's been so Luck has figured so prominently in virtually every positive turn that I've been lucky enough to enjoy. that Yeah, to suggest that I actually had anything to do with it, that it was part of a strategy is laughable. bit's yeah That's not true at all. ah
Speaker: You know, people have have chosen to be remarkably generous to me for reasons that I cannot fathom. um and And timing has just worked out in weird and perfect ways, you know, when it so easily could not not have. ah You know, Chesapeake Requiem became a bestseller through the most unlikely chain of events. yeah that that Barnes & Noble gets bought you know that has a change of management.
Speaker: Their new CEO happens to read the book on a transatlantic flight, takes a liking to it, makes it Barnes & Noble's book of the month, the very month that COVID hits, and all of America goes to Barnes & Noble to buy books for what they think are going to be is going to be a two-week lockdown.
Speaker: they all buy Chesapeake Requiem, bestseller. I had nothing to do with it. You know, I worked a year and a half earlier and yeah the book enjoyed a, a very nice reception.
Speaker: But, but it certainly wasn't a bestseller before COVID hit. It's so, so wild. Those things out of your control, how certain things can be a bestseller or your book publishes the same week as another one that just takes all the oxygen out of the room. Absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah. So many things like not that the front runner was ever going to shoot up any list, but it came out the same week as that um original sin book by Jake Tapper and the other guy about Joe Biden and the presidency there. And that book just it just took all the oxygen out of the entire literary ecosystem that week. And it was like, well, any shot that any other book had a chance at ah at moving up any list, getting any degree of attention was mood. It was never going to happen. And you can't control that stuff. Yeah, you can't. You can't. And great in that case to be Jake Tapper sucks to beat everybody else. I mean, and yeah yeah, you've spent two years of your life waiting for that moment.
Speaker: And yeah, let's see that happen. It's it can be a pretty heartbreaking way to make a living. Yeah, and ah Glenn Stout, who wrote The Young Woman in the Sea, among many other books, um yeah about Trudy Ederly, that book came out in, I think, 2003 or something, a long time ago.
Speaker: ah Roughly 20 years later, a random guy finds it in a used bookstore. That random guy happens to be a filmmaker who's like, I want to make this – I want to adapt this as a movie for my daughter. Yeah.
Speaker: you know because it's an empowering a female athlete story. And through a lot of fits and starts, it eventually becomes a movie from Disney starring starring Daisy Ridley.
Speaker: Total luck. Great book. Had to be a great book to be noticed and to want to be adapted, but he it was plucked out of a used book bin and becomes a movie. It's like these are the things that are like you drive yourself mad trying to chase that. All you can do is like lean into the work and cross your fingers. Well, look at Theo Goldham.
Speaker: I mean, talk about an unlikely story. Yeah. when A guy self-publishes and then it turns into an international bestseller. it's ah yeah That's lightning striking. it's yeah rare It's rarer than lightning striking. out It's crazy. But, you know, it happened.
Speaker: and Yeah. But for after a million of books that did not get discovered. Yeah. Yeah. when you were on the trail and everything, of course, you're very cognizant of what you're carrying with you, but you're a journalist and a writer at heart. And so you got to take notes and keep things with you. So how are you recording your, ah you know, your day to day and ah yeah keeping track of things?
Speaker: Well, In so far as I was a a southbounder, ah I did not have a lot of conversations to record. So that streamlined the process significantly.
Speaker: I kept a detailed journal. I wrote for it at the end of the day. So usually I would get into my sleeping bag under the quilt a good hour before I planned to turn off my headlamp and and get it done then.
Speaker: and yeah And rarely... I mean, occasionally um would take notes, pull out the notebook and take notes during the day. But mostly what I did during the day as I was actually hiking was I just took pictures. And I was able to marry the photos to particular points on the trail just by their time stamps.
Speaker: and Oh, yeah. And so when it came time to get home and to to integrate all of this all of this stuff, it was pretty easy to do. Yeah. I also had a very...
Speaker: you know I was using an an app for the second half of the hike that made it pretty easy to track where I was on the trail, on on the map. um And that map was augmented with various geological and other formations and and points of interest. So I was able to to pretty pretty no thoroughly reconstruct the experience.
Speaker: Didn't have to put it together ah ah document that that brought the photos in, but I had to use the photos to create the document. okay yeah so So I had the photos off to one side and then did build a ah ah build a massive chronological document with all of my notes, all of the peripheral reporting I had done before and after the hike included in that. ah and And then had a separate document consisting of the Molly and Jeff case and all of the detail I was able to dig up on that.
Speaker: And, you know, and then built initially a ah chronological narrative out of the hike, built a parallel narrative about Molly and Jeff, and then just broke them broke them up. First of all, i had to pare it down, the the hike part of it, by 80%.
Speaker: Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. Whack it down. Because I had a 1990 hike that I had to include in that, too. You know, yeah which, of course, was another breed that I had to build it as a chronology.
Speaker: And um really, the... the The hiking part was was strictly chronological. I mean, that was that was not hard to do.
Speaker: And it was not hard to overlay 1990 on 2024. The challenge was how do you unspool what happened to Molly and Jeff in a way that doesn't give away the whole story too early and that that plays on the kind of randomness of what happened to them.
Speaker: yeah And, and so I, wanted to, to, to have that be a slow reveal, their story to be a slow reveal and not necessarily in, in sequence.
Speaker: So that, and what I decided to do was pretty much tell the story as I learned it, which was out of sequence. you know, I didn't find out about it until five days or so after they, they died.
Speaker: and, the information about how all that had happened came to me piecemeal and it spread out over time. And so that's pretty much the way I bring it about in the in the book as well. And, um, as you know, I mean, the, the big challenge when the real difference between writing, say a magazine feature story and, and, uh, a book is not the, you know, sitting down and having to type it out or anything. It's,
Speaker: and or or the length of the story per se, it's it's organizing all of the material you have to amass to tell that story and just managing that huge amount of material.
Speaker: And in this book, really, the amount of material I had to manage was a lot less than it usually is, because usually I wind up with several cubic feet of of notes out of libraries and archives and whatnot and documents. and There were no documents per se here.
Speaker: Yeah, except for my journals. Yeah, that was that was pretty much it. So once those were in the computer, you know, they were if they were out of the picture. I didn't have to mess with those anymore.
Speaker: Yeah, there's a a challenge in the the balance of what to include on the hike. So that that just doesn't feel repetitive because, <unk> you know, you need to pick these high high intensity moments, be it the physical experience of a gnarly section of trail or just some three siblings from Kentucky who are just these assholes with no etiquette.
Speaker: Or this MAGA guy who drives you, shuttles you up the up the trail and you like chastise him for like, you know, this is inappropriate how you are leaning, yeah' going into all this. So you you pick these moments and then sprinkle Molly and Jeff throughout so it's not front loaded or middle loaded or back loaded. So yeah, there's this, ah yeah, there is a delicacy of how you deploy various elements throughout. Yeah, well, like ah any storytelling, proportionality is is the key ingredient, you figuring how much of of each piece you share it with the reader.
Speaker: and ah And I think that if there is one fatal flaw in most trail chronicles, It's that the writers don't make enough of a distinction between telling moments and untelling moments. you know They we just throw everything at you, and it just it gets it gets really boring.
Speaker: And even even some classic – I mean there are relatively few classic books about the AT, but one of them came up really early. came in the late 70s. It's this two-volume, thousand-page book.
Speaker: um called Hiking the Appalachian Trail. It was put out by Rodale Press, in Pennsylvania, and it's a hoss. and And what it does is it recounts, it gives you first-person accounts of like the first 50 or so through hikes.
Speaker: You start reading that thing, and by a hundred pages into the first volume, you've gone numb because every story is pretty much exactly the same. I mean, that there's not a lot of variety there. And part of the problem is the readers, that the whole tenor of the the story is this happened and then this happened and then this happened and then this happened. And there's never a moment's pause to reflect on, well, what does that mean? Why should I care?
Speaker: you know Why is that important? Everything is treated as equally important and therefore nothing is important. Yeah, I imagine that that was a degree to which you were always interrogating what you were putting in. And that comes from years of experience, too, of knowing, like, yeah i am the I have my thumb on the scale of this particular story. I'm the tour guide for this story. And I'm going to point to what matters. And yeah know this is why I'm telling you this. And this is, like, pointing over there. Like, see that see that landmark? Like, this is why this matters. And, like, that degree of authorial ah authority.
Speaker: is is so integral to any narrative, especially something of this, because yeah otherwise it would just be so rote and beads on a string and boring, but you have to imbue it with with something, a pulse. Yeah, yeah well, I mean, yeah our first job, job one, for anybody writing a book, for anybody writing a story of any kind, any length, is to get the reader to that last word. If you don't do that,
Speaker: Doesn't matter what pretty words you drop in the middle of the story. Doesn't matter how brilliantly conceived it is. The story has failed. Because you have failed to get the reader to the end, yeah to the finish line. You've got to get the reader there. So the whole process of of structuring a story and in and strategizing about a story comes down to how do I remove all the speed bumps to prevent you know that will encourage the reader to set this aside.
Speaker: And if you can do that effectively, then then then you win. you know You get the reader to to finish the story. And no matter if the the reader can badmouth the story after the fact, if the reader's gotten to the end, you as the writer have achieved what you set out to do.
Speaker: you know That's all you can ask for, is for them to finish the story. You can't ask them to like it. That's up to them. But you can't get them to finish it if you do it right. And ah yeah, I mean, it's a the You know, nonfiction is a construct just as surely as fiction is. we We make decisions about what we include and what we leave out. We decide where we start a story, which is not always at the beginning. We decide where we're going to end it, which is not always the ending. yeah and and And so ah you you hope...
Speaker: that in making those decisions, you get the reader to the truth or pretty pretty damn close to it, as close as you can, given the facts that you're you're you're working with.
Speaker: But it is a construct, and ah and it is it is your responsibility, it seems to me, to to structure your story in such a way that that the story will achieve what it sets out to do, that it will will succeed you know, in terms of ah incorporating enough propulsion to get get the reader to the end.
Speaker: and And so the whole idea of of throwing down everything I had, doing a notebook dump of the second hike, and then going in and just chopping.
Speaker: And I probably spent three months doing nothing but cutting. Most of the writing of this book was cutting. I wrote a journal while I was hiking. And then I did nothing but cut when it came out of writing the book.
Speaker: yeah And with each cut, you know, you start off with with a chainsaw. it's like it's It's like doing a sculpture. you You start off with the big, you know, big swings of the hammer, and then you you get to the fine stuff the further into it that you go.
Speaker: Eventually, it it got to the point where it seemed to be moving in a pretty good clip throughout. And I could stop cutting. Yeah. Well, ah in in in what ways did the hike change you in 1990 and how did it change you in 2024? Well, was
Speaker: the big takeaway for me was that I could do anything. It just, it just boosted my confidence to the point where I, I'm sure I was pretty obnoxious in the months immediately after my life.
Speaker: God knows how it must have been difficult to deal with. I could do anything. You know, it made me Superman. And, um, And part of that was seeing demonstrated daily something my dad had been saying to me for for years at that point. He was always big outside. How do you eat the elephant? One bite at a time. And um yeah it had just been dad talk ah to me until ah until this hike when I realized part of being able to do anything is knowing how to bust it up into its components.
Speaker: then bust those components up into their individual individual individual ingredients, those into theirs, and then take each little bite-sized fragment that's left and and take them you know take them in sequence, and pretty soon we accomplished the whole thing.
Speaker: And that kind of ah dictated my approach to two big assignments at the paper and in magazines, and and certainly it has informed every every book effort because...
Speaker: It's a stupid amount of work to write a book. I mean, it's, I wouldn't recommend this line of work necessarily to anybody. It's a ridiculous way to try to make a living. So on the certain, so filled with terror. yeah And so potentially without reward of any kind, know, to the vast majority of people who do it, that's the case.
Speaker: But, you know, there's no doubt that, that it's the trail, And breaking that 2,200 miles into daily doses of 14 to 17 miles described perfectly how I go about writing a book now.
Speaker: yeah i mean beaten You don't sit down to write 105,000 words. You sit down to write 1,000 words, 1,200 words a day. And that's my daily quote is 1,200 words. And yeah you do that over enough days and pretty soon you have the 105,000 words. How do you settle on 1,200 words?
Speaker: yeah had you settle on twelve hundred Well, early early on, my first couple of books, it was 2000. I whacked it down since. I just find it like as, you know, my first hike, I had no trouble banging out 17 to 20 miles a day. and And now 14 feels pretty like a tough day at the office, a long day. It's the same with writing. 1200 words takes as much out of me now 2000 used to, i think.
Speaker: yeah And next book, I'll probably drop it down to 1100, maybe even 1000. I'd like to think that the words are better than they used to be. Don't know that that's the case at all. I would still find that I spend the first hour or two every morning in the middle of a a book project going back through what I thought were perfect words laid down the day before. Yeah.
Speaker: Almost invariably I'll wake up, you know, find that they weren't so perfect after all. In fact, need a lot of fixing. So I do repair for the first couple of hours and then...
Speaker: then try to make something out of the rest of the day with, with new, new stuff. Oh, awesome. Well, yeah, you certainly made, uh, the most out of your writing days with this book. I, yeah, I truly loved it. was great company. And I, uh, I, when I, when I saw the post on Instagram that you had this new book coming out a couple months ago, i'm like, Oh shit, I gotta get, I gotta get in line for this one.
Speaker: So, so glad I, so glad I did it. It didn't disappoint at all. So, um, Yeah, it's just Earl. Thank you so much, as always, for taking the time to talk some shop, your fourth time on the pod. I'm totally psyched that that's the case. enjoyed so much, Brandon. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker: Yes. Awesome. Thanks to Earl for coming back on the show for nearly half of the books he's written. Be sure you pick up a copy of Up on Cove Mountain wherever you buy books and follow the show on Instagram at Creative Nonfiction Podcast as well as subscribing to the extended network of newsletters I make for you, my friend.
Speaker: As much as I hate social media, the algorithm fed me a really insightful reel from the runner Henrik Ingebrigtsen, the brother of Jakob Ingebrigtsen, two Norwegians, elite runners. Jakob is a gold medalist and world record holder, and the most versatile middle distance runner since Steve Prefontaine.
Speaker: But this video focuses on Henrik, and so take a listen right now of how Henrik Views sacrifice then I'm gonna come back and riff on it it's about a minute Take it all in I think it's very interesting when people talk about all of their sacrifice and and all that stuff in my head There's no sacrifice. I'm setting a goal and I'm doing everything I can to reach that goal if you're talking about sacrifice then you don't really want this, right?
Speaker: I didn't sacrifice anything. Of course, I, I chose to spend my time doing this. I, I traveled, I spent a lot of my time on, on this stuff instead of, you know, all my other interests or friends or family or yeah whatever. But if you're just being honest with yourself about,
Speaker: what are your true ambitions, right? Goals, then of course, all your choices that brings you closer to that, it's not, it can't be a sacrifice.
Speaker: It's such an interesting phrasing, right? Like of course, to realize our goals, we have to make sacrifices or maybe not. Maybe it's just making the right choices that align with our goals.
Speaker: This resonated with me so much as I have some ambitious marathon goals that I'm constantly reevaluating based on fitness and body comp and age. Henrik didn't see the choices he made or makes as sacrifice. Rather, they were in alignment with his ultimate goals of being a world-class runner, which he is.
Speaker: I don't know what that looks like for him, you know what he's, let's just say, giving up. But let's use me as an example with my my running today, my obsession du jour.
Speaker: And this will extrapolate to writing as well. I so often see giving up my beer habit or pleasure-seeking grub as sacrifice in the name of a goal.
Speaker: And yeah, it feels kind of like FOMO, like, I'm giving this thing up because I got a blah, blah, blah. And yes, if you want to accomplish a running goal, you need great nutrition and sleep and recovery.
Speaker: And alcohol and junk food, especially at age 46, can't be overcome no matter how many miles you log. yeah My FOMO of not enjoying my favorite beers often keeps one foot in the beer world and the other foot trying to accomplish an ambitious physical goal. And they cancel each other out and it just leaves me spinning my tires and very frustrated.
Speaker: The two can't really exist together, not in their current form. And I've long seen it as ah sacrifice, know that I'm giving up something, losing something.
Speaker: yeah The loss of the vice is stronger than the vision of the goal. That goal has to be so strong that indulging these vices, in fact, sacrifices and sandbags, the ultimate goal, that's the sacrifice.
Speaker: When your goal is so crystallized and so important to you, then there aren't our sacrifices, only smart choices that inform the end, that end. And I don't want to look back and be like, ah, why did I have six beers that day and then had that crushing hangover and then missed that important workout or made the workout, but it wasn't as good as it could have been because I slept like shit and then the workout was bad and then, you know, these blocks, there's they build on each other.
Speaker: And if you have a shitty brick that breaks under the weight of the other ones, you're compromising things that are coming down the road. And the same can be true for writing, writing a book.
Speaker: yeah if you really want to pursue that project, then giving up an hour of Netflix a week isn't a sacrifice. It's an investment in this goal you say you want. And when we succumb to those seductions and bad habits, we have to interrogate just how important that goal is to us.
Speaker: If the goal is as important as we purport it to be, then the decision is made. Big ambitious goals take ambitious habits. I don't want to sacrifice my goal for a short-term fix. Instead of that six beer Saturday, maybe have one or two, B.O. It's okay.
Speaker: The beer is always going to be there. My physical ability to do what I want is very finite. These tires only have so much tread. and I have a window of a couple years to do what I want to do, or at least to take a shot at what I want to do.
Speaker: So go for it. And don't hold back. But it's tough because life beats the shit out of you. And sometimes all you want is to turn your damn brain off.
Speaker: And what is booze and Netflix better at than turning your brain off for a few precious minutes? What I'm asking of myself is to keep reminding myself how badly I want this particular running goal.
Speaker: And I do. And my next book goal, which I do. And then make choices, not sacrifices, that get me moving in that direction. The sacrifices make you feel like you're losing out.
Speaker: But what you're really losing out on is the potentiality of achieving that goal. Reach that goal and then do a kick-ass keg stand. So stay wild, C.N. Evers, and if you can't do, interview. See ya.
Speaker: Thank you.
