Independent Bookstores and the Humpback Covered Bridge
Plus, modern calligraphy and the Shenandoah Valley
There’s something about curling up with a good book in a cozy, independent bookstore that transcends reading at home. Join us this week as we explore eleven small-town bookstores across the Southeast.
Plus, venture down backroads to discover Virginia’s oldest surviving covered bridge and attend an event where you can experiment with the art of modern calligraphy.
Free subscribers can preview this email. Upgrade your subscription for full access.
Bound Together
Explore walls of books in these cozy nooks
By Beth Peterson
“Something there is,” according to Robert Frost, “that doesn’t love a wall.” Once upon a time, that was true. Nowadays, there is something that doesn’t hate them. Loves them, in fact. Builds them without our help at all.
Frost lamented the isolation he felt, despite the obviously good and practical purposes of a wall. How much more would he decry the wall that technology builds around us every day? How much more would he marvel—and not in a good way—at the ability of this wall to build itself higher and higher?
Yet something there is, in 2025, that adores a wall. A wall of books. There are still places you can go to touch physical pages, fan them slightly, and allow the familiar scent of binding glue and ink to work their magic. Let’s explore a few, shall we?
Upgraded subscribers will receive a separate email tonight containing this story.
Humpback Covered Bridge
Virginia’s oldest surviving covered bridge is a 110-foot Burr truss structure with a timbered interior that spans a graceful S-curve over Dunlap Creek, just west of Covington in Alleghany County. The current bridge, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was built in 1857 with a unique hand-hewn arched design that resembles a humpback whale, thus the name. It supported wagons as they crossed the James River and Kanawha Turnpike until 1929.
The first bridge in this location was built during the 1820s, but a flood washed it away on May 12, 1837. Its replacement suffered the same fate on July 13, 1842, and the third bridge to be built there “gave way” in 1856, according to the turnpike company.
The Humpback Bridge is located within a 5-acre state wayside park and can be reached from Interstate 64 by taking exit 10 to Route 60 and traveling a half mile east, or by taking Route 60 west from Covington.
Modern Calligraphy Workshop
