It was last fall when I realized that everything had changed. First there were the back-to-back high-country rides where my friends and I were the only ones on mountain bikes without motors. Then there was the eleven-mile climb where a hiker squinted at my crankset, exclaimed, 鈥淣o battery!鈥� and began to clap. There was the exchange later that day with the only other cyclists we saw riding traditional pedal bikes, who shouted as they passed, 鈥淲e鈥檙e a dyin鈥� breed!鈥� Finally, there was the encounter at the top of an obscure peak in the Sierras, when an older man looked at my bike and said, 鈥淚 remember riding this trail on my analog bike.鈥�

Depending on who you ask, we are approaching, at, or past a tipping point for eMTBs. This year, Santa Cruz Bicycles could sell more eMTBs than pedal bikes, the company鈥檚 product director Josh Kissner tells me. Specialized鈥檚 model has been its top-selling mountain bike for years. And Cannondale currently has more eMTBs in development than analog. Professional mountain biker Paul Basagoitia, who鈥檚 ridden e-bikes since a 2015 crash at Red Bull Rampage left him paralyzed, laughed when I asked whether eMTBs were the future of the sport. 鈥淭he future?鈥� he said. 鈥淲hat do you mean? It鈥檚 here, it鈥檚 now.鈥�

Industrywide, bike shops still sell more pedal bikes than eMTBs. But product managers from the brands above believe e-bikes will soon represent more than half the bikes on the trail. How much more? Specialized was the most bullish, with Turbo product director Marco Sonderegger and eMTB product manager Joe Buckley guessing they could become 75 to 80 percent of the bikes sold. Kissner of Santa Cruz thinks it could be up to two-thirds. Cannondale senior global marketing manager Mike Marro believes that in the future, 鈥渁nalog will have its place,鈥� but it will dominate only for 鈥渟pecific use cases,鈥� like cross-country race and downhill categories.

鈥淗ow many people are cross-country skiing compared to alpine skiing?鈥� asked Buckley, rhetorically. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 where it鈥檚 going to go.鈥�

The inflection point that once seemed impossible, then unlikely, then far off, is suddenly here. European eMTB models emerged in the early 2010s, but they had kooky bolted-on batteries and carried their weight about as well as a JanSport backpack stuffed with Encyclopedia Britannicas. Specialized is credited for launching the North American eMTB revolution in 2015, when it debuted the sub-fifty-pound Turbo Levo 6Fattie, with its integrated battery and refined handling. But eMTBs still had a long road to social acceptance. In 2018, an 国产吃瓜黑料 columnist wondered if they were 鈥�Dorkmobiles or Saviors of the Universe.鈥� By 2019, however, bike reviewer Aaron Gulley allowed that they鈥檇 鈥渃ome far enough that they鈥檙e well worth buying.鈥� Around 2020 or 2021, Sonderegger says, the Levo began to lead Specialized鈥檚 mountain bike business. Today, he tells me, 鈥淚 don鈥檛 see a way back.鈥�

How you feel about this change depends, unsurprisingly, on whether or not you ride an eMTB. Most eMTBers I spoke to said they鈥檇 welcome a future in which they鈥檙e the majority (duh). Most industry professionals expressed optimism as well (at least outwardly) for a scenario in which e-bikes grow ridership, stoke trail building, and get more Americans exercising. One industry professional admitted that he would feel 鈥渁 little bit sad鈥� if eMTBs one day outnumbered pedal bikes. Then he asked if he could stay anonymous.

A lot of longtime riders can probably relate to this sentiment鈥攁s well as the reluctance to voice it. It鈥檚 not really OK to be anti-e-bike anymore. Most of us know or love people who ride them, many of whom couldn鈥檛 (or wouldn鈥檛) ride otherwise. If you love the sport, it鈥檚 tough to criticize gray-haired dads riding with their kids, injured cyclists returning to the trail, or, really, any rider more readily accessing the joy of mountain biking.

It鈥檚 not really OK to be anti-e-bike anymore. Most of us know or love people who ride them, many of whom couldn鈥檛 (or wouldn鈥檛) ride otherwise.

But also, if you love the sport, you might not want it to change. Many die-hard pedal bikers thus find themselves in an awkward position. Just because you support eMTBs doesn鈥檛 preclude you from dreading their ubiquity, or worrying about a future in which they completely take over. It鈥檚 either naive or disingenuous for people to reduce the debate to 鈥渞ide whatever makes you happy,鈥� as if pedal bikers have no stake in whether they鈥檙e eventually outnumbered.

No one wants to be constantly buzzed on singletrack by much faster riders; and despite the industry鈥檚 claims that eMTBs don鈥檛 damage trails mile-for-mile more than pedal bikes, concerns about overuse by virtue of an eMTB鈥檚 ability to cover more mileage are legitimate. Marro also tells me that one reason people buy e-bikes is to keep up with their friends. In his view, riders like me could soon have to make a decision: Do I buy another analog bike? Or do I get an e-bike so I can keep riding with the group? (The product managers I spoke to also agreed that most companies will pare down their pedal offerings if growth continues to lag.)

Not everyone believes our electric future is a foregone conclusion. Kyle Young, founder of Transition Cycles, for example, doesn鈥檛 think it鈥檒l happen (although even the decidedly core Washington brand sells one eMTB out of every four mountain bikes sold).

But wherever the long-term ratio shakes out, we鈥檝e already hit some undeniable tipping point鈥攖he alienating experiences I鈥檝e had recently would have been hard to imagine even a year ago. If there was any moment where the eMTB revolution could have stalled, Cannondale mountain bike product director Scott Vogelman believes it would have been five to eight years ago, when battles over trail access for eMTBs were most hotly contested. Since then, eMTB riders have won access to many trails.

鈥淎t this point the ball is rolling down the hill,鈥� he says. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think it鈥檚 stopping.鈥�

The Turbo Levo turns ten this year. As with other technological changes over the past decade, eMTBs show that we鈥檙e living in a time when a lot is changing very fast. Now, buoyed by their success, the outdoor industry is experimenting with what else it can motorize. Companies have recently released electronic touring skis, hiking pants with a powered exoskeleton, and an electronic tow rope for backcountry skiing. On a Reddit thread about the electronic skis, commenters dismissed them as 鈥渁bominations鈥� and said they would never be allowed on public lands where most backcountry skiers go. They could be right. But I remember similar conversations when we saw the first eMTBs too.

This piece first appeared in the summer 2025 print issue of 国产吃瓜黑料 Magazine. Subscribe now for early access to our most captivating storytelling, stunning photography, and deeply reported features on the biggest issues facing the outdoor world.聽聽

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Two summers ago, I went shopping for a . I鈥檇 just moved to the Lake Tahoe area, and everywhere else I鈥檇 lived, races and group rides were how I鈥檇 made friends. I knew that if I could find a good weekly ride, I would find my new community.

The first ride I checked out had only three participants, including myself. The next was attended by riders who seemed mostly new to one another. Then I went to a ride hosted Wednesday nights by , a bar/restaurant/gear shop in the North Lake Tahoe hub of Truckee. I arrived at 5 p.m. to find thirty or so riders milling around in front of the shop. Everyone seemed to know one another. I was standing alone, wishing for an invisible-鈥檛il-now manhole to open beneath my feet and swallow me when a woman walked up, introduced herself, and offered me a ride to the trailhead. Another rider asked if it was my first time. When I said yes, he replied, 鈥淭hanks for coming.鈥� An hour and a half later, at the bottom of the descent, I watched the group cheer for the last rider, a gray-haired gentleman they called Ben. I noted once more that everyone seemed to know each other. But this time that didn鈥檛 make me want to fall through a trapdoor. It made me want to come back next Wednesday.

Friendship and community are popular topics these days, and the conversation in recent years has often turned to the notion of the third place. According to the late sociologist Ray Oldenburg, who coined the term, a third place is one that鈥檚 outside the home (the first place) and work (second place), where people can meet and socialize with strangers, acquaintances, or friends. Third places are posited as a solution for finding and building community during a time when Americans are increasingly alone. 鈥淒o Yourself a Favor,鈥� the Atlantic advised in 2022, 鈥渁nd Go Find a Third Place.鈥�

What always puzzled me was this: Just because you live near the kinds of establishments that are traditionally identified as third places鈥攍ike bars, coffee shops, parks, and libraries鈥攄oesn鈥檛 mean you鈥檙e going to become friends with your neighbors. My sister and her husband, for example, live two blocks off a charming downtown drag in the Bay Area, but they鈥檝e struggled to make local friends.

Americans who live near amenities like these are more likely to meet new people than those who don鈥檛, according to a 2021 community life survey. But the same survey also found that more than half of Americans who live in 鈥渧ery high-amenity鈥� areas chatted with strangers at most a few times a year.

Outdoor places and spaces like run clubs, group rides, gear shops, trails, ski areas, and others also fit Oldenburg鈥檚 criteria for third places. They鈥檙e free or low-cost to attend (the cost of gear notwithstanding). They bring people together from different backgrounds and put them on equal footing, an effect called 鈥渟ocial leveling.鈥� And they facilitate casual conversations.

But the outdoors may be even better than traditional third places at bringing people together and sparking the lasting connections that form a community.

A third place is less about where people gather and more about what they do together, says Debbie Rudman, a health sciences professor at Toronto鈥檚 Western University who is co-leading a four-year study on third places. 鈥淚t鈥檚 the doing that becomes the point of connection,鈥� she says. 鈥淭he relationships, sense of belonging, and community build from that.鈥�

That鈥檚 in part because a key ingredient to community-building, besides a place, is time. This is one of the biggest barriers to community building in our productivity-oriented culture, says Kathy Giuffre, a professor emerita of sociology at Colorado College. 鈥淲e feel like we can鈥檛 waste our time to go to a coffee shop and just sit around for a couple hours and meet the regulars.鈥� At a third space like a run club, however, the activity itself demands spending time together. Participants also return week after week, becoming regulars and forming bonds, because they enjoy running and its .

Even if someone does find the time to go to a coffee shop, these spaces don鈥檛 necessarily encourage interaction. Starbucks bills itself as a third place, historian Bryant Simon noted in 2009, yet 鈥渙ne learns they do not have to talk at Starbucks. Actually one learns not to talk.鈥� Sharing an activity, by comparison, makes it easy to strike up casual gab: You can bitch about the hill you鈥檙e climbing, or ask which race someone is training for.

Some argue that run clubs don鈥檛 qualify as third places because of their emphasis on exercise, or productivity. The researchers I spoke to disagreed. The guise of productivity may actually work in our favor, says Giuffre. 鈥淚t almost gives people an excuse to do something that鈥檚 actually quite pleasurable, which our society makes us feel really guilty about,鈥� she says. 鈥溾€業鈥檓 exercising, so it鈥檚 OK.鈥欌€�

Hedman, who studies what makes sports clubs so effective at building communities, prefers the term 鈥渟hared goal鈥� to productivity. It鈥檚 this goal orientation that gives sports clubs such staying power as third places, and even sets them apart from other 鈥渄oing鈥� spaces like, say, an art class. As members return regularly in pursuit of these goals, relationships develop through friendly interactions and shared experiences, 鈥渂e they fulfilling, terrifying, or triumphant,鈥� he writes in a 2024 paper. People with these kinds of emotional ties, he says, are more willing to contribute to 鈥渃ollective undertakings.鈥�

I鈥檝e seen the power of outdoor sports to create what I call a community鈥攁 diffuse network of people who have bonds both tight and loose, yet nonetheless feel an accountability to one another that supersedes their individual ties. Several years ago, when my then-fianc茅 was hospitalized after being hit and nearly killed on his bike by a careless driver, we received messages, visits, gift cards, meals, flowers, Venmo transfers, and care packages from not only friends and family, but also near-strangers and acquaintances. At the time, the influx was so steady that it felt like our community was performing acts of kindness like cyclists in a paceline, each member taking a turn at the front and then peeling off to let the next rider through. After we left the ICU, his brother said, 鈥淭his was probably the worst thing that鈥檚 ever happened to us, but it wasn’t a negative experience.鈥�

The notion of third places may be evolving from Oldenburg鈥檚 original definition. Considering what people do together, not just where they gather, dispels the idea that third places are static, pre-existing physical spaces that people visit to get their daily dose of connection, Rudman says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 the people who actually create the third place by doing the activity.鈥� We become the regulars, the characters that define a place.

I like this concept of a third place as one you make, not just one you find. I did keep going back to that Wednesday night group ride, and the following summer I started to help lead rides as a shop ambassador. (RMU provides me with a small bar tab and a few items of gear in exchange.) But according to this theory, every rider who comes helps to create the experience I look forward to each Wednesday. Maybe that explains why I often feel compelled to say the same thing whenever I see a new face: 鈥淭hanks for coming.鈥�

This piece first appeared in the summer 2025 print issue of 国产吃瓜黑料 Magazine. Subscribe now for early access to our most captivating storytelling, stunning photography, and deeply reported features on the biggest issues facing the outdoor world.聽聽

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I. Four Dead

Around 10:30 A.M. on October 7, 2023, Elena Cebanova鈥檚 phone rang at her home in Affi, Italy. When the slim, blond mother of two picked up, she learned that her younger sister, 33-year-old Anna Gutu, had been caught in an avalanche in Tibet and was missing.

Elena didn鈥檛 know much about mountaineering. Her sister had dived headlong into the sport less than two years earlier. She did know that this was an important climb for Anna. If she summited the mountain, she might achieve her dream of becoming the first American woman to climb all 14 of the world鈥檚 8,000-meter peaks.

Elena was sure that Anna was OK. Whenever the family worried about her climbing, Anna always told them that she was guided by professionals. Now these people would find her, Elena thought.

An hour and a half later, her phone rang again. The caller spoke English, and Elena, who spoke only Italian and Russian, couldn鈥檛 follow what he was saying. Her partner opened Google Translate. Using the app, they learned that Anna was dead.

Two hours later, around 8 A.M. Eastern time, a phone rang in a leafy Massachusetts neighborhood. Seventy-five-year-old Susan Rzucidlo picked up. Susan, her cousin said, I鈥檓 not sure how to tell you this, but someone called saying that Gina died in an avalanche. I don鈥檛 know if it鈥檚 a prank.

This can鈥檛 be true, Susan thought. She would have gotten a call from the expedition鈥檚 organizers. She couldn鈥檛 remember the name of the mountain that her second-eldest daughter was climbing, but she knew that it was in China, because the permitting process had been agonizingly convoluted, and Gina had waited anxiously for weeks, hoping to beat another woman to the top. So Susan googled something like 鈥渕ost recent avalanche China.鈥� And then she saw her daughter鈥檚 name.

The accidents made international news: Two American women and two Sherpas had perished in a pair of avalanches on Shishapangma, an 8,027-meter peak in Tibet. The climbers, it was reported, had been racing each other to become the first American woman to scale all 14 of the world鈥檚 8,000-meter peaks, a feat widely popularized by 40-year-old Nepali mountaineer Nirmal 鈥淣ims鈥� Purja, who in 2019 proved that the mountains鈥攁ll of them located in the Himalaya and Karakoram Ranges of South Asia鈥攃ould be climbed in just months. Purja himself had been on the mountain that day; Anna Gutu was a client of his climbing company, Elite Exped, and had been led by one of its Sherpas, 27-year-old Mingmar Sherpa. Gina Rzucidlo, 45, had been led by a 35-year-old Sherpa named Tenjen 鈥淟ama鈥� Sherpa, who earlier that year guided Norway鈥檚 Kristin Harila, a former professional skier, in a successful attempt to beat Purja鈥檚 record. (They trounced it, climbing all the peaks in 92 days.) Both Mingmar and Tenjen died roped to their clients.

Climbers spoke to reporters about what they considered a dangerous trend of record chasing on 8,000-meter peaks, inspired by Purja and Harila and fueled by social media. (Gutu had a sizable Instagram following.) Several of those on the mountain that day were also pursuing their 14th peak; Purja had been trying to reach a new goal of summiting all of them without supplemental oxygen. Members of the climbing community pointed to recent snowfall that likely worsened the risk of avalanches, and criticized what they said was a failure of leadership on the mountain. But one expedition leader, Mingma Gyalje Sherpa of Imagine Nepal, known as Mingma G, said that the race was to blame. 鈥淓verything was going smoothly,鈥� he told a reporter for , 鈥渂ut the competition between the two ladies ruined everything.鈥�

Questions remained. Several years ago, one might have been lucky to climb a handful of those peaks in a lifetime. Now two women had ticked off 13 in rapid succession, converging upon the same final mountain on the same day. Who were Gina Rzucidlo and Anna Gutu? How did they end up racing to the roof of the world? And why did they, and their guides, die?

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Originally, I had a vision. It involved getting into a car with strangers.

The idea struck me a few weeks before I left for Colorado, where I was going to report on the state鈥檚 notorious Interstate 70 traffic. Each winter, I-70 makes headlines and stymies skiers attempting to drive from Denver and the urban Front Range to the dozen or so resorts that lie west along the scenic and beleaguered 144-mile mountain corridor. The highway has even inspired its own Instagram account, , which features scenes of Corvettes squirming in the snow, semis jackknifed across the road, and the cherry-red ass ends of countless vehicles, all filmed by frustrated travelers.

I鈥檝e been mired on I-70 myself, having lived on the Front Range until last year, when I moved back to my home state of California, to the mountains around Lake Tahoe. On my upcoming trip, I hoped to answer some of the questions I鈥檇 pondered as a Coloradan: What causes I-70 traffic? Could it ever be fixed? And what did traffic on I-70鈥攁nd other infamous recreational arteries like Utah鈥檚 Little Cottonwood Canyon to Alta and Snowbird ski resorts or the Montauk Highway to Long Island鈥檚 beaches鈥攔eveal about our relationship with nature?

At the moment, though, I was specifically puzzling over who, exactly, wandered innocently into the I-70 gridlock each weekend. Everyone I knew in Colorado seemed to understand that you could mostly avoid traffic if you left the Front Range early in the morning and the resorts early afternoon. We set grim alarms that began with the numbers five, four, or even three to go skiing. Who were all these snoozers caught in the 8 A.M. swell each week? And wouldn鈥檛 it be great, I mulled, if I could somehow get into one of their cars for this story?

That鈥檚 when a synapse in my brain either fired or short-circuited. Maybe I could.

The initial plan was rough: I would trawl the popular Dinosaur Park-n-Ride lots outside Denver and talk my way into a vehicle with a group of these hapless pilgrims. We would wade into traffic together, brothers and sisters in arms, and I would bear witness to their arduous journey. Hard lessons would be learned, but good times would still be had, in the Rocky Mountain spirit of adventure.

I briefed my fianc茅. He politely lauded my out-of-the-box thinking, but expressed valid concerns, including the offhand chance that I got murdered, or a more likely scenario in which I failed to convince anyone to let some rando into their car. He suggested I arrange a ride in advance.

I took to the keyboard with optimism. 鈥淗i all!鈥� I posted on three Denver-area skiing Facebook groups. 鈥淚鈥檓 looking for a fun group to hitch a ride with on Saturday January 6. … Looking for folks who were already planning to leave the Front Range at 7 A.M. or later.鈥� I left my phone number, converting a few digits to text (鈥渟even2zero鈥︹€�) to foil the spam bots, and waited for the invitations to roll in.

The response was swift and derisive.

鈥淭hat鈥檚 literally the worst traffic weekend of the year. Hard pass!鈥�
鈥淎nyone leaving at that time of day, on that particular weekend is clearly a sadistic psychopath and should not be trusted to drive you anywhere.鈥�
鈥淭his is literally the first man [note: I鈥檓 a woman] that is actively trying to get stuck on i70.鈥�

And the most humiliating:

鈥淵ou can write your number out this 颈蝉苍鈥檛 bumble or match.com.鈥�

For the next several days I cringed at the sight of new Facebook notifications. I questioned my entire plan. Colorado was having an unusually dry season, and for the week preceding my trip, the snowfall forecast looked like a line of binary code: 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1 inches. What if it didn鈥檛 snow? What if ski conditions were so bad I didn鈥檛 even see traffic?

By Thursday, things were looking up. OpenSnow forecasters were baiting skiers with 鈥渟oft/powder conditions鈥� for Saturday morning. The mountains were calling, and everyone in Denver would go. I packed my skis and flew to Colorado to get stuck in traffic.

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Araminta 鈥淢inty鈥� Ross was born into slavery in 1822 on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. As a girl, she dreaded doing domestic work that kept her indoors under the hawkish eye and often abusive hand of a mistress. As a teenager, she was hired out to do the kind of grueling agricultural labor usually assigned to men, and she later worked alongside her father, a lumberman, learning how to forage and to follow waterways. Eventually, she used the survival skills and physical endurance she鈥檇 developed not only to escape north to her own freedom, but also to lead more than a dozen successful missions to liberate over 70 enslaved people. Ross navigated for those groups under cover of night and in freezing winter conditions. She hid people in swamps, showed them which plants could be eaten safely, and deployed her knowledge of the woods to evade slave hunters. For this she would one day be described as 鈥渢he ultimate outdoorswoman鈥� by a park ranger. Most of us know her by the name she adopted in her twenties: Harriet Tubman.

This fresh look at the Tubman narrative is one of many stories from the new book , by Tiya Miles. In Wild Girls, Miles, an author and a professor of American history at Harvard University, reexamines the lives of female trailblazers to reveal how playing and working outside as girls prepared them to subvert the status quo as adults. A childhood full of climbing trees and challenging boys to footraces in Victorian-era New England, for example, inspired Louisa May Alcott to create the feisty, independent Jo March in Little Women. Annual migrations between summer and winter settlements in the Rocky Mountains equipped a 16-year-old Shoshone girl named Sacagawea, who was kidnapped and sold or exchanged to a French trader to be one of his 鈥渨ives,鈥� to serve as Lewis and Clark鈥檚 most valuable guide. Before she founded the United Farm Workers Association with Cesar Chavez in 1962, Dorothy Huerta learned 鈥渢o be strong,鈥� she said, from hikes through the Sierra Nevada with her Girl Scout troop.

In Wild Girls, Miles focuses on women of the 19th century, when, she writes, indoor spaces represented both literal and psychic confinement. White women were relegated to the domestic sphere at a time when performing physical work or playing sports was considered unfeminine. Enslaved Black women working in the house endured the surveillance of the women who controlled them and sexual predation by the men, even as the outdoors connoted both the toil of forced labor and the beauty of nature. Native girls sequestered in boarding schools had their culture and identity systematically assailed. Indoor spaces were heavily regimented along gender lines, Miles argues, while the outdoors was where girls could be freer from restrictive social norms and supervision. Her thesis: time in nature expanded their minds, readying them for revolutionary thought.

Miles herself was profoundly shaped by time outdoors in her youth. Growing up in Cincinnati in the 1970s, shuttling between divorced parents鈥� homes, she spent hours exploring abandoned buildings and empty lots in the urban neighborhood around her mother鈥檚 house, discovering relics like old shoes and furniture, and imagining what they might tell her about the past. She visited state parks with her father and stepmother, and at Kentucky鈥檚 Natural Bridge State Resort Park, Miles saw a landscape so awe-inspiring that she wrote about it for a Bible class assignment requiring her to describe an experience with God.

Miles鈥檚 most treasured memories outdoors were of times spent with her maternal grandmother on the porch of her Craftsman bungalow or in the garden she lovingly tended. Her grandmother told her stories about her childhood in rural Mississippi, where her family had been sharecroppers. The stories were always rooted in the environment: how green and lush and sustaining the country, how backbreaking the labor in the cotton fields. Miles鈥檚 grandmother also described the day when armed white men rode onto the family farm on horseback and forced her father to sign away almost all of their land and possessions. 鈥淭here was this memory of an idealized Southern nature accompanied by a terrorized Southern nature,鈥� Miles told me when we spoke in the fall. 鈥淎t the same time,鈥� she continued, citing her grandmother鈥檚 ability to save over decades to buy that Craftsman, 鈥渢here was a present-day experience of the pleasure and pride of having one鈥檚 own little bit of the outdoors, one鈥檚 own little garden.鈥� The idea that Black people have a complicated yet nonetheless deep and sustaining relationship with the outdoors is a theme Miles has explored in her writing again and again.

鈥淭he way we think about nature and the environment in this country is fairly limited,鈥� says Carolyn Finney, author of the book Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors. 鈥淲e either see nature as a supermarket of resources or a place for outdoor recreation.鈥� Tubman doesn鈥檛 fit into either category in that narrow view; nor do the relationships that many people of color have with the outdoors. For example, Finney points out, 鈥淟abor has never been seriously considered as a way to have a really strong relationship with nature.鈥� This narrow mindset has led to the erasure of Black people and other people of color from the conversation about environmentalism, she says. The stories in Wild Girls, then, also quietly expand the idea of what it means to be an outdoors person. Miles wants readers to know that, as she writes, 鈥淧eople imagined to exist outside only as exploited laborers or romanticized symbols have in fact lived large and impactful lives outdoors.鈥�

Soon after the revelation about Tubman, Miles, who began her research in African American and Native American women鈥檚 histories, became increasingly interested in environmental action. Also in 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, disproportionately affecting Black residents, and Miles saw that the effects of climate change were likely to hit poor communities and people of color hardest. In her work, she began to collect notes on how enslaved people related to nature. In 2011, she founded a nonprofit, ECO Girls, which provided environmental cultural experiences in southeast Michigan. These efforts culminated more than a decade later in Wild Girls.

Miles, an artful explainer who often began her responses to my questions by summarizing the points to be covered, told me that there were two reasons she felt compelled to share stories like Tubman鈥檚. 鈥淚 think it鈥檚 important for all of us to understand the complexity and multidimensionality of Black experience,鈥� she said. 鈥淏lack people and other marginalized groups have been too often reduced to stereotypical elements and not considered or respected or understood in the wholeness of their beings.鈥�

The other reason, she said, is to reveal to Black women and other women of color that their history is rooted in the outdoors; that they, too, have inherited a deep connection to nature. In doing so, she hopes to activate them to meet the environmental challenges ahead. 鈥淚 want Black women to feel equipped to know that we stand on this earth, we live with this earth, we are part of this earth,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 our duty to try to protect the home that we depend on, as well as the many other creatures we share it with.鈥�

The pandemic in particular exposed unequal access to green spaces, especially for poor communities and people of color. Studies found, for example, that Black and Asian teens were less likely than their white counterparts to visit parks during the early months of the pandemic, and were more likely to feel emotionally distressed. Areas that were predominantly non-white had both less green space and higher rates of COVID-19.

When I asked Miles for some practical ways to make it easier for everyone to get outside, she suggested that people start by ensuring that everyone feels welcome in their own communities. 鈥淰isual signifiers鈥� can help, she said, like a sign in her neighborhood that reads WITCHES AGAINST WHITE SUPREMACY, which, she tells me, made her chuckle. 鈥淚 thought, This is a street I want to walk on.鈥� Miles also suggested that people contribute not only to organizations that work toward conservation, but also to those that improve access for underrepresented groups.

Miles鈥檚 forthcoming projects include a book entirely about Tubman, and her first foray into climate fiction. She and her husband, also a Harvard professor, spend their summers in Montana, where he鈥檚 from. Their home base in Bozeman is the launching pad for most of their hikes and visits to national parks. But in Cambridge, too, Miles tries to get outside as much as possible, even if it just means taking her laptop outdoors. For her, time in nature is still key to maintaining gratitude and optimism, even while her work immerses her day after day in our country鈥檚 fraught racial history and our planet鈥檚 warming future. 鈥淓ven though it鈥檚 a very destabilizing time,鈥� she says, 鈥渋t鈥檚 also a time when possibly, maybe, the things we all do can matter more because the stakes are so high. I think we all can have a heightened sense of purpose right now. That sense of purpose really does energize me.鈥�

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Let me tell you a tale of a mythical beast who wanders the wintry peaks. He is your average American resort skier, and he does strange and marvelous things. According to legend, he will sit in traffic for three hours on a Saturday morning to make a drive that would otherwise take less than half the time. He will wander haplessly to a ticket counter and pay $200 for a lift ticket. He will wait in lift lines so long, the locals whisper, that you can see them from space. He will do all this for the privilege of sliding around for a few hours on a chewed-up slope days after the last storm. He will call it 鈥渟kiing pow.鈥� This behavior is nonsensical, you say. This man must be a myth.

On a sunny, bluebird Saturday in January, in a gondola going the wrong direction at Northstar ski resort outside Lake Tahoe, California, I find myself face-to-face with this fantastical beast. His name is Calvin, and he comes from Florida.

The creature, alas, is wounded. He shows me his forearms, where two hematomas are rising like bread loaves. 鈥淚 got beat up a little,鈥� he tells me. That鈥檚 why he鈥檚 riding the lift down.

I鈥檓 taking the gondola down too, but not because I鈥檓 hurt. I鈥檓 two hours into a daylong mission to ride a chairlift from first chair to last, 9 A.M. to 4 P.M., and interview everyone I encounter. That鈥檚 roughly 30 seven-minute interviews on the ride up, plus anyone I meet on the ride down. My editor wants me to take the lift both ways, I think because he hopes to torture me for comedic effect. He mentioned, a little too gleefully, that I should bring a warm jacket in case I鈥檓 on the chair for eight hours in a blizzard.

Sorry, guy: the day is instead warm and brilliantly clear, and the only lift a local resort will allow me to lap is Northstar鈥檚 Tahoe Zephyr Express, a 鈥渃hondola鈥� that carries both chairs and gondolas. I ride the chair up and the gondola down, and the latter is how I meet skiers and riders who the mountain is spitting out, like Calvin. (According to chairlift cultural norms, I鈥檓 going first-name only.) As with all the conversations I鈥檝e had today, I ask him various unscripted questions, but they all circle around the same theme: why do you ski?

Or really, why do you still ski? Because it鈥檚 getting harder and harder to do. The average weekend warrior encounters increasingly insurmountable obstacles on their journey to the mountain: traffic ; lift ticket prices are extortionary; climate change has . Even if our hero could move closer to the slopes, Airbnb and remote work have decimated ski-town housing. 鈥淭he regular Joe or Jill can’t afford to fall in love with the sport anymore,鈥� Seth Masia, president of the International Skiing History Association, tells me. 鈥淚f you fall in love, it could be like a bad marriage.鈥�

I know this feeling. When I became enamored with snowboarding 17 years ago, the romance began like a dream. There were ski cabins leased with friends in Tahoe, a winter in New Zealand, a hundred-day season in Aspen. But after I moved to Colorado鈥檚 urban Front Range in 2012, the relationship began to sour. Weekend ski traffic got worse. Lodging got more expensive. I shifted time to the backcountry鈥攂y then I鈥檇 switched to skiing鈥攂ut a lot of it was still off the notoriously congested I-70. So I sat in the gridlock. I skipped more powder days. And I wondered, at times, if my love affair had become toxic.

But Calvin, 27, is still in the honeymoon phase. He鈥檚 just happy to be on the mountain, which he describes as 鈥渘ext-level.鈥� Calvin鈥檚 first foray into snowboarding was in Tennessee, and he started on the bunny hill with a bunch of little kids. Now he can kind of make turns, except when he can鈥檛, and the board squirts straight down the hill. This, he says, is terrifying.

Calvin is here in Tahoe on a work trip, and he was determined to go snowboarding today. 鈥淚 was like, whatever the cost,鈥� he says, 鈥淚’m paying it.鈥�

What did he pay?

He furrows his brow. 鈥淚 rented the gear. It was maybe $130, and then for the day ticket it was like $200. So not too bad. You usually expect to spend like 500 bucks to go snowboarding.鈥�

Do you? This expectation alarms me. This year I paid $870 for my season pass, and that felt like a big expense. But much news has been made of outrageous lift ticket prices; recently, a resort broke the $300 barrier. Price gouging鈥攍et鈥檚 call it what it is鈥攆or day passes is, of course, a strategy for selling season passes. And season passes are a climate-change-resistant strategy for collecting cash upfront, regardless of snowfall. But over a third of skier visits still come from folks like Calvin, who shell out for lift tickets at the window. And in some regions, like the Rockies, those folks have gone from paying an average of $98 for a day of skiing in 2013, to $197 in 2022, according to the National Ski Areas Association (NSAA).

But Calvin has no complaints. The views here are 鈥渦nreal,鈥� he says.

Is it worth it?

鈥淥h yeah. A hundred percent.鈥�

The post I Spent 7 Straight Hours on a Chairlift. Here鈥檚 What I Learned About Why We Still Ski. appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Tommy Pozzi started washing dishes at a diner for seven bucks an hour when he was 13 or 14. Like most teenagers, he didn鈥檛 know what he wanted to do when he grew up. But both his parents worked the assembly line at the Buick factory in Flint, Michigan, and they told him and his younger sister not to do what they did. Don鈥檛 waste your life punching the clock at a job you hate, they said. Do something you鈥檙e passionate about.

Tommy was passionate about the mountains. He鈥檇 never seen the big ones out west, but as a young rock climber he read mountaineering books, and in the winter he opened the windows of his bedroom and did push-ups in the frigid air鈥斺€渃old training,鈥� he called it. After high school he went to the University of Utah, in Salt Lake City, so he could ski and climb, but as a junior he ran out of tuition money. Over the next several years he worked various jobs in the oil and gas industry, which was good pay but a hard lifestyle that involved spending weeks on a rig. By the time he was 30, he had a serious girlfriend, and he could see a future in which the job made him a miserable husband and father. So he quit.

He had friends who were ski patrollers at Park City Mountain Resort, about 30 miles from his home in Salt Lake. In 2015, he started as a rookie patroller there, where he learned new skills constantly: how to make a ski slope safe from avalanches by throwing explosives onto it, how to transport an injured skier down a mountain in a toboggan. He loved the job, but the pay was dismal. His hourly wage increased from $10.25 an hour to $16 his third year, then stagnated. Money got particularly tight after he and his wife had their daughter in 2019. He sometimes had to carpool to work because he couldn鈥檛 afford the gas to get there.

Things became even more stressful during the pandemic. In January 2020, the union Tommy had joined鈥擯ark City Professional Ski Patrol Association, which represented the 180 or so patrollers and safety personnel on Park City Mountain鈥攈ad begun negotiating a new contract with the ski area鈥檚 multibillion-dollar parent corporation, Vail Resorts, which at the time owned 37 properties worldwide, including Whistler Blackcomb and Vail Mountain. Tommy had hoped the union could bargain for a couple bucks鈥� an hour raise, which would help him cover his bills. But the negotiations didn鈥檛 start until August 2020, and then they dragged on through the following 2020鈥�21 ski season, without resolution. Meanwhile, real estate prices soared in resort towns like Park City, as well as outdoorsy metro areas like Salt Lake City.

In the fall of 2021, Tommy鈥檚 son was born, and he began his seventh season as a patroller. That December, the union approached its 46th meeting and 16th month of negotiations with Vail amid a roiling national conversation about labor, as workers from 碍别濒濒辞驳驳鈥檚 and Amazon staged strikes and unionization drives. Vail was taking a pummeling in the news due to long lift lines and terrain closures, both attributed to workforce shortages. The union鈥檚 talks attracted public support and media attention. When I met Tommy over Zoom a few weeks before Christmas, he told me about the nine-to-twelve-hour days that left his feet and back aching, the commute through Parleys Canyon that became 鈥渓ife or death鈥� in the snow, and the dangers of his job. With regard to hand-throwing explosives, for example, 鈥淵ou can only throw it so far, and some people,鈥� he said, joking, 鈥渁re not that good at throwing.鈥�

Despite his wry sense of humor, it was clear that Tommy was frustrated by the protracted talks between the union and Vail, which wanted to start first-year patrollers at what was then the company-wide minimum wage of $15 an hour, instead of the $16.70 the union was asking for. (According to shareholder reports, Vail appeared to be financially healthy, earning profit margins in its mountain operations, before depreciation and amortization, of 29.2 percent in 2020 and 32.6 percent in 2021.) At the time, as a seventh-year patroller who oversaw a team of four or five, Tommy made just $17.83 an hour, well below the $20.88 MIT then deemed a living wage to support a family of four in Salt Lake County. A two-week paycheck, after taxes, ranged from $850 to $1,300. His wife made a modest salary at a local nonprofit, and after their $1,200 mortgage, $1,800 a month for two kids in day care, groceries, diapers, a car payment, gas, and other bills, 鈥渋t鈥檚 very much a paycheck-to-paycheck existence,鈥� he told me.

Tommy pointed to the irony that his employee ski pass gave him access to any Vail resort, but he couldn鈥檛 afford a ski vacation: not the gas to get there, the hotel to stay in, or the ski lessons for his kids. 鈥淏ut all the people who can afford all that stuff, we鈥檙e there to help those guys and make sure that the mountain is open so that they can spend money there,鈥� he said. Noting a recent $118 million acquisition by Vail of three resorts in Pennsylvania, he said, 鈥淚t鈥檚 like, what about the people who make all this possible? It just feels like they think we鈥檙e expendable and we have no value.鈥�

The second week of January 2022, the union voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike ahead of the resort鈥檚 lucrative Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. A few days later, after a 15-hour meeting that ran into the early morning, the union and Vail arrived at a new contract, which was put to the patrollers for a vote. Tommy deliberated until the final hour before voting yes.

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Last fall, I came up with what seemed at the time like a good idea: I convinced my friend Melanie that she and I should enter a backcountry ski mountaineering race. The Grand Traverse is a 40-mile slog from Crested Butte to Aspen, Colorado, and it required us to race as a team. Neither of us had ever done a ski race, but we鈥檇 always been compatible partners on mountain bikes, so I figured we鈥檇 be well-matched on the skin track, too.

I was wrong. On our first long training day together, Mel dropped me repeatedly. As she disappeared out of sight on our last climb, I began a downwards spiral: How much would I hold us back on race day? Why had I come up with this stupid idea? Why wasn鈥檛 she waiting? When I finally caught up, Mel asked, 鈥淎re you bonking?鈥� I opened my mouth to respond and鈥攐h, no鈥攖ears began rolling down my cheeks.

I was awash in saline and shame. Crying was a behavior I associated with beginnerdom, noob status, something I did most often in the years I was learning to mountain bike. But鈥攄ammit, now Mel鈥檚 brow was furrowed with motherly concern鈥擨 couldn鈥檛 stop the waterworks. 鈥淚 think you need to eat something,鈥� she offered.

She was right: sugar improved my mood, and at the bottom of the final descent we joked about my meltdown. In the days that followed, though, I became more curious than embarrassed.聽I wasn鈥檛 actually crying out of pain or discomfort, so what emotions were I reacting to? And was there anything positive to be derived from the tears鈥攐r were they just a liability in an outdoor setting?

A friend once dubbed what happened to me a 鈥渟ports cry,鈥� and in the years I鈥檝e been using the term since, I鈥檝e found no need to explain it: even the most accomplished athletes have shed tears in the field. Pro climber , the first woman to free-climb El Capitan鈥檚 Golden Gate route in under 24 hours, calls it her 鈥渄efault鈥� reaction when she鈥檚 frustrated or scared. Pro skier tells me he鈥檚 鈥渄efinitely鈥� done it, for 鈥渕ultiple reasons.鈥�

My initial theory about sports cries was that they were a result of fatigue and glycogen depletion. While researchers haven鈥檛 studied those variables directly, Ad Vingerhoets, psychology professor and author of Why Only Humans Weep: Unraveling the Mystery of Tears, tells me they do know that sleep deprivation lowers the threshold for crying, meaning it takes less to make us boohoo. But while being physically tired may make us more likely to cry, most tears are triggered by emotions鈥攁nd the emotions underlying our mid-adventure meltdowns are often the same ones that trigger them in day-to-day life.

While children most often cry in response to physical pain or discomfort, Vingerhoets explains, adults rarely do. The most common emotions that cause tears throughout our lifespan, he says, are feelings of powerlessness and frustration, followed by loss and separation from loved ones. Both sets of feelings were present that day on the mountain with Mel: I felt powerless and frustrated that I was moving so slowly, but I also felt the primal panic of being left behind.

Townsend also identified similar feelings during one of his more memorable sports cries, which happened during a shoot, when he miscalculated his takeoff on an 80-foot cliff jump and blew his knee. Afterwards, as he was being evacuated alone in the helicopter, he contemplated the severity of his injury as well as the fact that he was flying away from his friends, and started 鈥渂awling.鈥� 鈥淵ou feel like an island in those moments,鈥� he says. 鈥淟ike you fucked up and put yourself in this position鈥� and now you鈥檙e alone.鈥�

Crying might be one of the more vulnerable things we do, writes Amy Blume-Marcovici: 鈥淚t is a time when our body reveals our inner world to those outside of us, whether we want it to or not.鈥�

While Townsend tends to cry only during what he calls 鈥渙utlier鈥� moments, it鈥檚 more workaday for Harrington. 鈥淚t鈥檚 just one of those things that happens to me when I have strong emotions,鈥� she says. For her, crying feels helpful, like a catharsis.

Actually, some research says that crying 颈蝉苍鈥檛 inherently therapeutic or cathartic. In , performed by Vingerhoets and some colleagues, just 50 percent of people reported feeling better after crying, while 40 percent reported feeling no different and 10 percent felt worse. The major factor that determines whether people report feeling better or worse after they cry is how others react鈥攃rying in a supportive environment can make people feel better; an unsupportive response makes them feel worse.

For Harrington, who started climbing at age ten, the male-dominated culture of climbing didn鈥檛 feel like one that was receptive to her tears. When she was younger, she says, she often felt embarrassed and ashamed about breaking down on the wall. 鈥淚 used to feel like it was this distinctively female trait,鈥� she says. 鈥淚 just felt like everyone thought I was weak.鈥� The tears didn鈥檛 have the cathartic effect they do now; they only added to the frustration of the moment, and afterwards, she would spend the rest of the day feeling bad about the outburst. But as she matured, she realized that the way she handled her emotions wasn鈥檛 wrong or bad; it was something that worked for her. That self-acceptance transformed the tears from a 鈥渉urdle,鈥� as she puts it, to a 鈥渢ool.鈥� Now, she says, 鈥渃rying is sort of my process.鈥�

Women do cry more often than men, though researchers aren鈥檛 exactly sure why. It could be hormones鈥攍ower testosterone is generally related to a lower threshold for crying鈥攂ut it could be social factors, too. Vingerhoets theorizes that women may feel helpless or powerless more quickly in conflict situations, for example; and they may also expose themselves to what he calls 鈥渆motional stimuli鈥� more often.

Of course, there are practical reasons that crying or any other major outburst 颈蝉苍鈥檛 always helpful in outdoor sports鈥攕trong emotions can impede decision-making and become a safety issue. Townsend says there have been times he鈥檚 wanted to cry on ski mountaineering missions but didn鈥檛, in order to get out of a dangerous situation safely. Harrington keeps it productive by allowing herself to feel the emotions, cry, and then move on. To her, it鈥檚 similar to any strong display of emotion, like shouting after you fall鈥攖he feeling is the same even if the expression is different. 鈥淚 think it鈥檚 OK as long as you don鈥檛 carry it with you throughout the day,鈥� she says. 鈥淎s soon as you touch the ground it should be over.鈥�

Despite its potential drawbacks, there are other reasons crying might have value in outdoor culture鈥攊t can help us connect more deeply with others. Researchers think emotional crying is a behavior we evolved to help us create social coherence, by signaling that we need help or care. , Vingerhoets and other researchers compared normal criers with people who never cry, and found that the normal criers were more empathetic, and reported feeling more connected to and supported by others.

For Townsend, tears have facilitated bonding experiences on at least two separate occasions. On one trip, a friend had an anxiety attack and started crying; eliciting Townsend to put his hand on his back and sit next to him for about 20 minutes. Afterwards, the friend told him that was the best response he could have provided. Tears have helped him share positive emotions too: In 2019, while en route to skiing the Messner Couloir on Denali, Townsend caught a view back to base camp at 19,000 feet. Overwhelmed by the beauty, he started crying. His companions were also swept up in the experience, and eventually the group was laughing tearfully together, 鈥渋n a really joyful fun way, not in a making fun of you way,鈥� he recalls. Both experiences, he says, felt deeply meaningful.

Because it鈥檚 so rarely in our control, crying might be one of the more vulnerable things we do, writes Amy Blume-Marcovici, in the book, When Therapists Cry: Reflections on Therapists鈥� Tears in Therapy: 鈥淚t is a time when our body reveals our inner world to those outside of us, whether we want it to or not.鈥� That鈥檚 probably because crying is the outcome of a sudden physiological shift in our bodies, when our sympathetic system鈥攖he one responsible for our fight or flight response鈥攃edes control to our parasympathetic system, which powers our rest or digest response. While going into rest-or-digest mode on a mountain might seem counterproductive, in the magazine , psychologist Jay Efran suggests that rather than thinking of tears as a breakdown, 鈥渨e optimistically consider it a potential breakthrough. By backing away from an overwhelming issue, the system can husband its resources and regroup for a fresh assault.鈥� Either way, he notes that we often don鈥檛 cry at the height of a crisis but rather when we think it鈥檚 safe to finally relax. That sense of safety can come from a caring gesture or the presence of a trusted figure鈥攍ike a friend who鈥檚 willing to sit with us when we鈥檙e having a panic attack, or gently suggest that we eat some calories.

Despite the rough start to our training, on race day Mel and I proved to be a good pair. The race began at midnight, and for six hours we schussed together as a unit through the inky darkness. But as the sun began to rise, we found ourselves pushing as hard as we could to make it to Star Pass, the high point of the race, by the crucial 7 A.M. cutoff. At the top, just before the brief descent to the pass, I spotted a course marshal checking off racers. After a frantic transition, we skied around a small contour and the marshal reappeared. Now she was holding two ski poles over her head in the shape of an X.

A painful lump formed in my throat. We鈥檇 missed the cutoff by minutes. The tears welled up, and I didn鈥檛 bother holding them back this time. I let myself have a good cry on the ridge, at 12,330 feet.

But as the tears flowed and dampened my goggles, I felt less bereft. The race had always been a big, ambitious goal. We had tried our best and pushed ourselves farther than we鈥檇 ever gone on skis. That was something to be proud of.

鈥淔or me, tears represent that discomfort of pushing my limits constantly,鈥� Harrington says. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e the result of me always taking on big challenges, putting myself out there, being open to failure.鈥� We should fail more often, she thinks: these are the times we grow.

After a few minutes, I pulled myself together. A storm was coming in and it was time to get off the mountain. By the time we began skiing back down the way we came, my eyes were dry, and I felt a surprising sense of peace.

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Adam and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.
鈥擥enesis 3:25

It鈥檚 weird to start a story about yourself with someone else鈥檚 memory. But I don鈥檛 have memories like this of my own. I never ran on a beach naked. I never played naked in the dirt. I don鈥檛 think there鈥檚 a single naked photo of me as a kid.

It鈥檚 not like I think I鈥檝e been deprived. My fully clothed childhood was happy and fine. But I do think it鈥檚 probably why, as an adult, I don鈥檛 have the kinds of wild tales that Dan and my friends have; stories of skiing butt naked in the backcountry and mountain biking nude under the full moon. If we come upon an alpine lake midhike, I鈥檓 the person who gets in wearing my underwear, or worse, who doesn鈥檛 swim at all because I don鈥檛 want to pack wet clothes out. Once, on a hut trip, some friends stripped down to their avalanche beacons (safety first) and skied off the roof. I cheered and took photos from the sideline. In these moments, my modesty felt like an impediment. I admired my friends who were less inhibited, so comfortable in their own skin.

I did try loosening up. Years ago, some pals and I went on a backpacking trip to Conundrum Hot Springs, outside Aspen, Colorado. Like most backcountry springs, these were clothing optional, and the second morning at camp, I rallied everyone to get in naked.

At least I thought I did. I made it to the pool first, undressed, and got in. Then everyone else arrived.

And no one else got naked.

It was like a bad dream. Only instead of standing in front of a classroom, I was sitting in an alpine pool as clear as glass. I tried to fold my limbs strategically, and my friends and I looked around and made awkward conversation. At one point an older man arrived and, fully clothed, squatted poolside like a gargoyle, just watching. It was agonizing. I wouldn鈥檛 disrobe again in public for years.

But that was a long time ago. I鈥檓 in my late thirties and harder to embarrass now. So recently, as Dan was telling me about the time he modeled nude for an article in his college newspaper, I blurted out, 鈥淲hat if I became one of those naked people?鈥� I was tired of listening to everyone else鈥檚 stories.

鈥淥h God,鈥� Dan muttered. But he quickly got on board. A lifetime of prudishness would not be undone overnight, so we agreed I should design a training plan of sorts, progressing from a beginner-level warm-up (bathe in a nude hot spring?) to some intermediate challenge (wander around unclad at a clothing-optional resort?) and eventually to a graduation exercise (a naked ski or bike ride?). I would become one of those people I had always admired.

I would become someone who does naked stuff outside.

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Before I became a journalist, one of the best jobs I had was waiting tables at a barbecue restaurant atop a little bump on Snowmass Mountain called Sam鈥檚 Knob. My daily commute involved riding a high-speed chairlift, and I was guaranteed an hour and 15 minutes of snowboarding every morning before my shift. Tips were good, so I could afford to work four days a week, thus netting myself another three days to snowboard. Sam鈥檚 was where I learned that fresh snow made a sound when you were surfing through it: shhhh, softer than a whisper.

The way I felt about that job was the polar opposite of how I鈥檇 felt about the job I left not long before it, the one I worked right out of college, as a financial analyst for corporate clients in San Francisco. Particularly during the first couple of years, I worked late nights and often weekends. The office was on the 20th floor of a skyscraper on California Street, and I can still remember how the city glittered at night through the glass walls, rows and rows of glowing windows framing offices like mine, many of which were still occupied by young professionals like me, all of us eating takeout at our desks.

These two jobs may not appear to have much in common, but they were fundamentally similar in that they were, to me, J-O-B jobs. I mean that I did not find either of them inherently fulfilling; neither dishing brisket nor building Excel models made my soul sing. But in both instances I was compensated adequately, worked in a safe and comfortable environment, and had coworkers and supervisors that I enjoyed. The difference, then, was not the job itself but the life I was able to have outside it鈥攖hat is to say, in the case of my finance job, no life at all, and in the case of the serving gig, one in which I spent most of my time doing something I loved.

The latter scenario is the holy grail of work-life balance. But many of us don鈥檛 have lives like that. According to a , more than 40 percent of Americans work over 45 hours a week. Yet, despite those long hours, roughly a third agree or strongly agree that in their current job, there鈥檚 鈥渢oo much work to do it well.鈥� All this got worse during the pandemic, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, saw their calendar stack up with more meetings, their inbox swell with more email, and their workday lengthen by 48.5 minutes. No wonder nearly 60 percent of Americans feel 鈥渟ome level of burnout,鈥� according to a Business Insider.

But burnout 颈蝉苍鈥檛 just a result of being overworked. It鈥檚 also rooted in our cultural belief that work 颈蝉苍鈥檛 just a means to a paycheck but a path to purpose, meaning, and character, says Jonathan Malesic, author of . Malesic, a former theology professor who grew disillusioned with what was once a dream career in academia, says that the underlying cause of burnout is a mismatch between this lofty view of work and the more mundane reality that it鈥檚 sometimes unpleasant, meaningless, and even character destroying. This gap, Malesic writes, 鈥渓eads us to exhaustion, cynicism, and despair.鈥�

The solution, he says, is to reprioritize life above work. For many this will mean working less, 鈥渂ecause drowning in email鈥� is 鈥渘ot the purpose of a human life.鈥� Instead, we should build a meaningful existence鈥攐ne worth walking away from our desk for鈥攁nd decide how work fits into that.

There鈥檚 just one obvious catch: historically, work-life balance has largely been out of our hands. 鈥淢ost people don鈥檛 have much of a choice about whether, or how much, to work, given the state of wage and benefit levels in the nation and the lack of government-provided social safety nets,鈥� notes , a Harvard law professor and a faculty codirector of Harvard鈥檚 Labor and Worklife Program. 鈥淭he power generally resides with the employer.鈥�

But Sachs also says that we鈥檙e now witnessing important developments in the labor market. Starting last spring, in what鈥檚 being called the Great Resignation, millions of workers quit their jobs. Corporations from to have recently seen major worker strikes over wages and other issues. And over the past two years, employees at Facebook, Google, and Net颅flix staged walkouts and demanded an emphasis on social responsibility from executives. These displays of collective power, Sachs says, can have 鈥渞eal effects.鈥�

In other words, we may be having a moment鈥攐ne in which, for the first time in decades, we have some ability to redefine what work-life balance means. So let鈥檚 start by asking the right questions: What is a meaningful life? And how does work fit into that?

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