The first time acclaimed indie musician visited Asheville, North Carolina, was roughly a decade ago, at the end of her first national tour. She was smitten. A city with a small-town feel (it has just under 100,000 residents), Asheville is nestled among the Blue Ridge Mountains and surrounded by rivers and forests, drawing artists and outdoorspeople alike. Locals wanted to chat. They eagerly showed her their favorite watering holes and trails. 鈥淚 was like, 鈥楾his is real living,鈥欌�� Olsen recalls. 鈥淚 just dreamt of it.鈥�

She moved there from Chicago in 2013. Since then, she鈥檚 released six records, which include three of her biggest hits, those albums all earning designation: Burn Your Fire for No Witness (2014), My Woman (2016), and All Mirrors (2019). But like so many musicians, she was forced at the onset of the pandemic in early 2020 to . Without the outlet of live performances and travel, she set about exploring her adoptive hometown and surrounding landscapes. This was a time of some personal turbulence, too: last year, Olsen to her friends and family, not long before both of her parents died. 鈥淥ver the pandemic, it was so healing to say I lived in a spot like Asheville,鈥� she says. 鈥淚 think I just fell even deeper in love with it all. I was just like, 鈥極h, I鈥檓 going to stay here forever.鈥欌��

Olsen makes rock music that veers between spare and bombastic, anchored by her bright voice and intimate lyrics. Earlier this year, she released her seventh full-length album, Big Time, a country-inflected record whose writing and feel were informed in part by this period during which she sought refuge outside. The cover鈥攁 photo of Olsen silhouetted against hazy mountains鈥攚as taken on , a bald summit that the Appalachian Trail passes over. 鈥淚 love just going on aimless drives or going on hikes alone and just being quiet and seeing how small I am and being in nature. It just reminds me that we don鈥檛 survive more than this big mountain. It鈥檚 bigger than we are. It will be here when we鈥檙e gone, you know?鈥�

Over Zoom, while packing her bus for an upcoming tour, Olsen told us about some of her favorite spots in Asheville and the surrounding Blue Ridge Mountains. Not all of them, mind you: 鈥淚 can鈥檛 tell you about the secret spots,鈥� she says. 鈥淏ecause, you know, there鈥檚 rules and stuff.鈥�

Coffee

On a summer day, Olsen likes to grab coffee to go and find a place in a park overlooking the French Broad, a river that winds through Asheville, to write for a while. She recommends Le Bon Caf茅, a coffee truck near her home in the Montford neighborhood, or High Five Coffee鈥�, which only takes orders to go. And for a 鈥渇ancy spot,鈥� Olsen enjoys , a newer outpost in the center of town that serves thoughtfully sourced brews and a variety of pastries, including inventive waffles鈥攐ne recent offering, for example, came topped with whipped ricotta, tomatoes, and sunflower seeds.

Food

On a typical night at home, Olsen might order tacos鈥�, , and all make her list. And she likes , a caf茅 behind the restaurant Curat茅, for its Spanish tortilla. But for some of the best food in town, she says to look no further than , a wine bar whose kitchen turns out a range of small, shareable dishes. 鈥淭he plates are simple and consistent and they have it dialed in,鈥� she says. The owner, Drew Wallace, has opened several Asheville restaurants, including and , which Olsen calls a go-to for lobster rolls, cheeseburgers, fries, and milkshakes.

Drinks and Nightlife

For wine, cocktails, and ambience, Olsen likes Pink Moon, a speakeasy-style bar located behind Double Crown, a classic dive with country karaoke. (Pink Moon posts a password for entry daily on .) To catch a show, there鈥檚 鈥攚hich, in addition to putting on country and punk shows, serves as a wedding chapel and vintage market. And for dancing, there鈥檚 This event and performance venue opened just last year and hosts drag nights and live DJs. According to Olsen, its presence marks a big change in Asheville鈥檚 cultural scene. 鈥淚t鈥檚 millennial and Gen Z running the show. It鈥檚 queer and BIPOC people running the show, owning the spaces, and having the support,鈥� Olsen says. 鈥淲e have so much work to do for people being inclusive in the South, but it鈥檚 cool to see that my friends are part of this movement.鈥�

Parks and Trails

Within the metropolitan area are a number of green spaces to stroll or run in鈥擮lsen cites , near her home, for one. But for a wilder slice of the mountains that wind through North Carolina, there鈥檚 Craggy Gardens, a modest but rewarding hike just off the Blue Ridge Parkway. Most of this mile-long out-and-back is shaded by mossy trees and, in the summer, the purple blooms of rhododendrons. You might pass through a blanket of mist before reaching the summit. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a really rewarding end,鈥� Olsen says. 鈥淥n the other side, you see the whole view of the mountains.鈥�

Day Trips and Beyond

When she鈥檚 heading into the region outside of Asheville, Olsen tends not to research trails and areas ahead of time鈥攊nstead, she likes to take meandering drives and stop when something catches her attention. 鈥淚鈥檓 not going to look something up; I鈥檓 just going to go get lost,鈥� she says. For example, she follows the sinuous 33-mile stretch of Highway 209 known as . 鈥淚t鈥檚 a lot of rolling hills,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 also just really beautiful to drive and park and hike different spots along it.鈥�

Still, Olsen has revisited some places, like the villages of Hot Springs and Trust, excellent hubs for exploring the Pisgah National Forest, which wraps around Asheville. 鈥淭he Pisgah region is the one I really love,鈥� she says. Olsen frequently hikes up , near Hot Springs, whose strenuous uphill culminates in a panoramic view of the French Broad River and the Blue Ridge Mountains; and , a popular that feeds into the French Broad.

And with hundreds of waterfalls in the surrounding area (the neighboring town of Brevard has styled itself the 鈥�鈥�), there are plenty of places to cool off after a long outing鈥攎any of them with amusingly descriptive names. Olsen enjoys , which drops 404 feet in Chimney Rock State Park southeast of Asheville; Looking Glass Falls (pair it with a hike up nearby Looking Glass Rock); in Dupont State Forest; and , where the water cascades down a 60-foot slab of rock that visitors often use as a water slide. The sheer number of under-the-radar spots in and around Asheville means that everyone has a favorite, uniting the city鈥檚 creative and outdoors communities. 鈥淚n every clique or scene,鈥� Olsen says, 鈥渆verybody goes into nature in Asheville.鈥�

The post Angel Olsen鈥檚 Guide to Asheville, North Carolina appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

A car chugs across a snowy landscape. Two red-capped figures emerge, pick their way across a ridge of black rock, and stop when they reach its crest: there, in front of them, lava boils out from a volcano. One holds a camera to capture the sight.

They are Katia and Maurice Krafft, a pioneering husband-and-wife volcanologist team鈥攁nd the subjects of director Sara Dosa鈥檚 latest documentary, . Dosa has made four films, and that the ways that people relate to the natural world is a major throughline in her work.听 Her 2014 feature debut, , follows two former soldiers who forage matsutake mushrooms in Oregon and earned her a Film Independent Spirit Award nomination. But perhaps the most dynamic example is Fire of Love, which in January and this month. Fire of Love pieces together the Kraffts鈥� lives and work using their own archival footage and photography, along with voice-over narration by filmmaker Miranda July. The fact that the couple could鈥攁nd in fact would鈥攑erish on any of their research expedition frames the narrative. But so too does their reverence for their subject of inquiry. Their mission was grand and romantic. 鈥淭hey used volcanoes as their own love language,鈥� Dosa told me in a recent interview.

As the film recounts, Katia and Maurice grew up in the Alsace region of France just after World War II and rose to celebrity as volcanologists in the 1970s and 鈥�80s. This was the era of the plate tectonics revolution鈥攚idespread adoption of the once-controversial theory that the Earth鈥檚 crust comprises shifting plates that butt against each other or pull apart, producing volcanic eruptions, among other things. It was also a period of widespread social change and protest; the Kraffts, disillusioned by the atrocities of the Vietnam War, sought meaning through their connection with the natural world. 鈥淜atia and I got into volcanology because we were disappointed with humanity,鈥� Maurice says in an interview. 鈥淲e felt that this is what we need: something greater than human understanding.鈥�

Katia, a geochemist, and Maurice, a geologist, were at the vanguard of volcanology, which was then in its infancy. Among their peers in the field, Katia says in the film, they were seen as 鈥渨eirdos.鈥� While many of the Kraffts鈥� colleagues worked in academia or were contracted to governments or extractive industries, Dosa explains, they took a freelance approach, publishing books and making movies and traveling. Their main goal was to be on volcanoes, constantly pushing the boundaries of science and exploration.

Katia and Maurice spent the first part of their career trying to catalog every volcano and eruption they could. The documentary is filled with their hypnotizing imagery of the Earth stretching, bursting open, spilling, and reforming鈥攃hallenging our assumptions about what it means to exist on solid ground. But later, after observing the devastation of the eruption at Nevado del Ruiz in Colombia in 1985, where upward of 25,000 people died because the government had no evacuation plan, they devoted their studies to pyroclastic surges鈥攈ot explosions of ash and gas from volcanoes鈥攊n an effort to help the public understand and respond to these particularly dangerous eruptions. According to the volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer, who was a science advisor on the film, this is one of the things the Kraffts are still celebrated for today; the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth鈥檚 Interior awards a medal in their name that recognizes humanitarian contributions to the field.

They were controversial figures during their lives, however, because they frequently transgressed what others might consider to be the limits of safety. And that is saying something, seeing as volcanologists are a hardy bunch. In Werner Herzog鈥檚 2016 documentary, , one scientist explains the proper approach to avoid getting smashed by 鈥渧olcanic bombs,鈥� the projectiles lobbed from the mouth of an erupting volcano: 鈥淭ry to pick out the ones that might be coming toward you, and step out of the way.鈥�

Sometimes, the boundary between study and stunt appears porous. In one memorable sequence in the film, Maurice takes an inflatable dinghy he bought at a French flea market out on a corrosive acid lake in Indonesia to make measurements, but he really did it because such a thing hadn鈥檛 been done before. Oppenheimer met the Kraffts when he was a doctoral student and still recalls the frankness with which they handled the risk of death. 鈥淭hey lived in full knowledge that could happen, driven by the urge to capture something more spectacular, more up close than they had seen before,鈥� he wrote in an email. 鈥淭heir fascination for all things volcanic knew no bounds鈥攂ut they also wanted to share that passion with wide audiences.鈥�

Katia and Maurice died on Mount Unzen, a volcano in Japan, in June 1991. Though their fate looms over the film, Fire of Love spends comparatively little time dissecting what happened that day. Instead, it focuses on the legacy of their work. For example, as a result of a film about pyroclastic surges that Maurice helped make, governments in eruption-prone areas started to take the threat of volcanoes more seriously. About 60,000 people were successfully evacuated during an eruption in the Philippines shortly after their deaths.

They left behind roughly 200 hours of 16mm footage, thousands of photographs, around 20 books, and another 50 hours of media appearances: television documentaries, talk show interviews, speaking engagements鈥攔eams of material that Dosa and her team combed through to construct their film. They wrote their own books in a vivid first person, toeing the line between scientific inquiry and adventure travelogue. 鈥淰ery often, they would do a play-by-play of what they experienced in some of these moments,鈥� Dosa says. 鈥淭hat not only allowed us to have a sense of what happened, but also what they felt about it.鈥� They became savvy purveyors of their own mythology as well as science communicators. And they hungrily collected stories and imagery around volcanoes; the animated collage scenes in Fire of Love that fill in some gaps in the narrative appear twee until you learn that they were inspired by the Kraffts鈥� own troves of images.

Still, despite this wealth of material, Dosa found there were things that she and her editors, Jocelyne Chaput and Erin Casper, simply couldn鈥檛 know. Most of the footage didn鈥檛 have sound; sometimes, their research uncovered conflicting stories. The narration is refreshingly transparent about what parts are reconstruction or conjecture鈥攖he story of how Katia and Maurice met, for example, or the fact that an actor is reading excerpts from Katia鈥檚 diary. 鈥淎s in love, there are mysteries,鈥� July tells us in narration. 鈥淵ou fall hard for what you know, harder for what you don鈥檛.鈥�

鈥淲e thought we should give voice to the unknowns,鈥� Dosa says. 鈥淔or us, it also felt like it dovetailed with the geological methodology. Geologists are trying to interpret the clues left behind from Earth鈥檚 processes.鈥�

Dosa found herself increasingly absorbed by the Kraffts鈥� philosophy as she pieced together all the evidence they left behind. She was among the droves of spectators who visited the Fagradalsfjall volcano in Iceland as it erupted last summer, choosing the location for an edit retreat after being inspired by her work on the film. 鈥淪ince they knew that their lives could end at any moment, it did force a clarity of priorities for them. They knew their values,鈥� Dosa says. 鈥淕etting in touch with their story and learning about volcanoes in this way has helped me to think a lot more about what鈥檚 important to me and how I want to live my own life.鈥�

The post This New Documentary About a Volcanologist Couple Is Remarkable appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

When his athletes describe the ways that stress has impacted their performance, clinical psychologist Justin Ross likes to tell them: 鈥淲elcome to having a mind.鈥� Ross specializes in mental performance coaching, a growing discipline aimed at helping athletes strengthen their competitive minds just like their bodies. 鈥淭his stuff is pervasive,鈥� Ross says, from the amateur level all the way up to the elite echelons of sport. 鈥淭he majority of things we may be struggling with are deeply human.鈥�

Athletes and coaches have long known that a sharp mental game can be the deciding factor in competition, and mental techniques like visualization and self-talk are often part of their preparation. But in recent years, there鈥檚 been an uptick in awareness of formal mental skills training designed to develop and hone those techniques, as well as in the number of experts entering the field. In 2018, the Association for Applied Sport Psychology (AASP) certified 29 new mental coaches; in 2021, the number was 100. This has also coincided with a growing chorus of high-profile athletes, including Mikaela Shiffrin, Simone Biles, Chloe Kim, Naomi Osaka, and Nathan Chen, starting frank, public conversations about their mental health and the pressure to perform.

A few decades ago, the discussion around mental health and performance 鈥渄idn鈥檛 occupy the same space in sport that it does now,鈥� says Ben Rosario, the executive director and former head coach of Hoka Northern Arizona Elite (NAZ Elite), a Flagstaff-based professional running team.

That鈥檚 beginning to change. In 2017, NAZ Elite began working with a mental performance consultant named Shannon Thompson. These days, most of the team meets weekly with Thompson for 30-minute group 鈥渇ocus sessions,鈥� which Rosario compared to short lectures, each with a lesson plan. One week, Thompson might discuss goal-setting; the next, how to handle the crux of a race. Often, the sessions end with a brief guided meditation. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a huge push in sports around mindfulness-based strategies,鈥� the performance psychologist and researcher Kevin Alschuler told me.

Still, unlike clinical therapeutic practice, which has certain legal restrictions around who can call themselves a psychologist, mental performance consulting is largely unregulated. Anyone can use the term mental coach. 鈥淚 think the coaching world in general is sort of the Wild, Wild West,鈥� says Jon Metzler, who chairs the AASP鈥�s council. The CMPC designation designation is intended as a bulwark against that: it requires applicants to have completed graduate-level coursework in subjects including sport psychology, ethics, and statistics and hours of practical experience under an approved mentor. A version of this certification was first established in 1992, and in 2020 it was accredited by the National Commission for Certifying Agencies, an organization that sets professional standards for certificates in many areas, including sports and healthcare. There are 644 CMPCs practicing today, although the number of mental coaches likely eclipses that. There鈥檚 no official tally; in some ways, it remains a nebulous discipline.

In the summer of 2018, runner Danielle Shanahan turned pro and joined NAZ Elite. (She has since moved to the Mckirdy Trained High Performance team, with her fianc茅, Jack Polerecky, as her coach.) But she struggled to adjust to the training load and the altitude, and having come from a small college without the most pedigreed track program, she had a hard time convincing herself she was good enough.

鈥淵ou can train as hard as you want, but if you get to the line and don鈥檛 believe you belong there, it makes it really hard to perform,鈥� she says. In 2020, she started working one-on-one with Thompson. They developed a plan鈥攊ncluding listing words, like 鈥済ritty鈥� and 鈥渟crappy,鈥� that identified the athlete and person Shanahan wanted to be, and coming up with mantras鈥攁nd it started to work. During one arduous workout that October, which was faster and longer than anything she鈥檇 done before, she felt the hurt set in. She began talking directly to her pain in her head: 鈥淗i, pain, I鈥檓 acknowledging that you鈥檙e here, and I鈥檓 going to harness this,鈥� she remembers telling herself. 鈥淚鈥檓 the one steering this ship.鈥�

That winter, she ran stronger than she ever thought possible. In one 10,000-meter race, she shaved a full minute off her personal best鈥攅ven though about halfway through. 鈥淚t was probably the most badass thing that I鈥檝e ever done in my life,鈥� she says. 鈥淚 went into that race with an odd sense of calm.鈥�

The consultants I spoke with emphasize that mental coaching looks different for each person, but they typically start with an assessment of an athlete鈥檚 goals and what鈥檚 already working, or not, in their mindset. This allows them to come up with a plan tailored to the individual and their objectives. Mental coach and psychologist Jim Taylor, who works with a number of pro skiers, typically prepares notes and exercises for his clients to practice each week; sometimes, he joins them out in the field or even travels with them as part of their coaching staff.

In addition to visualization and self-talk, mental coaches often help athletes work on activation control, which is the ability to become calm or energized on command. Climber Kyra Condie听started working with a mental performance expert in the lead-up to the Olympic qualifying events in late 2019. She found that listening to opera (Mozart鈥檚 鈥淭he Magic Flute鈥�; Prokofiev鈥檚 鈥淭he Love for Three Oranges鈥�) could help her relax before bouldering and lead-climbing competitions. Other common mental coaching practices include simulation training, or replicating the mental and physical pressure of a competitive environment in practice, and handling social media. (Taylor advises his athletes to simply turn off their notifications before and during competitions, which may be easier said than done.)

And as with physical training, an athlete鈥檚 mental training plan requires constant refining. Inevitably, there are setbacks. In early 2021, buoyed by her performance in the fall, Shanahan was still running with attack and determination. But she found there was a catch to her 鈥淚 am going to crush everything and I am not going to fail at anything鈥� attitude, she says.听It didn鈥檛 leave much room to cope with anything less than narrowly defined success. And it caught up with her when an injury that spring forced her to withdraw from the Olympic Trials. Shanahan didn鈥檛 race for eight months鈥攕he returned in November for the USATF 5K championship in New York. The night before, she wrote in a journal entry: 鈥淚 know in my gut that I can make the right decisions and put myself in the right positions to succeed to the best of my ability. After I can do that, the result will be what it will be.鈥�

The boundary between the therapeutic and performance applications of sport psychology is a blurry one; mental health and mental performance are often conflated, says veteran mental skills coach Colleen Hacker, who has served as a consultant to athletes at six Olympics. 鈥淢ental coaching is really about helping athletes perform better. Sport psychology is much more wide-ranging鈥攊n terms of personal development, mental health, and mental illness,鈥� Taylor says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 really one part of a bigger picture of the role that the mind plays in sport.鈥�

And for some, that boundary can feel especially porous. The mental performance consultant and ultrarunner says that outdoor and endurance athletes often have a hard time separating their sense of self-worth from their performance in competition, in part because sports like skiing, climbing, or running have a strong lifestyle component.

At the Tokyo Olympics last summer, the United States delegation included four separate mental health experts for the first time鈥攁 psychologist, two psychiatrists, and a licensed counselor鈥攚hich Bracy says reflects a new commitment to both mental health and mental performance. Some coaches, like the one Kyra Condie worked with, have a clinical background, but often they simply have enough education in psychology to know when they鈥檙e out of their depth. That way, they can refer their athletes to the right kind of expert. (Peak mental performance and mental illness occupy different points on the same spectrum of mental health. Welcome to having a mind.)

In 2018, the downhill skier Breezy Johnson suffered a knee injury that ended her season. As she worked towards recovering physically, she started experiencing anxiety and depression, occasionally lashing out at her trainer and physical therapist. They recommended she start working with a sport psychologist鈥攐ne with a background in mental performance coaching.

She approached her first appointment with skepticism. 鈥淚 literally walked in and said, 鈥業 don鈥檛 need someone to mansplain to me how to visualize,鈥欌�� she says. But as she returned to racing, she continued working with him as a mental coach. She found that her thoughts occasionally became preoccupied by the thought of crashing. 鈥淲hen you鈥檙e doing a dangerous sport it鈥檚 like, 鈥楤ut also what if we die?鈥欌�� she says.

She focused on acknowledging and setting aside that fear鈥攁 technique drawn from mindfulness. 鈥淲hen you fight those thoughts, you spend a lot of time doing this tug of war,鈥� Johnson says. 鈥淚nstead, you can be like, 鈥極K, yes, you鈥檙e not wrong, we all might die, we might crash, but the best way to move on is to return to the task at hand.鈥欌��

In December 2020, she raced to her first podium finish, placing third at Val d鈥橧s猫re. She began the 2021/2022 season in Lake Louise with her first second-place finish. During that season, 鈥淚 had several moments where I was like, this is it,鈥� she says. Mentally, she was in a good place, and she was skiing really, really fast. (Shortly before the Winter Olympics in Beijing, Johnson injured her knee during a training run and pulled out of the competition. She鈥檚 planning to return to the snow in September and hopes to race this season. 鈥淚t鈥檚 been a long road,鈥� she wrote in an email in July. 鈥淚 can’t say that work with a sports psychologist or anything I have tried ever fixes that pain entirely,鈥� she continued, 鈥渂ut I know how to keep going to reach my end goal, both mentally and physically.鈥�)

Taylor says that athletes often seek mental coaching because of some specific performance block, but he wants to see more athletes proactively add it to their training routines. He compared mental skills training to physical preparation: 鈥淵ou wouldn鈥檛 wait to get injured before you start getting conditioning,鈥� he says. 鈥淵ou wouldn鈥檛 wait to have a technical flaw before you get a coach.鈥�

Several mental coaches cite the whiff of stigma that鈥檚 still attached to discussions of mental health and, by association, mental skills training in sports. But the window of acceptable discourse is widening, in part because teens and twenty-somethings, including more athletes, are talking more plainly about mental health. 鈥淎 few years ago, it almost felt shameful in certain respects for people to reach out,鈥� Ross says. 鈥淚 think the conversation is really shifting鈥攖hat mind and body need to be in alignment in order to perform well.鈥�

The post Why Elite Athletes Are Getting Serious About Mental Coaching appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

In captivity, we give polar bears names and personas. Take, for example, Gus, who resided at the Central Park Zoo and became the beloved mascot of New Yorkers due to . Or Knut, of the Berlin Zoo, who appeared on an ice floe on the cover of Vanity Fair听alongside Leonardo DiCaprio (and whose life in the public eye and untimely death 听a comparison to Marilyn Monroe). And then there鈥檚 Nora, the unlikely protagonist of journalist Kale Williams鈥檚 new book, .

The story begins with Nora鈥檚 birth at Ohio鈥檚听Columbus Zoo in 2015. Just a couple days after she emerged into the world, her mother abandoned her, and a group of keepers, veterinarians, and even a nutritionist swooped in to save her. (Collectively, they became known as the Nora Moms.) Polar bear cubs born into captivity already face long survival odds:听only about a third of them听make it to adulthood. Those odds go down without a parent. But baby bears can also be a boon for zoos, drawing attention and ticket sales. (Hamish, the first cub to be born in the United Kingdom in 25 years, with his birth in 2017.) So although her survival was by no means assured, Nora became a social media celebrity in infancy, starting with a video the zoo posted of her very first feeding.

Nora was also born into a conflict over听what she represents: 鈥淥ver the years, polar bears have become a symbol,鈥� The New York Times听 last year, 鈥渂oth for those who argue that urgent action on global warming is needed and for those who claim that climate change is not happening.鈥� Or, as Williams puts it, 鈥渟he and her species had become the sad-eyed face of climate change.鈥� So alongside a central narrative that tracks Nora into adolescence, The Loneliest Polar Bear also situates polar bears鈥攚ild and captive鈥攚ithin a sprawling discussion of the origins and consequences of the climate crisis. Polar bears, after all, have become some of its most powerful avatars, providing a captivating lens through which the public can understand, and empathize with, the consequences of a warming world.

鈥淭hey lend themselves well to storytelling,鈥� Williams told me recently. In the book, he attributes this, in part, to the 鈥渘umber of seemingly contradictory qualities鈥� they display. 鈥淭hey are endearing and ferocious,鈥� he writes. 鈥淪trong as individuals but fragile as a species.听They are to be feared, but also feared for. They come from a part of the world that few will ever see with their own eyes.鈥� They鈥檙e intelligent听and . The bears have long figured in traditions and taboos observed by the Indigenous people who live in the Arctic: for some Inupiat hunters, the first polar bear kill is considered a rite of passage.听In the past, the hunter would isolate himself from friends and family afterward for at least a day. 鈥淭hese animals have been the subject of folklore forever鈥攕ince people have been making folklore,鈥� he told me.

These traits also make Nora a fitting subject for Wiliams鈥檚 wide-ranging book, which grew out of he reported for the听Oregonian/OregonLive听in 2017. To learn more about her origins, Williams retraced the bear鈥檚听family tree, eventually following it to Wales, Alaska. There听the reader meets an Inupiat hunter named Gene Rex Agnaboogok, who fell听into a polar bear den in 1988听and听orphaned Nora鈥檚 father, Nanuq.听The book also follows Nora as she traverses the country: after spending the first months of her life around humans, the Columbus Zoo sent her to Portland, Oregon,听in 2016 in hopes that an older bear, Tasul, could be a kind of mentor. The following year, after Tasul鈥檚 death, she moved to Salt Lake City鈥檚 Hogle Zoo. (This year听she鈥檚 once more.) At the same time, Williams crafts a narrative in which the story of a polar bear is also one of history and geology. He draws a straight line from the 鈥渃olonial mindset鈥� that white settlers imported when they arrived in the Arctic in the 18th century, 鈥渨hich dictated that the natural world was a resource waiting to be converted into capitalism,鈥� to the extractive treatment of both the Indigenous population and the environment. 鈥淓very square inch of the planet is smudged with human fingerprints,鈥� he writes.

So Nora鈥檚 tale, in which she鈥檚 rescued and raised by keepers and vets, becomes a metaphor for the larger way in which the fates of polar bears are bound up in human actions. In the 1970s and 1980s, polar bear science and climate science began to converge. They became primary subjects of research and conservation when five nations, including the U.S., signed the 1973 Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears and embarked on a project to accurately count the bears鈥� 19 subpopulations. By the following decade, when climate scientist James Hansen before Congress about the greenhouse effect,听it became听clear that rising global temperatures would impact sea ice, imperiling the people and animals living听on it. Polar bears, already a powerful vehicle for storytelling, were wrapped right up in the crisis. 鈥淭heir entire habitat was at risk, and the threat wasn鈥檛 any one thing,鈥� Williams听writes. That risk was central to the argument for giving them protection under the Endangered Species Act, which they were granted in 2008. And it has only increased.

In captivity, polar bears are frequently treated as a kind of ambassador for a vulnerable environment. They 鈥済ive the public a reason to care,鈥� Williams writes. 鈥淭heir stories have power, and few animals offer as compelling a story as Nora, an abandoned cub, raised by human hands, who had overcome obstacle after obstacle.鈥� But the species has also become a target for a subset of climate deniers. Skeptics tend to focus on unknowns, and since polar bear populations are difficult to study, they maintain that the bears are doing just fine, actually. And the disinformation internet is recursive. A听 cited in The Loneliest Polar Bear found that among the climate-denial blogs its authors examined, about 80 percent attributed their information about polar bears back to another, specific climate-denial blog called Polar Bear Science.听The emphasis on one species听鈥済ives people who are wont to argue in bad faith an opening to do so,鈥� Williams听told me. 鈥淲hen you use just one species to illustrate this big and vast and multidimensional problem, of course there鈥檚 something that鈥檚 going to be lost.鈥� It also risks losing sight of the real source of the problem.听To help听help galvanize visitors, signage around Nora鈥檚 enclosure in Columbus offered tips on limiting personal carbon emissions. But individual actions have done less to contribute to the problem than energy corporations, which have long waged a campaign of disinformation aiming to convince the public that climate change isn鈥檛 such a big deal.听

The threat to polar bears as a species is one consequence of a warming planet; conservation initiatives cannot relieve their plight without taking on the root causes of climate change. This also seems to mean that to take the polar bear as the figurehead of the crisis is to accept that the crisis is systemic. 鈥淚t鈥檚 that context that I think really, for me, brought into focus how bad the problem is,鈥� Williams told me. The Loneliest Polar Bear demonstrates how Nora听and her kind听are part of a much wider constellation of social and environmental issues. It鈥檚 not necessarily an optimistic book, but it does lay out in clear terms what鈥檚 necessary: 鈥淥nly change on a systemic scale,鈥� Williams writes,听鈥渨ill stave off the worst of what鈥檚 to come.鈥�

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Along the southern shoreline听of Alaska, underneath the Aleutian Trench in the Pacific Ocean, two tectonic plates converge. One presses beneath the other at an annual rate of about听two and a half听inches, causing a moderate earthquake about once a year. But at 5:36 P.M. on March 27, 1964鈥擥ood Friday鈥攖he plates slipped dramatically, setting off a violent听quake that rippled across the state for nearly five minutes鈥攍ong enough, according to听journalist Jon Mooallem, 鈥渇or some people to question if it would ever stop.鈥� The great Alaskan quake, as it later became known, hit a record-setting 9.2 on the Richter scale. It remains the largest earthquake ever recorded in听North America听and the second-largest recorded worldwide.听

In Anchorage, just 75 miles away from the earthquake鈥檚 epicenter, a main road cracked in half, and the听wealthy enclave of Turnagain slipped almost entirely into the sea. Power lines went down. And very little information entered or exited the region听until Anchorage鈥檚 local radio station, using backup generators, burst back onto the air.

One of its local reporters, Genie Chance, was in her car with her son when the quake struck. After it subsided, and after she got a glimpse of the scale of destruction,听she only stopped to drop him听safely at home before rushing back into the field to start reporting. 鈥淔or the next thirty听hours,鈥� she recalled later, 鈥淚 talked constantly.鈥� She quickly emerged as the voice of Anchorage in the wake of the earthquake, dispatching critical updates to listeners across the region. (This included her own relatives: 鈥淭he Chance family is alright,鈥� she told her parents over the air.) Her programming was picked up by other Alaskan radio stations, then nationally; she later won numerous journalism awards for her disaster coverage. But history soon forgot about the听earthquake and the female reporter who covered it best. Chance died in 1998.

Decades later, Chance is at the center of Mooallem鈥檚 new book, ,听which will be published March 24. The veteran听journalist first learned about the great Alaskan quake听when he spotted black and white photographs of the wreckage from听tsunamis caused by the earthquake on the wall of a diner in Crescent City, California. His interest piqued, Mooallem later spent years poring听over听contemporaneous interviews, news accounts, and scientific research, including a report Chance produced for the U.S.听Geological Survey, trying to piece听together a cohesive account of that weekend. 鈥淣o one had written this story before,鈥� Mooallem told me recently.听

Before long, Chance herself became the beating heart of the story he wanted to tell. Perhaps intuiting that听her records might one day be of historical significance, Chance had sent听reel-to-reel tapes of her broadcasts to the University of Alaska, where Mooallem found and listened to them decades later. Her daughter, Jan, also had a separate trove of recordings.听As Mooallem writes it, Chance underwent a transformation from a working mom and frontier-town journalist (a typical story of hers might have been on听sled-dog races) to the most indispensable voice of a city thrust into disaster. 鈥淚 was just really moved by the role that a radio person could play in that situation,鈥� Mooallem says, 鈥渂ecause that role fundamentally connects other people.鈥澨�

Mooallem tried to interview as many survivors of the great Alaskan quake as possible, traveling听across Juneau, Sitka, Anchorage, and rural Washington State to speak听with them. Many people who had lived in Anchorage in 1964 are scattered now, getting old, with their memories failing or already gone. The bulk听of his research was archival鈥攈e spent a lot of time in the Newark, Delaware, archives of the Disaster Research Center鈥攁nd Mooallem, who usually reports on more contemporary stories,听found the gulf between himself and his subjects strange. 鈥淚t layered the whole experience with this weird feeling of dislocation, that I couldn鈥檛 quite connect with those people,鈥� he says.听

Decades of hindsight add nuance听to an otherwise straightforward narrative about disaster and recovery, allowing Mooallem to examine social issues that accounts at that time听did not. He writes, for example, of the sexism Chance听confronted at the radio station, the听鈥減ersistent, backhanded disbelief that a woman could work so hard and proficiently during a crisis.鈥澨齏hen she听asked for a raise, she was told she 鈥渨as already making the highest salary 鈥榝or a woman鈥欌�濃�攕he wrote听later that the station only employed her to begin with听鈥渂ecause I worked hard and cheap.鈥� Chance听faced similar sexism in her later work听in Alaska鈥檚 state legislature听and endured an abusive, alcoholic husband at home.

Mooallem addresses听the 鈥渙vert听racism鈥� some Anchorage residents directed toward Native Alaskans immediately following the earthquake, a 鈥渟hameful exception鈥� to the narrative of harmony and inclusivity听that听the city wanted to tell about itself during the crisis.听He describes a tense standoff between听journalists from the lower 48 who arrived to cover the quake and the Eskimo Scouts, a contingent of the Alaskan National Guard made up of Native Alaskans,听who were tasked with securing that area for everyone鈥檚 safety. The journalists, hoping to get as close as possible to the disaster zone, soon became antagonistic; one called听the Natives 鈥渓ittle soldiers鈥� to belittle them.

At its core, This Is Chance! succeeds at creating the first contemporary history of how Anchorage responded to the unexpected crisis, and it paints a picture of a community coming together in the face of tragedy. It seems to offer a blueprint for us now:听a possible route forward, when previously unthinkable environmental and political catastrophes听seem to have听become a daily occurrence.听

Earthquakes, by their nature, disrupt something we听take for granted as stable: the solid ground beneath our听feet. Though that experience provokes a queasy, vertiginous fascination and tons of press coverage,听鈥渢hen,听somehow, life stitches back together and you move on,鈥� Mooallem says.听鈥淚 really wanted to spend time seeing what happens afterward听instead of just looking away.鈥�

What he found,听when he peered into the void the earthquake ripped open, was encouraging. Sociologists with the Disaster Research Center touched down in Anchorage just a few hours after it ended听to study the city鈥檚 response. Despite prevailing fears about mass hysteria听and stampeding crowds, what they witnessed seemed to demonstrate that people are inclined toward听goodness. 鈥淢any of us have enjoyed鈥攁ctually, taken a great deal of pride in鈥攕eeing the way the people of Anchorage can rise to the occasion,鈥� Chance said shortly after the earthquake. It听supported then controversial social-science theories, which have since been borne out by decades of research, that disasters might actually bring out the best in people.

鈥淚 don鈥檛 think we have a real way to talk about what happens next in those situations,鈥� Mooallem says, echoing an observation in听Rebecca Solnit鈥檚 , a compilation听of case studies about how communities respond to catastrophe.听鈥淲e lack the language for that aspect of our existence, the language we need to describe what happens during disaster,鈥� Solnit writes, describing the compassionate human response that arises in the wake of a catastrophe. 鈥淎nd yet the experience happens anyway.鈥�

Mooallem argues听that Chance, for one, provided the language, that her live-broadcast coverage became 鈥渘ot an antidote to that unpredictability, exactly, but at least a strategy for withstanding it.鈥� In moments of chaos and upheaval, strong narratives can make sense of what previously seemed senseless. 鈥淭he disaster had no narrator,鈥� he writes. That is, until Genie Chance got back on the air.

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Every Saturday night in Cairo, where novelist lived for four years as a kid, a network broadcast the same National Geographic special about Yellowstone National Park. So the American West already loomed large in her imagination when, in 2014, she and her husband planned a road trip from Jackson, Wyoming, into Grand Teton National Park. She was awed by the landscape, the plains stretching out before her, and the Teton Range towering above to her left.

鈥淚 remember feeling this tremendous sense of arrival,鈥� she recalled recently, 鈥渓ike a homecoming.鈥�

The trip ignited an interest in the narrative of the West听and the consequences of the waves of settlers who鈥檇 laid claim to the territory. Obreht鈥檚 鈥攈er first since her 2011 debut,听, garnered a National Book Award nomination鈥攖akes place in a version of that world. It alternates between the two distinct perspectives of its main characters: Nora, a young mother in drought-ridden 19th-century Arizona, whose family homestead seems to be prowled by a cloven-hoofed beast with a grinning skull face,听and Lurie, an outlaw and immigrant from the Balkan region of the Ottoman Empire听who, in order to escape the marshal pursuing him for murder, takes up with a group of camel drivers about to embark on a military expedition. Through these parallel narratives (which eventually听catastrophically听collide), Obreht maps out a little-known episode in the settlement of the Southwest: the expedition of the U.S. Army鈥檚 first and only Camel Corps, which surveyed a wagon road from Fort Defiance in New Mexico to the Colorado River in California between 1857 and 1858.

A decent portion of the novel is addressed directly to Lurie鈥檚 camel, based on one of 34 real-life camels who arrived in Indianola, Texas, in 1856 for enlistment in the Army. Officials figured the animals听would be well-suited to crossing the Southwest in the middle of the 19th century鈥攖hey were sturdy and could go a long time without water or rest. Assigned to lead the Camel Corps was one Lieutenant Edward Fitzgerald Beale, the former superintendent of Indian Affairs in California and Nevada; he and his assistant, May Humphreys Stacey, kept detailed diaries of their expedition, which听Obreht consulted for her novel. (Beale appears in Inland, portrayed as an enthusiastic leader whose 鈥渢hick, bushy brows鈥� it鈥檚 said 鈥渂espoke supernatural powers of observation.鈥� In addition to the fictional Lurie, actual Camel Corps cameleers, like Hadji Ali and Greek George, and the real camel Said听also populate the novel.) Beale鈥檚听reports showed a growing affection for his trusty dromedaries: 鈥淢y only regret at present is that I have not double the number,鈥� he wrote in July 1857. When the project was abandoned the following decade, he bought a few to live out their days on his ranch.

But Inland doesn鈥檛 focus on Beale. Instead, it forgoes the romanticized imperialism common in stories about the West at the time: very male, very white. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think that there was much left to imagine about that more dominant myth,鈥� Obreht听told me. Her interest in the classic genre tropes lay elsewhere: 鈥淚 was really curious about the woman who鈥檚 always scowling in the corner and stirring the pot when the cowboys come in from outside.鈥� And while Obreht 鈥渒new that, as an immigrant from the Balkans, I wasn鈥檛 going to tell a Native American story,鈥� as she told the听 earlier this year, she was more interested in 鈥減eople who had existed at the margins of identity during the Western expansion鈥濃�攍ike the Army鈥檚 cameleers, Ottoman immigrants who were, with few exceptions, omitted from accounts by men like Beale and Stacey.

By imagining these forgotten characters, she wanted to explore how migration and displacement affect 鈥渁 person鈥檚 sense of self鈥� and 鈥渟hape our understanding of home,鈥� she said. For centuries, Native people occupied what is now Arizona; it wasn鈥檛 until the 16th century that Spanish settlers arrived, and then, in the 19th century, immigrants from across continental Europe, including England, Germany, and what was then the Ottoman Empire. The conflict among these groups surfaces throughout Inland; in one surreal episode, drawn in part from Beale鈥檚 diary, a steamship chugs upriver just as the fleet of camels reaches its shores, while a group of Mojave people look on, unfazed. 鈥淚t鈥檚 the same thing to them: ship, camel,鈥� Ali observes. 鈥淲hat鈥檚 the difference? There鈥檚 no miracle in it. It鈥檚 just another sign of their end.鈥� It echoes Beale鈥檚 own observations: 鈥淭he steam whistle of the General Jesup,鈥� he wrote, according to historian Lewis Burt Lesley, 鈥渟ounded like the death knell of the river race.鈥�

In his diary, Beale also documented the precise coordinates of each of the party鈥檚 campsites along their route. Obreht visited as many as she could, taking photographs and notes on the surroundings: one now exists as a Greyhound station in Albuquerque, New Mexico, another a gas station, still another a small island in the middle of a highway. (By the 20th century, the trail听he surveyed became known by another name: Route 66.) Absent any physical markers of its short existence, the Camel Corps is now only an asterisk in the turbulent, often horrific history of western settlement.听It was abandoned amid the Civil War in 1864. (Jefferson Davis was an early advocate for the project, which can鈥檛 have helped its eventual fate.) Many of the camels were sold at auction or escaped into the wild; Said鈥檚 bones survive at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

It鈥檚 proved too thorny and bizarre a chapter to easily lend itself to mythology, and yet it also survives in fable. Obreht first learned of the Camel Corps through an episode of the podcast that begins with a late-19th-century ghost story about two women听left alone on a homestead in the Arizona desert听who are stalked by a massive red beast with a demon jockey on its back. Just as with Beale鈥檚 and Stacey鈥檚 diaries, Obreht became obsessed with what was missing from the story: 鈥淲ho are these women? What is their relationship?鈥� she wondered. 鈥淎nd then:听How had this creature gotten there?鈥� The dreamed-up听answers to these questions ended up building Nora鈥檚 portion of the novel.

Through history and myth, Inland revives and reframes the , eschewing macho cowboy swagger in favor of what those cowboys might have missed. 鈥淲hat would we have left to say of ourselves, when the Camel Corps was truly no more, only a reminiscence, and we became old men who talked about a long-ago time we had gussied up for the benefit of disbelieving youth?鈥� Lurie thinks听toward听the end of the novel. What remains is for imagining.

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