It was announced yesterday,听 September 4,听迟丑补迟 . Creator Mike White and HBO have zeroed in on France as the setting for the upcoming season of the hit series, Deadline reported in an exclusive.

While no exact location has been confirmed, the murder-mystery dramedy has always been shot at a Four Seasons, as HBO has a marketing partnership with the hotel and resort chain. Deadline focused speculation on the luxe Grand-H么tel du Cap-Ferrat on the French Riviera, with its strong Hollywood tie-in and proximity to Cannes.

However, sources stress to Deadline that no hotel has been locked in. There are two other Four Seasons in France that could be used for filming; the Meg猫ve in the French Alps, and Hotel George V, which is located in the heart of Paris.

It鈥檚 no surprise that 国产吃瓜黑料 hopes it鈥檚 set in the French Alps, an outdoor playground known for its imposing peaks鈥攈ello, Mont Blanc鈥�and high-octane world-class skiing and hiking. After all, we have the French Alps to thank for 补辫谤猫蝉-蝉办颈. While everyone鈥檚 favorite custom of warming up with food and drinks after skiing originated in Norway, the term was coined in the 1950s after it spread to France.

The setting is everything in the White Lotus, and it is always part of the larger theme. Hawaii dove into class and colonialism; Sicily played with themes of lust and fantasy versus reality; and Thailand poked at spiritual tourism, and well, karma.

So perhaps a season in the French Alps could tackle ambition and competition?

The Drama of the French Alps Is Perfect for the 鈥榃hite Lotus鈥�

Our fellow editors at 厂碍滨听called it earlier this year: . 鈥淚t makes perfect sense. Wealthy clientele on vacation: Check. Gorgeous scenery. Check. And resorts that seem too good to be true? Check, check, check.鈥�

But SKI editors also heard a rumor the White Lotus creator Mike White says听he鈥檒l never write a season centered around skiing because he doesn鈥檛 like the cold. We’ve seen enough bodies floating in the water, what about sticking out the snow? And, of course, the Alps are warm in the summer, when the series is filmed typically.

鈥淔or the fourth season, I want to get a little bit out of the crashing waves of rocks vernacular, but there鈥檚 always more room for more murders at the White Lotus hotels,鈥� White .

While SKI speculated Courchevel would be a good pick in the French Alps, as it鈥檚 where “wealth, status, and ambition would fit right into the White Lotus universe.鈥滿eg猫ve is also synonymous with upscale ski culture. After all, it was established as a rival to St. Moritz in the 1920s by the Rothschild family.

We asked French mountain guide Fred Buttard his thoughts on Meg猫ve as a ski destination. Buttard was born in the heart of the French Alps, has over 20 years experience as an IFMGA-certified guide, and has led ski touring trips all over the world, most recently 70 degrees north of the Arctic Circle for .

鈥淢eg猫ve is unique because it鈥檚 a cosy little town / village, in a small mellow mountain area, but so close to Chamonix and all the big mountain skiing,鈥� says Buttard.

Known for its charming medieval streets and designer boutiques, Meg猫ve does also seems like a great setting for wealthy people pushing each other off cliffs. Located in the elegant , there are nearly 250 miles听of slopes spread over four mastiffs to ski here, and well, to plot.

The Four Seasons Hotel Meg猫ve has ski-in, ski-out access to the slopes of Mont d鈥橝rbois, and the region鈥檚 largest spa. This could be where the spa manager character Belinda comes in鈥攚orking at the spa before she starts her own.

If It鈥檚 Not in the Alps, the French Riviera Is Still Epic

Yoga Journal听digital editor Calin Van Paris says she鈥檚 never stayed at a hotel as luxe or visibly epic as the 鈥淭he pool, for example, is located down a wooded trail (which can be skipped via hillavator) and built into the surrounding ocean rocks. There are two recently refurbished villas, the front room was designed by Gustave Eiffel (as in Eiffel Tower), and the main building is a beacon of Belle Epoque architecture.

It’s a bit of a trip. The antique elevator makes it feel like you’re traveling through time.鈥�

While it’s not the Alps’ outdoor playground, there are still some active pursuits in the French Riviera. Running, yoga, and cycling would be the most natural outdoor activities here, says Van Paris (there’s a paved trail along the water and mountain bike rentals are available for guests). “The hotel鈥檚 recent push to be viewed as a wellness destination could factor into the show’s trajectory,”adds Van Paris.

Maybe the Riviera would show Belinda enjoying her new-earned wealth. 鈥淔ormer spa manager Belinda had been a through line for the White Lotus, and an opportunity to take her passion for wellness (and her newly acquired millions) to a destination that’s defined by heightened glamour could make sense,鈥� says Van Paris.

It鈥檚 unlikely Mike White will opt for an urban setting like the city of Paris, but if he is choosing the French Riviera, it does track with the previous opulent settings.

Frankly, it鈥檚 all down to the plot and characters for us. We couldn鈥檛 get enough of Walton Goggins’s character, Rick. And even though he won鈥檛 be making it back for the next the White Lotus, we are excited to see Hoggins play a climber in the upcoming Batso听film about trailblazing climbers who took on El Capitan.

High peaks do lead to high-stakes drama and mystery… c鈥檓on Mike White, give us Le Lotus Blanc (Mont Blanc).

The post The Next ‘White Lotus’ Will Be Filmed in France. We Sure Hope It’s the Alps. appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Making a pilgrimage to one of the most iconic and remote land art installations of our time, The Lightning Field (1977) by American sculptor Walter De Maria, in the high desert of western New Mexico, isn’t easy to get to by any measure. After arriving in Albuquerque, you drive two and a half hours southwest through the vast desert to the ranching town of Quemado. There, a staff member then shuttles you another 45 minutes on dirt roads to the site, where 400 stainless-steel pointed poles jut out of the barren plain. You must stay the night in a rustic cabin; no day-tripping allowed. This isn’t a walk up, walk away piece of art hanging in a gallery. This is an experience of leaving one world and entering another, and one that has the suspended possibility of a next-level lightning show. De Maria once said isolation is the essence of land art. Standing there, small and silent in all that space, you begin to get it.

Nearly a half-century later, land art is having a moment again鈥攅specially in the American West, where the terrain still inspires the big, the wild, and the weird. The new era of outdoor art isn’t just for those who seek transcendence in stillness; it’s for people who want to hike past it, bike through it, or ski to it. You might find a massive steel paper airplane planted in the dust like a crash-landed idea. Or a James Turrell piece streaming color next to a ski slope.

This is land art reimagined for the now鈥攎ore accessible, more kinetic, and just as cosmic.

Big Sky, Bigger Art

A few hours drive north of Yellowstone National Park, a working sheep and cattle ranch houses large-scale sculptures scattered against the dramatic backdrop of the Beartooth Mountains.

, at 12,500 acres, is one of the largest sculpture parks in the world, offering visitors a chance to take in monumental sculptures and attend classical music concerts in uninterrupted landscapes. Located in Fishtail, Montana, halfway between Billings and Bozeman, the art center was founded in 2016 by philanthropists Cathy and Peter Halstead. Artists themselves, the Halsteads drew inspiration from in upstate New York to take art out of the museum鈥攖o open up art and the land to people.

“When you’re moving through a museum, you see piece after piece, and you’re consuming a lot of art at once,” Pete Hinmon tells me. He and his wife, Lindsey, are the co-directors of Tippet Rise Art Center, and help bring the founders’ artistic vision to reality. Former ski patrollers, they posses the varied outdoor experience to keep both safety and weather in mind. The sustained engagement with The Lightning Field is something they hope to spur as well. Just as De Maria’s seminal sculpture was meant to be walked in, and taken in over an extended period of time, so are the pieces in Tippet Rise, says Pete.

“The Lightning Field is this in-depth, multi-day experience. You spend the night. It’s a really lengthened and heightened experience. We’re interested in that as well, and how you physically move through the space,” he says.

And space there is: more than 15 miles of trails and 14 miles of gravel road can be traversed by mountain bike or on foot. And while visitors usually spend at least a half day here, no two visits are the same. Sculptures are scattered hundred yards to a few miles apart on hilly terrain and steep inclines. “Through this extended time and space, it allows people to have a deeper connection with the outdoor environment,” says Pete.

Visitors for hiking and biking are limited to 100 people per day, so it’s possible you won’t encounter another soul during your Tippet Rise visit. That’s the luxury of open space here, not exclusivity. Hiking and biking is free; concert tickets, as well as sculpture van tours, are $10, and the number of people who can come per day is controlled via a ticket drawing system. “We limit the reservations, because we really want it to be an intimate experience,” says Pete.

Exiting the parking lot, the first work visitors come upon is Aps谩alooke (Crow) artist Wendy Red Star’s The Soil You See鈥� (2023). Red Star grew up on the Aps谩alooke tribe’s reservation, roughly 120 miles east of the art center. Her monumental piece sets the mood immediately for letting art-goers know they’re on her sacred homeland.

A giant blood-red fingerprint, nearly eight-feet tall and modeled from Red Star’s own fingerprint, rests on top of granite rock. Etched in whorls on kiln-formed glass are the names of 50 Aps谩alooke chiefs and tribal representatives who were coerced to sign treaties giving away their land to the United States government between 1825 and 1880. Often these treaties were signed with thumbprints (and Xs).

The sheer distance of terrain to cover means there are many ways to heighten the experience鈥攁nd the effort. “You are having this sort of raw, visceral experience because you are putting in effort and moving through the landscape at a pace where you can notice the nuance of it,” says Pete. Sixteen permanent sculptures are scattered across Tippet Rise, including pieces by internationally renowned artists Ai Weiwei and Richard Serra.

“It’s this sense of exploration; you’re on this journey, climbing up this hill, or running or biking, and you pop around the corner and there is this stunning red piece, Archway II by Alexander Liberman, like a gateway arch into the Beartooth Mountains,” says co-director Lindsey Hinmon.

“We hope to maintain that openness of the land, so that there is that experience of being able to see the sculptures on foot or on land, and not feel like you’re seeing sculptures, every way you turn your head,” she says.

Last August, the art center debuted its new open-air music venue, The Geode, which is an art piece itself: four triangle structures envelop the sound and project it in all directions. The newest installed sculpture is site-specific Bronze Bowl with Lace by Ursula von Rydingsvard, which stands at nearly 20 feet tall and is made from cedar wood planks cast in bronze, set within a natural bowl surrounded by plateaus and canyons.

“It references the rock formations that are visible beyond it; the texture of it, the shadows and light that it creates, and all of the hues are just so at peace with the landscape,” says Pete.

A likely question that arises around putting any man-made structures in nature: how does this affect the environment? Pete is quick to respond. “We essentially have conserved 12,500 acres, and yes, we’ve installed several large outdoor sculptures on it. But [the land] is not being developed beyond that,” he says. “It’s private ranch land that is now open to the public.”

Using private land this way has a powerful place in creating more space for wildlife, Pete explains. If we were to confine wildlife to just public land managed by the Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management, it creates “islands,” lessening the amount of safe land wildlife can live and traverse. By not developing land adjacent to those public land masses, a larger ecosystem is able to be created.

Tippet Rise is located in what’s called the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, which spans 22 million acres and includes the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness Area, Yellowstone National Park, Teton National Park, and big tracts of ranch land. “Tippet Rise is one of those tracts of land that is helping create a buffer between highly developed areas and the wilderness areas,” says Pete. What’s more, all buildings on campus are heated and cooled with a geothermal system, solar panels provide electricity to the buildings and vehicles, and a gray-water system collects runoff.

“Humans are a part of nature,” Pete says. “I think that pairing these wonderful highly creative, amazing human creations alongside and right in nature help remind us of that.”

A Skiable Sculpture Park

Hiking and biking miles to the next sculpture takes the experience up a notch at Tippet Rise, but skiing to sculptures? That’s the ambitious idea behind Powder Mountain’s new open-air land art park.

With its old-school vibe and endless pow, 鈥擯owMo as it’s affectionately called鈥攊s one of the largest ski resorts in North America, with some of the most skiable acres in the U.S. It’s a throwback to what skiing used to be, with uncrowded slopes and its indie spirit. With more than 8,000 acres of in-bounds terrain, it’s virtually a ski sanctuary.

But staying independent and free from lift lines, while still being a viable ski resort, hasn’t been easy in recent years, and its new owner has brought in some controversial changes. In a bold business shakeup, Powder Mountain’s new billionaire owner, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, announced he was taking the resort semi-private for homeowners and lifting a longtime season pass cap. Adding on an ambitious approach to preserve its magic by creating an open-air museum with artworks that are reachable via hiking鈥攁nd yes, skiing鈥攊s, understandably, being met with more excitement and open minds.

The visionary idea behind using the Utah ski resort’s vast terrain as an art park came from Powder Mountain’s chief creative officer Alex Zhang. “I always had a really strong connection to the mountain, and it held a special place in my heart, mostly because I think in the American West, so many ski resorts and ski towns are overdeveloped. They’re super crowded. They’ve lost a lot of that soul,” says Zhang, who has been skiing Powder Mountain for the last ten years.

“Powder Mountain seems to have retained this sort of rawness and the sort of soulful magic of like a throwback to where ski resorts, in the seventies, eighties, nineties, could just sort of be whatever they wanted to be,” he adds.

Zhang heard the rumor swirling that Hastings was going to acquire Powder Mountain, where Hastings was already a homeowner. So when Hastings asked Zhang what he would do with Powder Mountain if he were him, he had already given it great thought. At the time, Hastings was asking everyone from the executives of the resort to the shuttle driver: “What makes this place special? And what would you do to protect it?”

That feeling of the sublime, the feeling of spirituality, you get that when you’re in the presence of great nature, you get that when you’re in the presence of great art, too.

Zhang said Hastings was in a very receptive, open-minded mood to dream up something exciting. So in that first conversation, he shared his idea for how you preserve the soul of a place without overdeveloping it, all while increasing visitation and tourism in a way that honors the culture and the place.

“The easy thing to do just to make it a solvent business would be to build a bunch of retail, shopping, restaurants, condos, and sort of do that over seven years and build as fast as you can, and call it a day,” says Zhang, noting that’s what most American ski towns have done.

“So I came to him with this idea around involving artists and involving culture at an earlier level of this development, so a lot of that magic will actually be preserved,” he says. “It will increase visitors not as fast as a shopping mall, but it will be a lot more enduring, and with a more diverse, interesting audience.”

Zhang was inspired by the Japanese “art islands” of Naoshima and Teshima, where art breathed new life into these depopulated and aging islands. And unlike Desert X, the biennial contemporary art show held in the Coachella Valley, these would be permanent installations.

The perceived weaknesses of Powder Mountain鈥攊solation, the single road, and the expansive, underdeveloped terrain鈥攃ould be just the thing to save it, thought Zhang. Its shoots and glades, powder skiing in the trees, and off-piste terrain all make it the perfect place for discovery. There’s a “magic school bus,” as the locals call it, an abandoned school bus that found its way into the middle of the forest some 15, 20, years ago, that people hang around and take pictures in.

“What if instead of that old hippie-dippie bus, it was contemporary art by a really important artist, and it had even more of a wow factor, because it was a 30-foot sculpture that had a ton of excitement and artistic merit behind it,” Zhang imagined.

Awe, Art, and the Sublime

This initial idea evolved into creating an outdoor, skiable, open-air museum, one that will unlock a multi-season art experience: biking in the summer, hiking in the fall, skiing in the winter. There was a resounding “hell yes” from world-class artists, Zhang says, who were so excited by the ambition of creating something monumental at scale and integrated into nature and landscape. Light master James Turrell, text-based artist Jenny Holzer, and provocative sculptor Paul McCarthy are part of the lineup of iconic artists on board. And a major work of late land art pioneer Nancy Holt will be permanently installed at Powder Mountain.

These site-specific works will be permanently installed on Powder Mountain; several of the large-scale pieces already are, while some are in the works for an official unveiling in 2027. All the art will be free and accessible to the public via hiking and biking during summer and fall, and skiable with a lift ticket or season pass during the winter. And you don’t have to worry about dodging sculptures in the middle of a ski run: all artworks will be carefully placed to avoid disruption of the ski experience. In fact, you might not even find them, they’ll be so integrated into the landscape.

The first newly installed art piece, Relay (Powder Mountain) (2023), created by the art duo Gerard & Kelly, is a whimsical but functional ski magic carpet that takes people 90 feet up the ski slope on a converter belt covered by rainbow-banded canopy. Listener, Reflector, and Mother (2024) by Davina Semo consists of three six-foot bronze bells at the peaks of Powder Mountain. Right before you drop into your ski experience, you ring the bell, and it creates this amazing sound. The ring and echo is like a call and response that you hear in different parts of the mountain.

One of the much-anticipated works is by Turrell, who is no stranger to ambitious projects. (Take Roden Crater, a two-mile-wide extinct volcano in Arizona he’s been carving a naked-eye observatory into since 1977). The 82-year-old artist’s walk-in light installation Ganzfeld Apani (2011), originally commissioned for the 2011 Venice Biennale, is set to be installed in a trailside pavilion at Powder Mountain in 2027.

It’s a particularly fitting piece, as “Ganzfeld” refers to the German word to describe a “complete field” or perceptual deprivation, also known as the Ganzfeld effect. One of the ways this disorienting loss of depth perception is caused is by snow blindness during a blizzard, which can cause hallucinations. Turrell’s immersive installation changes colors and covers the entire space鈥攁 simulated “snow blindness” effect that could occur naturally on this same mountain.

“There’s always been this sort of fear coded into [our] DNA about [mountains], but always viewed as the sublime,” says Zhang. “Think of the landscape paintings in the 19th century of this sort of Manifest Destiny, and looking out and surveying a great land.”

For Zhang, the scale of mountains and the scale of land art both help us connect to a feeling that’s bigger than us.

“There’s an intrinsic obsession with the wonder and the scale of the mountains. It’s very humbling. It makes you feel smaller,” he says. “And to me, great art makes you feel the same. Great art is spiritual, or it’s transcendental, and it fills you with awe, and makes you, for a moment, forget about whatever was on your mind and be in the present moment.”

That feeling of the sublime, the feeling of spirituality, you get that when you’re in the presence of great nature, you get that when you’re in the presence of great art too, he believes. “And I think the fusion of those two together will create a very, very transcendental experience for people who might not even know that they’re looking for it.”

The Desert Canvas

A radical movement paved the way for today’s land art.

Picture this: It’s 1970, and you’re an artist who’s fed up with stuffy galleries and urban sprawl. So what do you do? You go west to push some boundaries and to collaborate with nature.

In the seventies, renegade artists decided the American West’s endless stretches of wild space were everything they needed. Armed with heavy rocks and cranes, and a healthy contempt for convention, they set out to make art so big, utterly un-sellable, and in the remotest of spaces that it would break the system.

Take Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970), a 1,500-foot-long coil of earth and black basalt jutting into Utah’s Great Salt Lake like some prehistoric sea monster taking a nap. Smithson moved 6,000 tons of material to create this 15-foot-wide walkway that spirals into pink algae鈥搕inged waters. The best part? Sometimes it disappears entirely when water levels rise, as if the lake itself is playing curator.

Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels (1973鈥�76) consists of four massive concrete cylinders arranged in Utah’s Great Basin Desert, like an ancient astronomical computer. Twice yearly, during solstices, the sun aligns perfectly with these tunnels, creating a light show that would make Pink Floyd weep. As Holt put it in a 1977 Artforum article, they “bring the vast space of the desert back to human scale.”

Michael Heizer looked at Nevada’s Mormon Mesa and thought, “You know what this needs? Giant trenches.” His Double Negative (1970) is exactly that: two massive cuts creating sculpture made entirely of absence. His City, a 1.5-mile behemoth of compacted rock and concrete, took 50 years to complete.

Then there’s James Turrell, who has spent the past five decades transforming Arizona’s Roden Crater鈥攁 two-mile-wide extinct volcano in the Painted Desert鈥攊nto a naked-eye observatory, carving chambers and tunnels that will, one day, open to the public.

The desert, it turns out, makes an excellent gallery. It never closes and the lighting is always perfect.

The post The New Wild West of Art Is More Adventurous Than Ever appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

As a former Washingtonian, I’m always quick to bust the myth that our nation’s capital is only about politics鈥攏o matter who’s in the White House. There’s so much more to do than hit the free Smithsonian museums and monuments along the Mall. Consistently ranked among the country’s fittest cities, D.C. is home to 694 parks鈥攊n a city of 68 square miles. And its nearly 2,000-acre outdoor heart, Rock Creek Park (the oldest federally-managed urban park in the United States), is more than twice the size of New York City’s Central Park. The miles of green space aren’t hard to access, either: it’s all Metro-accessible and easy to get to by hopping on a Capital Bikeshare e-bike (D.C. was the first city in North America to launch a modern bike-sharing program).

While summers are notoriously muggy and spring is crowded with cherry blossom鈥搒eeking tourists, the fall has always been my favorite time of year to get outside in the District, especially as the leaves start to turn fiery gold. I’m not alone; this October in D.C., a record-breaking 40,000 runners will take on the Marine Corps Marathon, aka the “People’s Marathon,” for its 50th anniversary.

On a recent visit to my once-hometown, I returned to my favorite parks and trails, and caught up with a few current locals to get their picks for what visitors shouldn’t miss right now.

Parks and Trails

1. Hike Through D.C.’s Urban Oasis

“Go in one side, and come out the other. Get lost a bit,” recommends D.C. local Kay Rodriguez, founder of , a new social platform that matches like-minded people for walks around D.C. Her go-to escape in D.C. is , which has more than 32 miles of wooded trails and paths. By popular demand post-pandemic, there’s now approximately five miles of twisty-turn roadway through the park that’s car-free year-round. This is not only welcome by cyclists, but for visitors with disabilities who now have more access to the park.

2. Paddle on the Potomac River with Monumental Views

Some of my most memorable evenings outside in D.C. were catching the sunset from a kayak, or stand-up paddleboard on the Potomac River, as I paddled past aglow landmarks, such as Watergate, the Kennedy Center, and the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument. , a Georgetown institution under the Francis Scott Key Bridge, offers rentals, classes, and group paddling tours.

3. Explore Nature Trails on Theodore Roosevelt Island

After kayaking around it for years while living in D.C., I finally stepped foot on in the middle of the Potomac River. You won’t believe you are still in the city while strolling through 2.5 miles of nature trails in this 88.5-acre wooded sanctuary.

4. Stroll Through Meridian Hill Park

For the last 50 years on any Sunday afternoon with decent weather, you’ll find a lively drum circle and dancing in , aka Malcolm X Park. This longtime tradition began in the 1960s during the Civil Rights Movement, and now celebrates black liberation and defines this community park between Columbia Heights and Adams Morgan. “We end all our Outerly walks at Meridian Hill Park; it’s a great spot to see the cross populations of this city,” says Rodriguez.

5. Run or Roller-skate Along the River

, with its wide paved trail, frequently is used as a site for 5Ks. But the coolest thing here? An open-air roller-skating pavilion鈥攖he only one in a National Parks Service site, which also offers free skate rentals in the summer.

Food and Fuel

6. Bike for Brews

links 12 of the city’s most popular breweries and bars, all bikeable or walkable via the , which stretches from Union Station through the revitalized neighborhoods of NoMa, Eckington and Brookland. “Grab a Rowdy Rye Ale or Silent Neighbor Stout, two favorites, from , a 100-percent solar powered brewery,” recommends O’Shannon Burns, a D.C. local and sustainability consultant.

[Editor鈥檚 Note: Atlas Brew Works announced after this issue went to print that it will close its location along the Metropolitan Beer Trail at the end of September. They have several other locations in the area, including at the Navy Yard in DC, and at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport airport.]

7. Low-key Food Heaven

If a Top Chef is in town, is where you’d spot them. D.C.’s hippest food hall in NoMa features gourmet bites from more than 40 food and beverage spots. Standouts include: the two-story Levantine-themed La’ Shukran bar-bistro-roof terrace; TaKorean’s Korean style Bulgogi beef and tofu tacos; Fishwife’s salmon cheesesteak; and Immigrant Food’s Havana sandwich.

8. Hyperlocal and Forest-to-table

“The owners of D.C.’s Spanish cider company ANXO have opened a new restaurant called Poplar with chef and forager Iulian Fortu. Their weekly veggie-centric menu often features wild ingredients from around D.C., and their candied candy cap mushroom cheesecake was incredible and unlike anything I’ve ever had before,” says Burns.

9. Year-round Waterfront Farmer-focused Dining

Rain or shine, Farmers Fishers & Bakers’ patio on the Potomac River in Georgetown is open. This is one of the three DC locations of , a farmer-owned restaurant group sourcing from local family farms, ranches and fisheries. Their scratch-made American classics include chicken and waffles and seafood jambalaya.

10. D.C.’s Signature Dish: The Half-smoke

Forget oft-mentioned Ben’s Chili Bowl鈥攁nd your plant-based diet鈥攁nd try D.C.’s iconic half-smoke, a spicy sausage meets hot dog dish, at local hot spot . You can visit two locations in D.C.: one in Bloomingdale NW and the other in historic Anacostia SE.

Where to Stay

11. Arlo Washington DC

Last fall I checked out , one of the newest hotels in D.C. While the White House is only a 20-minute walk away, you won’t see any sign of buttoned-up politics at this new Arlo outpost in the Judiciary Square area. There’s a fresh, creative vibe here with Mindbender local art covering the elevators, rooftop yoga, soundbaths, live music, and affordable restaurants (and happy hours) created by one of D.C.’s most famous chefs, Pepe Moncayo.

12. Eaton Workshop

“ is more than a hotel鈥攖hey host local art exhibitions, vinyl DJ nights, wellness activities, and a coworking space where many local community organizations base their operations. Throughout the property there are nods to the many Black Americans who have shaped D.C.’s history and culture, and their bar Allegory is one of the best in the city,” says Burns.

Wellness and Fitness

13. DC Bouldering Project

“[] is hands-down one of my favorite community spaces in the city,” says Rodriguez, who climbs and works out at the gym and uses the coworking space. “Not only is it friendly for climbers of all levels, but it’s a great place to make friends, get some exercise, and push yourself,” says Tyrhee Moore, the founder of , a nonprofit bridging Black and Brown communities to nature. He hosts some of Soul Trak’s meetups here. “It’s been such a powerful space for both new and seasoned climbers to grow together. It’s been more than a gym for us, it’s a space for connection, community and pushing boundaries.”

14. Kraken Kourts & Skates

Pick up a paddle and a beer at , what Rodriguez calls a “social fitness center” with indoor pickleball, roller skating, and a bar. Indoor lawn games like cornhole, giant Jenga, and darts surround 14 pickleball courts.

15. Vida Fitness at The Yards

When I was back in town, I got a day pass ($45) at , in D.C.’s Capital Riverfront neighborhood. I was blown away by all the amenities in the 30,000 square foot wellness and fitness club: steam rooms, saunas, full-service locker room, Peloton bikes, and an array of classes, from Sweatbox to heated yoga and Pilates. They offer cold plunge tubs at their Logan Circle location, too.

The post The Ultimate Guide to Outdoor 国产吃瓜黑料 in Washington, D.C. appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Sailors have been known for telling tall tales. So when Terry Kennedy, a now 83-year-old sailor, would talk about swimming with his friend off Mexico鈥檚 remote Revillagigedo Islands in the late 1980s, it鈥檚 understandable why some questioned if it was all true. The charismatic friend he was always going on about was, after all, a 22-foot giant manta ray.

This extraordinary bond between man and manta is the focus behind the new film , premiering at Tribeca Film Festival on June 8th, World Oceans Day. If The Octopus Teacher could change the way the world sees cephalopods, this film will surely move you to care more deeply about mantas. The documentary follows Kennedy on a final expedition, a 鈥渄ying wish,鈥� to swim with his friend Willy one last time.

An ex-Hells Angel and Vietnam vet sailing Baja鈥檚 Sea of Cortez on a boat named Erotica in the 80s, Kennedy is a local legend with no shortage of stories. But the one that forever changed his life鈥攁nd the lives of the Pacific manta rays in these Mexican waters鈥攚as how he became friends with 鈥淲illy Wow.鈥�

It all began one morning in 1988, when Kennedy was on his sailboat off San Benedicto, a tiny uninhabited volcanic island in the Revillagigedo Islands chain, 210 miles south of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico.

鈥淎ll of a sudden, there’s a big old bang on the side of the boat. The boat actually moves about a foot in one direction. I thought we got hit by another boat, but looking around we were the only ones in the [area],鈥� Kennedy shared with 国产吃瓜黑料.

鈥淚 look over the side and here’s this giant manta ray half the length of the boat. And the boat’s 46 feet long. Well, I can’t pass this up,鈥� he recalled. An expert diver who鈥檚 clocked more than 14,000 dives, Kennedy has taken a lot of chances in his life. At this point, he had only seen a massive ray in the distance; he had never been in the water with one before. Not wasting a moment, Kennedy grabbed his tank and his fins, and jumped over the side. But once in the water, saw the ray was gone.

鈥淗e just vanished. As I looked down to make sure I had my fins on, there he was right below me, about four feet down. Nothing but massive black coming up right underneath me. There’s nothing I could do鈥ut hang on.鈥�

And off they went. Kennedy says he hung on, gently, to the back of this gigantic manta ray while it took him for a ride. 鈥淎fter about 15- 20 minutes, he brought me right back to the boat. And then he did the same thing the very next morning.鈥�

So began a nearly 20-year-long friendship between Kennedy and Willy, his name for his new friend (鈥淲illy Wow鈥� being his full name). 鈥淲henever he’s feeding on the south end of the island, he recognizes the bottom of the boat,鈥� Kennedy believes. With a gentle slap of his wing on the hull of the boat, Willy signals him to come take another dive.

An Unlikely Conservationist

Some of you reading this are likely thinking no one should be touching鈥攁nd especially riding鈥攁 . But these encounters happened over 37 years ago, when little was known about the lives of manta rays, even by marine biologists.

Since no one believed Kennedy鈥檚 encounters of riding a magical manta, he started to film them. From then on, when he talked about Willy, he’d be able to prove that these incredible moments happened by pictures and video. It was also Kennedy鈥檚 quick camera skills that documented what would become a catalyst to protect these same mantas.

On February 14, 1994, fishermen aboard two Mexican boats moved into the waters around San Benedicto Island with nets, baited hooks and harpoons seeking to catch and kill anything they could鈥攊ncluding Kennedy鈥檚 friends, two other giant manta rays he swam with other than Willy. Mexican law prohibited commercial fishermen from fishing within two miles of Revillagigedo Islands; these fishermen were only 200 yards from shore.

As eyewitnesses, Kennedy and his then partner, Joyce Clinton, were horrified yet managed to document on video and camera what later would be called . What they captured on camera attracted international news, and the swift attention of the Mexican president to intervene and soon after declare the Revillagigedo Islands a Biosphere Reserve, which increased the no-take zone to 12 miles around each island.

In 2016, UNESCO declared the islands a World Heritage Site, and in 2017,听 it become the largest marine protected area in North America. These islands are now known as the 鈥�,鈥� and home to one the largest aggregations of manta rays, and sharks, in the world.

The Last Chance to Find Willy

Kennedy鈥檚 incredible encounters with manta rays defied everything that was known about ocean life at the time, and changed irrevocably our understanding of mantas. After , founder and director of the and one of the leading authorities on the species, saw the sailor鈥檚 footage, he secured funding for one of the first major manta ray research projects. This work led to an entire field of manta research that tracks over a thousand individual mantas at these islands. The affectionate names Kennedy gave to his manta friends in addition to Willy鈥擱osy, Chevy, Tippy鈥攕cientists still use today.

Kennedy鈥檚 bond with Willy goes beyond research, suggests The Last Dive director Cody Sheehy: 鈥淲illy wasn鈥檛 just tolerating Terry鈥攈e was engaging with him, leading him through underwater canyons, protecting him from sharks, or just playing.鈥�

Terry Kennedy and his wife Dawn, watch the sunrise before the last dive. (Photo: Chance Falkner)

For nearly two decades, Willy always found Kennedy, who would then climb onto his back and the two would communicate on a level no one else could understand. Willy could read his mind, Kennedy believes鈥攚hat Dr Rubin says 鈥渋sn鈥檛 an unreasonable thought.鈥� Rubin鈥檚 research suggests that manta rays can identify us by the unique signature of our bioelectric field.

It was another chance encounter that brought Kennedy鈥檚 friendship with Willy to the big screen. Sheehy, a sailor as well, met Kennedy while he was anchored off Loreto, a coastal town on Baja California Sur, nine years ago. One evening over sundowners, Kennedy鈥檚 stories started to flow. 鈥淚t became clear that this man wasn鈥檛 just another cruiser鈥攈e had lived a life most people couldn鈥檛 even dream of,鈥� states the filmmaker.

Sheehy, admittedly, was also a bit skeptical at first of Kennedy鈥檚 stories about Willy鈥攗ntil he saw the footage. 鈥淲hen I found out about the massacre, and the role that Terry played in bringing attention to it, especially at the level of the Mexican president and the protections that came from it, that’s when I realized this is a great human story, a story of redemption.鈥�

鈥淭he reason why the mantas are still there is because of [Terry]. It just shows what one person can do,鈥� says the director. 鈥淭hink of what else people will be inspired to do [after watching the film].鈥�

As Kennedy aged, his life moved to land. Now in his 80s trips to the islands are more challenging, and maintaining a boat that can make the journey is expensive and tiring. So Sheehy saw a way he could take Kennedy back home to see his long lost friend. The last recorded Willy sighting was in 2012, and giant manta rays have been reported to . So it鈥檚 not unreasonable to think Willy could still be around. Kennedy hasn鈥檛 stopped thinking about Willy in all these years; he worries his old friend thinks he forgot about him.

Kennedy had a troubled past, but none of that mattered under the surface. He not only found redemption in the ocean, but healing. Blue therapy is a growing body of research that shows time in or near water reduces stress, anxiety, and symptoms of PTSD. Scuba diving, in particular, has proved transformative .

How to Swim With Mantas鈥擡thically

While Kennedy was the first known person to ride a manta, it鈥檚 now considered harmful and extremely discouraged. But the close connection Kennedy made with Willy and all the footage he captured proved there is so much we don鈥檛 know about manta rays and ocean life in general. The sailor鈥檚 unusual bond ultimately became the catalyst for protecting manta rays and all life around Revillagigedo Islands.

What are the dangers today for the mantas around these islands? And is there still an ethical way to swim with them?

Today, the biggest threats to mantas are overtourism and boat strikes, both around the islands and on their migratory travels. 鈥淎s Revilla is a remote location, technically protected by both a National Park and the World Heritage Site, it’s largely a safe space for these animals,鈥� says Karey Kumli, project manager at Pacific Manta Research Group. 鈥淗owever, there is the occasional illegal fishing, primarily at night; we know this as the liveaboards keep their AIS scanner on and watch for lights.鈥�

Yet tourism plays a powerful role in protecting the manta rays. 鈥淚t wasn’t until all the tourist boats came [to Revillagigedo Islands] that the fishing really was enforced. So it’s crucial that there’s tourists there,鈥� says Sheehy. 鈥淭he money and the jobs brought to those islands show the Mexican government could justify their position on keeping it in the national park and [staving off] fishing,鈥� he adds.

Now the issue is how to keep tourism here ethical and responsible. Mantas like to come to the surface, but getting hit by boats is one of the biggest threats to them right now.

“The tourism operators are really good about understanding that too many people in the water, and touching and riding mantas, is not going to be good for mantas,” notes Sheehy. “The film, and our team really, is behind the idea of sustainable diving with the mantas.鈥�

In the 10 days they were filming the documentary around the islands, a manta got hit by another boat, adds Sheehy. 鈥淚f [mantas] get hit too many times, they’re not going to want to be around tourists, right? And then all those diving experiences that the operators are getting money from will disappear, because the mantas won’t come anymore.鈥�

Kennedy鈥檚 final chance to find his long lost friend is no fool鈥檚 errand. Individual mantas have been identified through photo-ID for up to 33 years鈥攖he worldwide age record for the oceanic (giant) mantas. When they look back at photo sets taken 10-40 years ago, ninety-five percent of those animals have made at least a second appearance, shares Kumli.

If you think you spotted Willy or any other manta ray, you can submit photos to the 鈥淲hen divers submit manta images from Revilla to us, we do a quick scan for re-sighted animals. We’d recognize Willy in a heartbeat,鈥� adds Kumli. Willy has four signature black dots in the shape of a diamond on his right shoulder.

Will Kennedy find Willy? You’ll have to watch the film to find out. While their encounters changed so much of what we know about mantas, so many mysteries remain. Why did Willy pick him to be his friend? What is certain is that an unlikely conservationist became a hero for the ocean鈥攔eminding us of how much we have yet to discover鈥攁nd that anything is possible. But bring a camera if you want anyone to believe you.

_________________________________________________________

Kathleen Rellihan is the Senior Travel and Culture Editor at 国产吃瓜黑料. She听swam with mobula rays (Willy’s smaller cousins) in Baja California Sur, Mexico, and seeing a manta ray while scuba diving Australia’s Great Barrier Reef was a lifelong dream. Now another one is spotting Willy herself.听

The post 鈥楾he Last Dive鈥� Follows a Diver鈥檚 20-Year-Long Friendship With a Giant Manta Ray appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman are back on bikes for the fourth series in their epic motorcycle saga around the world. Over twenty years ago they filmed their first series, Long Way Round (2004), which followed the duo, still in their thirties, riding from London to New York鈥攚hat McGregor calls 鈥渙ne of the highlights of my life.鈥�

From his breakthrough role in Trainspotting to playing Star Wars鈥� legendary Obi-Wan Kenobi, McGregor鈥檚 star factor surely has skyrocketed since that first series. But in Long Way Home he鈥檚 still playing himself, riding along with his best friend Boorman as they film each other from cameras mounted on their crash helmets.

鈥淏ecause of the shared experience of doing these journeys together there鈥檚 this bond that we have that I don鈥檛 share with anyone else,鈥� shares the Scottish actor. In Long Way Down (2007), the two rode from Scotland through 18 countries down to Cape Town, South Africa. And in the last installment, Long Way Up (2020), McGregor and Boorman rode on prototype electric Harleys from the southernmost tip of South America through Central America to McGregor鈥檚 home in L.A.

A lot has changed since filming their first Long Way series two decades ago, but you wouldn鈥檛 know it from their bikes: McGregor rides a 1974 Moto Guzzi Eldorado while Boorman chooses a rusty BMW R75/5. After riding into the future on electric bikes that they had to plug-in along remote stretches of Patagonia, McGregor said “the only way to go this time was back.”

In addition to riding vintage bikes, this time the two also are adventuring closer to home, from the rolling hills around McGregor鈥檚 childhood home in Scotland to Boorman鈥檚 house in England. But as always, they’re taking the scenic route. Zipping along a 17-hairpin pass in Norway up to the Arctic Circle, and then down to the Baltics and through the Alps they clock 7500 miles through 17 countries in 63 days. But they still manage to dive into different cultures and take on challenges along the way, including picking themselves up after a few hairy stretches and falling off the bike.

OUTSIDE: So why Long Way Home now? It鈥檚 been 20 years since your first Long Way motorcycle road trip.听

Ewan McGregor: We did our last trip, Long Way Up, just before the world was locked down with the terrible pandemic. It was in sort of a lucky accident that it happened, when it happened.

It had been a long time since we did Long Way Down. We got this very strong sense that it had meant a lot, to a lot of people who had been stuck inside, who hadn’t been able to travel for two years. And just by sheer luck or whatever Long Way Up came out when people were still sort of struggling to get back into coming out of their homes. It meant a lot to people, and it meant a lot to us doing it.

Long Way Up had its own complications鈥攚e did the trip on electric bikes which were quite difficult to find a plug for in Patagonia and such places [a fast charger would have been nice too, laughs Boorman]. But we did it, and we just love being back on the road together basically.

On that trip, when we were in Bolivia, we started daydreaming about another one. We came up with the Scandinavian idea; 鈥淟ong Way Scandi鈥澨齱e used to call it in our helmets as we were chatting to each other. I suppose after we’d been on the cutting-edge-of-technology motorcycles, the only way to go was to go back the other way.

Last time you were riding on super fast electric Harleys, now you鈥檙e riding a bit slower on old temperamental bikes. Why old bikes this time around?听

McGregor: Oh, I’ve always loved old bikes, and I always fancy doing a trip in old classic bikes. We just wanted to do one that was less stressful, more fun. More chance for us just to f***听around and have a laugh. And this sort of loop came out of that idea where we weren’t going to be. We’re not going to have to rush to get a boat from Egypt to Sudan on this one day, or else we wouldn’t be able to do it for another week. So we took the stress out of it, and we just had such a great time.

There were some intense moments when the power went out in Long Way Up and you needed to charge your bikes in the middle of Patagonia. What were the challenges this time?听

Charley Boorman: I don’t want to point any fingers [points to Ewan in the chair beside him]. With the high-tech bikes you can’t really fix them if they go wrong. But old bikes you can. There’s always somebody somewhere that you bump into who can help you, who has a little workshop in the garage. So the breakdown becomes part of the adventure. The times you get stressed because your bike is broken, you end up meeting all these extraordinary people that can help you, and then that becomes one of the highlights of the journey meeting these interesting, like-minded people. That bumping into strangers is part of it.

McGregor: No computers involved. There’s no chip. There’s not a chip on that bike, except for the occasional french fry that’s falling out of my pannier. They鈥檙e mechanical and therefore fixable, and on an adventure that’s quite a good idea. You don’t want something that can catastrophically fail.

So Ewan, you’re in all these films now, what do you like about working on something were it鈥檚 unscripted; you’re yourself?听

McGregor: I’ve always made documentaries. I did one about polar bears a long, long time ago up in Churchill, Canada.听I’ve made three different movies with my brother about the Royal Air Force because he was a pilot in the Royal Air Force. I’ve always enjoyed them because I don’t have the pressure of playing somebody. It’s just me.

I suppose it鈥檚 like a busman’s holiday in a way. We are filming, and we are filmmakers. Charley and I were thinking about getting things across for an audience while we’re doing these trips, but also at the same time, we’ve got an amazing, talented cameraman, Claudio von Planta, and Max Curtis who we picked up in Chile as our fixer there. And he’s such a great addition to the filming team that we had him come on all of this trip. So Claudio and Max sit on the same motorbike, and it’s just the three bikes for most of the time.

And because they’re so skilled we don’t really have to worry too much, just about being ourselves and meeting people and appreciating what we see, recording it, talking about it, and then hopefully inspiring people to look at this world that we鈥檙e lucky to live on. And if we can inspire some people to get out there and travel and experience the world, then we’d be very proud.

Charley, you’ve been in some serious motorcycle accidents over the years…What keeps you getting back on the bike鈥攅specially with the camera on you?

Boorman: Ah, there鈥檚 been a lot of crashes, and 2016 was a bad one, lots of operations to get back together. And then 2018 [crash] was much worse. But all my life, I’ve ridden motorcycles, I’ve ridden horses and stuff like that, and you tend to fall off, and you get back on again. The first one with the broken legs I woke up the next morning having gone through a lot of surgery. I’d broken three limbs, and I’d broken my left hand as well as my right hand.听 I was starting to go down into a into a very deep, dark hole.听

Then I realized there was someone in the room with me, and I looked over and there was a guy in the other bed, and he was in a much, much worse place than I was. And I remember looking at him, and I remember looking down at myself, and I remember thinking it’s not that bad actually. So from then on I was lucky enough to be able to sort of jump out of that hole and start to look at wanting to ride a bike again and wanting to have more adventures.

Somehow the motorbike was my therapy to get back on it. It鈥檚 very easy to get stuck in a trauma and let that trauma dictate your life and it’s a real rabbit hole. There is nothing you can do about what’s happened, so you may as well look forward.

And having friends like Ewan and knowing that people are around you to help but it’s taken a long time, 30 odd operations to get back and be walking again properly.

So I’m happy to be here with Ewan.

So what鈥檚 next? Will there be any more Long Way adventures?

McGregor: Well, you just have to wait and see. Who knows? We’re planning a big luxury RV trip.

Boorman: With helicopters.

Long Way Home premieres on May 9, exclusively on Apple TV+.

The post Ewan McGregor Is Back on His Motorcycle for His Latest 国产吃瓜黑料 Series appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

My knees shake and my fingertips cling to the rock. I can鈥檛 bear to move my laser-focused gaze anywhere beyond the metal rung that鈥檚 just out of reach. A moment before, I was climbing up a ladder, but now I feel like I鈥檓 hanging off the edge of a cliff (because, well, I am).

鈥榃hy exactly did I think this was a good idea?鈥� I think to myself. A hike would have been nice.

It鈥檚 June, and I鈥檓 perched on a precarious ledge of granite 75 feet above the forest floor on the new Eagle Cliff Via Ferrata in the Shawangunk Mountains, just 90 miles outside of New York City. Though I鈥檓 currently frozen on this ledge, I somehow summon the grit to keep moving鈥攕weaty palms and all. One hour and a few leaps of faith later, to my delight, I finish the via ferrata feeling accomplished and ready to jump into Lake Mohonk, beckoning from below.

A few weeks later in Italy, I鈥檓 ready to tackle another, much higher鈥� although, surprisingly, less physically taxing鈥攙ia ferrata in the Dolomites.

I climbed my first via ferrata on Whistler Peak鈥檚 a decade ago, when I was younger and more fearless. But in trying out some of the world’s most spectacular ferratas since, I always come to the same realization: they are as fear-inducing as they are exhilarating and rewarding. That鈥檚 why I keep signing up for more.

What Is a Via Ferrata?

A via ferrata (Italian for 鈥渋ron way鈥�) is a protected climbing route with fixed steel cables, metal rungs and ladders that make traversing steep and rocky terrain accessible, but certainly not without challenge. The beauty of via ferratas is that you can experience the highs rock climbers do without needing technical experience.

While there are numerous via ferratas around the world you can climb on your own, I recommend going with a guide as it鈥檚 not only safer, but supports local tourism economies鈥攁nd perhaps you鈥檒l learn a thing or two about where you are. And as long as you鈥檙e reasonably fit, and you don鈥檛 have a paralyzing fear of heights you鈥檒l survive, and you might even enjoy it. (Some level of fear is okay, too. It keeps you vigilant.)

While via ferratas are most common in Europe, with a majority in Italy and Austria, they are growing in popularity around the world鈥攅specially in the United States, where private landowners, resorts, and cities are building routes through incredible terrain. And though this is not a definitive list of the world鈥檚 best, we鈥檝e hand-selected a few spots that are ideal for most adventurous people looking to climb via ferratas. Think: locales as far flung as the Middle East and Kosovo, to well-known meccas like the Dolomites, and a few classics, new and old, here in the U.S.

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Piccola Cir Via Ferrata, Dolomite Mountains, Italy

Best For: Travelers who want to try multiple routes in the via ferrata motherland

There鈥檚 no better place to try a via ferrata than in its birthplace. The roots of via ferratas come from World War I, when climbing routes were strategically created by the Italian army as a way to evade attacks and traverse jagged peaks in the Dolomite Mountains. Over the decades, these paths were reinforced with metal rungs, and today they鈥檙e used for recreation and sport.

In the Dolomites alone, there are over 600 via ferratas. I tried one of the popular and more beginner-friendly ascents this summer, . While the 2.3-mile loop trail is relatively short for the Dolomites, it鈥檚 still a challenge at spots because of its sheer height alone.

The reward? Totally worth it. When you reach the top at 8,504 feet, a sweeping 360-degree view of the Dolomites awaits you: the Sella massif and the entire Val Gardena valley stretches out below. I also loved seeing the summer panorama of the famous Sassolungo peak, which I skied down earlier this year.

More 国产吃瓜黑料s Nearby: , a four-seasons adventure company, arranges guided, multi-day via ferrata trips featuring some of the most classic routes in the range (from roughly $1,400, depending on duration and number of people in your group). The company also offers mixing via ferratas with hiking and biking (prices vary).

Eagle Cliff Via Ferrata, New York, U.S.

Best For: Travelers who want a convenient mountain escape from the city

New York鈥檚 new via ferrata, buried in the Shawangunk Mountains (better known as the 鈥淕unks,鈥�) is the northeast鈥檚 first resort-based route. It鈥檚 located at the 155-year-old Mohonk Mountain House, and sits just 90 miles from New City City, making it a convenient and accessible way to experience one of the top rock climbing spots on the East Coast. I climbed the this summer soon after it opened in May, and while it鈥檚 not as high as its West Coast rivals, I found it physically and mentally challenging鈥攁nd beautiful, to boot. The Nature Conservancy even this mountain range as 鈥渙ne of the last great places on Earth.鈥�

Securely connected to cables, you鈥檒l traverse nearly a half mile across rocky landscapes and quartz ledges. The secluded route then follows the natural features of the conflated rock, and showcases views of Lake Mohonk and verdant forests below. Climbing it in autumn brings a glorious array of the northeast鈥檚 famed fall foliage, too. (Book with Mohonk from $295 per person.)

More 国产吃瓜黑料s Nearby: 85 miles of trails within Mohonk Mountain House鈥檚 grounds provide idyllic hiking, biking, snowshoeing, and cross-country skiing. And if you鈥檙e working your way up to the via ferrata, try the less challenging and also new Pinnacle Ledge Tour (from $75 per person), which features an aerial bridge walkway. Note: you鈥檒l have to to book via ferrata and Pinnacle Ledge tours (rooms from $695 per night, including meals, most activities, and wellness classes).

Panorama Via Ferrata, the Balkans, Kosovo

Best For: Travelers looking for adventure and culture further afield

While many parts of Europe battle overtourism, one of the Balkans鈥� most unexplored mountain ranges beckons outdoor adventurers who ache to get off the beaten path.

Last summer, I trekked portions of the newly established , a 225-mile-long route that connects three former conflict countries: Kosovo, Albania, and North Macedonia. My trekking guides, Taulant Hoxha and Arian Krasniqi, the owners and co-founders of , grew up in Prizren during the Kosovo Conflict in the late 90s. And later, they helped develop both this trail and several new via ferratas around it, deep in Kosovo鈥檚 Sharr Mountains.

Before we started hiking the High Scardus, we warmed up on the nearby Panorama Via Ferrata. This 1640-foot climbing route that鈥檚 less than three miles long sits just outside the historical city of Prizren, and overlooks the ridges of Sharr Mountain National Park and the Lumbardhi River. It only took us two hours, but SuperXplorers can take you on much longer and challenging routes as well.

More 国产吃瓜黑料s Nearby: Go the distance and take a 9-day guided hike of the High Scardus Trail with SuperXplorers (from $1270), or ask about the company’s through these less-trodden mountains and gorges.

Telluride Via Ferrata, Colorado, U.S.

Best For: Experts or those with nerves of steel

You might not want to make the your first, unless you don鈥檛 mind hanging at 500 feet on an exposed canyon wall in southwest Colorado鈥檚 San Juan Mountains. It’s possible to go without a guide on this technical climbing route (it鈥檚 one of the only free and open-to-the-public via ferratas in the U.S.) but it鈥檚 highly recommended to opt for guided expertise.

Pam LeBlanc, an avid outdoors writer, recommends booking a tour with (from $205 per person, depending on group size). The company provides gear, knowledge, and moral support, before taking you over a series of fixed cables, stemples, ladders, and bridges along the east end of Telluride canyon to the backdrop of stunning views of Bridal Veil Falls and the Telluride Valley below.

鈥淚t was terrifying, and I鈥檝e got a fear of heights so clinging to a 330-foot sheer rock wall, nose pressed to gritty rock, knees clicking like castanets, made me want to curl up in a ball and sob. Or barf,鈥� LeBlanc says. 鈥淏ut I was glad I did it, because I felt like a badass afterward.鈥�

More 国产吃瓜黑料s Nearby: Telluride is a full-fledged, four-season town with lots of other fun outdoor activities. LeBlanc recommends ice climbing, as it鈥檚 less crowded than nearby Ouray, as well as mountain biking, downhill skiing, and fatbike touring through the snow. When you鈥檙e finished, warm up with a hot toddy at tasting room.

Al Jabal Akhdar Via Ferrata, Oman

Best For: Travelers looking for a far-flung luxury adventure

Sure, a luxury hotel in the Middle East might not seem like a place for a via ferrata. But surprise, surprise: there鈥檚 a stunning route that鈥檚 actually near two hotels, and , located 6,500 feet high in Jabal Shams, the tallest peak in Oman.

This (from $91 per person) traces the highest protected climbing path in the Middle East, and includes a traverse down a sharp vertical rock face and through a tiny cave to end on a tightrope wire cable bridge suspended 65 feet over the valley below.

Catherine Gallagher, co-founder of , did this via ferrata in Oman and recommends going just before dusk. 鈥淚t鈥檚 so cool,” she says. “The exposure, the sunset, the physical challenge, the mental challenge… When you finish, you top out at the bar where people are enjoying sundowners.鈥� Or you can head to the cliffside infinity pool for a dip.

More 国产吃瓜黑料s Nearby: Hike to Jabal Al-Nab墨 Shu士ayb, the highest peak in the Arabian Peninsula at 12,030 feet, take a to see 800-million-year-old granite rock features ($130 per person), or try Gallagher鈥檚 favorite: off-roading across the dunes in the Wahiba Sands desert鈥攐ne of the world’s most beautiful places you’ve never heard of.

Whistler Peak Via Ferrata, British Columbia, Canada

Best For: Travelers who want to reach the peak of Whistler without skis

This mountain playground and home of the 2010 Winter Olympics might be most known for its world-class ski runs, but Whistler is an all-seasons resort with numerous adventure opportunities year round. While I love skiing on Whistler鈥檚 famed peak (one of North America鈥檚 highest mountains) it was my first experience climbing it that hooked me on via ferratas.

Departing from the top of Whistler Village Gondola at just above 5,905 feet, the took us approximately four hours to climb over 2.5 miles of mountainous terrain, gaining 850 feet of elevation. What I loved most about this via ferrata were the incredible views of surrounding snowy peaks, and climbing in shorts and a tank top.

It鈥檚 open May through October (from $209 per person). Once you鈥檝e summited Whistler Peak walk the that hovers high over Whistler Bowl for 360 views of the still snow-capped Rocky Mountains.

听 More 国产吃瓜黑料s Nearby: Whistler has no shortage of high-adrenaline activities throughout the year such as downhill mountain biking, which is serious business here. (I took a beginner lesson for $193 on ).You can also standup paddle on glacier-fed lakes, and cold plunge if you鈥檙e feeling brave.

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It was my best New Year鈥檚 in memory; jumping into the 45-degree Atlantic Ocean with 6,000 other people for Coney Island Polar Bear Club鈥檚 annual community swim.

I鈥檓 no Wim Hof devotee, but I鈥檝e taken cold plunges all around the world, from two polar dips in Antarctica to swims in glacial lakes in British Columbia. My first trip to Finland six years ago inspired my love of cold water dips.听For me, taking a cold plunge is a way to commemorate a place. And the dopamine rush and health benefits that follow don鈥檛 hurt either.

Of all the self-soothing rituals we do in the name of wellness, cold plunges seem like the complete opposite. They鈥檙e brutally shocking and uncomfortable, but if you wait for it, the euphoric effects kick in and feel electric. Every time I do one, it鈥檚 as if a new life force is pumping through my body. Cold water dips make me feel alive. Clearly, I鈥檓 not alone.

In addition to the record-number of participants at Coney鈥檚 Island 121st New Year鈥檚 Polar Plunge (this year鈥檚 numbers beat out 2023鈥檚 record of around 3,800 people), the cold immersion trend is hot worldwide, from backyard ice baths, to ice facials, cryotherapy spas, and more. For many cultures around the world, especially those hardy Nordic people, cold water plunges aren鈥檛 a trend, but a popular and time-honored past-time.

Rather than sitting in a tub full of ice cubes in your backyard, you can travel to curative dips in chilly waters with beautiful backdrops year round, and a devoted community of fellow swimmers to make it all the more memorable.

Why Are So Many People Hooked on Cold Plunges Worldwide?

Many cultures around the world have enjoyed the benefits of cold water immersion as a wellness ritual for centuries. In Finland, the tradition is over 300-years-old, and there are many Finns who swim in the sea daily鈥攅ven when it鈥檚 covered in ice. Crowned the happiest country in the world for the seventh consecutive year by the World Happiest Report, is one of their secrets to finding joy in a somewhat inhospitable and harsh climate.

鈥淚ce bathing is a good example of both our strong sense of community, and our extraordinary determination and inner strength, also called sisu,鈥� says 听who represents Finland鈥檚 next generation of ice swimmers. Ma虉kinen is the first Finn to swim an icy mile below 41-degrees Fahrenheit and her TikTok videos attract millions. She鈥檚 known for her grit or sisu for taking daily plunges of two to four minutes in -4F ice-covered Finnish lakes in only a swimsuit.

Why do Finns like Ma虉kinen plunge daily into ice-cold water? On my first trip to Finland, I met Katja Pantzar, author of , who like Ma虉kinen, swims daily year round. She told me the 鈥渇eel good鈥� effects I experienced after my first dip in Finland’s sea were a result of the so-called happy hormones, endorphins鈥攖he body鈥檚 natural pain killers rushing through my body.

Pantzar鈥檚 book research found that cold water immersion tells the body to produce more of the mood-balancing hormone serotonin along with dopamine, the neurotransmitter that helps control the brain鈥檚 reward and pleasure centers, and oxytocin, also known as the 鈥渓ove hormone.鈥� That鈥檚 why it can feel so euphoric. And the benefits don鈥檛 stop there. There鈥檚 a bevy of spinoff effects Pantzer reports for cold water immersion, including enhanced blood circulation, and a boosted immune system. And yes, no surprise, you burn more calories, too.

Cold-Plunge Tips for Beginners

Anyone can try cold water immersion, even just by turning the dial on your shower. But if you want to test it out in the wild, Ma虉kinen and Wim Hof Method instructor Malena Meneses-Skoda share these tips on how to make your cold plunge safe and enjoyable:

• Know your health. The number one rule: If you have a pre-existing heart condition, do not try cold plunges or winter swimming.
• Don’t go alone. It鈥檚 best to cold plunge with someone who’s experienced and who can give you tips and moral support.
• Plan your exit strategy and recovery. Know how you’re going to get in and out of the water and make sure you have dry, warm clothes to put on afterward. Bonus鈥攆ind a sauna to warm up afterward, recommends Ma虉kinen.
• Go easy on yourself. 鈥淲hen you are relaxed, you can keep your heart rate lower and soften the initial cold shock,鈥� says Ma虉kinen. 鈥淵ou can start with dipping only your legs, and progressively dip a bit more in the second and third round to get used to the cold.鈥�
• Listen to your body. There’s no need to force yourself to stay in for longer than what feels safe. 鈥淚t’s training, and training takes time,鈥� adds Meneses-Skoda, who leads a glacial plunge experience at Clayoquot Wilderness Lodge on Vancouver Island. 鈥淕radually and with ease train your body and mind past your edge of comfort.鈥�
• Disconnect to reconnect. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not about numbers or photos, it鈥檚 about you. Detach from your watch and device. Get in there and just breathe,鈥� adds Meneses-Skoda.
• Some gear helps. Wear neoprene swimming shoes and gloves and a wool cap to help with the cold, if necessary.
• Enjoy the rush. 鈥淎nd lastly, smile and enjoy the endorphin rush when embracing cold water,鈥� says Ma虉kinen.

Where to Take the Plunge with a Community

The feel-good effects of cold water immersion may be amplified when you share the moment with others. 鈥淐ollective effervescence鈥濃�嬧�� is exactly what I experienced on New Year鈥檚 Day and when I joined my fellow travelers in Antarctica for a polar plunge. It鈥檚 a concept that scientists of awe use to convey that feeling of energy and joy that people sense when they come together for a shared purpose. Even one as wild as jumping into cold bodies of water together.

So on that note, take your cold plunges to the next level with these beautiful, inspiring destinations worldwide. Thanks to these retreats, programs, excursions, and more, you won’t be doing it alone.

Best Places in the World to Cold-Plunge

Hit Up an Iceberg-Lined Beach in Antarctica

The most memorable moments of my trip to Antarctica was taking not one, but two polar plunges. Perhaps you鈥檝e seen photos of people jumping off ships or zodiacs in Antarctica, but on my cruise we took our polar dip from the beach. HX, a Norwegian company, offers their polar plunge experience from the beach to allow guests a chance to swim longer, take their time, and go together. I was grateful I had the support of my fellow travelers as I walked gingerly over rocks to the waters edge, with icebergs a stone鈥檚 throw away. We shared in the range of emotions washing over us during our plunge鈥攆irst fear and excitement, and then joy. More people joined us once they saw we were not surviving, but thriving, and some of us even stayed a bit longer.

When to Go: Feb – March
Water Temps You’ll Experience: 34 to 35F
Other 国产吃瓜黑料s to Try: How about a cold immersion sleep? HX offers a camping experience on their Antarctica sailings鈥攜es, that means you鈥檒l be sleeping in a tent on the White Continent (the only way you鈥檙e allowed to). You may even get woken up by the sounds of a glacier calving.

Take a Glacial Plunge in British Columbia, Canada

Ask Canadians about cold plunges and they鈥檒l have many ideas for where to go. Our northern neighbors have plenty of firsthand experience swimming in cold water year round. But if you鈥檙e looking for a treat, stay at Vancouver Island鈥檚 luxury eco-lodge, which offers a led by a certified Wim Hof instructor in glacier-fed rivers and lakes. While I was staying at Clayoquot this wasn鈥檛 an official offering, but due to popular demand from guests they now provide this as a guided experience. During my stay, my personal Wim Hof-certified guide Malena Meneses-Skoda helped me push past my comfort and swim for longer鈥攚hich only increased my energy to try all the other adventures here.

When to Go: End of May – September
Water Temps You’ll Experience: 39 to 51F
Other 国产吃瓜黑料s to Try: Try canyoning along the glacier-fed Bedwell River filled with hidden waterfalls. You鈥檒l be in a wetsuit for this, and you can snorkel in the cold, calm waters to see hundreds of salmon gathering.

Join the Nation鈥檚 Oldest Winter Swimming Club for New Years, in New York City

This tradition of cold plunging into the Atlantic Ocean has been a mainstay for since 1903. While the New Year鈥檚 Day polar plunge is open to all, this is an official club, the longest-lasting winter swimming group in the U.S., and you have to earn your place as a member. People are allowed to join for a single guest swim throughout the year. Currently there are 150 members, and on average you鈥檒l see about 80 show up for each Sunday swim. After my New Year鈥檚 Day dip, I was able to join members for another exhilarating swim one Sunday as snow covered the beach and boardwalk nearby.

When to Go: The New Year鈥檚 Day plunge is open to the public. If you join the club for a session, the season runs Nov-April.
Water Temps You’ll Experience: 39 to 41F in recent years, due to more moderate winters
Other 国产吃瓜黑料s to Try: Head over Coney Island鈥檚 to toast to your bravery, play free retro arcade and pinball games, and warm up indoors.

Discover Your Cold-Water Bliss in the Happiest Country in the World, Finland

Finland鈥檚 capital, Helsinki, has so many places where you can feel the spirit of sisu in the sea without even leaving the city. Ma虉kinen says a true cold plunge in Finland includes a sauna as well, and recommends a few places I also tried myself: offers beautiful and modern saunas by the sea; this is where I took some of my first cold plunges. is Helsinki鈥檚 waterfront public plunge and sauna open 24/7, run by the community. It鈥檚 free and open to everyone, and is a cultural experience where diversity is at its best, says Ma虉kinen. The Finnish ice swimmer also recommends taking the ferry to Suomenlinna, Helsinki鈥檚 UNESCO-listed 18th-century sea fortress for the seaside sauna . This was one of my favorite places to cold plunge, followed by a sauna with locals, as well as the , a busy spot back at the capital with outdoor cold sea water pools and saunas, of course.

When to Go: Year round
Water Temps You’ll Experience: -4 to 14F
Other 国产吃瓜黑料s to Try: There鈥檚 roughly two saunas for every one person in Finland, so no shortage to try鈥攁nd you can find them just about anywhere. Also, once you’re done cold plunging and sweating, hop a flight north to Lapland to scope out the best Aurora Borealis you’ll ever see (September to October; February to March).

Take a Historic Forty-Foot Dip in the Irish Sea, Dublin

It鈥檚 a Dublin tradition to jump from Forty Foot, a rocky outcropping on the southern tip of the city’s bay, into the wild Irish Sea on December 25. Since the 19th century, swimmers have braved the chilly temperatures here, but historically, it was a mens-only bathing spot. That all changed in the 1970s when women protested for themselves and children to be allowed to dip here, too. Now it’s open for everyone and frequented by locals year round for morning dips. The small Sandycove beach is a short walk from the James Joyce Tower (the setting for the opening scenes of Ulysses), and the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in the distance makes this a memorable spot to cold plunge anytime of the year.

When to Go: Year round
Water Temps You’ll Experience: 44F (in winter)
Other 国产吃瓜黑料s to Try: Grab a rental car and try cold-water surfing on Ireland鈥檚 golden sands at Brandon Bay in Kerry, or at one of Ireland鈥檚 most popular surf spots at Lahinch in Clare, just a few miles from Cliffs of Moher. offers multi-activity adventures that include sea swimming, surfing, and kayaking.

Get into Your Creative Flow with a Cold Plunge in Scotland鈥檚 Lochs

In addition to all the physiological health benefits of cold water immersion, it may also help you tap into your creativity. The company Travel Matters offers a few wild swimming retreats on the banks of Scotland鈥檚 lochs (or lakes). For example, Amber Fillary, the female world record holder for the longest under-ice swim with breath hold, leads a on Loch Tay. While you won’t be expected to hold your breath under ice at this retreat, Fillary will lead breathwork exercises to calm your mind and help you get the most out of your swims.

Travel Matters also hosts a led by actress, writer, and Channel swimmer Doon Mackichan on the banks of Loch Rannoch. Travel Matters founder Karen Simmonds created these retreats to harness the benefits of cold water exposure to stimulate our creative energy. Immersion in cold water activates neuroplasticity鈥攖he brain鈥檚 ability to form new neural connections鈥攚hich enhances cognitive functions, she says. “This includes creativity, by facilitating the brain鈥檚 adaptability and capacity to think outside the box,鈥� Simmonds explains.

When to Go: September
Water Temps You’ll Experience: 53F
Other 国产吃瓜黑料s to Try: Get inspired by hiking around the lochs, where you can spy golden eagles, osprey, otters, sea eagles, and tap into nature to fuel your prose. Travel Matters can point you in the direction of abundant trail networks.

Dip into Extreme Ice Swimming in Svalbard, Norway and Greenland

Even in August, there鈥檚 plenty of places where you can find cold water to swim鈥攅specially if you head to Norway and Greenland. For those more experienced in cold water swimming, the company Expeditions Online offers extreme cold water swimming adventures in remote, frigid places. These trips are not for the faint-hearted, but they are open to anyone. Extreme cold water swimming is an experience Ram Barkai, founder of the International Ice Swimming Association, wants to share with others on trips he leads in and . Barkai says it is a life-altering experience and will give you 鈥減erspective in our mad over-stimulating and diminishing planet.鈥� These are not quick cold plunges; swims on this trip include 50, 250, 500, and 1,000 meters, and an ice mile is the top level that requires serious experience. Family and friends joining the trip can take a fun plunge though, Barkai adds.

When to Go: Svalbard (August 24) and Greenland (August 25)鈥攂oth in 2024
Water Temps You’ll Experience: 41F in Svalbard; 37 to 39F in Greenland
Other 国产吃瓜黑料s to Try: Post-swims, enjoy the frozen sea from a kayak, which Expeditions Online provides. It鈥檚 a warmer and calmer way to take in the surroundings and look for wildlife, such as walruses or seals.

Kathleen Rellihan is a travel journalist whose love for adventure includes jumping into cold bodies of water around the world. Her first cold plunges in Finland hooked her for life, and she has since taken two polar plunges in Antarctica, and a few dips with the Coney Island Polar Bear Club in New York City.

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Most of Mother Nature鈥檚 most spectacular shows are all about being at the right place at the right time. Maybe you waited your whole life to witness a total solar eclipse, or perhaps on your last mountain trek you stumbled upon a radial rainbow cloud with your own shadow as the star. In all cases, natural phenomena are a reminder that science has the power to leave us more in awe than any sci-fi show possibly could.

Some phenomena are more well-known than others, though, and some are harder to catch. You鈥檝e probably heard of the aurora borealis, or northern lights, and bioluminescent bays, but what about sailing stones and glow-in-the-dark mushrooms?

From Antarctica鈥檚 mysterious Blood Falls to Yosemite鈥檚 fleeting Firefall, here are some particularly unique natural phenomena that you can鈥檛 find just anywhere.

Hokkaido鈥檚 Frost Flowers

In winter on Hokkaido, Japan鈥檚 northernmost island, even as temperatures in Akan-Mashu National Park drop to minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit, Lake Akan is seemingly abloom with life in the form of an endless ethereal meadow of ice flowers. These beautiful blooms on the lake鈥檚 surface, known as frost flowers, sprout when the temperature drops quickly, causing a drastic difference between the cold air and the warmer ice surface. When the mist in the air freezes and hits the ice, it gets crystallized. The ice crystal patches are piled in layers and form delicate patterns, looking like real flower petals. Meteorologists have found that this is most likely to occur when three conditions are met: the surface of the lake is frozen with a thin, clear layer of ice and no snow; the air temperature is below 5 degrees; and there鈥檚 no wind.

Antarctica鈥檚 Blood Falls

It sounds like the next Netflix thriller and might look as ghastly, but East Antarctica鈥檚 Blood Falls is only gushing saltwater. This dramatic piercing on the white continent oozes five stories high at the end of Taylor Glacier, where an ancient saltwater reservoir trapped beneath the glacier flows to the surface and into Lake Bonney. The buried saltwater lake is not actually red鈥攏or is it full of red algae, as once believed鈥攂ut it is super salty and rich in iron. The iron turns red when it reacts with the oxygen at the surface, and its high salt content prevents it from freezing, according to . That鈥檚 how eery red water ends up flowing out of the icy white glacier.

Brazil鈥檚 Bioluminescent Mushrooms

You may have already been lucky enough to see ocean water sparkling at night with millions of glowing phytoplankton鈥攁 phenomenon called bioluminescence, in which living organisms emit a cold visible light. But did you know there are glow-in-the-dark mushrooms? Brazil鈥檚 Atlantic Forest, teeming with biodiversity as impressive and unique as its larger Amazon rainforest, contains about 20 species of bioluminescent fungi. These mushrooms flourish in the humidity and grow on tree bark or on tree trunks and fallen branches that line the forest floor. By day you wouldn鈥檛 take a second glance at these tiny mushrooms, but at night these fungi glow due to a chemical reaction between them and the decaying wood on which they grow. Scientists only recently discovered why this happens: the fungi produce light that will then help spread their spores throughout the forest. , a protected reserve used for research and conservation in the Atlantic Forest, offers guided night tours to see the bioluminescent mushrooms.

Yosemite鈥檚 Firefall

For just a few weeks in mid-February, thousands flock to Yosemite National Park to view this optical illusion on Horsetail Fall, a small waterfall on the famed rock face of El Capitan. A fleeting flow of fire-like light emits for just a few minutes when the alignment of the sun, the waterfall, and the viewer are just right. Right before sunset, if there is enough water, Horsetail Fall will be struck by the fading sunlight in such a way that a streak of fiery orange appears, resembling a lava flow on the 3,200-foot monolith. This completely natural event is actually named after a manmade tradition that started back in 1872, when the owners of the Glacier Point Hotel threw a bonfire off the edge of the waterfall to dazzle onlookers. The park put an end to the dangerous show in 1968, but five years later, climber and photographer Galen Rowell snapped Mother Nature creating the same effect, bringing the optical illusion to the spotlight and reviving the Firefall tradition in a safer way.

High Altitude鈥檚 Brocken Spectre

It sounds like a German punk rock band name, but Brocken spectre is a trick of the light that puts you on center stage. This optical illusion is named after Brocken, the highest peak in Germany鈥檚 Harz Mountains, where it was first observed. In the cloud-shrouded Chinese mountains of Huanshan and Mount Ernei, it鈥檚 referred to as Buddha鈥檚 light. Also known as mountain spectre, it occurs at high altitudes under misty conditions when the observer鈥檚 shadow is magnified and cast upon the clouds opposite the sun. As a result, the shadow appears surrounded by a spectacular rainbow halo caused by the diffraction of light. The Scottish Highlands鈥� misty weather and high peaks are a frequent setting for this phenomenon. It鈥檚 also been documented on in Washington鈥檚 Olympic National Park.

Death Valley鈥檚 Sailing Stones

On the dry lakebed of Racetrack Playa, in a remote valley between Cottonwood and the Last Chance Ranges, rocks sail across the desert floor propelled by a mysterious power. While no one has documented seeing them move in person, the tracks left behind the stones and the changes in their location prove they are indeed moving. Some trails left behind extend as long as 1,500 feet. In 2014, a helped scientists determine the sailing stones were likely due to a perfect combination of ice, water, and wind. That鈥檚 right鈥攊ce in Death Valley. 鈥淚鈥檓 amazed by the irony of it all,鈥� after solving the mystery. 鈥淚n a place where rainfall averages two inches a year, rocks are being shoved around by mechanisms typically seen in arctic climes.鈥�

Alberta鈥檚 Frozen Methane Lake Bubbles

In winter months, Abraham Lake in Alberta, Canada, is known for a peculiar marvel that lies beneath the surface of its clear blue frozen water. 听Throughout the year, Abraham Lake, also the largest reservoir in the province, emits methane gas when bacteria feed on decaying plants as part of a natural biological process. During winter, when temperatures drop below zero, these large amounts of methane gas form bubbles that are trapped in the ice as they rise to colder water closer to the surface. What results is a beautiful effect of cascading white orbs with an ominous core. Inside these bubbles is methane, a highly flammable greenhouse gas more than and therefore much more of a threat to our climate as well.

The post The Science Behind 8 Unique Natural Phenomena appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

One of the silver linings of the pandemic is that many of us found an even greater appreciation for escaping into nature. But as the world reopens and cranks the volume up, the roar of traffic and airline engines are more jarring than ever. Some days it might even be hard to recall the Great Quiet of 2020, the seismic silence from a COVID-slowed-down planet that scientists determined to be the longest period of quiet in recorded history.

So how do we move into a post-pandemic era and still enjoy the peace and quiet we promised we鈥檇 never take for granted again?

Gordon Hempton, known as , has a few ideas.听Hempton is an acoustic ecologist who has spent the past four decades identifying and preserving natural soundscapes around the world and who cofounded听), a nonprofit, all-volunteer organization on a mission to protect daily access to quiet for everyone.听鈥淨uiet was the unexpected gift of the pandemic,鈥� he says. With a handful of U.S. destinations currently under consideration for the Wilderness Quiet Parks designation, a pilgrimage to such a quiet place may be just the remedy for what ails you in these increasingly noisy times.

Similar to the 鈥檚 efforts to protect and preserve the night skies from light pollution, Quiet Parks status helps protect places largely lacking noise pollution. The status helps communities steward the quiet, which could include preventing additional land use, development, and aviation noise. Just as it鈥檚 harder to find night skies free from light pollution, quiet is also nearly extinct鈥�97 percent of the U.S. population is exposed to noise pollution from planes and highway traffic.

Quiet Parks status is conferred after听a multilevel process. First, light pollution, transportation routes, and noisy land use (like logging, hydroelectric power lines, and residential or commercial development) are evaluated. Then local or federal land managers are consulted. Finally, a QPI team visits the location and collects sound recordings. QPI hopes that receiving a coveted Quiet Park status will inspire grassroots community involvement, local governments, land-management agencies, tribal governments, and others to preserve the quiet.

鈥淲hen we save quiet, we save everything else,鈥� Hempton likes to say. He鈥檚 right. Science shows that periods of quiet improve cognitive and creative skills, reduce stress, and help us live longer. And quiet isn鈥檛 only a natural resource important to humans鈥攚ildlife needs pure acoustic environments to communicate in.

In 2019, QPI gave the first Quiet Park award to the听 in the Ecuadorean Amazon rainforest, home of the Cof谩n people. Since then, it has established close to 300 quiet places around the world, including Quiet Trails and the first Urban Quiet Park, in Taiwan.

Hempton and the QPI team are evaluating the following quiet places in the U.S., working on saving such destinations as cherished sites where we can hear birds chirping鈥攁nd ourselves think.

Haleakala National Park,听Hawaii

This isn鈥檛 merely the quietest place in the U.S.鈥攊t鈥檚 鈥渢he quietest place on earth,鈥� according to Hempton. (He is featured in the 听of the same name.) The park has the fewest decibels and least noise pollution of any place Hempton鈥檚 recorded. Given Haleakala Crater鈥檚 high elevation (10,023 feet), and the fact that air traffic arriving on Maui happens below the volcano rim, in addition to volcanic ash within the crater absorbing sound waves, very few sounds penetrate the park. What will you hear? Wind blowing through volcanic formations so faint it sounds like a whistle, or maybe the occasional nene鈥攁 Hawaiian goose. 鈥淗awaiian culture is sound-rich, with a history about silence as the birthplace of creativity,鈥� Hempton says. 鈥淭here are more than 100 Hawaiian words that describe different kinds of winds.鈥�

Descend into the crater for natural quiet, dress warmly, and bring water and a headlamp, because thick mist can arrive at any time, advises Hempton. An added bonus of visiting this park? Pristine stargazing is spectacular from the summit of Haleakala Crater.

Hoh Rain Forest, Washington

Audio clip: Hoh Rain Forest birds

Hempton鈥檚 quest for quiet began in 2005, with his One Square Inch of Silence project, in which he determined that the Hoh Rain Forest of Olympic National Park, home to the planet鈥檚 tallest forest, was possibly the quietest place in the country, due in part to its sound-absorbing moss. He also discovered unique acoustics there, including the 鈥渇lutelike bugling of Roosevelt elk.鈥� Unfortunately, the U.S. military directs air traffic over the park, a factor currently preventing it from being awarded official Quiet Park status.

Big Bend Ranch State Park, Texas

鈥淏y all accounts, this may be the quietest, least noise-polluted location in the U.S,鈥� Hempton says. Two reasons contribute:听its location on the Mexico–U.S. border is an area that sees less air traffic, and its arid climate is less elastic, so when any sound (including noise pollution) occurs, it fades quicker and is less clear.

鈥淭he canyon areas at Big Bend provide magical places to listen, as these places are in the shade most times of day, providing particularly good echoes and a stunning sense of space,鈥� says Hempton.

American Prairie Reserve, Montana

Audio clip: Coyotes and birds at dawn on the American Prairie

The goal of this collaboratively managed wildlife preserve is to create the largest nature reserve in the contiguous U.S., with approximately 3.2 million acres of land. It鈥檚 also home to one of Hempton鈥檚 favorite soundscapes, a mix of prairie winds and a spring dawn chorus of sharp-tailed grouse singing and dancing on the lakes. Hempton advises to head out well before sunrise in order to catch males performing to attract a mate. With little air-traffic intrusion, you might even be able to hear bison grunting miles away.

Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, Minnesota

鈥淒ear to my heart, the BWCA [was] the first place to be defended from aviation noise, when Wilderness Watch took the Air Force to court and effectively won,鈥� says Hempton. This vast wilderness on the Canadian-American border covers over one million acres of protected land that鈥檚 off-limits to military aircraft and other motorized vehicles and vessels. It is the only wilderness in the country that has an airspace reservation that prohibits flights below 4,000 feet. Even the lakes are largely free of motor sounds鈥攐nly 16 of the 1,100 lakes allow motorized watercraft. Here, you must paddle. It鈥檚 a true wilderness, adds Hempton, with songbirds charming daytime listeners, frogs and toads croaking at night, not to mention the howling of wolves and the echoing calls of the iconic loons.

Glacier National Park, Montana

Audio clips: A Glacier snowstorm (first clip); Kintla Lake

This million-acre-plus glacier-carved national park has one of the largest intact ecosystems in the lower 48. Because it鈥檚 on the border of Canada, there鈥檚 also less air traffic, notes Hempton. 鈥淭he stunning and profound coniferous forests and alpine lakes are all special opportunities to listen to natural concert halls,鈥� he says. He also suggests tuning your ears to listen for the 鈥渕usical notes鈥� of stones in the streambeds.

Quiet Park Trips

If you鈥檇 rather have a guide to find some peace and quiet, a new mindful adventure company, has partnered with QPI to offer Quiet Park trips.

鈥淚n today鈥檚 modern world, there鈥檚 so much noise around us. But potentially even more problematic is that our minds often match that level of noise, processing a seemingly constant flow of news, social media, and work,鈥� says Recal founder Anthony Lorubbio. A three-time CEO, Lorubbio created his newest venture after suffering from work-induced burnout. Recal鈥檚 Quiet Park series immerses travelers deep into nature, free from human-made noise, in an effort to reduce stress and exhaustion, which Lorubbio believes are increasingly ailments of our grind culture. Add in pandemic fatigue, and we鈥檙e even more disconnected from personal interactions and nature and in need of an escape from the constant burrow of enmeshed home-work life, he says.

鈥淲e believe there is a connection between the growing rates of burnout and our human disconnection from nature鈥攅specially true and pure quiet,鈥� Lorubbio says.

As part of its new , Recal is offering trips in Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and Glacier National Park. On the Boundary Waters adventure, you canoe, portage, camp, and listen to the natural soundscapes on quiet hikes, as well as participate in breath-work sessions and enjoy sensory-focused silent meals. On the Glacier trip, activities range from riding e-bikes on the car-free Going-to-the-Sun Road to silent stargazing (Glacier is also a designated Dark Sky park) to mindfulness practices designed to tap your inner quiet.

All Recal guides are trained by the QPI team on how to listen while immersed in quiet. Matthew Mikkelsen, executive director of QPI鈥檚 Wilderness Quiet Parks and an audio engineer and sound recordist, offers this tip: don鈥檛 try to figure out sounds or name them. 鈥淣aming the object is almost a distraction for some folks, because then it takes you out of the headspace of listening. Truly listening means not placing judgment, priority, or bias on the information you鈥檙e receiving.鈥� Simply let the sounds surround you.

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