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.

The post Oh, Yes, You Can: 6 Breathtaking Via Ferratas for Every Type of 国产吃瓜黑料r appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

When Ada Limon, America鈥檚 first Latina poet laureate, was tasked with bringing poetry to people who otherwise might not be exposed to it, she knew just where to put it: National Parks. The celebrated poet talks to 国产吃瓜黑料 about her inspirations for the You Are Here project, and how nature and poetry can help us rethink wild places, and our place in them.

You can find a list of National Parks for the You Are Here project .

The post Ada Lim贸n Wants Picnic Tables to Make You Feel Something appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

I turned down this assignment the first time my editor mentioned it.

Pick the 10 most beautiful hikes in the United States? By this point in my still-brief hiking life, I鈥檝e logged a few cumulative years in tents on trails themselves and in a van at trailheads in all 50 states. But still, I couldn鈥檛 imagine the difficulty of selecting 10 that felt the most epic, immersive, stunning, or however it is you want to begin setting the parameters of 鈥渂eautiful.鈥� In fact, while I鈥檝e had bad days on trail, I鈥檝e rarely encountered a 鈥渂ad trail,鈥� or one that didn鈥檛 change or at least charm me in some way.

And then there was the vainglory of the exercise: No matter how many National Scenic Trails I鈥檝e thru-hiked, day hikes I鈥檝e logged, or summits I鈥檝e reached, there鈥檚 always more. My selections remain just a sliver of my individual experience.

But then I thought about the way my favorite hikes鈥攁ll beautiful, in every sense of the word鈥攈ad transformed my life. The way the Grand Canyon made me sell my house and move into a van. The way the Pacific Crest Trail made me commit to thru-hiking as a core of my identity. The way that living a few miles from Max Patch in Appalachia made me want to move to still-bigger mountains.

If I could talk about the way these landscapes and walks rewired my brain, and how they might do that for others, I was in. It is, I think, enough to witness nature; it is much more to let its lessons lead you somewhere new. That became my main criteria: the walks that had so many marvels that my insides had to shift to accommodate them.

There were two other criteria, more on the level of logistical details than existential underpinnings. Each of these trails is in the Lower 48, as Hawaii, Alaska, and territories like Guam and Puerto Rico warrant rankings of their own. And none of these spots are secret鈥攖hat is, hikes that stand to suffer from a sudden explosion in traffic by winding up on such a list. They are the transformative places that sent me in search of bigger adventures, more obscure delights, novel ways to be rearranged.

I鈥檓 hoping they do that for you, that鈥攖o paraphrase the great Barry Lopez, who would have surely hated a hierarchical list like this鈥攖hey cause the world to flare up for you, too, with a real sense of wonder.

Black Elk Peak, South Dakota

Length: 7鈥�13 Miles
Duration: One day
Elevation Profile: You鈥檒l almost always be climbing or descending, but the grades are mostly accommodating.
Best Trailhead to Start From: Sylvan Lake Parking Lot
Why We Love It: In a region rich with geologic oddities, this uplifted zone of ancient granite possibly lets you see into five states.
For Fans Of: Learning about difficult history, the idea that there鈥檚 more to South Dakota than prairie, skipping Mount Rushmore

If you are an enthusiast of the National Park Service, you鈥檝e probably either been to South Dakota鈥檚 Black Hills or added it to your must-see docket. It鈥檚 home to six NPS sites, including Mount Rushmore, Wind Cave, and Jewel Cave. The first two are truly under-heralded treasures; the less attention the former gets, the better. But if you skip simply because of its lesser designation, you鈥檙e getting the passport stamps but missing one of the country鈥檚 best expanses of protected land.

Pristine lakes and idyllic streams, wallowing bison and roaming mountain lions, giant granite spires and a staggering highway: At more than 70,000 acres, Custer State Park could rank as a national park. (I think we could stand to lose the name of a Civil War hero who became a gold-hungry butcher, anyway?) It鈥檚 also home to Black Elk Peak, the highest point between the Rocky Mountains one state over and the Pyrenees, one ocean and chunks of two continents away. Far more than a geologic footnote, Black Elk Peak hosts a summit hike that suggests you鈥檙e amid an amusement park.

There are a half-dozen ways up Black Elk Peak, via a byzantine network of trails thanks in part to the area鈥檚 many managing agencies. The most stunning might be the simplest, too, with an ascent via Sylvan Lake Trail No. 9 and a descent via Little Devil鈥檚 Tower No. 4. You鈥檒l work your way through gaps in rock walls, up twisting rock-hewn steps, and over stairwells that feel like Manhattan fire escapes until you reach an architectural marvel of a fire lookout that鈥檚 perched atop the mountain like some monstrous castle鈥檚 turret. You may believe you鈥檙e in a video game.

Named for a Lakota medicine man whose make for indispensable American reading, Black Elk Peak鈥攔enamed only in 2016 after commemorating, for more than 150 years, an Army commander who killed Indigenous peoples 鈥攊s a colossal reminder of our national crimes and the ongoing and necessary quests to correct them. Black Elk Peak is a gateway to the West and questions about it, plus a marvel all its own.

An Easier Alternate: One of my favorite places to swim in South Dakota is Sylvan Lake, where you鈥檒l park to start this hike. If you don鈥檛 feel like climbing Black Elk, clamber instead around Sylvan鈥檚 rocks.

Coyote Buttes North: The Wave, Arizona

Length: 6鈥�10 Miles
Duration: One day, given you鈥檝e secured a permit
Elevation Profile: You鈥檒l feel the steady and occasionally steep climbs on a sunny day, but there鈥檚 nothing too crazy here.
Best Trailhead to Start From: Wire Pass Trailhead
Why We Love It: Within a few miles, you can begin to understand the surreal and surprising intricacies that are so abundant in the Southwest.
For Fans Of: Deep oranges, color-field painting, perfect photos

鈥淭he Wave is mostly unknown, except to the cowboys running cattle in that area.鈥� So reads the laminated poster in the Kanab Visitor Center at Utah鈥檚 southern edge. Though that may sound like some 19th-century fantasy, the sign actually refers to the 1960s, long before one of the world鈥檚 most surreal and sublime sections of sandstone also became one of the country鈥檚 most in-demand .

In the decades that followed, guidebooks, foreign documentaries, the 2002 Olympics, and, of course, social media created repeated surges of attention for a pocket of wind-eroded buttes so perfectly contoured and colored they look computer-generated. Four dozen people are now allowed to see The Wave per day, six times the quota when the Bureau of Land Management began issuing permits in the 鈥�80s. I have friends who have applied every month for years to 鈥淐oyote Buttes North,鈥� as the zone is called, and they鈥檝e still never seen their dream. I鈥檝e been close, but I haven鈥檛 marveled at the masterpiece yet either.

It is tempting, of course, to lampoon fever for The Wave, to see the hubbub as some artificial creation of influencer culture. But in nine relatively easy miles, you can sample the wonders of the Southwest without worry about massive crowds. After moving through an emblematic desert wash, for instance, you cross the pristine tracks of Sauropodomorph dinosaurs (and a tail drag)鈥斺�渁 dinosaur dance floor,鈥� a once called it.

Continue past The Wave, and you鈥檒l find windows around the Melody Arch and a great recessed amphitheater positioned among massive dunes, dubbed The Alcove. In a region so rich with geologic miracles, social media obsession with The Wave may indeed seem myopic, but, permits notwithstanding, it may be the most instant portal to seeking out those other sights for yourself in years to come.

An Easier Alternate: The barrier to The Wave isn鈥檛 physical; it鈥檚 getting a permit. Space is almost always available in the neighboring zone, Coyote Buttes South, which is nearly as striking as the social media star next door.

The First 30 Miles of the Florida Trail, Florida

Length: 30.6 Miles
Duration: 2鈥�3 Days
Elevation Profile: It鈥檚 southern Florida, as flat as a flounder
Best Trailhead to Start From: Oasis Visitor Center, Big Cypress National Preserve
Why We Love It: This adventure will be the stuff of your dreams forever, from nightmares spent escaping an alligator underwater to fantasies where you remember the glory of reaching the interstate and finding a shower.
For Fans Of: Flirting with mortality, asking yourself 鈥淲hat the hell, man?,鈥� grinning like a goof

Very few people believe me when I insist, so I鈥檒l just tell you the truth here as plainly as possible: There are few stretches of trail more gorgeous, mysterious, and outright fun in the U.S. than the southernmost 30 miles of the Florida Trail. That span begins at the Oasis Visitor Center in Big Cypress National Preserve, a 700,000-acre expanse of perpetually murky swamps, enchanting pine glades, and prairies that suggest some sunken-world version of Kansas. It ends as you cross the east-west portion of Interstate 75, so notorious for its wildlife that it鈥檚 long been dubbed Alligator Alley.

And yes, that means the first 30 miles of the Florida Trail are full of alligators and water moccasins, softshell turtles and frogs so tiny they look like leaves. If you鈥檙e lucky, as I was when I hiked it in the early winter of 2022, you might encounter the long-endangered Florida panther or the invasive Burmese python. I almost forgot to mention that these could all be in or around the brown water through which you will walk.

I get it if you鈥檙e terrified, but hang on. As you wade through the swamps of southern Florida following orange blazes that mark the trail markers painted on any available dry surface, you will also be surrounded by wild orchids and air plants so thick you will sometimes need to push them out of the way. They seem to sprout out of the trees themselves, less like epiphytes than some novel chimera. It appears as a flooded Eden.

From time to time, though, you will have the surreal experience of swearing there is a little mountain on the horizon, though this is pancake-flat Florida. It is an oasis, an allusion: Those are cypress domes, rounded mounds of trees that are tallest toward the center, where the water is deepest and where camping doesn鈥檛 actually exist. Instead, rest for the night in a hardwood hammock, a stand of trees just above the water line that is, in essence, a tropical forest teeming with life. These 30 miles reinvent ideas not only of what hiking can be but where beauty can exist. Just look out for eyes of alligators and big cats, in or around the water.

An Easier Alternate: Want to see the Florida wildlife without walking in the same water they swim? Head to the Royal Palm Visitor Center in Everglades National Park for the and trails, brief primers on how much Florida fun you can have.

Franconia Ridge Loop, New Hampshire

Length: 9 Miles
Duration: A half-day
Elevation Profile: You鈥檒l have a steep climb followed by a merciful rolling ridge walk and then a big drop back down.
Best Trailhead to Start From: Lafayette Place Campground, Franconia Notch State Park
Why We Love It: This is a welcoming introduction to mountain climbing, to reaching a summit ridge (and some peaks, too), and feeling like the whole world unfurls before you.
For Fans Of: The vague suggestion of danger, the satisfaction of summits, the company of strangers

The axiom of outdoor adventure travel is that it makes us feel small, that it transports us beyond the egotism of our own daily concerns if only for one out-of-body instant. But this happens because, in those moments, we understand just how vast our surroundings are, just how unknowable it all is to us and how unknown our concerns are to it. This sensation is the manna of mountain climbing, a reason that so many of us return to peaks so high and massive the world seems infinite.

There are few places more magical and convenient when it comes to that feeling than New Hampshire鈥檚 Franconia Ridge, a thin but very manageable air-bound isthmus of land between a half-dozen 100-million-year-old peaks. Standing on the two-mile runway between Lafayette and Little Haystack, you are three hours from Montreal and two hours from Boston or the New Hampshire coast. From up there, though, the entire world seems like a mountain range, as rich with beauty as the seasonal green or white on each peak鈥檚 flanks.

It is no surprise, then, that the loop that climbs to and descends from Franconia Ridge is one of the country鈥檚 most popular hikes. Arduous without being technical or terrifying, this trek squeezes a lot of diversity into just nine miles, from the climb through thick forests (where stands of maples and birch give way to spruce and fir) and past one of the White Mountains鈥� iconic to its descent alongside rushing waterfalls.

But it hinges on the phenomenon of being surrounded by nothing (so much sky!) and everything (so many peaks!) at once that you get after reaching Mount Lafayette鈥檚 5,260-foot summit, then walking through a rare Eastern stretch of alpine tundra. By Colorado鈥檚 standards, for instance, that鈥檚 much lower than a trailhead for a climb. But in New Hampshire, because of the high latitude and the proximity to coastal weather, it is an accessible taste of how humbling and galvanizing high mountains can be. Caveat emptor: I got addicted to that rush somewhere around there, so proceed with caution.

An Easier Alternate: Seen those 鈥淭his Car Climbed Mount Washington鈥� bumper stickers? If you鈥檙e not feeling a hike, take the scenic Auto Road to its top, but give yourself time to wander around this landmark Eastern summit.

The Grand Canyon: Rim-to-Rim, Arizona

Length: 20鈥�30 Miles
Duration: 1鈥�3 Days
Elevation Profile: Hey, at least the several thousand feet of downhill and uphill on either side are broken up by a nice canyon stroll.
Best Trailhead to Start From: North Kaibab Trailhead, so you can indulge in burgers and beer on the South Rim when you鈥檙e done.
Why We Love It: Not only will it be a feat of personal endurance, but it will also change your perception about how dynamic time and space can feel.
For Fans Of: T-shirts that commemorate lifetime achievements, bragging rights at parties, very steep but slow roller coasters

A true story: Less than a decade ago, on a free trip to Sedona, my wife, Tina, and I took a last-minute drive at dawn to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. It was socked in with clouds, so we dropped briefly beneath the rim on South Kaibab Trail, long enough for us both to gaze into what seemed infinite folds of red rock. Two months later, we鈥檇 quit our jobs, sold our house, put everything in storage, and moved into a van. That moment with the Grand Canyon turned us into van-dwelling, mountain-climbing thru-hikers, and I鈥檓 eternally grateful for that vista. We鈥檝e since crisscrossed the Grand Canyon multiple times; the scale of its wonder only ever increases.

Hiking between the Grand Canyon鈥檚 rims opens your mind and rearranges the furniture inside. Intellectually, you confront the reality of deep time, as you move down, along, and up two-billion years of geologic history; to witness the is to understand the pull of mystery, of the unknown. Aesthetically, you are walking in an art installation so vast it is not yet entirely understood and so enchanting we have yet to stop trying; it is like seeing a new detail in your favorite painting, except the canvas has no end, or at least one you cannot see.

And physically, you are moving across a marvel of our world, a gap so big it can be seen from space; to finish it is to realize just how much you can do, even if it鈥檚 over the course of several days. In fact, slow down as much as you can, since you could spend a lifetime looking and never be satisfied here.

An Easier Alternate: If you鈥檙e short on time or worried that your knees aren鈥檛 ready for the rim-to-rim gauntlet, drop from the South Rim to , where, yes, you will probably say that.

Longs Peak: The Keyhole, Colorado

Length: 14 miles
Duration: One day
Elevation Profile: You鈥檙e here to go up a legitimately big mountain, so it can get intense.
Best Trailhead to Start From: Longs Peak Trailhead
Why We Love It: Though it should not be your first of Colorado鈥檚 58 14ers, it could well be the one that introduces you to mountain climbing that involves gumption and the thrill of encountering your mortality.
For Fans Of: Geologic features with evocative names, bursts of adrenaline, big pizza rewards

In the continental U.S., just surpass 14,000 feet, the threshold required for that celebrated category of 鈥�14ers.鈥� Three-quarters of them are in Colorado, topping out at 14,438 with the gentle slopes of Mount Elbert. Most of these peaks are deep in Colorado, far from the shopping centers and urban bustle of the Front Range. But not Longs: On a bluebird day, Longs and its mammoth neighbor, Meeker, can be seen from Denver. They make better bulwarks of the Colorado skyline than the city鈥檚 tallest buildings.

Longs happens to be one of the country鈥檚 , too, from the Salvador Dal铆-like towers of its Keyboard of the Winds and an imposing face dubbed 鈥楾he Diamond鈥� to the massive 鈥淣otch鈥� that makes it identifiable from many miles away. It is a showcase of geologic forces, a marvel of strange geometry.

And it is entirely , even if you鈥檙e rather new to the state sport of 14ers. (But please do not head straight from the airport to climb Longs. Acclimate, and maybe hike a 14er like Quandary first.) Every year, an estimated 15,000 people attempt to climb Longs, the highest point in Rocky Mountain National Park and one of the few places in the park that requires neither a permit nor a fee. Most of the climb is a splendid hike, first through a forest so fragrant it feels as if you鈥檙e walking through a candle shop and then across rocky slopes and boulder fields that conjure jungle gyms. (You should start early enough that Boulder鈥檚 lights twinkle behind you.)

The fun鈥攁nd, yes, the danger鈥攕tart when you cross through the famous Keyhole, following a series of painted bullseyes through the vertiginous Trough and the aptly named Narrows. From the summit, the kingdom of the Front Range is in view, from the Wild Basin below to the Indian Peaks beyond. This is one of the most marvelous places in the U.S. to spend your morning.

An Easier Alternate: If the first four miles and 2,000 feet of the climb up Longs Peak drain you (or if it鈥檚 long past sunrise, honestly), stop. Go instead to , the jewel at the base of Long Peak鈥檚 gargantuan wall, The Diamond. You won鈥檛 be disappointed.

Lost Coast Trail, California

Length: 25 Miles
Duration: 2鈥�4 Days
Elevation Profile: You鈥檒l see steep terrain nearby, but you won鈥檛 be climbing too much of it. This is mostly gentle.
Best Trailhead to Start From: Mattole Beach Campground
Why We Love It: In California, some of the country鈥檚 best nature has been bent to society鈥檚 will; here, engineers just gave up.
For Fans Of: Salt spray kisses, black sand beaches, elephant seal calls

Tell someone you are going to hike on the California coastline, and they鈥檒l likely be confused, picturing beach-ready bodies bounding in and out of the surf as you stroll awkwardly by wearing a backpack. But California鈥檚 premier coastal hiking鈥攁nd, really, one of the best stretches for breathtaking beach walking in the U.S.鈥攊s in northern California, in a region so remote and rugged that highway engineers simply gave up on trying to route roads through it: the Lost Coast.

For backpackers, that engineering abdication has been a boon, leading to a 25-mile span of undeveloped beachfront where black bears roam, elephant seals cavort, and tides lash against cliffs and coves with might. This is the Lost Coast Trail, one of the last secluded and most untrammeled places in a state of development dreams.

Only a few miles inland from this gnarled shoreline, King Peak rises almost to 4,100 feet, an impressive height considering the nearby Pacific. In fact, the surrounding is not far from the Mendocino Triple Junction, an offshore intersection of tectonic plates and intense geologic activity that led to the land鈥檚 sudden rise from the sea. The Lost Coast Trail moves back and forth from the beaches to the quickly rising shore above it.

Several sections of the hike cling so closely to the walls above that you can pass only when the tide is low, making these miles more about planning than perseverance. Oh, and you鈥檒l need a , too, since the Bureau of Land Management rightfully wants to keep the Lost Coast 鈥� well, not entirely lost, but at least much less crowded than its counterparts to the south.

An Easier Alternate: If you鈥檙e worried about navigating the tides, you can stick to the trail鈥檚 middle section only between Sea Lion Gulch and Miller Flat by starting at Kinsey Ridge Trailhead.

Max Patch, North Carolina

Length: 1.5 miles
Duration: 1 Hour
Elevation Profile: You鈥檒l likely stroll right up it, even the few bits that seem steep.
Best Trailhead to Start From: Max Patch Road
Why We Love It: The shortest walk here offers one of the grandest glimpses of Appalachia anywhere.
For Fans Of: Little walks to big views, jokes about Bill Bryson鈥檚 A Walk in the Woods, lessons in crowd control

There is a strange phenomenon in Southern Appalachia, where both the mountains and the latitude are so low that even the highest peaks, like Mount Mitchell and Clingmans Dome, can sustain trees. But a series of so-called 鈥渂alds鈥� do not, their rounded tops given over to mountain oat grass and diminutive flowering plants.

There are a half-dozen for why this happens, and balds generally come in two categories鈥攃ultural, meaning they were once cleared by people, and ecological, meaning it鈥檚 simply nature at work. In either case, balds often offer panoramic views of the surrounding Blue Ridge Mountains and Roan Highlands, some of the most pastoral and pleasant ridgelines in North America at any height or distance.

About 250 miles northbound on the Appalachian Trail, Max Patch may be the best; a little loop hike from an oft-overrun parking lot, it is certainly the most accessible. Cleared for grazing long ago, Max Patch is particularly broad, its viewshed letting one peer one way into nearby Tennessee and the squiggles of the ancient French Broad River and the other way to some of the East鈥檚 tallest points.

I hesitate to put Max Patch, once practically my backyard, here, because it has been so overrun by revelers in recent years that the National Forest Service has . But the ecosystem has started to recover, a testimonial to good management of places whose demand speaks to their majesty. Go to Max Patch. Marvel at the uninterrupted views. And then leave it for the next person, please.

A Harder Alternate: If you want to experience the sylvan charm of the AT and endure its chronic ups and downs, have someone drop you at Max Patch for the 20-mile trek into Hot Springs, North Carolina. You鈥檒l drop into several gaps and cross gentle Bluff Mountain along the way.

Pacific Crest Trail, California, Oregon, and Washington

Length: 2,655 Miles
Duration: 3鈥�6 Months
Elevation Profile: You will be surprised by how rarely daunting the PCT is as it rolls from one border to the other.
Best Trailhead to Start From: Southern Terminus, Campo, CA.
Why We Love It: Of the country鈥檚 three iconic long trails, its reward-to-work ratio is by far the highest, with each day looking like another stunning photo ripped from the pages of a National Geographic calendar
For Fans Of: Looking at your Apple Desktop photos, pretending to be Ansel Adams, putting your life on hold

To call a 2,600-mile, multi-month journey between the borders of the U.S. one of its most beautiful hikes is a cheat, I know; such an endeavor at least seems impossible to many for reasons of practicality and privilege. But mile for mile, no long-distance hike in the nation is easier or more visually rewarding than the Pacific Crest Trail.

For that first compliment, remember that the PCT is so long because its grades are so slight, meaning that you wind around canyons and peaks rather than shoot straight up or into them, as on the Appalachian or Continental Divide trails. If you can walk at a reasonable pace, you can finish the PCT. And especially if you鈥檙e headed north, 700 miles of desert (and the occasional mountain) will prepare you for the more daunting stretch that is the Sierra Nevada.

Speaking of the Sierra Nevada, it is the rare mountain range to combine relatively easy hiking, very high elevations, and completely spellbinding sights. To move between the high passes and among the glacial lakes and verdant glades of the Sierra is to be dumbstruck by the same landscape that catalyzed U.S. conservation. This goes for the entire PCT, really, where almost every day feels like you鈥檙e walking through a screensaver or a wall calendar.

The Goat Rocks Wilderness and Mount Rainier views in Washington? The Three Sisters and Crater Lakes zones of Oregon? Almost the entirety of California, from the reaches of San Jacinto to Shasta? It鈥檚 a stunning journey, the long trail you should do if you have one in you.

An Easier Alternate: Though it鈥檚 no piece of cake itself, California鈥檚 High Sierra Trail offers a relatively short but incredibly scenic route through the mountain range that is the PCT鈥檚 crux.

Teton Crest Trail, Wyoming

Length: 35鈥�40 Miles
Duration: 2鈥�4 Days
Elevation Profile: You鈥檒l encounter occasionally steep climbs out of basins and over passes, but this one is often cruisey.
Best Trailhead to Start From: Phillips Bench Trailhead
Why We Love It: With both an airport and a great mountain town nearby, there may be no better or more accessible way to understand the immersive splendor of the country鈥檚 most distinctive peaks.
For Fans Of: Mountains that are sculptural masterpieces, carrying bear spray on your hip, marveling at wildflowers

Since my first climb in Grand Teton National Park nearly a decade ago, I have returned every year for new mountains and fresh hikes with a fanatic鈥檚 devotion, as if this were my annual pilgrimage. Still, after all that time, I feel like I haven鈥檛 even started to understand the bounty of the place, the marvels it hides in the folds of its mountains or the basins and ridges between them. I often ask myself if, even after a lifetime of visiting, I will still feel the same way about my favorite bit of land in the U.S.? I鈥檓 intent on finding out.

There may be no better sampler of the place than the Teton Crest Trail, a masterpiece of a route that winds between the park itself and the Bridger-Teton National Forest. It鈥檚 a , which is for the best: You want to have the occasional sense that you have this landscape all to yourself. You鈥檒l probably find yourself longing to return, too.

Despite its name, the Teton Crest doesn鈥檛 simply stay high, and you don鈥檛 really near the summits of the . Instead, you often stick close to the park鈥檚 myriad lakes鈥擯helps, Marion, Sunset, and so on鈥攁nd cling to elaborately shaped shelves just above deep canyons. You鈥檒l cruise through Alaska Basin wide-open expanse and many alpine meadows, then climb atop Paintbrush Divide, the trail鈥檚 highest point, for gobsmacking views of the Tetons.

It鈥檚 not all geology, either, since Wyoming wildflowers are some of the best in the West, clusters of purple and yellow, red and white pushing up from endless seas of bright green grasses. Moose, deer, elk, and, yes, brown and black bears roam the same trail. Few places in the U.S. proclaim the marvels of wilderness more loudly than this grand bit of western Wyoming; this is your avenue to listen and see.

An Easier Alternate: If you want to understand what it鈥檚 like to climb at the edge of the Tetons without spending days among them, the uphill haul to gets you closer to them after a five-mile spiral among wildflowers and forests.

Grayson Haver Currin is 国产吃瓜黑料鈥檚 hiking columnist and a Triple Crowner. He has logged over 10,000 miles on the U.S.鈥檚 National Scenic Trails and countless more on other trails. A North Carolinian who moved into a van with cats, a dog, and his wife, Tina, in 2017, he now lives high among the mountains of Colorado鈥檚 Front Range. He is also a music journalist for The New York Times, Pitchfork, NPR, Mojo, GQ, and others, and you can subscribe to his forthcoming newsletter, Out and Back, .

The post The 10 Most Beautiful Hikes in the U.S. appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Labor Day celebrates the social and economic achievements of the American worker. As the informal end of summer, it also marks a transition for seasonal inventories of clothing and outdoors gear, so there are lots of Labor Day deals. Here鈥檚 how you can save money while supporting American workers, the American economy, and buying high-quality American products.

Updated September 2: It’s Labor Day. We’ve checked all the deals and prices in our list. Many of these deals will likely expire late tonight.

If you buy through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission. This supports our mission to get more people active and outside. Learn more.

Mountain Safety Research produces all of the field water purification gear for the United States Army. That requires that the company maintain the most sophisticated water lab in the country, which it also uses to develop, test, and validate water filters for civilian consumers. The lab is so unique in its capability that other water filter brands actually contract out their own testing to MSR, while others include in their small print a if it’s to come out of their products as clean as they claim.

Unlike competitors, MSR also only produces filters that stop flowing water when they lose the ability to remove pathogens, so there鈥檚 no chance you鈥檒l ever drink contaminated water if you use an MSR filter, which are all made right there in Seattle, under the same roof as that lab.

Our Pick: MSR Guardian Water Purifier

REI is including a bunch of MSR filters in this sale, all for 25 percent off. They鈥檙e all good, but a standout is the Guardian, a large filter capable of removing even chemicals and viruses from water, so is what you need if you鈥檙e planning a trip to the developing world.

Walk out of the water lab, through the water filter production line, and you鈥檒l get to MSR鈥檚 stove factory. MSR is owned by the same parent company as Therm-a-Rest: Cascade Designs. All MSR stoves are made right there in Seattle, and every single one of them is subject to thorough testing by an actual American adult before they鈥檙e boxed and shipped to you. That doesn鈥檛 just mean they鈥檒l work the first time you light one up, but also keep working even in cold weather, even at high elevations.

REI is offering 25 percent off all MSR liquid fuel stoves. Liquid fuels work much better than gas fuels in cold temperatures because you use a pump to create pressure within the canisters. Some models can also run on a variety of fuels, which makes them uniquely useful on international adventures where you may be unable to source fuel canisters.

Our Pick: MSR Whisperlite Universal Stove

The Whisperlite is the original liquid fuel backpacking stove, and still one of the highest performing options. It鈥檚 currently reduced from $200 to $150. Not bad for the last stove you’ll ever buy.

Probably the hardest thing to make in America right now is clothing. It鈥檚 incredibly difficult to compete on price with foreign sweatshops while complying with our country鈥檚 pay, benefits, safety, and ethical standards. It鈥檚 even harder to make technical clothing here because most fabric technologies are produced in those foreign sweatshops, and many of the brands that make those technologies only sell their wares in extremely large volumes.

It鈥檚 notable that NW Alpine has been making all its high-tech performance clothing in Oregon since Bill Amos founded the company in 2010. And while all of its fabrics aren鈥檛 American-sourced, its new range of Fortis base layers is. And those are 20 percent off until September 2.

Our Pick: NW Alpine Fortis Base Layers

The big innovation with Fortis is the incorporation of Ultra High Molecular Weight Polyethylene fibers in its nylon-blend fabric. That means you get all the sweat-wicking properties of a lightweight base layer, but with a massive additional dose of abrasion resistance and longevity. They feel incredibly soft after a run through the washing machine and dryer, too.

Even though many tech fabrics are produced abroad, their underlying technologies are often developed in America. Forloh gets around the barrier to fabric technology access by hunting down the latest innovations while they’re still in the lab, signing exclusive rights to them for a few years, then working with American factories to develop the ability to use them.

The result is standout pieces that function in totally unique ways. The brand’s American-made rain gear? It has a higher moisture vapor transmission rate than anything else out there, plus a proprietary method for applying Durable Water Repellent coating that won’t wear off.

Forloh’s sale runs through September 3. Everything is 20 percent off.

Our Picks: and听

(The 20% discount is shown at checkout.) Forloh’s down insulation pieces are extremely breathable. The pants they designed just for me are also extraordinarily durable.

Cascade Designs is still privately owned by the families of the former Boeing engineers who founded Therm-a-Rest in 1972. And all Therm-a-Rest sleeping pads are still made in Seattle. Making stuff there is what enables the company to offer its famous lifetime warranty, which is remarkable for products that must remain airtight, while being dragged up mountains, down rivers, and through the woods.

REI is offering 25 percent off across all Therm-a-Rest sleeping pads. They鈥檙e all good, but if I had to pick some to highlight they鈥檇 be the NeoAir XTherm NXT, which remains the standard for mountaineers who need a reliable, highly insulated pad.

Our Pick: Therm-a-Rest NeoAir XTherm NXT Sleeping Pad

Born Outdoor Bedrolls Are 10% Off鈥攚ith Code FALL10

I鈥檝e been sleeping on a large Therm-a-Rest MondoKing 3D off and on this summer鈥攊nside a Born Outdoor Badger Bed 25 bedroll. It’s the brainchild of Army veteran Stuart Born, who wanted to create a more comfortable way to enjoy a night outdoors. The Badger Bed wraps an ultra-comfy sleeping pad inside a rugged shell, then uses that to house sheets and a down quilt, too.

The whole thing rolls up into a waterproof duffle bag, which is designed to be carried exposed on top of a 4×4 or in the bed of a pickup truck. That鈥檚 good, because these systems are massive. Unroll one, and you鈥檒l find a water and a puncture-proof shell that wraps the pad on the bottom and sides. It also holds the quilt in place with toggles. Zip the water and wind-resistant-top sheet up, and you鈥檒l be relatively protected from weather, while enjoying lots of room to roll around.

Our Pick: Badger Bed 25 Sierra Bedroll Bundle听

Stuart and his family make Badger Beds just outside Boulder, Colorado, and they鈥檙e currently offering 10 percent off sitewide by entering the code FALL10 at checkout.

Bozeman, Montana-based GoFastCampers disrupted the camper space in 2017 when it brought to market the lightest, strongest, most affordable camper ever made. At the time it was the only camper that was safe to carry in the back of popular mid-size pickups like the Toyota Tacoma. And even on larger trucks, a GFC remains the only camper strong enough to stand up to washboard and wheeling. The company does all its manufacturing in Bozeman, offering full-time (with benefits) jobs that pay the highest starting salary of any manufacturer in the northern Rockies. And it only asks employees to work four-day weeks so they have time to use the free campers they receive as part of their compensation.

Early versions of the GFC proved incredibly popular, but the radically simple nature of the product caused some frustrations with parts like vents and latches. GFC listened to its customers and across its line of campers, bed caps, and rooftop tents earlier this year, while also reducing weight, increasing comfort, and adding even more strength. And now, it鈥檚 making those upgrades available to existing customers too, so they don鈥檛 have to buy a whole new camper to take advantage of improvements they asked for.

Parts like tent bodies, latches, lighting kits and more are at 10 to 20 percent discounts.

Our Pick: Complete Upgrade Camper Upgrade Bundles

The real savings can be found in , which are discounted as much as $914.

Having sweaty feet sucks. And the way to avoid that is by wearing merino wool socks. But unethical sweatshop labor and highly polluting international shipping suck even worse. Luckily, Darn Tough makes all its merino wool socks in Vermont.

REI is offering 25 percent off all Darn Tough socks through September 2nd. You can鈥檛 go wrong with any of them.

Our Pick: Darn Tough Crew Lightweight Socks

I鈥檓 a big fan of the mushrooms and pigs on the 鈥渢ruffle hog鈥� casual sock pattern, which is reduced by $6 to $18 a pair.

The post 8 Amazing Labor Day Deals on Gear That鈥檚 Made in the USA appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

If Ada Lim贸n were left to her own devices for the day, she would rise, hug her husband and her dog, write a poem, and read a poem. Then she鈥檇 spend the rest of her waking hours learning the names of things鈥攆lowers, trees, insects, clouds. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a beauty to naming, to learning the name, to identifying,鈥� she tells me one morning in March. Once, while looking up the term for part of a magnolia tree, she discovered that the species is primarily pollinated by beetles, which are older than bees, and that its early ancestors lived alongside the dinosaurs.

鈥淲hen people ask, 鈥楬ow do you keep finding things to write about?鈥� I鈥檓 like, 鈥楬ow do you not?鈥欌�� she says. 鈥淗ow could you not wonder in awe at the magnolia tree and think of it existing among the dinosaurs? It鈥檚 endless.鈥�

It has been a while since Lim贸n, 48, had an entire day to spend as she pleased. In July 2022, she was named the 24th poet laureate of the United States鈥攖he first Latina to be awarded the seat鈥攂y the Library of Congress. Since 2006, she has published , and currently she鈥檚 working on four book projects in addition to touring and promoting the projects she鈥檚 created in connection with her new post. In February, she was honored as one of Time magazine鈥檚 12 Women of the Year. Even scheduling interviews with her involves coordinating with three people鈥攁n impressive contingent for a poet.

But Lim贸n graciously takes my video calls from her home office in Lexington, Kentucky. Her 13-year-old pug snores next to her, she鈥檚 surrounded by hundreds of books, and she鈥檚 intentionally calm and engaged: 鈥淏efore every reading, every event, every vacation, I put my hand on my heart and say to myself, Be present and enjoy this.鈥�

Yet as much as she lives in the moment, Lim贸n wants to encourage change, and that requires forethought. During their one-to-four-year tenure, each poet laureate in recent history has developed a project to bring the literary form to those who might not otherwise encounter it. Lim贸n wanted her project to involve nature. 鈥淢y first thought was, What if we flew planes over deforested land, with poems written on seed packets, and worked to reseed and replant places harmed by wildfires?鈥� She figured that the good people at the Library of Congress would ask her to dream a little smaller.

Instead, she opted to focus on the accidental encounter: How could she create opportunities for people to stumble upon a poem while in nature? The result is a dispersed exhibit of picnic tables engraved with poems by a variety of modern writers selected by Lim贸n. The initiative is being rolled out at seven national parks this summer. At Mount Rainier, in Washington State, the late poet A.鈥塕. Ammons鈥檚 work 鈥淯ppermost鈥� will accompany a view of the 14,411-foot peak from the park鈥檚 popular Paradise area:

The top / grain on the peak / weighs next / to nothing and, / sustained / by a mountain, /
has no burden, / but nearly / ready to float, / exposed / to summit wind, / it endures / the rigors of having / no further / figure to complete / and a / blank sky / to guide its dreaming

Why national parks? According to Lim贸n, these are places of 鈥渋ntentional nature,鈥� destinations you might seek out in pursuit of an altered state. Maybe you鈥檙e looking to quiet your mind. Maybe you鈥檙e chasing an experience of wonder. Maybe you just felt restless and cooped up.

A pitfall for many motivated to get outdoors, however, can be missing the forest for the trees. Lim贸n cites hiking to an objective, like a summit or a lake, as an example: 鈥淵ou鈥檙e supposed to be at ease, at peace, and in awe, but then you鈥檙e thinking, I have to get to this place.鈥� It鈥檚 only by slowing down鈥攖o take a closer look at a flower, say鈥攖hat the wonder begins to reveal itself.

鈥淭he connection between poetry and nature is that they both give us a moment to recognize what we鈥檙e going through. They give us space. They give us breath. They return us to ourselves.鈥�

Like nature, poetry invites the mind to wander and take a break from its preoccupations. 鈥淧oetry is a place that holds so much mystery. It holds a space for the unknown and for the messy interior of the mind,鈥� she says. She also hopes that people will use it to ponder language鈥攂ut also the limits of language. 鈥淧oetry makes room for that. So often we stand in a forest and think, Oh, there are no words, and that鈥檚 enough.鈥�

Each picnic table includes a prompt: 鈥淲hat would you say in response to the landscape around you?鈥� Lim贸n also asked 50 poets that question and compiled their responses into an anthology of nature poems titled , published by Milkweed Editions in April. It鈥檚 the second half of her project and aims to offer diverse reflections on the many ways we engage with the earth, including 鈥渄aily nature, urban nature, ourselves as nature,鈥� Lim贸n says.

Lim贸n grew up in Sonoma County, California, a child of artistic, outdoorsy parents. (Her mother鈥檚 paintings adorn the covers of her poetry collections.) In school, the syllabus included field trips to the ocean, and she constantly learned about the plants and animals that surrounded her home. Words held a deep fascination. She graduated from the University of Washington with a major in drama, but a trusted professor suggested a second degree in poetry, which led to an MFA at New York University. That morphed into a career doing marketing for national magazines, an arrangement that subsidized her real passion. After juggling the two pursuits for a decade鈥攁nd publishing three poetry collections鈥攁t the age of 34 she quit her job to write full-time. Accolades and awards followed, as well as a , a university teaching position, and a MacArthur 鈥済enius鈥� grant.

Although Lim贸n has been in Kentucky for more than a decade, memories of her time in New York continue to find their way into her work. Initially, the wilderness of her childhood felt distant from the city. Then she discovered the East River, the city鈥檚 winged and four-legged inhabitants, the plant life, the weather, 鈥渢he bright ginkgo, with its foul smell, smashed on the sidewalks鈥攁ll of that is part of nature,鈥� she says.

You Are Here provides a more expansive view of the outdoors, in which the neighborhood gingko is of equal importance to the high peaks. Lim贸n considered including archival works but decided against it. 鈥淭he nature poem has changed,鈥� she says. 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 have a nature poem extracted from the emotional impact of climate change. Everything is tied up in what we鈥檝e done. Making room for complicated grief is just as important as making room for the beauty, the awe, and the wonder.鈥�

Instead of perpetuating the old-school style she describes as 鈥渁 white man standing on a mountain having an epiphany,鈥� she wanted work with a broader array of perspectives. 鈥淵ou see a colonial, idealistic taming of the land in those [older] poems, or that nature exists just for the poet to observe it. What hubris, when in reality nature is observing us as well. It鈥檚 reciprocal.鈥�

The experience of being witnessed is a recurring theme in Lim贸n鈥檚 own work. 鈥淎 Name,鈥� the first poem in her collection , published in 2018, reads:

When Eve walked among / the animals and named them鈥� / nightingale, red-shouldered hawk, / fiddler crab, fallow deer鈥� / I wonder if she ever wanted / them to speak back, looked into / their wide wonderful eyes and / whispered, Name me, name me.

Lim贸n is masterful at simple, surprising shifts in perspective. When you give equal weight to the human and animal points of view鈥攁nd perhaps throw a few plants into the mix as well鈥攖he world becomes a friendlier place. She鈥檚 an avid birder, and her half-acre backyard contains several feeders. When she forgets to fill them, the birds make it known. 鈥淭hey come by like: Hey, what鈥檚 going on? Noticing that kind of relationship, feeling seen by the world, not only makes you a better steward, it also makes you less lonely.鈥�

Beginning this summer, Lim贸n will visit each of the seven parks selected to receive a picnic table as part of the project. She tells me that she can鈥檛 wait to visit the redwoods of Northern California, where Chicano poet Francisco X. Alarc贸n鈥檚 鈥淣ever Alone鈥� will be featured. The short piece addresses a phenomenon similar to what Lim贸n feels when the birds seek her out, a kindred companionship.

Always / this caressing / Wind / this Earth / whispering / to our feet / this boundless / desire / of being / grass / tree / coraz贸n

Lim贸n is looking forward to her own personal shift in perspective amid the world鈥檚 tallest trees. 鈥淚鈥檓 obsessed with feeling small,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 very good for my brain. I can turn myself into an all-encompassing, looming force in my own life, but when I鈥檓 in the redwoods, I feel like the smallest speck.鈥�

The post The Newest National Parks Feature? Poetry. appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Traveling to see Taylor Swift’s Era’s Tour in 2024? Luckily, she’s headed to a bunch of badass places that happen to be outdoor-adventure meccas, too. Make the most of your fan-filled trip by adding these must-dos to your itinerary, all synced up with international and domestic dates on .

My wife and I flew to Chicago last June to see our favorite artist in concert, and had such a good time we almost immediately bought tickets to the next show we could find, which happened to be in Lyon, France, in June. Talking about getting tickets to a Taylor Swift show would take up an entire article on its own鈥攊t鈥檚 famously difficult and most easily navigated if, like us, you鈥檙e a super fan. But, if you are currently holding tickets for a future concert, that鈥檚 exciting, since it may be a reason to explore a part of the world you鈥檝e never seen before.

Why Taylor? I was obviously introduced to her music through my wife (and sister-in-law), but it’s hard not to find stuff to like in her catchy, cleverly-written songs about female empowerment. If nothing else, standing in a stadium alongside tens of thousands of young women having the best night of their lives is something that’s hard to walk away from without having a good time.

Eras Tour Paris and Lyon, France

Show Dates: May 9 – 12 (Paris); June 2 and 3 (Lyon)

Flying all the way to Paris just to see Taylor would probably be worth it on its own, but because we鈥檙e going there at the nicest time of year, we figure we should make the most of it. So, we鈥檝e booked a few nights at our favorite hotel on 脦le Saint-Louis, plan to visit my parents at their farm near Limoges, and will then rendezvous with family and friends in Lyon for the concert, plus a few nights of gorging ourselves on that city鈥檚听 famous culinary scene. After all that, we’ll be ready for some exercise.

A few years ago, we took the opportunity on a similar trip to visit France鈥檚 脡crin National Park, and spent two days backpacking through its high alpine backcountry. There, we slept under a 500-foot waterfall, watched wild ibex and chamois frolic while golden eagles soared overhead, and were positively swarmed by marmots. The best part? We saw zero other people. Compare the park鈥檚 800,000 annual visitors to the 4 million who visit Yellowstone, and you can see why, with a little hiking, it鈥檚 not hard to find yourself a slice of the French Alps you can call your own for a night or two. And we鈥檒l return to the park after June’s concert in order to recreate the experience.

If you want to do the same, the easiest way to make it work is by backpacking, and bringing what you would for any high-elevation summer trip. You鈥檒l need to rent a car (either drive from Paris, or take the train to a nearby city), but as compensation for that additional expense, you鈥檒l get to drive in the Alps, which includes some of the most fun and visually stunning roads in the world. (There will be no need to travel off-road, so a small, sporty car is fine.) Leave your nice clothes in the trunk, out of sight, and make sure you throw your passport and wallet into your pack while you camp鈥攙ehicle break-ins are a problem at trailheads in Europe, just like they are in America.

We like to stay another night in Paris before we fly out. Since driving in the city is a nightmare, I return the rental car to the airport on our way back into the city, then take the metro (RER) into town. While planning your route, don鈥檛 forget how small Europe is. On that same trip, we popped into Italy for lunch after hiking back to the car, and still made it into Paris in time to shower and head to a fancy dinner.

Here are outdoors tips for every other stop on Taylor Swift’s Era鈥檚 Tour 2024.

Eras Tour Stockholm, Sweden

Show Dates: May 17-19

If you have tickets to see Taylor in Stockholm this May, you鈥檙e making me jealous. Late spring in Sweden is gorgeous. Take advantage of the spring weather by getting on the water. will rent you boats and other equipment, or take you on a guided tour of some of the 30,000 islands on the archipelago. Day trips start at under $95-a-person. Like other nordic countries, Sweden has a right to roam law that enables you to explore most wild places, so if you have time, rent camping gear from Get Out too, and enjoy a night under the stars on one of those islands.

Eras Tour Lisbon, Portugal

Show Dates: May 24-25

Portugal鈥檚 Atlantic coast is famous for its big waves. Even if you don鈥檛 surf, head over to watch people ride the famously huge waves in Nazare. More accessible (read: easier) surf can be found in nearby Coxos. Tours, lessons, and gear are available from . A day trip to Nazare costs $60-a-person if you just want to watch, while a rental board and wetsuit can be had for about $38.

Eras Tour Madrid, Spain

Show Dates: May 29-30

It鈥檚 going to start getting hot in Madrid in late May. The 125-acre El Retiro park in the city center is designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site and includes expansive shaded gardens and a pond you can row boats in.

On the west side of the Manzanares river, you鈥檒l find the even larger, 3,800-acre Casa de Campo. Use the city鈥檚 bike share service, , and pedal under the pine trees. Rates run just 50 cents per half-hour.

Eras Tour Edinburgh, Scotland

Show Dates: June 7-9

June in the Scottish Highlands may be marked by as much as one or two hours of clear skies. Pack rain gear and hike to the most remote pub in the country, which is 18 miles one way. Food at , in the Knoydart Peninsula, is said to be better than is typical in the country, but there鈥檚 no accommodations to spend the night. Rather than carry heavy camping gear, we鈥檇 rent听a room or house in the . You鈥檒l appreciate having a roof over your head and a place to dry out your socks. Just make sure you book ahead of time.

Eras Tour Liverpool, England

Show Dates: June 13-15

The neatest thing about northwest England is the canals. Built before the advent of rail to connect British industry with ports sailing to America and elsewhere, the canals are now almost-forgotten byways that wind their way through the pastoral English countryside. You can stay on a 听(or plenty of places elsewhere), hike or bike paths that run along them, or to paddle them starting at under $40-a-day.

Eras Tour Cardiff, Wales

Show Date: June 18

Once there, skip town and make the drive to the for Pen y Fan, which at 2,910 feet is听the tallest peak in the Brecon Beacons. Don’t worry, all road signs are in English, too. The United Kingdom鈥檚 Special Air Service famously conducts its selection trials on the mountain, but the 7.5-mile hike to the summit from Cwm Gwdi is much easier than their 22-mile trek. Don鈥檛 be fooled by the sub-3,000 foot elevation, terrain on Pen y Fan can be treacherous and Wales isn鈥檛 famous for its sunshine.

Eras Tour London, England

Show Dates: June 21-24; August 15-20

Take the tube out to Richmond and walk up the hill to Richmond Park, making sure you walk up the terrace for the views over the Thames. You can hike the park鈥檚 7-mile trail that follows the perimeter while watching the 600 plus head of red and fallow deer that, unlike wildlife in the U.S., belong solely to the King. Head back down to town for a pint at , and make sure you entertain the locals with your best Ted Lasso impression.

Eras Tour Dublin, Ireland

Show Dates: June 28-30

Get away from the hokey tourist attractions (think: the Blarney Stone) and drive the two hours听over to Galway on the west coast to hike the Cliffs of Moher. The most popular route runs 12 miles . You know what I鈥檓 about to say: pack rain gear and waterproof boots.

Eras Tour Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Show Dates: July 4-6

Rent a stand up paddle board from (from $16-a-day)听and see the city from its most famous attraction. Amsterdam is also famous for its cycling. There鈥檚 plenty of places to rent one, or you can take advantage of the city鈥檚 for about $5-a-day.

Eras Tour Z眉rich, Switzerland

Show Dates: July 9-10

You鈥檒l be 30 miles from the Swiss Alps, some of the most beautiful mountains on earth. Rent a car and drive into them, where virtually any activity is possible. From mountain biking to via ferrata to paragliding, you won鈥檛 go wrong. Heck, just driving around is about as good as it gets, too. For a basecamp check out , the highest campground in the country. There, you can (glamping tents start at $118-a-night) or bring your own tent or camper. Parking spots start under $10-a-night).听

Eras Tour Milan, Italy

Show Dates: July 13-14

Rent a car (or preferably a motorcycle) and drive up to Lake Como. There, take one of the car ferry routes across the lake at sundown. For just a few bucks, you鈥檒l get views Lake Como regular George Clooney might be jealous of. My favorite town on the lake is Mandello del Lario. Home to the world鈥檚 oldest motorcycle factory, you can , or simply enjoy the town鈥檚 working class heritage to enjoy an honest, affordable meal. Bring your hiking shoes and take the 5.6 mile loop up to Alp d鈥橢ra for stunning mountain views.

Eras Tour Hamburg, Germany

Show Dates: July 23-24

Taking a rowboat (from ) across the Alster Lakes is the definitive experience here, but Hamburg is also a great place to cycle. The city鈥檚 bike share program is everywhere and costs only 12 Euros per day.

Eras Tour Munich, Germany

Show Dates: July 27-28

Most people visit Munich to drink beer, but you can also do that after hiking. Germany鈥檚 highest peak, Zugspitze, stands 9,718 feet tall, and takes most of the day just to climb the 14 miles, let alone descend. A faster option is the (tickets are about $67 per-person), and you can also for the same price to the plateau, about halfway up, where many shorter hikes are available.

Eras Tour Warsaw, Poland

Show Dates: August 1-3

Did you know that Warsaw is home to ? Located on the Vistula river, you can sunbathe, swim, or even enjoy a campfire. And visiting one won’t take you too far from the city鈥檚 stunning architecture and many historic castles.

Eras Tour Vienna, Austria

Show Dates: August 9-10

Vienna maintains 14 excellent hiking trails right inside the city. The free contains all the maps and information you鈥檒l need, and you can fill it with stamps collected from each route. Earn all 14, and the city will听reward you with a commemorative pin.

Vienna is better known for . So you can unwind after all those hikes in a thermal pool or with a good massage. is the largest thermal pool in the city, day passes start at $22.

Eras Tour Miami, Florida

Show Dates: October 18-19

October is hurricane season in Florida, so I鈥檇 travel armed with backup plans. I鈥檇 also take the opportunity to go see the Everglades before they鈥檙e destroyed by climate change. There鈥檚 all sorts of ways you can do that, from self guided tours of the national park, to guided boat experiences. But if it was me, I鈥檇 help out with local conservation efforts by booking a guided python hunt. The species is invasive, and kills just about every native species of wildlife there is, and the hunting season is open year-round. You don鈥檛 even need to know how to shoot or hold a hunting license if all you want to do is tag along as locals catch their own. A goes for $1,800 for a group of three. Plus, you鈥檒l get to experience Florida culture at its finest.

Eras Tour New Orleans, Louisiana

Show Dates: October 25-27

Sure, y0u can visit to eat and drink like everyone else does, but New Orleans is another swamp town, and the best way to spend time in that unique environment in a or kayak. can be had for as little as $65 per-person. You can also fish for speckled trout in Lake Ponchartrain on your own; the cooler weather in October starts getting them active. Or, head to the marsh to for $805-a-day, per-boat.

Eras Tour Indianapolis, Indiana

Show Dates: November 1-3

Indianapolis isn鈥檛 exactly a mountain town. So if you want to have an adventure, you鈥檒l need to get creative. offers four different outdoor paintball fields, with both public events and private rentals available. Games are run seven days a week, and start at just $28 per-person, including equipment rental. 听Nearby Parke County is also , boasting 31 total. Those would make a great day-long driving tour. Hiking trails are available in Fort Harrison State Park. I’d take the 4-mile , which will offer the best odds for solitude. There should be plenty of fall colors left in early November.

Eras Tour Toronto, Canada

Show Dates: November 14-23

Add a few nights to your trip before or after the concert, and head to a cottage on one of the 250,000 lakes听north of the city. It鈥檚 the definitive Ontario activity. Fall on the lakes is particularly beautiful, and you鈥檒l be getting dustings of snow by November. Make sure you rent a winterized cabin and pack warm clothes. Look for cabins in Muskoka or Georgian Bay if it’s your first time, those areas enjoy more facilities and services than more rural climes.

Eras Tour Vancouver, Canada

Show Dates: December 6-8

December is stormy in Vancouver. Sure, you could chase some early season snow in the nearby mountains, but I鈥檇 head for nearby Vancouver Island, and the many hotels and cabins located on its pacific coast. There, you can take in full might of the ocean, while staying safe inside facilities that run from basic to ultra luxury. The most famous hotel on the island is Wickaninnish Inn, where rooms during storm season start at $400-a-night. I鈥檝e never not seen orcas on the ferry ride over.

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There’s almost nothing better than cracking open a book right where the action takes place鈥攔eading Cheryl Strayed’s on the Pacific Crest Trail or Sebastian Junger’s beside the Atlantic seas that claimed the fishing boat Andrea Gail.

Whether you’re rolling on a road trip or hunkered down under your tent鈥檚 rain fly, you need a worthy paperback companion. In compiling this list, we weren’t looking for another batch of Classics with a capital C, though our selections do include a few. Instead, we canvassed our editors, contributors, and readers with a simpler question: What book would you stuff in your backpack if you were headed to Maine? Or California? Or Missouri or South Carolina or even Washington, D.C.? And because we couldn鈥檛 help ourselves, we also slipped in bonus picks for a few states.

The resulting collection is wide, immersive, and above all readable. We hope it takes you places, whether out in the wild or burrowed happily in your favorite chair.

Alabama: The Last Slave Ship, by Ben Raines (2022)

In 1860, 50 years after the Atlantic slave trade was abolished, the schooner Clotilda stole into Alabama鈥檚 Mobile Bay carrying 110 kidnapped West Africans from Benin. Those enslaved people would go on, after Emancipation, to found a community known as Africatown, and their stories would be told in various chronicles, including Zora Neale Hurston鈥檚 . But Clotilda itself disappeared. Then, in April 2018, using old maps and journals, charter captain Ben Raines found the wreck under the murk of the Mobile River delta. His story weaves together his own obsession with finding the ship and the stories of the people it carried. 鈥�Clotilda was a ghost that haunted three communities鈥攖he descendants of those transported into slavery in her hold, the descendants of their fellow Africans who sold them, and the descendants of their American enslavers,鈥� Raines writes. 鈥淭he only way for that ghost to begin to be expelled was for the ship to be revealed.鈥� 鈥擡lizabeth Hightower Allen

Alaska: The Sun Is a Compass: My 4,000-Mile Journey into the Alaskan Wilds, by Caroline Van Hemert (2019)

Over the last century, icons like John Muir, John McPhee, and Jon Krakauer have all written about Alaska鈥檚 beauty, its severity, and its seductive isolation. But the book that sticks with me most is more recent: Caroline Van Hemert鈥檚 2019 memoir, The Sun Is a Compass, about a months-long, 4,000-mile adventure taken by Van Hemert and her husband. They start in coastal Washington, row the Inside Passage to the Alaska panhandle, then strap on skis and traverse the Coast Range. They canoe, pack-raft, and hike across the Yukon and through the Brooks Range before emerging on Alaska鈥檚 Arctic coast. It is an impressive adventure, but what I love most about the book is its quiet message. Van Hemert is a scientist who lost touch with how her work used to bring her into sync with nature. Her journey has a purpose that any of us can relate to: reconnecting to the ways the wild world ebbs and flows around us. 鈥擡va Holland

Bonus Read: , by Tom Kizzia (2013), an account of the many abuses by modern-day homesteader Papa Pilgrim in what its publisher bills as 鈥�Into the Wild meets Helter Skelter.鈥�

Arizona: The Emerald Mile, by Kevin Fedarko (2013)

The stack of literature about the Grand Canyon is as deep and varied as the rock layers themselves, but we鈥檙e picking the work with the most cubic thrills per second: The Emerald Mile. It鈥檚 the account of the famed 1983 鈥渟peed run鈥� through the Grand Canyon, in which three river guides slipped a wooden dory into the raging floodwaters of the Colorado River by moonlight during a record-breaking high-water year. It was a wild ride鈥�227 miles in just 36 hours鈥攂ut just as wild was the effort by Bureau of Reclamation hydrologists to keep Lake Powell from breaching the Glen Canyon Dam amid the mayhem of the largest helicopter rescue the canyon had ever seen. Come for the adrenaline, stay for the history of the canyon, both natural and man-made. 鈥擡.H.A.

Bonus Read: (2005), the harrowing saga of 26 men attempting to cross the most desolate stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border, by Luis Alberto Urrea.

Arkansas: The Grail Bird, by Tim Gallagher (2005)

The cypress swamps of Arkansas erupted in a blaze of glory in 2004, when the Lord God Bird鈥� a.k.a. the ivory-billed woodpecker鈥攚as sighted in the state鈥檚 Cache River Wildlife Refuge after being presumed extinct for decades. But was that feathered ghost really the ivory-billed? Gallagher, the editor of Living Bird magazine and one of the birders who鈥檇 seen the bird, set out to find proof that the woodpecker still existed. If so, he wrote, 鈥渋t would be the most hopeful event imaginable: we would have one final chance to get it right, to save this bird and the bottomland swamp forests it needs to survive.鈥� Sure enough, in 2022, 17 years after The Grail Bird was published, field researchers claimed multiple new sightings of the Lord God Bird, this time in Louisiana. Bird species may be declining around the world, but in this book, hope is indeed the thing with feathers. 鈥擡.H.A.

California: The Last Season, by Eric Blehm (2006)

We know you鈥檙e packing Wild, by Cheryl Strayed. But also consider The Last Season, which explores the Sierra Nevada through the life and writings of Randy Morgenson, a Yosemite-born park ranger who spent 27 and a half summers in the backcountry of Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks. In July 1996, the 64-year-old loaded up his pack for a routine patrol through terrain he knew better than anyone. Then he disappeared, spurring one of the largest search-and-rescue operations in national park history. Blehm鈥檚 engrossing prose brings to life Morgenson’s dedication to the beauty and isolation of California鈥檚 landscapes鈥攁nd the mystery of how they ultimately swallowed him whole. 鈥擬aren Larsen

Bonus Read: (2023), Los Angeles Times reporter Rosanna Xia鈥檚 thoughtful look at how communities are coping with rising sea levels.

Colorado: Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country, by Pam Houston (2019)

What would you do if you sold your first book and had a whopping $21,000 in your pocket? If you were Pam Houston, you鈥檇 take the money from your surprise 1992 bestseller Cowboys Are My Weakness and drive around the West looking for a home. And you鈥檇 find it, in a 120-acre ranch surrounded by the 12,000-foot peaks of the San Juans, outside the town of Creede. Populated with a rotating cast of beloved horses, donkeys, Icelandic sheep, and Irish wolfhounds, the ranch is her refuge through frozen winters, glorious summers, and a wildfire that almost wipes the whole place out. As for the hope part? It鈥檚 how Houston sees our obligation to the land itself. 鈥淎s we hurtle toward the cliff, foot heavy on the throttle, to write a poem about the loveliness of a newly leafed aspen grove or a hot August wind sweeping across prairie grass,鈥� she writes, feels like the height of naivete. 鈥淏ut then again, maybe not. Maybe this is the best time there has ever been to write unironic odes to nature.鈥� 鈥擡.H.A.

Bonus Read: (2021), Heather Hansman鈥檚 love song to the increasingly difficult lifestyle of the modern ski bum.

Connecticut: A Place of My Own, by Michael Pollan (1997)

Before Michael Pollan became our chief explainer of and , before 鈥渟he sheds鈥� started popping up across America, and before we all started working from home, the decidedly non-handy Pollan set out to construct a tiny writing cabin in his Connecticut backyard. 鈥淚 wanted not only a room of my own,鈥� he writes, 鈥渂ut a room of my own making. I wanted to build this place myself.鈥� Two and a half years of weekends later, under the gruff tutelage of a local carpenter, he had a small shingled hut with a tiny porch and a picture window at the edge of the woods, 鈥渁 place as much one鈥檚 own as a second skin.鈥� He also had the material for this beautiful examination of home and office, work and solitude, privacy and creativity鈥攁 book, critic Janet Malcolm wrote at the time, 鈥渨ith the brilliant plainness of a piece of Shaker furniture.鈥� 鈥擡.H.A.

Delaware: West of Rehoboth, by Alexs D. Pate (2001)

Sometimes adventure is not something that you undertake willingly but is thrust upon you by a change in circumstance or geography. Such is the case in Alexs D. Pate鈥檚 heartfelt coming-of-age novel, West of Rehoboth. The protagonist is a chubby, bookish boy named Edward, whose parents send him to spend the summer of 1962 with his Aunt Edna in West Rehoboth, the Black, working-class side of the well-known Delaware beach resort. While his mom waits tables, Edward explores the woods and creeks and fishes for crabs in the canal that divided the Black side of Rehoboth from the white side, and visits the small scrap of segregated beach allotted to Black folks. Everything about Delaware is terra incognita to him. The plot is explosive, but just as interesting is Pate鈥檚 portrayal of an unseen, under-represented side of a place that seems so peaceful and familiar. 鈥擝ill Gifford

Florida: The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orlean (1998)

After reading The Orchid Thief, you might find yourself with a new flower obsession, googling images of sexy little blooms and itching to get knee-deep in some gnarly swamp water. Susan Orlean experienced such a spiral while reporting this classic nonfiction book. She follows Florida man (in every sense) John Laroche鈥檚 extreme, sometimes illegal pursuits of rare orchids and explores other fanatics throughout history; bizarre orchid biology; and Florida鈥檚 particular natural and Indigenous history. Orlean isn鈥檛 a Floridian herself, so she offers a helpfully perplexed perspective on the state鈥檚 enticing weirdness. 鈥淭he wild part of Florida is really wild. The tame part is really tame. Both, though, are always in flux,鈥� she writes. Orlean comes to appreciate what any Floridian knows about one of the country鈥檚 most misunderstood states. Much like the strange beauty of an extraterrestrial-looking orchid, the qualities that make Florida unique are the same things that make us unable to look away. 鈥擡rin Berger

Georgia: Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, by Janisse Ray (1999)

Part memoir, part natural history, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood earned Ray the sobriquet The Rachel Carson of the South. The book chronicles her childhood growing up in a junkyard alongside Highway 1鈥斺�漬ot a bad place to grow up,鈥� she writes, 鈥渨eird enough to stoke any child鈥檚 curiosity, a playground of endless possibility.鈥� Much of that possibility lay behind the piles of cars and radiators in 鈥渁 singing forest of tall and widely spaced pines,鈥� the longleaf pine ecosystem that once covered the entire South. When Ray wrote this book, only 1 percent of those old-growth longleaf forests remained. It took her a while to embrace her origins, but now, she writes, 鈥漌hat I come from has made me who I am.鈥� 鈥擡.H.A.

Bonus Read: (2009), Warren St. John鈥檚 bestselling story of how a refugee kids鈥� soccer team united tiny Clarkston, Georgia.

Hawaii: Aloha Rodeo, by David Wolman and Julian Smith (2019)

In 1908, three paniolos from the Big Island pulled off a huge upset at Wyoming鈥檚 Frontier Days rodeo, winning the steer-roping competition to the dismay of the mainland cowboys. While the event is central to this book鈥檚 narrative, the backstory is what鈥檚 most captivating; Hawaiians have been herding longhorn up and down the rough slopes of the state鈥檚 volcanoes since the early 1800s, decades after cattle were first dropped into the waters off the western town of Captain Cook and forced to splash their way ashore amid the sharks. Spanish vaqueros who came from California taught locals their skills, introducing the islanders to working with horses to help them manage what quickly became a massive bovine population that would change not only the landscape but island culture and politics. That heritage lives on during the annual Panaewa Stampede Rodeo in Hilo. 鈥擳asha Zemke

Bonus Read: (2010), Susan Casey鈥檚 immersive exploration of the 鈥渕onsters of the deep鈥� and the surfers who chase them.

Idaho: Indian Creek Chronicles: A Winter in the Wilderness by Pete Fromm (1993)

In 1978, Pete Fromm was a 20-year-old student at the University of Montana in Missoula. That year, he stumbled into a job overwintering in a wall tent in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness guarding millions of tiny salmon eggs that Idaho Fish and Game had placed in the local hatchery. Fromm decided he wanted to be a mountain man, but he couldn’t have been more uneducated in the ways of wilderness survival. He goes into the backcountry a naive quasi鈥揻rat boy and comes out closer to Grizzly Adams. Which is to say, almost entirely on his own, he learns to hunt (everything from grouse to moose), cook (from the barest cache of dry goods), get from point A to point B (mostly on snowshoes), and appreciate the predators, prey, and chorus of hunters that break up his sometimes unbearable isolation. Read this book if you liked Into the Wild but wanted a triumphant ending. 鈥擳racy Ross

Illinois: Life of Black Hawk, or Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kia-Kiak, by Black Hawk (1833)

This 19th-century Sauk war captain is best known for the 1832 conflict that bears his name, in which Sauk soldiers fought with the British to repel American settlers from parts of present-day Illinois and Wisconsin. But he also dictated his autobiography to an interpreter, an adventurous story for an adventurous life. Black Hawk fought his first battle while barely a teenager, clubbing an Osage enemy to death and then presenting the scalp to his father. 鈥淗e said nothing,鈥� Black Hawk recalls, 鈥渂ut looked pleased.鈥� This book bristles with violence鈥攖he death of his father at the hands of Cherokee fighters, the death of his adopted son by a few murderous whites. But it also contains wonderful descriptions of the cornfields tended by Sauk women, the Rock River with its abundance of fish, the land that houses 鈥渢he graves of our friends.鈥� After losing the Black Hawk War, the Sauk had to leave all of it, something Black Hawk laments again and again: 鈥淲hy did the Great Spirit ever send the whites to this island, to drive us from our homes?鈥� 鈥擟raig Fehrman

Indiana: Rural Free: A Farmwife鈥檚 Almanac of Country Living, by Rachel Peden (1961)

Rachel Peden was a farmer and local newspaper columnist before Knopf published her first book, Rural Free, in 1961. The book became a media sensation (as did its author), and reading it now you can see why. Rural Free鈥檚 chapters follow the months, starting with September, and in them Peden describes her family, their farm, and the natural world that envelops them. 鈥淣ights,鈥� she writes, 鈥渁re marked by a steady humming spread on the air like a thick blanket.鈥� Peden makes sure her readers can hear the different parts of that humming, the crickets and the katydids and 鈥渢he rare cello of a big bullfrog at the pond back of the barn.鈥� Her writing remains funny, observant, unhurried, and most of all local, committed to the smells and sights and sounds of her home state. 鈥擟.F.

Iowa: Wildland Sentinel: Field Notes from an Iowa Conservation Officer, by Erika Billerbeck (2020)

If you鈥檙e curious about what wilderness looks like in a state that鈥檚 97 percent privately owned, try this fresh memoir by a rookie law enforcement ranger. 鈥淚 am an Iowa native,鈥� Billerbeck writes. 鈥淏ut as a newly badged officer, standing in the bed of my pickup for a better view, 鈥� I found myself wondering if I would be able to find the natural resources I was sworn to safeguard.鈥� Her work includes everything from arresting drunken boaters to chasing down wayward skunks. 鈥淚 once read a memoir by a game warden who seemingly emerged from the womb with a badge on his chest and a gun on his hip,鈥� she writes. 鈥淢y story is much less heroic.鈥� Still, there may be no better way to get to know Iowa鈥檚 wild spaces than riding shotgun in Billerbeck鈥檚 truck. 鈥擡.H.A.

Bonus Read: (1991), novelist Jane Smiley鈥檚 prizewinning reimagination of King Lear on a 20th-century farm.

Kansas: Grassland: The History, Biology, Politics, and Promise of the American Prairie, by Richard Manning (1997)

Many travelers speed through the grassy expanses of the Great Plains, but in doing so they miss a landscape both beautiful and powerful. In Grassland, Richard Manning explores the history of these vast landscapes, their rich biology, the myriad misguided efforts to tame them, and the growing understanding of our need to adapt our lives to the grasslands rather than try to get them to adapt to our agendas. Grassland will compel and haunt you with its appreciation of the unique character and experience of the plains. 鈥淭he solitude of the prairie is like no other,鈥� he writes, 鈥渢he feeling of being hidden and alone in a grassland as open as the sea.鈥� 鈥擩onathan Beverly

Kentucky: Appalachian Elegy, by bell hooks (2012)

In a state that rightfully claims Wendell Berry as its bard and eco-conscience, another writer has harvested poetry just as connected to the land. Writer and feminist bell hooks started her journey in the isolated foothills of Appalachia; while her path took her to Stanford University and New York, she returned to teach at Berea College in eastern Kentucky, where she lived until her death in 2021. The poems here give voice to generations of Black people who took refuge in rural mountain pockets and made them their own. 鈥淭o be from the backwoods was to be part of the wild,鈥� hooks writes in the book鈥檚 introduction. 鈥淲here we lived, black folks were as much a part of the wild, living in a natural way on the earth, as white folks. All backwoods folks were poor by material standards; they knew how to make do. They were not wanting to tame the wild, in themselves or in nature.鈥� 鈥擡.H.A.

Louisiana: The Tin Roof Blowdown, by James Lee Burke (2007)

Hurricane Katrina did more than expose the social fractures of low-lying New Orleans and the ineptitude of the federal disaster response. The 2005 storm and its aftermath also inspired some of the best nonfiction of the 21st century. Our pick is fictional, but no less true: James Lee Burke brings back beloved Iberia Parish detective Dave Robicheaux in The Tin Roof Blowdown, which The New York Times called 鈥渢he definitive crime novel about Hurricane Katrina.鈥� Robicheaux finds himself neck-deep in corrupt muck populated by looters, trapped church parishioners, and a missing priest. Read those nonfiction books for their masterful journalistic accounts; read this for the human tide that flows underneath. 鈥擡.H.A.

Bonus Read: (2006), the must-read account of the disaster by historian鈥攁nd Katrina evacuee鈥擠ouglas Brinkley.

Maine: The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit, by Michael Finkel (2017)

Ever since Henry David Thoreau struck off for the Maine Woods in 1864, we have turned to this wilderness to both find and lose ourselves. At 20, Christopher Knight made an arguably childish decision to get lost in these storied woods in the spring of 1986. Then he decided to stay that way for 27 years, not by surviving off the land but by raiding nearby vacation cabins. He was a modern-day robber-hermit who never took more than he needed and almost always locked up after he was done 鈥渟hopping.鈥� With spare, precise prose, Finkel lays a case that Knight, who had only two conversations during his time in the woods, is a uniquely Maine phenomenon, combining a sincere need to be left alone with the local live-and-let-live sensibility that allowed for such an existence. 鈥淗e does not care if people fail to understand what he did in the woods, 鈥� writes Finkel. 鈥淗e didn鈥檛 do it for us to understand. He wasn鈥檛 trying to prove a point. There was no point.鈥� Knight was, in his own words, 鈥渃ompletely free.鈥� 鈥擶. Hodding Carter

Maryland: Beautiful Swimmers: Watermen, Crabs, and the Chesapeake Bay, by William W. Warner (1976)

The Latin name for the Chesapeake blue crab, Callinectes sapidus, translates literally as 鈥渟avory beautiful swimmer.鈥� And this ode to Maryland鈥檚 Eastern Shore and its watermen is worthy of that name. Warner spent a year out with crabbers, and no piece of eelgrass or ritual of crab courtship escapes his notice. That鈥檚 because he treats the lives of these crustaceans, and the crabbers who follow them, with the utmost fascination and delight. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Beautiful Swimmers is indispensable reading about the Chesapeake Bay. 鈥擡.H.A.

Massachusetts: Upstream, by Mary Oliver (2016)

In her final book, Upstream, Mary Oliver muses with her classic quiet elegance on the transcendentalists before her and winds their stories with her own moments of awe in nature. Set in her cabin on Cape Cod, she talks about her small discoveries鈥攁 wounded gull, being unable to find the right words to describe a sunflower, a fox out on a frozen pond. Oliver reminds us to take that extra deep breath, to slow our step and be present in nature, which I would argue is the best adventure of all. 鈥擪yra Kennedy

Bonus Read: (2023), a fictional chronicle of one piece of western Massachusetts land and its inhabitants over the centuries, by Daniel Mason.

Michigan: Rivers of Sand: Fly Fishing Michigan & the Great Lakes Region, by Josh Greenberg (2014)

If you hear the words Michigan and trout, you鈥檒l probably think of Ernest Hemingway鈥檚 . But for my money, the best writing about fishing in Michigan is found in a guidebook: Rivers of Sand, by Josh Greenberg, who owns and runs Gates Au Sable Lodge on the famed Holy Waters of the Au Sable. Sure, it鈥檚 helped me catch more fish. But it鈥檚 also taught me how to be a better angler, which is a different thing. In an early chapter about fishing small creeks in the state, Greenberg stumbles onto a 20-inch monster cruising in a pool. Before even trying to catch the thing, he writes, 鈥淭his trout, on this mysterious little Michigan stream, in the day, in the sunlight, was priceless in the way only nature can be priceless.鈥� That鈥檚 the way I want to think about fishing: as a pursuit rather than an activity, a journey rather than a destination. And Greenberg is exactly the guy I want to guide me. 鈥擩onah Ogles

Minnesota: A Year in the Wilderness: Bearing Witness in the Boundary Waters, by Dave and Amy Freeman (2017)

In 1956, Sigurd F. Olson published , a compilation of lyrical essays celebrating four seasons in northern Minnesota鈥檚 Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and the adjacent Quetico Provincial Park in Ontario. The book was the gold standard of north-woods nature writing for more than half a century. In 2017, married couple Dave and Amy Freeman furthered that tradition, bringing a unique perspective to the Boundary Waters鈥� beautiful solitude through an entire year of sleeping, eating, paddling, portaging, dogsledding, and camping within the confines of the one-million-acre wilderness. More important, they set out to accomplish a specific mission鈥攖o raise awareness of the threats that proposed sulfide-ore copper mines pose to the region. 鈥淭he year taught us to slow down,鈥� Amy writes. 鈥淲e were able to notice all these tiny miracles happening all around us that we would have missed if we were focused on racking up the miles.鈥� 鈥擲tephanie Pearson

Bonus Reads: The Indigenous histories by Ojibwe Red Lake brothers David and Anton Treuer, including Anton鈥檚 (2015) and David鈥檚 (2019).

Mississippi: Salvage the Bones, by Jesmyn Ward (2011)

In Jesmyn Ward鈥檚 seminal novel about a family loving and fighting its way through life in southern Mississippi in the days before Hurricane Katrina, nature weaves its way into, out of, over, and through her characters as a living, breathing being. The inescapable red dirt is at once a parasite invading their very pores and a friend comforting and enveloping. It鈥檚 in every step Esch, the pregnant adolescent听protagonist, takes and in every breath she breathes. Nature is a mother striding alongside Esch and her brothers as they dart into and through danger鈥攕ometimes holding their hands, sometimes swatting them: 鈥渁ll I can hear is the pine trees shushing each other, the oak trees bristling, the magnolia leaves hard and wide so that they sound like paper plates clattering when the wind hits them,鈥� writes Ward. In Salvage the Bones, her lyrical talent dissolves the separation between humans and nature. 鈥擶.H.C.

Missouri: Mississippi Solo, by Eddy L. Harris (1988)

Ever since Mark Twain worked as a steamboat pilot in the 1850s, the Mississippi River has sparked boyhood dreams. Eddy Harris certainly had them; growing up in St. Louis, he鈥檇 always wanted to travel the river from source to sea. In other ways, he wasn鈥檛 the usual river bard. He didn鈥檛 know how to paddle, for one; and he鈥檚 Black. Still, in 1985, at age 30, he launched a canoe in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, bound for New Orleans, a journey, he writes, from 鈥渨here there ain鈥檛 no black folks to where they still don鈥檛 like us much.鈥� Harris dodges barges, wild dogs, and locals with shotguns, but mostly encounters kindness and generosity. Twenty-five years later, he repeated the adventure in a trip he joked about as 鈥渙ld black man meets old man river.鈥� This more recent trip was an 鈥渁nti-fear鈥� journey, he said, to show Black Americans that nature belongs to them as much as anyone. The resulting 2017 documentary, River to the Heart, is a big-hearted bookend to one of the best travelogues ever written about America鈥檚 heartland. 鈥擡.H.A.

Montana: Fools Crow, by James Welch (1986)

There are plenty of great books about Montana, including Norman Maclean鈥檚 beloved A River Runs Through It and Young Men and Fire. But consider the lesser known classic Fools Crow, a 1986 novel by Blackfoot and A鈥檃ninin (Gros Ventre) author James Welch. Set in the 1870s, a young man called White Man鈥檚 Dog comes of age in a time when his culture and people are under siege. His homeland is fecund and beautiful: mountains and plains populated with ample wildlife and threaded by generous rivers. But white settlers are overtaking Blackfoot lands, the U.S. government is launching bloody military campaigns, and smallpox encroaches. In this book, Welch offers a window into a different Montana, before massive national parks, wealthy ski-resort towns, and white ranchers came to define the area. 鈥擜bigail Barronian

Bonus Read: (2017), Nate Blakeslee鈥檚 compelling, affecting biography of legendary Yellowstone alpha female O-Six.

Nebraska: Zoo Nebraska, by Carson Vaughan (2019)

This stranger-than-fiction tale unspools the story of Dick Haskin and his crazy dream of running a primate research center in his tiny hometown of Royal, Nebraska. It鈥檚 got everything: unexpected twists, small-town intrigue, and, of course, violent chimpanzees on the loose. Guilty watchers of Tiger King know how easy it would be to play it all for lurid comedy. But Vaughan sees something deeper. Haskin had been planning to go to Rwanda to study under primatologist Dian Fossey when poachers murdered her. Instead, he acquired Reuben, a young male chimp, and bought a trailer home on the edge of town to keep his research dream alive. With a detective鈥檚 eye for detail and an unerring ear for dialogue, Vaughan reveals Haskin鈥檚 undoing for what it really is: a strange, ineffable, and heartbreaking emblem of what it means to live in鈥攁nd feel circumscribed by鈥攖he narrow bounds of a dying town. 鈥擳ed Genoways

Bonus Read: Ted Genoways鈥檚 own book, , about the modern complexities of working a traditional American family farm (2017).

Nevada: Savage Dreams: A Journey into the Hidden Wars of the American West, by Rebecca Solnit (2000)

Rebecca Solnit鈥檚 second book explores what she has dubbed the 鈥渉idden wars of the American West,鈥� including the violent expulsion of the Ahwahnechee tribe from California’s Yosemite Valley in 1851 and the nuclear testing at the Nevada Test Site beginning a hundred years later. Those tests exposed 鈥渄ownwinders鈥� in the Great Basin to the fallout from hundreds of nuclear explosions over a two-year period. Nevada, with its wide-open desertscapes, colorful skies, and remote peaks, cannot be understood without an honest look at how the land and people fell victim to the nation鈥檚 quest for global military supremacy. But Solnit鈥檚 capacious writing brings both the ravages and the beauty of Nevada to life. The book, a combination of criticism, reportage, and historical research, helps the reader place these events in the longer history and myth-making of the American West, and raises questions about how we relate to both wild and developed landscapes. 鈥擜.B.

New Hampshire: A Walk in the Woods, by Bill Bryson (1998)

A Walk in the Woods is to the Appalachian Trail what Wild is to the Pacific Crest Trail鈥攁 book-turned-movie that sent hordes of hikers in its bootprints鈥攐nly a whole lot funnier. While Bryson began his hike in Georgia and ended up walking only about 40 percent of the route, the Granite State is what inspired the whole idea. Freshly settled in Dartmouth after years living in England, Bryson happened upon a path leading into the forest. Oh gee, it鈥檚 the AT! But readers鈥� groans will turn quickly to snorts during a Monty Python-esque set piece at the Dartmouth Co-op with a gear-splaining sales clerk: 鈥淗e would say things to me like: 鈥楴ow this has a 70-denier high-density abrasion-resistant fly with a ripstop weave. On the other hand, and I鈥檒l be frank with you here鈥欌�攁nd he would lean to me and reduce his voice to a low, candid tone as if disclosing that it had once been arrested in a public toilet with a sailor鈥斺�榯he seams are lap felled rather than bias taped and the vestibule is a little cramped.鈥欌�� This scene alone is worth the price of admission, and thankfully it鈥檚 just the beginning. 鈥擡.H.A.

New Jersey: The Meadowlands: Wilderness 国产吃瓜黑料s at the Edge of a City, by Robert Sullivan (1998)

John McPhee鈥檚 The Pine Barrens, a magisterial account of that million-acre tract of forest in southern New Jersey, might seem the logical pick here, but I would suggest that Sullivan鈥檚 unexpected foray into 鈥渢he world鈥檚 greatest industrial swamp鈥� more compellingly captures the always fraught human-nature nexus in the Garden State. Living in the Pacific Northwest, with snowcapped mountains at his disposal, Manhattan native Sullivan decides to come home to explore鈥攐n foot, on car, on kayak鈥攁 landscape that haunted his boyhood. Where, as Sullivan notes, the first settlers would have found animal life 鈥渃omparable to the number of cars on the Turnpike on a Friday night before a holiday,鈥� its marshy recesses became a sordid Superfund symbol for environmental degradation (with the disposal of everything from PCBs to, reputedly, any number of mobsters)听and a gritty, forlorn backdrop to Springsteen, The Sopranos, and the rest of the Jersey mythos.听 鈥淭here are real hills in the Meadowlands,鈥� Sullivan writes, in one of my favorite sentences, 鈥渁nd there are garbage hills.鈥� Today, the ever evolving Meadowlands, after decades of cleanup efforts, has become a favored habitat for birds, with nearly 300 species recorded. Not bad for the swamps of Jersey. 鈥擳om Vanderbilt

New Mexico: Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya (1972)

The Land of Enchantment is so rich in literary tradition鈥擨ndigenous, Hispanic, and Anglo鈥攖hat we had a hard time choosing (and we don鈥檛 say that just because many of 国产吃瓜黑料鈥檚 editors live in Santa Fe). Anaya weaves many of those threads together in the story of Antonio, a Chicano boy in 1950s Santa Rosa navigating a universe of Spanish Catholicism, Indigenous tradition, and ambient magic. The title character, the curandera, or healer, Ultima, is 鈥渁 repository of Spanish, Mexican, and Native American teachings,鈥� Anaya wrote in a new introduction in 1999. 鈥淲ith her guidance Antonio begins to understand that the river, the open plain, and all of nature is imbued with spirit. Everything is alive; God is everywhere.鈥� By now a beloved coming-of-age classic, Bless Me, Ultima has been banned and even burned for what was seen as antireligious messaging. But its hold on readers has endured. 鈥擡.H.A.

Bonus Read: (2022), Navajo author Ramona Emerson鈥檚 chilling debut about a Din茅 crime scene photographer who can鈥檛 escape the ghosts of the victims whose deaths she documents.

New York: My Side of the Mountain, by Jean Craighead George (1959)

I was already a semi-feral child in the New York suburbs by the time I read this classic 1959 novel about 12-year-old Sam Gribley, who runs away from his family in New York City to live off the land in the Catskills with a falcon, a weasel, and other wild friends for company. It鈥檚 meant to be read by kids about the age of its protagonist and has had an outsize impact on generations of civilization-cramped children, serving as a gateway drug to a lifelong addiction to the natural world. The book is full of lessons in grit, resourcefulness, and self-sufficiency, from trapping animals to making acorn pancakes. But it is the direct language that connects most with its young readers, allowing them to imagine a life lived closer to nature鈥檚 rhythms. 鈥淪pring is terribly exciting when you鈥檙e living right in it,鈥� Sam observes. A Washington Post reporter before turning to books, George often said she was channeling through Sam her own childhood memories, including a desire to escape the confines of society. 鈥擳im Sohn

North Carolina: The Last American Man, by Elizabeth Gilbert (2002)

Eight years before Eat, Pray, Love made her a celebrity, Elizabeth Gilbert wrote this classic about the kind of self-reliant frontiersman we don鈥檛 tend to see anymore. 鈥淏y the time Eustace Conway was 6 years old,鈥� she writes, 鈥渉e could throw a knife accurately enough to nail a chipmunk to a tree. By the time he was 10, he could kill a running squirrel at fifty feet with a bow and arrow. When he turned 12, he went into the forest alone and empty-handed for a week.鈥� The first time Gilbert met him, he turned up in New York in a handmade buckskin suit. Some of Conway鈥檚 comments haven鈥檛 aged well; he told Gilbert he wanted a woman to bear him many children and read out diary excerpts detailing his ardent lovemaking. But dang, this man is tough, a character right out of The History Channel鈥檚 Mountain Men. And indeed, Eustace Conway has a recurring role on the show. 鈥擡.H.A.

Bonus Read: (2016), Robert Moor鈥檚 examination of how we find our way, from ant trails to Cherokee footpaths.

North Dakota: The Night Watchman, by Louise Erdrich (2020)

North Dakota is Erdrich country, and there鈥檚 no better place to start than this Pulitzer Prize鈥搘inning novel, the closest to her own life. A member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, Erdrich based the plot on her maternal grandfather, Patrick Gorneau, the chief of the tribe鈥檚 advisory council and a night watchman at the local jewel-bearing plant, where tiny slivers were shaved off rubies and diamonds for watch and airplane parts. In 1954鈥攖rue story鈥攖he U.S. government announced that the Turtle Mountain Band would cease to exist, part of its midcentury policy of 鈥渢ermination.鈥� But after Gorneau testified before Congress, the tribe won a reprieve. As Erdrich writes in the novel鈥檚 addendum, 鈥淚f you should ever doubt that a series of dry words in a government document can shatter spirits and demolish lives, let this book erase that doubt. Conversely, if you should be of the conviction that we are powerless to change those dry words, let this book give you heart.鈥� 鈥擡.H.A.

Bonus Read: (2020), by Sierra Crane Murdoch鈥攁n unflinching true-crime account of Arikara woman Lissa Yellow Bird鈥檚 redemptive quest to find out who killed an oil worker on tribal land.

Ohio: The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, by Dan Egan (2017)

People don鈥檛 picture water when they picture Ohio. But there鈥檚 a lot of it there to explore, starting with the 94,000 square miles鈥� worth that make up the Great Lakes. As Dan Egan reveals in his masterful The Death and Life of the Great Lakes, these troubled waters strike many as an environmental success story鈥攐r at least as a huge improvement over the lakes鈥� industrialized low point, most famously evoked by Cleveland and its Cuyahoga River fire in 1969. Today, Egan notes, the Cuyahoga 鈥渄raws more fishing lines than punch lines.鈥� But underneath the sparkling blue surface, new ecological threats lurk. Take Toledo, where residents drained local swamps and created rich farmland but also toxic algae blooms that threaten Lake Erie and the area鈥檚 water supply. Egan tells a riveting, dispiriting story of canoes and lake trout and 20-foot waves鈥攂ut, most of all, of humanity and its unintended consequences. 鈥擟.F.

Oklahoma: The Way to Rainy Mountain, by N. Scott Momaday (1969)

Kiowa author Momaday covers several states in his work鈥攈e spent most of his life in Arizona and New Mexico鈥攂ut none so elementally as his birth state of Oklahoma. Part history, part memoir, and part folklore, The Way to Rainy Mountain explores his own identity as he follows the tribe鈥檚 migrations from Montana across the Great Plains and its ultimate forced relocation to a reservation in southwestern Oklahoma. There, at the foot of Rainy Mountain, he visits his grandmother鈥檚 grave. 鈥淭o look upon that landscape in the early morning, with the sun at your back, is to lose the sense of proportion,鈥� he writes. 鈥淵our imagination comes to life, and this, you think, is where Creation was begun.鈥� 鈥擡.H.A.

Oregon: Astoria: Astor and Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire: A Tale of Ambition and Survival on the Early American Frontier, by Peter Stark (2014)

Peter Stark鈥檚 Astoria: Astor and Jefferson鈥檚 Lost Pacific Empire tells the story of John Jacob Astor鈥檚 plan to monopolize the global fur trade in 1810. It all hinged on establishing a trading post at the mouth of the Columbia River鈥攑resent-day Astoria. Astor sent two expeditions: one by sea and the other overland, on a route established two years earlier by Lewis and Clark. Astor was a poor judge of leaders, and both parties were almost comically doomed from the beginning鈥攚hich is precisely what makes this book such a good read. With so much infighting, paranoia, double-crossing, madness, and starvation, there鈥檚 plenty of action to fuel Stark鈥檚 dueling narratives. 鈥淎mericans love heroes and winners,鈥� writes Stark, explaining why the remarkable story has been lost to history. 鈥淚n Astoria, there are few clear-cut winners and no unblemished heroes.鈥� 鈥擟hris Keyes

Pennsylvania: Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America, by Eliza Griswold (2018)

鈥淭his is the story of those Americans,鈥� Eliza Griswold writes, 鈥渨ho鈥檝e wrestled with the price their communities have long paid so the rest of us can plug in our phones.鈥� It鈥檚 the story of fracking, the story of the fouled water and dying farm animals that lie underneath our domestic energy policy. And it鈥檚 the story of two towns of rural conservatives who find themselves sickened by the fracking boom, including a single mother who takes her fight against Range Resources all the way to the Supreme Court. Griswold is a poet and global correspondent who has seen firsthand how 鈥渟ome of the poorest people in the world live on some of the most resource-rich land.鈥� Amity and Prosperity, which won the Pulitzer Prize, is a beautiful cry for environmental justice. 鈥擡.H.A.

Rhode Island: Spartina, by John Casey (1989)

The New York Times called this 鈥減ossibly the best American novel about going fishing since The Old Man and the Sea, maybe even Moby-Dick.鈥� Dick Pierce, a commercial fisherman, is barely supporting his family pulling lobster and quahogs out the salt marshes near Narragansett Bay. That hasn鈥檛 stopped him from sinking thousands into a half-built 50-foot boat in his yard, his ticket to big-time fishing and a money pit that is the abiding passion of his life. Spartina, named after the marsh grass that thrives in the area鈥檚 salty black soil, does finally make it into the water鈥nd straight into a hurricane that sparks a reckoning in Pierce鈥檚 life back on shore. 鈥擡.H.A.

South Carolina: The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man鈥檚 Love Affair with Nature, by J. Drew Lanham (2017)

In October 2022, Drew Lanham was awarded a MacArthur 鈥済enius grant,鈥� proof that the secret is out on one of the South鈥檚 most valuable writers and conservationists. Growing up in rural Edgefield County like generations of Lanhams before him, he surprises wild turkey and foxes on the same land where his ancestors worked as slaves. 鈥淚n me,鈥� he writes, 鈥渢here is the red of miry clay, the brown of spring floods, the gold of ripening tobacco. I am, in the deepest sense, colored.鈥� He wrestles with that history, as well as being that 鈥渞are bird,鈥� a Black birder in a white conservation world. A professor at Clemson University, Lanham writes that his home county still has a mixed and powerful draw. 鈥淒ouble standards are as common as ragweed and persistent as kudzu across the region,鈥� he writes. 鈥淏ut Edgefield was still my refuge, primarily because it was and is a sanctuary for creatures that aren鈥檛 subject to the prejudice of men.鈥� 鈥擡.H.A.

South Dakota: Buffalo for the Broken Heart, by Dan O鈥橞rien (2001)

Some years after buying the Broken Heart Ranch in South Dakota, author, environmentalist, and rancher O鈥橞rien stumbled on a radical notion in the wake of years of poor grazing conditions that decimated his cattle herd: bison. The natural inhabitants of the Great Plains are these woolly giants, not his overbred Angus cattle, which were destroying the land through their intense grazing habits. So he set off to transform his cattle ranch into a working bison preserve, which he subsequently chronicles in this impassioned memoir about the emotional struggles, backbreaking work, and redemptive exhilaration of seeing the effort through. O鈥橞rien is an award-winning novelist, so his prose shines, and he also understands the High Plains better than most. Today, O鈥橞rien has an even larger, 9,000-acre ranch鈥攁long with grazing leases on another 24,000 acres鈥攁nd through bison ranching he has increased biodiversity on the land, helped capture vast amounts of carbon dioxide through the protection of native grasslands, and produced some of the healthiest red meat on the planet. 鈥擱yan Krogh

Tennessee: The Forest Unseen: A Year鈥檚 Watch in Nature, by David George Haskell (2012)

Tennessee鈥檚 Cumberland Plateau is home to uncounted bluffs, gorges, waterfalls, swimming holes鈥攁nd the University of the South, a.k.a. Sewanee, a small bastion of literary all-stars, including biologist David George Haskell. In The Forest Unseen, the naturalist charts the comings and goings in a single square meter of old-growth forest over the course of a year. This is boring only in the way that Zen is boring. Yes, you sit, but it can be transformative. And indeed, Haskell鈥檚 inspiration is the Tibetan mandala, in which, he writes, 鈥渢he whole universe is seen through a circle of sand.鈥� In this particular galaxy, warblers, shrews, and salamanders (鈥渢he sharks of the leaf litter鈥�) move as giant predators while plants deploy their own strategies to survive. 鈥淭he mandala is a mulloskan Serengeti,鈥� Haskell writes. 鈥淗erds of coiled grazers move across the open savannah of lichens and mosses.鈥� He watches as a snail 鈥渉eads toward El Capitan, or a smallish rock, depending on how you see the world鈥�.Gravity blinks and the animal flows impossibly upward.鈥� A tiny little Alex Honnold muscling its way up a sheer rock face. 鈥擡.H.A.

Bonus Read: (2012), Barbara Kingsolver鈥檚 readable bestseller about climate, butterflies, and a small Appalachian farm.

Texas: Goodbye to a River, by John Graves (1959)

The writer John Graves lost the sight in one eye to an enemy grenade during World War II, taught English at universities in the U.S., and lived abroad in Europe and Mexico. Then, in 1957, he returned home to care for his dying father. In November of that year, he took what he thought would be a final canoe trip down the Brazos River, which was slated for several dams that would drown the riversides he鈥檇 explored since childhood. Graves鈥檚 account of that trip turned into Goodbye to a River, which weaves the narrative of the voyage with a natural and cultural history of the stream. The book was nominated for a National Book Award, and it helped stop most of the proposed dam projects. Although limited at times by the macho voice that prevailed in that era of Texas letters, Goodbye to a River is ultimately a book about trying to know yourself better by adventuring alone into the remote reaches of the place you come from. As Graves puts it: 鈥淥ne river, seen right, may well be all rivers that flow to the sea.鈥� 鈥擶ill Bostwick

Bonus Read: (2021), Darcie Little Badger鈥檚 National Book Award鈥搉ominated YA novel about a Lipan Apache girl fighting for the environment with the help of some friends in the spirit world.

Utah: Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place, by Terry Tempest Williams (1991)

The deserts of Utah are unlike anywhere else, beautiful and harsh, full of the feeling that everything you admire could kill you. Terry Tempest Williams鈥檚 book-length essay, Refuge, holds that contrast, too. Williams is a fifth-generation Utahn, and in the mid-eighties, when her mother and other women in her family were dying of breast cancer (because, she suspects, they were exposed to atomic bomb tests the government staged in the southwestern deserts), and her favorite place, the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, was flooding from mismanagement of water in the desert, she dove into the question of how to live in and love a place deeply altered by humans. Refuge, like the landscape in which it鈥檚 based, is both gorgeous and harrowing. Williams makes that edge of disaster feel very close. But she also leans into the beauty of living in a harsh, human-changed landscape, a stance that feels highly relevant in Utah today. 鈥擧eather Hansman

Vermont: Long Distance: Testing the Limits of Body and Spirit in a Year of Living Strenuously, by Bill McKibben (2000)

Most of us know his climate work, but Bill McKibben is also an avid cross-country ski racer. At age 37, the spindly writer embarks upon what he calls 鈥渁 process of jockification.鈥� A self-described wimp in childhood, he devotes a year of rigorous training to transform himself from an avid amateur endurance skier into a competitive cross-country racer. 鈥淧artly it was pure selfishness,鈥� he writes. 鈥淎fter a decade as an environmental writer and activist, I needed a break from failing to save the world. But mostly it was curiosity that drove me. By year’s end I hoped I’d have more sense of what life lived through the body felt like.鈥� Along the way, however, he is faced with the failings of the body when his father is diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor. One of the most personal of McKibben鈥檚 18 books, Long Distance reveals the all-too-human athlete behind the climate warrior. 鈥淚 came seeking sweat,鈥� he writes, 鈥渁nd only found enlightenment.鈥� 鈥擡.H.A.

Bonus Read: (2005), by Laura Waterman, about the author鈥檚 husband鈥檚 choice to leave the homestead and end his life by freezing on Mount Lafayette in 2000.

Virginia: Chesapeake Requiem: A Year with the Watermen of Vanishing Tangier Island, by Earl Swift (2018)

Think of this and Beautiful Swimmers, our Maryland choice, as a matched pair. Tangier Island, a speck in the Chesapeake Bay, is home to fewer than 500 people, a tight-knit community that has been anchored there since before the Revolutionary War. But the island has lost two thirds of its landmass since 1850, and thanks to climate change, the famed crabbing outpost is in danger of being overwhelmed by the waves. 国产吃瓜黑料 contributor Swift chronicles the fishermen and -women over several decades, as the sea literally takes their forebears from their graves. 鈥淚 consider the [head]stones for a long moment,鈥� he writes, 鈥渨ondering whether the people bearing those names ever imagined that the bay would one day claim all but these scant traces of their existence鈥攖hat it would plunder their homes, their entire village, then come for what remained of them.鈥� 鈥擡.H.A.

Bonus Read: (2023), Lauren Groff鈥檚 raw survival novel of a young servant girl鈥檚 flight from a colony into the wilderness in the 1600s.

Washington: The Boys in the Boat, by Daniel James Brown (2013)

Turn to this for a fun, engagingly written story about the University of Washington men鈥檚 crew team in Depression-era Seattle, Washington. The climax is the boys鈥� gold-medal race in the pre鈥揥orld War II Third Reich (not a spoiler; it鈥檚 based on real events), but below the plot of races and training are descriptions of the Emerald City and its broader region that still ring true. Granted, an enterprising lad can鈥檛 pay his way through the University of Washington (as protagonist Joe Rantz does) by working at logging camps on the Olympic Peninsula over the summer anymore. But quiet mornings on Lake Washington before practice evoke the same feeling that walking along the Montlake Cut does today: that the city isn鈥檛 so much surrounded by a beautiful natural environment as interwoven with it. 鈥擬iyo McGinn

Bonus Read: The beautiful memoir by fly-fisherman and Patagonia ambassador Dylan Tomine, (2012), of a year of foraging with his young family on an island in the Salish Sea.

Washington, D.C.: Spring in Washington, by Louis J. Halle (1947)

My hometown is better known for producing self-serving memoirs than great tales of adventure. The exception is this wondrous narrative, penned by a disgruntled federal bureaucrat. Bored with his job, Louis Halle became an explorer of the urban wilderness, sallying forth on his bicycle through the woods of Rock Creek Park and along the tidal fringes of the Potomac, counting mergansers and osprey in its hidden marshes before circling back toward his desk at the State Department. Spring in Washington chronicles the changes he observed over the first six months of 1945, which also happened to be the final chapter of World War II. The war goes unmentioned, but the metaphor of renewal and rebirth hangs on every page as he watches the natural world reawaken around him. Halle has been compared to Thoreau, but he was not turning his back on society; Spring in Washington is about learning how to see what is right under our noses. 鈥淚 must get out of my cell, out of doors, out into the open world where I can see again,鈥� he writes. 鈥擝.G.

West Virginia: The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia, by Emma Copley Eisenberg (2020)

In the summer of 1980, two young women hitchhiking to the annual Rainbow Gathering were found murdered in a forest clearing in Pocahontas County, West Virginia. Part true crime, part memoir, The Third Rainbow Girl delves into West Virginia鈥檚 proudly hardscrabble mountain communities, into questions of misogyny and sexuality, and into what made the victims, and so many others in these mountains, want to drop out. The title refers both to a woman who decided not to accompany her friends to the festival and to Eisenberg herself, who has spent years visiting or living in Pocahontas County. 鈥淭here is a deep awareness here of what the rest of America thinks a life should look like鈥攖he newest model, the fanciest vacation, the highest paying job with the best retirement plan鈥攁nd, among many, a rejection of that life.鈥� 鈥擡.H.A.

Wisconsin: Going Somewhere: A Bicycle Journey Across America, by Brian Benson (2014)

I picked up this memoir in the wobbly time after college graduation, when I, like Benson鈥檚 narrative self, was scrounging ideas for how to scaffold my hazy future. I liked his plan: to bike across America with a new partner, pedaling west from his hometown in northern Wisconsin. It didn鈥檛 take many pages for me to fall into fantasy, fixating on how to experience the world they cycled through. Because I had never been to Wisconsin before鈥攏or, somehow, read much about it鈥攎y first reaction to the lush detail was skepticism. How had I missed that you could 鈥渞ead a book on a bed of pine duff鈥� or eat blueberries beside a lake 鈥渘estled in a carpet of coniferous bog鈥�? Though Going Somewhere unspools across America, it鈥檚 the first third of the book, in Benson鈥檚 home state, that鈥檚 lingered with me. I鈥檝e since dog-eared the pages as an ad hoc guide for my own hiking and cross-country ski adventures there. It鈥檚 a joy to read about a place, but it鈥檚 a thrill when the words compel you to put the book down, get out a map, and start planning a trip. 鈥擡rica Berry

Wyoming: Close Range: Stories, by Annie Proulx (1999)

It鈥檚 appropriate that Annie Proulx should have the last word after her mic-drop short story about the love between two cowboys, Brokeback Mountain, which appears in this collection. The master of short fiction lived in Wyoming for close to 20 years, on a ranch called Bird Cloud on the North Platte River. The hard men and women of her Wyoming stories鈥攖hree volumes in all鈥攕cratch out a living, freeze to death, fall in love, and fight the state鈥檚 scouring wind. That rough wind ultimately carried Proulx away as well. She sold Bird Cloud and returned to the New England of her childhood; now she lives in New Hampshire. 鈥擡.H.A.

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This year for our annual Best Towns package, we decided to go in search of the happiest towns in America. Why did we choose this focus? Because the world is still rethinking how to work and live post-pandemic, and many people are searching for that perfect place to move to where they just feel better. We’ve also long been inspired by the World Population Review’s annual and decided that the U.S., and our readers, could benefit from some similar advice.

The project was an enormous undertaking, and we turned to 国产吃瓜黑料 researchers Philip Kiefer and to sort through piles of facts and figures to land on these 15 towns. (See more on our exact methodology below.) Once we had the list of places, we asked our writers鈥攚ho are based around the country and have lived in most of these locales鈥攆or their expert reporting and intel.

What constitutes a happy town? It comes down to things like ample outdoor access for all, affordability, a safe environment, diversity, and freedom for residents to be who they are. Let us know what you think of our choices. 鈥�Associate managing editor Tasha Zemke and deputy editor and travel director Mary Turner

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At first, Mark Eaton thought Thomas Hacker was just a nice older man, a community leader who鈥檇 taken an interest in him. In the mid-1980s, Eaton was a Boy Scout in the suburbs of Chicago. Hacker was a schoolteacher and a deacon at his church. He was also the scoutmaster of Eaton鈥檚 troop, and they went on a lot of campouts together.

鈥淭he touching,鈥� Eaton would explain years later, 鈥渋t was pretty much every campout.鈥�

Eaton shares his story about Hacker鈥檚 abuse鈥攁nd the way it changed his life鈥攊n the new Netflix documentary , which chronicles the extensive history of child sex abuse and cover-ups in the Boy Scouts of America. Eaton鈥檚 abuse lasted years. Eventually, he earned the highest scouting rank, Eagle, and he was honored in an elaborate ceremony.

Hacker was there, too.

鈥淗ow do you take this award ceremony,鈥� Eaton says in the film, 鈥渁nd then try to tie it together with this hidden-in-plain-sight type of abuse that鈥檚 going on?鈥�

The film鈥檚 production team includes executive producer/director Brian Knappenberger and executive producer Orlando von Einsiedel, as well as co-executive producers Clare Tucker and Anna Murphy. This film comes a year after the Boy Scouts settled the largest sex-abuse lawsuit in history. More than 82,000 men said they鈥檇 been abused as children, and the organization, its insurance companies, and some churches that sponsored troops agreed to settle for a total of $2.46 billion. The Boy Scouts of America has also to the victims a number of times, and even moving forward in a way that will keep children safe.

The new film makes it clear that sexual abuse was a long-standing problem in the organization. Scouts Honor features journalist Patrick Boyle explaining the origin and nature of the Boy Scouts鈥� so-called 鈥渃onfidential files鈥濃�攔eferred to by critics as its 鈥減erversion files.鈥� The organization kept secret records going back decades documenting allegations of molestation.

Thomas Hacker鈥檚 name is in those files. Before he became a scoutmaster in Illinois, Hacker already had a criminal record across the state line in Indiana. According to the film, the Boy Scouts knew about the accusations in Indiana, and despite that allowed Hacker to relocate and reenter scouting鈥攖he way Catholic churches moved predatory priests from one place to another鈥攅mpowering Hacker to continue molesting children.

Hacker eventually confessed to sexually abusing hundreds of boys, sometimes dozens of times each. He died in prison at 81, but his crimes are still reverberating. Christopher Hurley, an attorney who has represented some 4,000 survivors who鈥檝e sued the Boy Scouts, is also interviewed in the new documentary. He says that Hacker might be the most prolific pedophile in American history.

Hurley took a deposition from Hacker before he died. In what might be the most chilling moment in the film, Hurley says that he asked Hacker, this rampant abuser, why he chose the Boy Scouts.

Hacker鈥檚 response: 鈥淏ecause they made it so easy.鈥�

I wasn鈥檛 a scout, but I have a two-year-old son who may decide he wants to join someday. Two of his uncles are Eagle Scouts. We live in Texas, where scouting still matters. Nationwide membership has plummeted over the past few years鈥攄own since 2019鈥攂ut the patriotism, the reverence, the focus on manners? Those things are big in Texas. So is the ethos of can-do individualism. The organization鈥檚 headquarters is in Irving, just outside Dallas.

My wife and I have talked a lot about what we might say if and when our son asks if he can join. We want him to grow up with the knowledge and skills to thrive outdoors, along with the confidence that kind of self-reliance yields. But it鈥檚 more than this. My family admires the values the organization espouses.

If you鈥檙e not familiar with the way it works: Every scout takes an oath to follow 鈥淪cout law.鈥� The code dictates that a scout must try at all times to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. My wife and I want our son to be all those things.

But of course the Boy Scouts of America hasn鈥檛 always lived up to those ideals. Millions of families trusted the organization with their children, and the Boy Scouts let down too many of them. The organization certainly wasn鈥檛 loyal or helpful to the boys who were preyed upon, especially when higher-ups learned about previous accusations against troop leaders but allowed them to remain in contact with children anyway. The courageous move would have been to confront these issues head-on, referring every allegation to law enforcement, and doing whatever it took to keep every scout safe. So the organization damn sure wasn鈥檛 brave.

The main whistleblower in Scouts Honor is Michael Johnson, Boy Scouts of America鈥檚 youth protection director from 2010 to 2020, who tells his story for the first time here. Before working for the Boy Scouts, Johnson was a police officer who investigated child sex crimes. (As a youth, he was also a scout.) Early on in the documentary, he鈥檚 asked why he took the job at the Boy Scouts in the first place.

鈥淒o you want the truth or what I was told to say?鈥� Johnson replies.

Scouting has always been protective of its image. Parents were told that the organization had a rigorous process for screening volunteers, but for years that wasn鈥檛 the case. The truth, as Johnson tells it, is that the Boy Scouts of America is by its very nature a high-risk organization. How many other groups allow adults nearly unsupervised access to children on overnight campouts, sometimes for days at a time? The rules explicitly instruct scouts to obey their adult leaders.

But instead of paying for extensive background checks, or creating serious protective protocols鈥攁t one point, a member of the organization鈥檚 youth protection task force was 鈥攖he Boy Scouts spent years focused on . It also publicly which requires extensive background checks of adult volunteers.

Steven McGowan, the former general counsel for the Boy Scouts, also appears in the documentary, as the organization鈥檚 most vocal defender. His office oversaw nationwide youth-protection efforts. He contends to this day that the institution itself didn鈥檛 abuse anyone, that it was a problem caused by 鈥渂ad people that got in,鈥� and that the Boy Scouts had no way of identifying abusers ahead of time.

McGowan also stresses the obvious point that child sex abuse isn鈥檛 a problem solely for scouting. He believes it鈥檚 a broader social illness, and that the issues facing the Boy Scouts are emblematic of something bigger that鈥檚 wrong in American society.

鈥淲e just happen to be the one with the deep pocket right now,鈥� he says.

A sizable swath of American society has fretted belligerently about absurd child sex-trafficking conspiracies鈥攖hink QAnon and Pizzagate鈥攂ut the truth about the Boy Scouts, which has been known for years, doesn鈥檛 seem to have landed on many radars. Even before the massive settlement last year, there was a series of criminal and civil cases going back decades. Anyone who wanted to could learn the scope of the abuse and the nature of the cover-ups.

For reasons that could surely fill a doctoral dissertation, our culture has a difficult time discussing male-on-male sexual abuse. Often the allegations come years鈥攅ven decades鈥攁fter the abuse occurs, and the people disclosing the details of these heinous crimes are now adults. Most of the men who share their stories in Scouts Honor are tall and broad-shouldered. It鈥檚 sometimes hard to remember that when the abuse was committed, they were just children, still growing physically and emotionally, desperately trying to figure out how the world works.

One man鈥檚 abuse lasted nine years, until he turned 18. Another says he was abused at a large gathering, about 200 yards away from his parents. Another was passed around by his troop鈥檚 leaders. And another was molested as he slept in a cabin at Boy Scout summer camp.

Despite the ubiquity of these incidents, however, American society barely has the vocabulary to talk about the issue. The phrase we use, sexual abuse, is a euphemism. It鈥檚 our way of not discussing the painful details of the assaults that were happening in tents, cars, and cabins all over America. These moments fundamentally reshape a child鈥檚 understanding of almost everything. They can fracture psyches for life. The men in Scouts Honor describe something vital being taken away, years of childhood stolen. Several describe thoughts of self-harm and suicide. The stories these men tell are horrific and heartbreaking.

Mark Eaton says he was in his forties before he understood that the abuse he suffered wasn鈥檛 his fault, that he was a victim of Thomas Hacker. For decades, he lived with a deep, abiding anger that bubbled to the surface with little provocation. He talks about punching holes in walls. He says that the shame he felt hurt his relationship with his parents. And like thousands of other men, he鈥檚 had to figure out a way through all of this.

In the end, insurance companies will pay the vast majority of the settlement with survivors. The Boy Scouts of America will cover of the total. The organization agreed to give up to $80 million worth of property, another $80 million in a promissory note, and about $20 million in cash. The settlement was part of a massive bankruptcy filing鈥攎ost of the litigation took place in a Delaware bankruptcy court鈥攁nd the organization is now taking steps to evolve. The Boy Scouts no longer have a policy prohibiting gay members, and some troops allow girls.

As for the survivors, nothing can undo what they鈥檝e experienced. And while $2.46 billion sounds like a lot, spread over 82,000 plaintiffs, the settlement averages less than $3,500 per person. Some of the attorneys stand to make a lot of money, but almost none of the victims will get enough to substantially change their lives. Contrary to Steven McGowan鈥檚 quip about the Boy Scouts鈥� deep pockets, the men who鈥檝e come forward are obviously doing it for reasons other than money.

鈥淚 wanna take some of the stigma away from it, from boys being victims,鈥� Eaton says at one point. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not the boy鈥檚 fault.鈥�

Men sharing their stories, attempting to face down society鈥檚 stigma so others won鈥檛 have to live with the same pain, there鈥檚 a word for behavior like that: brave.

Michael J. Mooney writes for a variety of publications, including The Atlantic and Texas Monthly.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly credited filmmaker Alex Gibney as the producer of the film.听

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