As a habit, people tend to bristle at changes that don’t pay out immediate dividends. In Boston, where I’m based, and a number of other American cities, the installation of bike lanes and dedicated bus lanes on streets—to reduce the number of vehicles and traffic accidents on the roads and to improve the local air quality—has been met with fierce backlash from residents and commuters who only see the inconveniences of the transition. When new housing is proposed, in cities and towns where there’s a critical shortage of housing, a lot of the opposition (though certainly not all of it) is fueled by the prospect of having to deal with the sound of construction, the presence of trucks, and the influx of new residents who will also need to use local resources. The horror!

This aversion to accepting short term “pain” for lasting rewards is chronically human, and these days, it seems to be holding us back from making changes that would yield a lot more health and happiness. This week, as I was driving up to Montreal for work and thinking about this rut that we seem stuck in, my thoughts wandered in the other direction. I tried to think of long game investments that cities, states, and nations are more open to embracing. The answer hit me like that first blast of springtime aromas—fresh mud, flowers, and grass—that lots of us experience sometime in April. Parks!

In a way, public parks are one of humankind’s greatest deceptions. While a handful of them are naturally occurring green spaces, preserved in their scraggly glory, most city and town parks are works of architecture. The woods, waters, rocks, and floral displays are installed and allowed years to grow and weather. The promise of their maturation and the escalating beauty of the parkland is usually enough to get residents on board with the breaking and seeding of the ground. As I chewed on this, waiting in a line of cars at a Vermont-Canada border crossing, I remember something in Montreal that I had read about years ago. Something BIG, in the literal sense. And I realized that I was on my way to a perfect city for seeing how patient we can be, when parks take shape.

Maybe you’ve had the curious experience of visiting a park that looks like a mound of bright green gumdrops, where the grass is abundant but the little trees have barely made it beyond their sapling stage. Then, you learn that this sun-soaked park used to be a town landfill. Transforming a trash disposal site into something more ecologically responsible isn’t a new idea. For Mind The Moss, I’ve sometimes visited parks like this, such as Berlin’s Volkspark Hasenheide, where people threw illegal raves in the woods during the early years of the pandemic. But in north central Montreal, in a residential neighborhood called Saint-Michel, a landfill greenification on a massive scale is now underway. And while the space has years to go, on its long journey from a dump site to a rustly green space, you can walk there today and see how far the land has come.

Frédéric-Back Park, named for the late Québécois animator behind an Oscar-winning short called The Man Who Planted Trees, was once a 474-acre limestone quarry. It was so thoroughly scraped out during the early 20th Century that by the time it shut down in 1963, the sprawling pit was over 230 feet deep and the city had to decide what to do with this gigantic hole in Montreal’s cityscape. By 1988, the quarry was being used as a landfill for garbage, construction debris, and even some of the snow plowed from streets during the winter. In less than a decade, 40 million tons of waste had already accumulated in the old quarry, and the city was trying to leverage some benefits from the odorous mass—like setting up an onsite power plant that could capture some of the biogases wafting out of the landfill and convert them into electricity. Somewhere up or down the chain of city planning, another idea was hatched. Why not convert the landfill into a public park, on the same epic scale as Parc Mont Royal or Jean-Drapeau?

From inception, this was no light undertaking. Mont Royal, Montreal’s woodsy crown jewel, weighs in at nearly 700 acres. It connects city neighborhoods and it has its own namesake mountain, which Frederick Law Olmsted identified as the natural heart of the park when he started designing it back in 1874. It’s worth noting the Olmstedian origins of Mont Royal, because it took a century for the park to become the thriving green space that many of us know today. Frédéric-Back Park—the old quarry turned landfill turned public park—has an even longer and steeper road ahead of it. Filling the space with soil, woodchips, compost, and sand was only the beginning. Over the last several years, 525 trees and 17,800 bushes, perennials, and herbaceous species have been planted here. But beneath it all, there’s still over 40 million tons of waste decomposing at a near-glacial pace and producing all kinds of troublesome gases.

The latter explained one of the most peculiar things that I noticed just after I entered Frédéric-Back Park from Rue Paul-Botet. Across the rolling plains of the park, more brown than green in early spring, I gazed at hundreds of white pods planted in the ground. Each was the size of a smartcar, and the number of pods scattered across the park gave the space an otherworldly energy. I felt as though I had stumbled across a piece of land being surreptitiously used by the alien colonists in The X-Files. Through a glass window on the nearest pod, I saw a valved pipe, which immediately suggested that these strange objects had an important utility, given how many there were. The pipes, I would soon learn, are connected to gas capturing wells that collect Methane and other fumes that continune to emerge from all the garbage! As to why each of the well casings is spherical, there may have been some intention to giving Frédéric-Back Park a distinictly extraterrestrial vibe. A barely-adolescent park with nearly 500 acres of space is going to look somewhat lunar to begin with. It’s a unique landscape that can feel both fertile and barren. The vivid color of the grass and flowers hints at greater things to come, but the lack of shade trees—especially in a northeastern city like Montreal—is a departure from the parks or conservation lands that many know.

And yet, the inherent weirdness of a young park and its limited natural amenities don’t seem to dampen public enthusiasm for these projects. Somehow, in this context, more of us are able to connect the dots between making substantial near term investments for our health and happiness, getting some strange early results, and one day, ending up in a much better place. Perhaps the indignity of living near an enormous landfill is bad enough that any proposed environment change is seen as an improvement, warts and all. Or maybe being able to walk in the rehabilitated space, even as the trees and plants remain in their infancy, is enough of a reward to stave off misgivings about the price tag of the project or the development timeline. By nature, millions of us crave more spaces where we can amble freely, without worrying about getting clipped by a car or being told that we have to buy something. New parks, including those derived from landfills and other sites of ecological desecration, are one way of addressing this need. Maybe this makes us predisposed to support something like Frédéric-Back Park.

Still, you have to wonder what life might be like if we applied this open-minded, long game thinking to other facets of daily living. Once again, Montreal offers a glimpse of what this can look like. The bike lanes there, for which is the city is globally renowned, are as much a foundational part of the city as the streets. They’re used throughout the year by cyclists, and the city even plows them. It would be easy to assume that when the lanes were proposed during the 1970s and 80s, Montrealers were somehow more open to the project due to the European influence throughout Quebec. But in fact, the bike lanes ran into much of the same opposition that rages in American cities today! The thought of having to share more of the roads with bikes was anathema to drivers. This is what happens in pretty much every city and town that tries to install bike lanes.

The difference in Montreal, however, was how generations of city leaders responded to the backlash. They refused to abandon the project, recognizing its long term perks for mobility and health. There were setbacks, delays, and other hurdles. But in the end, Montreal got its labyrinthine, protected bike lanes, and the city is better off for them; just as the development of green spaces like Frédéric-Back Park can be an upgrade for our surroundings. And as other place-making projects run into reactionary skepticism, I have to wonder if more mayors and governors in the U.S. might choose to take that second page from Montreal’s book; keeping their eyes on the prize, not retreating in the face of harsh pushback, and accepting that this may cost them another term but will benefit their constituents in the long haul. One can dream. But it would be nice.

CLICK HERE for a map of Frédéric-Back Park

I don’t know about the rest of you, but last week, I was really starting to get worried about spring in the northeast. The trees were still skeletal and barren, and the ground brought to mind the contents of an ashtray, except for some one-off flowers here and there. Maybe it’s a reflection of the times we live in, when a global economic collapse or World War III seems more feasible each week. After all, spring happens on different regional timelines each year. But as I drove to Southern Maine last Thursday for work, I couldn’t help but wonder, What if spring never arrived this year? What would that even be like? Living in a primarily brown and gray world that grew hotter each week?

Thankfully, in the 24 hours between my arrival in the Pine Tree State and my return to Massachusetts, the big event that many of us have been waiting for finally came. The greening. You know it by sight. The emergence of electric green grass on the ground lights up the landscape. It’s complimented by the sudden explosion of buds on all the tree branches, as if the understory and overstory have coordinated their schedules. In the grand scheme of the landscape, the sudden materialization of the green elements is a “small” event, but the psychological effect can be downright luminous. As I drove south on I-95, heading back to Boston, I could feel the nearby glow of the new grass from the freeway, and that’s not something one will be able to say in May—when the novelty of the grass has burned off—or in August, after the higher temperatures have turned much of that grass into yellowy straw. In the same way that being on the street in New Orleans and unexpectedly witnessing a jazz funeral might inspire you to chuck your plans and spend the rest of your day clubbing, I decided to make the most of the 2026 greening by making a side-trip to an environment where I could really admire it.

Mass Audubon’s Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary, a 1,955-acre expanse of marshes, meadows, and drumlins, is one of those places that looms enormous and aquamarine on maps, while occupying a much smaller and more specific place in my memory. As a kid, I logged some miles here with my parents and my sister, and we were particularly bowled over by a unique feature of the reservation called The Rockery. It’s a jumble of boulders and stones, assembled in the early 19th Century like a primordial LEGO set. It features multiple caves that you can walk through and winding stone stairs that lead to little decks and lookouts atop the rockery. It’s the sort of feature that feels tailored to parents who are trying to instill some appreciation of nature in their children, and I remembered its dank recesses and ingenious construction so vividly that I wanted to see what revisiting The Rockery felt like during the greening (and less than six months from my 38th birthday.) But this time, instead of hiking to The Rockery from the main visitor parking lot, which is located very close to the rocks, I opted for a longer and far more scenic alternative route, from a sleepy residential street in the town of Topsfield.

It was late afternoon on a Friday, which made it possible to park in the lot at Steward Elementary School, nestled in the pine woods on the north edge of the Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary. A few paces from here, up Perkins Row, a gate on the right marks the beginnings of a gentle trail through the trees, which I spent a good 15 minutes following. The abundant chirping overhead hinted at what was ahead, in the heart of the marshlands. But I was so taken by the green resonance of the ground and how it imbued the forest with energy that the birds barely registered. Transitioning into the refuge this way felt like a recalibration of my consciousness; making my eyes and ears more perceptive to signs of life that were popping up around me. And as I crossed a series of wooden bog bridges and boardwalks onto Averill’s Island—a wooded piece of land completely surrounded by floatsam and jetsam—I managed to glimpse a pair of tiny turtles sunning themselves on a rock beside the bridge. The texture and color of their shells, and their stoic posture, felt in concert with everything surrounding us.

Still, as much as I enjoy briefly letting go of everything by being outside, and thereby getting outside of my head, it’s only so long before a forgotten ember of information starts glowing again. As I gazed lovingly at the turtles and thought about their place in this localized natural world, I remembered another context with which a great deal of Americans got to know the word “greening;” a context that’s also worth revisiting.

Maybe this is borrowed nostalgia speaking, but the 1970s were a unique time when you could smoke on a plane, walk into a sex club in Times Square, or write an essay for The New Yorker and quickly land a publisher’s deal to turn that essay into a book. (This still happens for writers occasionally, but way less often than it used to.) And at the start of the decade, a Yale Law School professor named Charles A. Reich wrote a piece called “The Greening of America,” which read more like a manifesto. Harnessing the countercultural movements of the 1960s, the ongoing horrors of the Vietnam War, and the discontents of the Nixon presidency, Reich envisioned a sweeping change in the American consciousness; a “greening” of the barren individualism and corporate logic of America, from which a more collective, human-centered society would grow.

“There is a revolution under way,” Reich’s New Yorker essay began. “It is not like revolutions of the past. It has originated with the individual and with culture, and if it succeeds it will change the political structure only as its final act. It will not require violence to succeed, and it cannot be successfully resisted by violence. It is now spreading with amazing rapidity, and already our laws, institutions, and social structures are changing in consequence. Its ultimate creation could be a higher reason, a more human community, and a new and liberated individual. This is the revolution of the new generation.”

Having spent a great deal of time with students at Yale, who were among those on the frontlines of the counterculture movement—and being a gay man himself, a few years away from coming out—Reich was better equipped than most to see the roots of this possible revolution of American thinking and culture. When he turned the essay into the 1970 book, The Greening of America, he expanded on his thesis by identifying the three layers of consciousness that would soon change. The first two levels concern the lopsided economic system in the U.S., and how the average American sees themselves being part of that system…or outside of it. Today, that certainly feels prescient, given the number of Americans who have found themselves downsized and marginalized by corporations over the last several decades (and the great many who could soon join them, as the same companies turn to generative AI to automate more of their labor.)

The third layer—Consciousness III, as Reich calls it—is somewhat murkier, and also the most elemental. It’s the crossroads where an individual establishes a spiritual harmony with their natural environment. This, according to Reich, is where a release from the scarcity-minded thinking of consumerism may finally happen. “Once a person reaches Consciousness III, there is no returning to a lower consciousness,” Reich wrote. The implication here is a numbers game. As more Americans go, so goes their culture. In the early 1970s, after The Greening of America was published, the question of whether millions of peaceful and individual revolutions could change the course of things was the subject of debate in magazines and on talk shows. There were optimists, and also plenty of critics; some of whom dismissed the third chapter of Reich’s vision as naive.

I find myself somewhat on the fence. Or rather, on top of a floating log, which I had to gingerly creep across shortly after reaching the end of Averill’s Island and getting back onto a waterlogged piece of the Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary mainland. The vision that Reich laid out helped seed the ground for the environmentalist movements that emerged from the 1970s. Millions of Americans underwent a change of consiousness, so far as their relationship to the natural world was concerned. But all these atomized revolutions failed to generate something bigger and more sweeping. After all, the 70s were followed by Ronald Reagan’s presidency—a broadly supported steroid injection for American individualism, corporate greed, and structural poverty. In a way, we are living in the wreckage of Reich’ vision today. At least, that’s what a pessimist might say.

But as I made the final push to The Rockery, over a floating boardwalk where each of my footsteps sent panicky birds shooting out of the nearby tall grasses, I felt my own thoughts about the greening of America wandering down a more hopeful road. The Rockery itself seemed to encourage them. Here was this beautiful oddity that people came together to build; schlepping heavy stones, fitting them into place, and seeing how The Rockery would compliment the natural elements of the Ipswich River basin, especially as age left The Rockery mossier and muskier. And some level of underlying curiosity and affection must have preceded this landscape project. Similar to how the Occupy Wall Street protests caused millions of Americans to become more mindful of widening wealth inequality—despite the lack of tangible outcomes produced by the movement—I think it’s possible that continued exposure to the magic of the wetlands and woods on the river set the stage for a shared idea like The Rockery to be realized.

I suppose that’s where we are today, as a country; long-primed and overdue for the “greening” that Charles A. Reich foresaw during another challenging chapter of our recent history. The question of when this happens and what it looks like remains as unknowable as the arrival of spring’s grasses and flowers. And of course, there’s no inevitability that undergirds this greening or its outcome. Nonetheless, I do believe that something is coming. And unlike this spring, it may arrive sooner than we think.

CLICK HERE for a map of my Ipswich River Wildlife Sanctuary walk

PS: Speaking of watery spaces outdoors and spring rituals, those of you who live in or near Massachusetts might enjoy this recent piece that I wrote for The Boston Globe’s Travel section on spectating venues for spring herring runs! Grab some coffee and an extra chunky donut, plunk down on a bench, and cheer the fish on as they swim hard upstream to get it on (externally) in the lakes and ponds around the Commonwealth.

One of the essential struggles of being human is realizing that you might be doing something bad. Maybe it was a one time fuck-up, or maybe you’ve been unwittingly transgressing for years. Whatever the case, once that possibility sinks in, you have to decide what to do with it. Two weeks ago, I experienced this while doing something I love—going for a late day hike amidst the gloppy glory of Mud Season in Vermont.

”Mud Season” is how spring is often described in the highlands. Prodigious snowmelt from the mountains mixes with warm rain, transforming the earth into a musky stew worthy of an existentialist Herzog documentary. Over the last five years, I’ve written about the scenic and olfactory bliss of Mud Season several times. Getting to witness the landscape thawing after the lonesome darkness of winter is special and cathartic. Getting to squelch through that landscape in waterproof boots is even better. That’s what I had driven up to Vermont to do. I had managed to nab a fire sale priced hotel room in Stowe (pro tip: New England ski towns in spring are usually killer deals) and my plan was to spend the day splashing my way down muddy trails to big, thundering cascades like Bingham Falls and Moss Glen Falls. But in the haste of planning this last minute road trip, I forgot something about Mud Season in the Green Mountain State.

For all its mucky beauty, Mud Season is a vulnerable moment for backcountry trails made of packed dirt. The wet ground is softer than usual and too much foot traffic on any dirt trail has the potential to reshape it in a bad way. The intermittent warmth and cold of spring, plus the perpetual dampness, dissuades enough hikers from hitting the trails that Mud Season damage is usually limited. But that could always change. A viral Instagram reel about a world class waterfall could send an early surge of hikers to the cascade when the access trail is at peak moistness. Vermont, more so than the other New England states, seems to have taken this possibility quite seriously. And so, as a precaution, the state closes many of its hiking trails during April and May to allow for the ground to dry up and firm up for the heavier summer and fall crowds. This isn’t a problem for most visitors, but for those of us who experience primal, full-body desire to get out and slosh around during Mud Season, showing up in Vermont with boots and a daypack, only to find a TRAIL CLOSED sign—as I did—is a disarming experience.

There was the obvious sting of dejection. I was not going to spend a Saturday staring at rip-roaring plumes of whitewater, as I had planned. But on a much deeper level, I felt something that hadn’t registered on prior spring hikes. I had come to Vermont to do an activity that the Vermont government did not want people doing. And despite the fact that I had enjoyed the same activity in New Hampshire and Maine—hiking in Mud Season, on spongy trails that remained open to the public—part of me couldn’t help wondering if I had been engaging in something unethical, by clomping up and down all these spongy trails and then encouraging my friends to try the same thing.

That afternoon, over a consolation ale at The Alchemist, I decided to do some digging into the question of why Vermont closes so many trails for Mud Season, compared to its neighbors. One of the answers is reflected in the landscape itself. If you’ve crossed the border of Vermont and continued into New Hampshire, you’ve probably noticed how the terrain dramatically shifts from placid green hills to more angular peaks and ridgelines. New Hampshire, “The Granite State,” has a lot more underlying crystalline rock than Vermont does. And this provides something of a bedrock buffer for trails in New Hampshire during Mud Season. Trails built on top of firmer surfaces don’t have the tendency to get as waterlogged as trails on softer terrain. Understanding this, I breathed a sigh of relief and chased it with a glug of beer. My Mud Season exploits in the White Mountains and the Great North Woods weren’t as likely to have left scars.

But even if they had been, the odds of getting called out and chewed out by a Granite State authority or busybody would have been near zero. Because land use ethics are regional, and the question of what amount of trail damage is acceptable during Mud Season has a different answer in each place. The lopsided granite ratio between New Hampshire and Vermont partially explains why the neighboring states have their own approaches to trail access during spring. But there are other differences between New Hampshire and Vermont, beyond the elemental. One of these states keeps sending Bernie Sanders to Washington DC and came close to implementing its own universal health care system. The other was invaded by libertarians from the Free State Project and is now slated to suffer public education funding cuts. None of this is to dunk on New Hampshire. I love both of these states, they share a lot of qualities, and they’re more culturally eclectic than many realize. But politically, there is a stark difference in the ways of thinking that drive the respective state governments. In Vermont, a more communitarian mindset prevails, and I suspect that’s another reason why the state bars access to more of its trails in April and May—asking hikers to make a seasonal sacrifice. I can’t really imagine New Hampshire’s current elected leaders asking this.

Thankfully, there are enough rock-hard trails throughout Vermont to offer at least a few alternatives during the Mud Season closures, and the one in Stowe (pretty much the only game in town, as far as I could tell) is the paved, winding Stowe Recreation Path. Branching off from Stowe Village near VT-100, it follows the bends of the West Branch of the Little River for 5.3 miles, gradually heading up toward Mount Mansfield and Smugglers Notch. The path crosses the river in several places with the help of footbridges, and it often skirts past VT-108 before dipping back into the woods or cutting across a meadow. That proximity to the road may seem like a buzzkill at first, but it actually offers something kind of cool: the chance to experience Stowe on foot.

Think about it. The vast majority of towns around Vermont are experienced through the windshield of a car. Sure, you might get out of the car and bumble around the commercial center of a town, or on a trail. But getting from place to place is almost always an automotive task. The Stowe Recreation Path allows you to walk between many of the things that people come to Stowe looking to do. My hotel was steps away from the path, and shortly after I checked in, I followed the path downstream against the sunset and I ended up at Doc Ponds, which does a killer Big Mac-style burger. The next day, I set off in the opposite direction, taking the path toward the mountains. I stopped over at GiraKofi for a small black coffee (which I enjoyed on a wooden bench flanked by carved giraffes) and then I pressed onward to the more rustic northern reaches of Stowe. This quieter stretch of the trail, away from all the eateries and lodging options, offered the kind of creaking woodland immersion I craved from the forbidden muddy trails. It wasn’t the same thing, of course. There were places where the Stowe Recreation Path would emerge from the trees to pass municipal infrastructure or the grounds of another motel. But its existence and the number of people I saw walking it on an overcast morning in early April hinted at good times to come, when the Green Mountain State’s trails finally open up again.

If nothing else, my two brief jaunts on the Stowe Recreation Path left me feeling less conflicted about my Mud Season urges, and the question of whether they were ethical urges. There’s nothing wrong with the desire to squelch across the countryside as the snow melts; just like there’s nothing wrong with accepting an invitation to a friend’s family dinner and showing up at their house licking your lips, ready to chomp some chicken. But of course, you wouldn’t just rip off the fattest drumstick and gnaw away. (I assume.) You would take your cues from your friend and their family, watching how they share and pass the food, and seeing if there’s a grace or anything offered before the eating commences. Going on a Mud Season hike in any state is like being a guest in someone’s house. Observe their customs, follow their footsteps, and enjoy a nice day of squelching; bothered by nothing except the black flies that have just hatched.

CLICK HERE for a map of the Stowe Recreation Path

While I don’t have a specific release date for the book finalized just yet, that step is now very close. The interior has been proofread and locked in. The test copy will be ordered soon. From there, it’s full steam ahead to the printer! BUT, there is still one task left, and I’m writing to ask for your help. One of you will reap a reward for this.

When a book is released, it’s customary for the back cover to be emblazoned with enthusiastic pull-quotes from the author’s friends and peers; endorsements for the book. If I were publishing Mind The Moss through a traditional publishing house, I would currently be hitting up all of the big names in my rolodex, at the publisher’s instruction, fishing for some splashy pull-quotes to throw on the book. But let me explain why I’m not doing that. The foremost reason why I wanted to publish this Mind The Moss book is to preserve something that thousands of you have made possible; by reading and supporting the newsletter for five years. I wanted to turn Mind The Moss into something that could be read beside a stream, on a stoop, or at the top of a mountain, without any digital interface. In other words, this book is for all of you. And what I would really love to feature on the back cover is short, colorful pull-quote from someone who feels like expressing why they like reading Mind The Moss.

So here’s the deal. For the rest of April, I will be accepting email submissions for the back cover pull quote. You can submit as many as you like, but please keep ‘em on the short side. Ideally a sentence, but no more than two. Feel free to be irreverent, sentimental, deadly serious, or whatever feels most natural. I will take a hard look at all of the pull quotes and by early May, I will choose one to feature on the back cover of Mind The Moss. The author of that pull quote will get a free copy of the book!

Again, none of this would have been possible without your enthusiasm for Mind The Moss and your direct support, which allowed it to grow from a sapling into a lichen splotched behemoth. I’m so excited to get this book into the world by the summer.

Cheers,
Miles

I found it impossible to focus on anything yesterday. Plugging numbers into a project spreadsheet, paying credit card bills, and taking out the recycling felt less like routine tasks of daily living and more like an absurd way of coping with the ground reality that our president was threatening to destroy an entire country. “A whole civilization will die tonight,” was the beginning of what Trump had posted on his TruthSocial page at 8:06 AM yesterday. “I don’t want that to happen,” he added. “But it probably will.” Whether this was an allusion to dropping a nuclear bomb on Iran or leveling enough power plants and bridges to send the Iranian people “Back to the Stone Age” (Pete Hegseth’s recent words), being alive and aware the other day was a cascade of awful feelings. I wandered from rage to shame to anxiety that the world might actually end, if no one in the White House had the courage to rein in Trump’s homicidal impulses. It was clear that most members of Congress—terminally obsessed with re-election, and unwilling to re-evaluate their paths to victory—were not going to do anything; which is almost as horrifying as Trump’s genocidal rhetoric and the damage it will inflict on any prospects for peace and on the world economy. I’m also rather horrified that the Democratic Party mainstream’s response to Trump changing his mind at the eleventh hour is essentially calling him a pussy. All of this is reckless, stupid, and unsustainable.

For me and my buddy Adam, also reeling from everything, our day ended at a quiet bar, where I couldn’t help but wonder how many of the other patrons were calming their nervous systems with alcohol because of the news cycle or irrspective of it. The healthier thing to do, which I’m trying to find the energy for this afternoon, would be taking a walk outside; something I’ve recommended time after time, whenever Very Bad Things happen. The boost of endorphins, serotonin, and dopamine may be short lived—I learned about Trump’s “civilization will die” post immediately after meeting another friend, Patrick Maguire, for an early morning walk around a pond in Boston. But at this point, we have to grab those boosts whenever and wherever we can; for the good of our health and our stamina. To say that we, as a nation, are in uncharted territory is describing the present situation lightly. I agree with Paul Krugman’s recent assessment that this is America’s “darkest hour;” that “the fate of the whole American idea is on the line.” I have a difficult time imagining this crisis ending in ways that are familiar and precedented. Nor can I picture America coming back from this without a big step in a new direction for America—culturally, economically, and governmental.

Reaching the edge of what’s familiar is a strange and sometimes scary exprerience. It means putting yourself in the way of chance, which can yield good things or go south. Stepping beyond that boundary doesn’t necessarily mean going into unknown space completely blind—usually, we have some idea what we’re getting into when we tread beyond our “normal” environments, whether it’s going on a birding walk with a bunch of strangers or trying a new sex position with a partner. But still, there’s often a pretty significant gulf between how we imagine these explorations playing out, and what they actually lead to. Once, when stopping in Worcester to search for a big rock in the woods that’s covered with fire and brimstone inscriptions, I ended up getting chased away by an angry dog from one of the houses near the edge of the forest. But more recently, a different and more local leap of faith opened my eyes to new possibilities that were hidden right under my nose for all the years that I’ve been living in Boston.

Since the price of gas is rapidly escalating across the world—making a weekday road trip and hike less practical for millions of us—I had been studying the commuter rail network map for Greater Boston. I was especially curious about the terminus of each route. I imagined taking one of the trains to the end of the line, setting off from the station platform with a backpack, and finding my way to someplace beautiful, weird, or unsettling. When the phrase “end of the line” is used in the context of train or bus travel, it often evokes this sense that a consequential transition is happening. When I hear or read the phrase, I think of Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, in which a journey from the world of the living to the afterlife is taken on a train that crosses the watery expanse of a dead-calm ocean. Or, if I’m in a saltier mood, I remember the beginning of Jim Jarmusch’s anti-western, Dead Man. Johnny Depp is riding the rail from Ohio to a new job in a town called “Machine,” somewhere in the Rockies. It’s not a good sign when the greasy train conductor (Crispin Glover) tells him “That’s the end of the line.”

The lack of commuter rail options from the station closest to my apartment made the decision for me, and the ashen clouds and sleety rain that materialized that morning didn’t feel like a great sign either. I spent about 20 minutes riding the train southwest from Boston to the adjacent suburb of Needham, which is separated from the city by the Charles River. Given that some of the other trains run all the way to Rhode Island or the North Shore, I was a little bummed to be taking an “end of the line” adventure that barely breached the Boston perimeter. But a quick look at a map while I waited for the train at least gave me something to aim for in Needham—a splotchy green chunk labeled “Ridge Hill Reservation” and a smaller, neighboring green blob marked “Needham Town Forest.” At the very least, I could walk from the train platform at the Needham Heights station to a pair of forests, for some spruce and granite therapy.

The first few minutes of my hike began on West Street, which took me down a steep hill—the literal height of land behind “Needham Heights”—which was covered with single family homes. When I’m walking through residential territory to get to a more grandiose green space, I often try to make the connective walk more interesting by identifying possible places of interest on the map, like a pocket park or a sculpture that I could dart by. My map of Needham Heights suggested that it might be fun to pivot from West Street toward a little water body called Rosemary Lake. Not just to see the lake, but to explore a short path that appeared to serve as a car-free bridge between the two places. On Google Maps, paths like these are often represented as thin green lines, and they’re routinely unnamed. At the bottom of the hill, I kept my eyes open on the left, searching for the beginnings of a walking path and expecting something fleetingly charming, like a stitch of oaks between houses. But pretty soon, it became clear that I was approaching something that the map had really undersold.

On the final stretch of its journey to the lake, Rosemary Brook sloshes through a vast bogland with twisted trees covered in bright green moss. It’s a swampy oasis tucked between town streets and developed land, and a grassy path runs straight through the bog—from the edge of West Street to the beginning of Tillotson Road. It seemed likely that this cross-bog path may have been a lost or unpaved segment of Tillotson Road. It was wide enough to accommodate a horse and buggy, if not a Ford F-150, and the Town of Needham was founded centuries ago in 1711. Whatever the case, I found the scale and color of the bog thrilling to behold. It was so unexpected that I ended up walking the cross-bog path three times. First, I used it to reach the north banks of Rosemary Lake, and the next two times were just for the sheer pleasure of walking down an unlikely hall of grand trees, past pools where skunk cabbages will soon be thriving. I had to remind myself to press onward to Ridge Hill Reservation.

As I passed the lakeshore once again, heading westward toward the woods, I saw a lonely bike abandoned in the parking lot. I wondered if its owner was miles away, or down by the water’s edge smoking some weed. Perhaps this lake was a foundational place for them, but what might the periphery of their world—their normal—look like? Would it include the evergreen and deciduous expanse of a place like Ridge Hill? The 352-acre forest offered more seclusion from the burbs and the local highways, but it was a more predictable immersion, not unlike stepping into the trees of familiar green spaces like the Middlesex Fells or the Blue Hills Reservation. Stumbling upon the bog along Rosemary Brook had surprised me enough that I was now intent on detecting other surprises nestled in the landscape. Toward the end of my Ridge Hill traverse, I found a smaller one; a sodden stuffed animal that someone had positioned on a tree branch. There were no plush companions in sight, here or anywhere else on the trail.

The smaller Needham Town Forest, on the other hand, proved more bounteous. I entered the woods on the far west edge and I followed a squiggly trail through an especially lumpy section of the forest with mossy glacial boulders and pond-esque vernal pools. According to my map, the Needham Town Forest isn’t just municipal property. A chunk of these woods is owned by Scouting America (formerly the Boy Scouts of America) and the gnarly little trail I had just picked up was part of a camp frequented by Boy Scouts. The path struck me as an ideal place for introducing Boy Scouts or any young, beginner hikers to the rocky and rooty rigor of what to expect across New England’s open spaces. The placement of the trail, in such a chunky part of an otherwise demure town forest, felt intentional—like its creators wanted to use this tiny, hairier piece of the forest to offer a concentrated showcase of hiking with a capital H. I wondered if this could be replicated in other forests in cities and towns; a tiny trail that offers a generous taste of how grueling and messy a good hike can be.

The questions of how to make it easier for more people to get outside—and how we can break down real and perceived barriers—has rarely been more centralized in the outdoor recreation community. But answering those questions still requires treading past the end of our lines, seeing what’s out there, and considering the possibility that some of these things may be worth holding onto and exploring further. In doing this more often, we might change the course of things and “discover” opportunities and directions that were hidden in plain view. Even when life is good and most things are working out, a trip to the end of a line and beyond is an excursion worth taking. But when it feels like the world is ending and there are no obvious answers within reach, “beyond” is the only place left to go. We may be surprised by what we find out there.

If you go weak in the knees at the thought of watching a freshly thawed waterfall roaring back to life—yielding a torrent of snowmelt, tree branches, and other forest detritus—you might instinctively look toward towering cliffs and boreal forests. In New England, most of the April waterfall chasing happens in places like Maine and Vermont, where the sawtoothed topography makes for some big ass, aquatic gods. But in 2026, after previously covering waterfall spectating in the Green Mountain and Pine Tree States, I want to focus on a less intuitive destination for this event. It’s a state which might appear smaller in stature, but which actually packs a real wallop when it comes to rivers or creeks spilling down hills. So this year, we’re going to Connecticut.

The Nutmeg State often gets pigeonholed as a kind of transitional backwater between New England and New York City. And while there’s definitely some cultural truth to it, this characterization makes the mistake of reducing the entirety of southeastern New York to the NYC area. The westernmost border of Connecticut is a much gnarlier place where the Taconic Mountains spill over from the Empire State and form the backbone of localized ranges like the Litchfield Hills. (The modern process of snowmaking was invented there, at the Mohawk Mountain Ski Area, back in the 1950s!) The foothills of these mountains keep rolling eastward to form the Connecticut River Valley. And from there, heading toward the Rhode Island line, the landscape calms down considerably.

My point is that Connecticut boasts some seriously chunky terrain. That means plenty of rock faces, crags, and precipices for water to crash down—a seasonal event that’s happening as I type. And so, for those you who want to savor the messy glory of the spring thaw, I beseech you to find a car and brave The Connecticut Waterfall Crawl.

Unlike prior Mind The Moss waterfall crawls—which were cross-state Point A to Point B driving routes—the Nutmeg State version is a nifty loop that takes about 4 hours to complete by car (without traffic). The orbital journey begins and ends in Hartford, and you might as well consider plumping for a hotel in the state capital; to allow for a nice post-crawl dinner at which you and your fellow waterfall chasers can toast your victory at high volume. So that people at other tables will look toward you, with one of them traipsing by to ask what you’re all so excited about. At which point, you can gush over Connecticut’s cascades, and how you took in seven of them in a single mid-spring day!

Each of the falls on the Connecticut Waterfall Crawl is located pretty close to the road—some require a short hike of a half mile or less, while others are waiting mere steps away from the parking lot or the shoulder. In clockwise order, here is the full lineup:

#1: Wadsworth Falls. Initially, you’ll follow the Connecticut River south from Hartford through suburban territory; a misleading first step for a drive that willl involve quite a bit of elevation gain and loss. And as you approach the woods around Middlefield, the blue bends of the Coginchaug River will reveal themselves. And just a few paces down a set of stairs and leafy path from the edge of the road is Wadsworth Falls. While it’s “only” around 20 feet tall, the formation of this rip-roaring cascade is what makes it so special. The steep drop and the massive volume of water from the river makes this fall look like a baby cousin of Niagara. Even in the early winter of 2021, just when the Coginchaug was beginning to freeze, the immensity of Wadsworth Falls stunned me.

#2: Buttermilk Falls. A somewhat short-lived stretch of I-691 is all it takes to enter the rustly foothills of the Taconic Mountains, where Buttermilk Falls gurgles away in the woods of Terryville. Significantly taller than Wadsworth, at roughly 60 feet, this cascade is a quieter, more serene creature. And what really makes it stand out are the adjacent ledges from which you can sit and gaze down at the pathway of the falls. In spring, the half-formed canopy offers partial views of the surrounding forest as well. Park on Lane Hill Road and head south into the woods to intercept Buttermilk Falls.

#3: Knife Shop Falls. As you approach the actual town of Litchfield—your best bet for a mid-crawl lunch, especially if you like the sound of oyster tacos or broccoli rabe and sausage rigatone—take a minute to pop by Northfield Pond. In the late 19th Century, one of America’s most innovative pocketknife makers (the Northfield Knife Company) ran a factory here, and that’s why the multi-layered falls that spill from the pond are known as Knife Shop Falls. Like Buttermilk Falls, the way to find these hidden beauties is to park on the edge of Knife Shop Road and crunch southward through the trees to reach the brook and its cascades. Be ready to schlep yourself over an occasional log.

#4: Kent Falls. A major escalation in every sense, Connecticut’s tallest waterfall is on the far west edge of the state, which means ascending through the mountains past the Mohawk Mountain Ski Area. But once you reach the doorstep of Kent Falls State Park, little is left to the imagination. The falls, which descend 250 feet down slopes of exposed stone, have their own pavillion at the base. But you can take in the total heft of Kent Falls thing by climbing the short trail alongside the drops, with its rock stairs and observation platforms. There’s a $10 fee for each car without Connecticut plates, and it’s bumped up to $15 over the weekends. But bear in mind, that’s about the same price as a single adult ticket to the inevitable Deadpool & Wolverine sequel.

#5: Dean’s Ravine Falls. Of all the cascades on the Connecticut Waterfall Crawl, the one that’s sequestered in a mossy ravine near Canaan requires the most hiking. It’s a half mile round trip from the junction of Music Mountain Road and Cream Hill Road (what great names!) to the hidden place where Reed Brook forms a gorgeous duet of horsetail falls that add up to 50 feet in height. If you’ve ever visited Crawford Notch in New Hampshire and laid eyes on Ripley Falls, the angle and shape of Dean’s Ravine Falls might give you a kick of Déjà vu. The path does get slippery, so tread gingerly.

#6: Campbell Falls. Now this one is a bit peculiar. A muscular cascade, with a 50-foot plunge and a frothing pool and rapids at the base, Campbell Falls is the crown jewel of Connecticut’s Campbell Falls State Park Reserve. The reason why I spell out the full moniker and its qualifier, however, is because Campbell Falls is technically located in Massachusetts! The waterfall occupies a tiny piece of forest that could be interpreted as Nutmeg or Bay State land, and it appears that Mass. just decided to let Connecticut have this one. The sloped half-mile trail to the falls starts at the state’s northwest tip and crosses into the town of New Marlborough, MA to reach the foot of the cascade. I’m still not sure how Campbell Falls became a Connecticut landmark. Maybe a former Massachusetts governor lost their dog around here or something. Either way, it rules.

#7: Enders Brook Falls. Descending from the Litchfield Hills back to the Connecticut River and the Hartford metro area might leave you feeling bittersweet…if the novelty of Connecticut casades hasn’t faded after taking in six of them! But you’re not out of the woods just yet, thankfully. West of Granby, the immersive Enders State Forest has its own sequence of falls—the most elegant yet varied of the day! Enders Brook Falls basically amounts to a buffet of waterfall genres. Horsetails, plunges, slides, you name it. The tallest of them is around 30 feet, and a boardwalk path that offers primo views of each fall. Think of Enders Brook Falls as the final number in a musical, in which the entire cast that you’ve spent two hours watching gets trotted out to belt out the song. You could also liken it to the finale of a fireworks show, when the pyrotechnicians take whatever is left in the arsenal and set it off at once, letting the whole place fucking rip.

Alternatively, if you decide to do the Connecticut Waterfall Crawl in counterclockwise order, then visiting Enders Brook Falls will be like those times when firework handlers accidentally ignite all the rockets and flares at the start; which is special in its own way.

CLICK HERE for a Google Map of the Connecticut Waterfall Crawl

As far as outdoor recreation is concerned, there are the four seasons that most of us live by, and then there are the micro-seasons; special, short-lived events that can turn a routine walk outside into a treasured memory that you’ll revisit for years. It might be exploring the Providence Riverwalk just in time to spot tens of thousands of herring in the water, swimming upstream and down to fuck. Or you might be visiting Southern California and hiking an oceanside trail on some evening between June and October, when higher concentrations of bioluminiscent plankton can cause the waves to glow.

Either of these are reason enough to plan a trip. But this week, to my horror, I realized that I’ve been sleepwalking through one of the most unique micro-seasons in places that experience colder and soggier conditions during the winter. Regions in which the conditions that materialize between November and April are enough to make people look out their bedroom windows and say, “I would not want to be playing golf today.”

We’ve visited golf courses in Mind The Moss before—between the subversive joy of trespassing on a golf course, to the unsung landscape architecture that make some mini-golf courses better than others. And every time I’ve written about golf courses, with their sculpted beauty, recreational exclusivity, and dodgy ethics, a lot of you have responded with comments, rants, and policy ideas; all of which I appreciated. The golf course seems to be an object of shared fascination and frustration for many of us. So as we approach the last days of March, I want to encourage you to take advantage of your dwindling opportunity to go for a hike…across a municipally-owned golf course.

According to the National Golf Foundation, there are around 2,939 municipally-owned golf courses in America—which boils down to 18% of our total golf courses. Contrary to what one might assume in our age of inequality, privatization, and austerity, public golf courses are actually doing well, with strong visitation rates and sustained growth against a broader backdrop of golf course shrinkage! Think about that for a moment. As total golf course real estate declines, municipal golf course territory is expanding. That’s pretty special in this moment of American culture and history. The problem is that this expansion of land and opportunity for golfers comes at a cost, paid by folks who enjoy hiking, birding, forest bathing, and other activites that don’t pair well with flying balls that can crack skulls. For those of us huddling under that umbrella, there’s a seasonal window when municipal golf courses become accessible to us, and it’s now.

Consider Franklin Park, the southern crown jewel of Frederick Law Olmsted’s Emerald Necklace park system, which connects several neighborhoods here in Boston. Nearly half of Franklin Park’s 527 rustling acres is occupied by the William J. Devine Golf Course. In the summer, it’s a forbidden zone for anyone who’s not wielding a club, but now—if you can look past all the Canada Goose shit—the hills of this golf course are downright romantic. On a sunny late winter/early spring day, you can even detect a hint of green in those hills. Their topography is not unlike the verdant humps of The Shire, as seen in The Fellowship of the Ring. To freely walk across such humps, in a city no less, is a special type of outdoor excursion. So that’s what I did on a bright Tuesday morning this week. I got up early, threw my laptop and work supplies in a backpack, and instead of jumping on the bus or train, I spent a lovely hour squelching my way across the William J. Devine Golf Course and enjoying the solitude of being there at the end of winter. My eventual destination was a bus stop near Egleston Square, on the north side of Franklin Park, but hiking there via the course allowed for the most naturally immersive morning walk I’ve had since Boston’s first snowstorm of 2026.

That’s just one example of what a municipal golf course hike can look like. A planned scenic detour on your morning commute, if you happen to live near a golf course. The municipal golf course takes many forms, and some of them are palatial enough to be worthy of regional travel. At the far eastern edge of Long Island, New York’s Montauk Point is packing a monster municipal golf course—buffered by woodlands, ponds, and of course, lots of sand traps. And since the Montauk Downs State Park Golf Course is ultimately a small piece of a vacation destination that draws hordes of visitors every summer, the golf course is within a short walking distance of other curiosities that can make for a full day of exploring; like the Arthur W.B. Wood Windmill House (the only house in Montauk with a windmill!) to the Fort Hill Cemetery (moody as hell!) Better yet, the Montauk MTA train station offers direct rail service to New York City and it’s less than an hour from the Montauk Downs golf course by foot. You can experience Montauk’s canopies, slopes, and seabreeze in a most unusual manner if you go ASAP.

Most golf courses in places with wintery climates tend to open back up for tee time in early-to-mid April. So I’m not exaggerating when I say that these next few weeks are your final chance to experience a golfscape that’s truly accessible to the greater public until this time in 2027. Probably, at least. I imagine that as summer droughts become more regular in more regions of the U.S., the question of whether maintaining golf courses is ethical will keep flaring up. (If a town or city is using limited resources to keep public land healthy and safe, it will be tougher to justify those expenditures if a large piece of land is only usable for a niche segment of the public.) As that question looms, it’s possible that some municipal golf courses could be converted into public lands of more uses. There’s already a precedent for cities buying private golf courses and turning them into parkland. Last year, Denver scooped up the 155-acre Park Hill Golf Course and voters there approved a $70 million public investment to transform the course into a rewilded park with trails, athletic facilities, and community gathering spaces. The architecture firm Sasaki is co-leading the project with Denver’s Parks and Recreation office, and the completed park will be one of the Mile High City’s biggest.

For now, most of us will have to imagine what a rewilded golf course could look like. But if you’re able to take a walk across your closest municipal course this weekend or next week, savoring all the soggy grass beneath your feet and the immense quietude that follows you from hole to hole—on the eve of golf season firing back up again—you might get a slightly sharper picture of how these polarizing green spaces could facilitate good health and happiness for a lot more of us, somewhere down the road.

I didn’t think I was going to be able to publish Mind The Moss this past week because, well, the last two weeks have been kind of insane. I’m not sure where to start. I had to deal with multiple health emergencies—including one of my own, that almost led to a broken toe—and this meant dealing with all the structural problems and indignities of our for-profit health care system. And while I’m relieved to report that the crisis phase seems to be over (pounding hard on wood), I can’t say the same for what’s happening beyond the localized scope of my daily life. Our president is dragging us into a war of choice that’s becoming deadlier each day. The cost of everything we need to survive is getting higher and forcing people to make terrible choices. And here in Boston, we’re still bracing for the possibility of an ICE surge, like the one inflicted upon Minneapolis.

All of which is a way of saying that millions of us are hacking our way through a world of shit right now. And this would be overwhelming and exhausting enough if all these things amounted to a recent detour into chaos—a sudden change in topography after you’ve been walking through a gentler, placid landscape. But what makes the stress of 2026 even more burdensome is that it’s just the latest escalation of a prolonged time period that’s been shaped by mass anxiety, instability, and trauma. Some people will cite the 2016 election and Donald Trump’s first presidential term as the beginning of this chronic nightmare, when the wheels of daily living started falling off. Personally, I would point to the COVID-19 pandemic. Horrendous as Trump’s first term was, there were still some “guardrails” to protect the world from his most sadistic impulses. And the pandemic marked the end of any breathing room that people found during those first four years. It was a global crisis characterized by mass death, illness, and isolation. And I feel fairly confident in saying that millions us have not recovered from that crisis.

I was talking about this with my friend and decades-long hiking buddy George a few weeks ago—not long after I followed him into some scrubby woods in Plano, Texas. It was the final 15 minutes of our hour-ish call, the topic had turned from the alarming state of the world to a possible path forward, and George proposed an idea that you don’t often hear in American life. What if, before moving forward, we took a minute?

Think about the crises we’ve weathered over the last decade. Again, we’ll go with the pandemic as the Godzilla of these crises. When was the last time you saw or heard a national political leader or public figure create a space in which the enormity of what was suffered and lost during the pandemic could be felt and honored? In which the millions who struggled in solitude during the pandemic could finally feel seen for a moment, beyond the bounds of their respective lives? If you’re having a tough time identifying a moment when we did this on a national scale, well….I’m not faring any better than you are. Because we never really had an intentional moment for national acknowledgment of the pandemic. Just as we never had a moment to recognize the things that occurred during Trump’s first term and how dangerous those years were.

Instead, as is often the case when control of the government changes hands from one party to another, the Biden/Harris administration primarily chose to “look forward, as opposed to looking backward.” Those were the same words that Barack Obama used in 2009 to explain why he wouldn’t pursue investigations of war crimes that occurred on George W. Bush’s watch during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While Biden and his team at least pursued prosecution of the insurrectionists who had stormed the U.S. Capitol and killed a police officer in January 2021, the first Trump administration and its architects mostly escaped any accountability for their actions. Just as the architects of the 2008 financial crisis, the Bush-Cheney wars, and other calamities were spared.

What this pattern yields is a dual-fold crisis of mental and civic health. When we fail to acknowledge a moment of profound, mass suffering—and the decisions that created this suffering or made it much worse—what we’re really doing is avoiding the work of healing. And that’s the thing which is often underappreciated in American life. Healing isn’t just something that happens with time. It takes a lot of intentional work, and this can be tough or even painful. It requires coming together to build something close to a consensus as to what happened, and what can happen next. In a personal context, it might mean talking with a health care provider and family members. But in a political context, this means more dialogue between elected leaders and communities, and an understanding that “looking backward” is often the first step of truly moving forward.

Last week, I took a short breather from the chaos and met up with my aunt Jorden for a walk on a trail that she had wanted to show me for months. The Clipper City Rail Trail is a recent addition to the North Shore realm of Newburyport, Massachusetts. It sets off from the commuter rail station outside the town center and it shoots through corridors of trees and power lines to the local Harborwalk. Right now, the Clipper City Rail Trail covers 3.9 miles, but it can be used as a means of connecting to additional rail trails and walking routes around Newburyport. Within a minute of hopping onto the trail from the Henry Graf Jr. Memorial Skating Rink (you can park here for free, if driving), we were encountering several forms of artwork and historic relics that have been staged along the trail. At one point, I posed for a photo in a replica of an early 20th Century steam engine. And a while later, as we segued to the waterside path of the Harborwalk, we found something else that inspired a literal moment of silence.

At first, all I saw was a wheel of dark granite, on which a school of white fish appeared to be swiming in circles. And then, I read the words. “For those who died and those who survived and all we lost during the COVID-19 pandemic. We shall remember.”

This pandemic memorial was installed on the Harborwalk back in 2023, after the worst of the crisis had passed. It was created by Michael Updike, a local sculptor and artist whose first intricate public project was the gravestone for his father, the author John Updike. It’s a beautiful sight in itself, but the surrounding landscape and the weather that afternoon amplified its power. The sky was the color of ashes and it was sleeting intermittently. Piles of rotten snow still dotted the grass nearby. But there was a faint warmth in the air—a tangible sign of spring. And just a handful of yards beyond the little white fish, swimming in their circles, Jorden and I watched the watery heft of the Merrimack River flowing forward, out and into the indefinite possibilities of the ocean.

Before our saunter, while toggling around various maps of the Clipper City Rail Trail, I had found a possible way to walk a much longer scenic loop around the Merrimack, on a patchwork of rail trails that run through Newburyport and nearby Salisbury. This loop walk would take the better part of a day, being around 13 miles in length, and it starts and finishes at the Newburyport train station—nixing a car from the equation! I had hoped to take the commuter rail back up there this coming weekend and spend some more quality time with Michael Updike’s pandemic monument and the nearby riverscape and wetlands, after a longer and more contemplative walk. Unfortunately, this past weekend, I slammed my pinky toe into the wooden leg of the couch at my apartment. And while I managed to avoid a bone fracture, I’m currently wearing a stiff soled surgical shoe and taping the little guy to his slightly larger neighboring toe. It’s an injury I’ve had before, and I should be back to walking and hiking in a week or so. But maybe you could get to Newburyport sooner; for a short walk, or the longer one.

It’s not often that a small piece of the landscape seems to offer a window to what a future could look like. But the Newburyport pandemic monument is in a league of its own. It is a depiction of our ability to remember and to continue living, with its white fish swimming around and around, and the flow of the Merrimack beckoning. Right after Trump’s re-election, I lamented the absence of a future that acknowledges the anxiety and immiseration that so many of us are still suffering…and how this deficit of vision made it easier for Trump to return to the White House, by promising the hellish inversion of such a future. As has always been the case, our job now—as a nation—is bringing that better, kinder, more humane and opportune future back into focus. The nightmare that we’re suffering at the moment won’t last forever. And when it ends, by election results or less conventional mechanisms, we’ll once again be presented with “looking backward” and “moving forward,” as if the two are binary, either/or choices.

The case for moving forward, without acknowledgment or accountability, has always been a way for politicians—and to some degree, the rest of us—to dodge the labor of doing both of these things. Making this mistake over and over again has brought us to this crux. For the good of our health, the next turning point should be different. It must include the space for recognizing what tens of millions have been forced to deal with since Trump re-entered the Oval Office. It must lead to prosecutions, for the laws that were broken. And it should bring us to a place of re-imagining what a real future can look like. Only then will we be ready to move forward, into something that can last.

CLICK HERE for a map of the 3.9-mile Clipper City Rail Trail walking route

CLICK HERE for a map of my 13.2-mile Newburyport riverscape walking route

I try to resist the temptation of using this newsletter to push my cinematic taste onto all of you too aggressively or frequently. But since the Oscars just went down, I want to use the footnote of this week’s dispatch to recommend one of the movies that was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film—not only because it’s my favorite movie from 2025, but because it involves walking through the landscape. That film is Sirāt, directed by Galician filmmaker Oliver Laxe, and the setup alone had me running for the nearest theater. A middle-aged father is searching for his daughter, who’s been missing for months, and he ends up at an electric music rave in the Moroccan desert (on the tip that she might be there.) He strikes out, but he also meets a small chosen family of nomadic ravers who are heading to another rave that’s even deeper in the desert. And that means another potential opportunity to find the missing daughter. But the desert is an incredibly harsh place, rife with elemental dangers. And to make things worse, a global war seems to be breaking out, just beyond the horizon line.

”Sirāt” is an Arabic word that describes a razor-thin bridge between paradise and hell. And that’s what the desert trip in Sirāt starts to resemble. Sometimes it mesmerizes, and other times it’s horrifying. But what sets Sirāt apart from other movies that have trafficked in merciless landscapes is its lack of nihilism. This movie is grounded in the idea that kindness is stubbornly persistent, even in the worst of times. Don’t get me wrong; Sirāt is an intense cinematic experience that had me periodically gasping. It stares at mortality without flinching. But when I staggered out into daylight, with the film’s techno beats still echoing in my head, I felt something that surprised me. Hope.

A couple of weeks ago, two friends and I were watching Peter Jackson’s Lord Of The Rings trilogy; my thirtieth viewing, at least, and my housemate Emma’s first. And as we made our way into the climatic battles in The Return Of The King, I was struck by how many of the ensemble characters are driven by the will to fight for Middle Earth. Even the hobbits, small in stature and raised on leisure, find internal depths of bravery that surprise them, as they take up swords and take on legions of orcs and goblins. The original books by J.R.R. Tolkien, and Jackson’s masterful film adaptations, are largely about courage and perseverence in the face of fear that’s entirely reasonable—like watching your verdant corner of the world burnt beyond recognition. At a moment that’s existentially dangerous, courage and hope are two of the most vital resources.

But what does courage look like during a war of aggression? A war of choice, where the stakes are measured in dollars and extractions? Naturally, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this during the last few days—particularly when I watched toxic, black clouds form over Tehran (a metro area with over 14 million residents) after American and Israeli forces blew up several of the local oil refineries. Even during the carnage of the Iraq invasion, energy infrastructure like refineries was largely spared from bombs. Not this time around, with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth promising “Death and destruction from the sky all day long,” like someone furiously jerking off in public.

During a war like this, does desertion become an act of courage?

It’s a provocative question that I’ve been mulling, starting around the time when the U.S. started double tapping alleged drug boats in the Carribbean; blowing them up, and then circling back to kill any survivors. This was when Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, a retired Navy pilot and NASA astronaut, took the unusual step of vocally imploring military service members to disobey illegal orders. It was cathartic to hear this from a standing Senator and a veteran, and I would imagine that it may have planted seeds which could germinate as the Trump administration’s war against Iran expands and escalates. Whatever resistance manifests could take many forms. But I suspect that when faced with the prospect of becoming an accomplice and a statistic in a war of aggression, some people may choose to walk away, by going abroad or into hiding.

Historically, desertion in wartime has been viewed as one of the most contemptible, cowardly things that a person can do. Choosing physical or spiritual self-preservation at a moment when others are putting their bodies on the line for The Cause. During the American Civil War, the Union Army paid bounty hunters to track down deserters and deliver them to the courts, where they were sentenced to hard labor or death. In the southern states, desertion became such a crippling problem for the Confederacy that militias known as the Home Guard were dispatched to ferret out deserters and kill them on sight. Those of you who’ve read Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain or seen the Anthony Minghella adaption may recall the Home Guard as the main antagonists of the story, which is about a Confederate soldier who decides that he’s had enough.

But there are other, lesser known tales of what happened to deserters during the dark chapters of U.S. History. Last week, I walked into one in Londonderry, New Hampshire.

The southernmost woodlands of the Granite State are a strange place where suburban development is buffered by vast parcels of sticks and water. One of these green blobs, less than 20 minutes from the Massachusetts border, is the Musquash Conservation Area—a 1,000-acre menage of deciduous forests and bogs, which you can roam on a trail network that exceeds 20 miles. I first wandered through this space on a purple-ish summer night in 2020, while seeking a respite from the pandemic in the only northern New England state that hadn’t imposed restrictions for incoming travelers. I was a bit too distracted and stressed to really appreciate its immersive beauty back then. But I held onto the memory long enough that when I found myself needing to test a new pair of winter hiking boots on powdery ground, a return visit in March sounded nice.

In the late 1760s, a small group of the British soldiers who had been dispatched to the colonies to quell frustrations over taxation without representation found their way to Londonderry too. They were also struck by the bucolic charm of the area, to the point where they decided to find accommodations and shack up locally. In other words, the soldiers abandoned the cause of keeping the colonies in line, joining them instead. A 2024 Concord Monitor story by Ashley Miller sheds some light on the moment, thanks to archival digging, and while it’s hard to know exactly what may have inspired these British soldiers to desert, I can take a few guesses. By 1769, it was clear that colonists’ frustrations with the British Empire were reaching a boiling point; that violent conflict could be on the horizon. In a dangerous climate like this, any solider has to ask what they’re willing to suffer or give, between the punishing working conditions of wearing the uniform, to the possibility that your life could be a footnote in a chapter of history that people talk about in hushed tones. And then there’s the matter of the other lives that a soldier might find themselves tasked with extinguishing, when war breaks out.

While we don’t know when and how the British deserters started breaking bread with the townfolk of Londonderry, what happened shortly after their deseration illustrates how successfully these soldiers had ingratiated themselves to the town. (Population: 2,590.) Somehow, word got out that Londonderry was harboring the soldiers, and a unit was sent out to arrest them. But as the British army detained the deserters and began marching them out of Londonderry, something remarkable happened. As Miller tells it, 11 villagers—some of them veterans from the French and Indian War—grabbed their guns, crashed through the woods, and intercepted the soldiers. They managed to free the deserters without firing a single shot, and after bringing them back to town, the conflict was pretty much settled. The British army didn’t send in another detachment to find the deserters again. (They had bigger fish to fry.) New Hampshire’s Governor at the time, John Wentworth, did his part to help the British upon learning of the so-called Londonderry Riot. At one point, he had the region leafleted with written warnings about the punishment for harboring deserters. And yet, no one gave up the Londonderry deserters. Presumably, they continued living in Londonderry to the end of their days. Or at least, to the end of the Revolutionary War.

If you want to explore the 2.6-mile Betty Mack Loop, which encircles the heart of the Musquash Conservation Area on a mix of dirt paths and creaky boardwalks, you have a few options for where to pick up the trail. I chose a short connector path branching off from Sarah Beth Lane. Initially, it follows a power line corridor before veering right into the forest. And through the trees, I could see the back decks and palatial yards of the houses built on the periphery of the forest. And something that I noticed about a few of these houses was that they appeared to have rather large finished basements; the type that you can enter through a door at the back end of the abode, beneath the deck. Back in the time of King George III and the Londonderry Riot, deserters who hid out in southern New Hampshire had a lot of options for hiding spots—the livable kind where you could have your bed and provisions, and the more urgent refuges in which you might squirrel yourself away if a garrison or a militia suddenly marched into town.

In present day Londonderry, a large basement in a house on the edge of a 1,000-acre wood is a space that might provide a similar cloaking effect, amidst a landscape that’s now replete with security cameras and digital infrastructure that can be used to track one’s footsteps. I imagined what it might feel like to spend indefinite weeks or months in a basement, not unlike those who found themselves quarantined in one during the worst times of the pandemic. I thought about what emerging from the basement for a walk in the adjacent woods could feel like under the newer context of an unjust war, which some will refuse to participate in—at their own risk. When it becomes clearer that this is happening, in our own backyards, I wonder what will resonate harder with Americans: the false solidarity of unity during a time of cruel and bellicose leadership, or the real solidarity of taking care of your own, in the face of psychotic governance.

Like Londonderry did, before America was a thing.

CLICK HERE for a trail map of the Musquash Conservation Area

At this point, it’s no longer news that regular snowstorms in formerly blanketed winter locales are a thing of the past. “Winter” is now a soggier, clammier event in regions that have seen steady temperature increases in the last few decades, and we’re doing our best to adjust to this new reality. Nonetheless, there are still some occasions when low pressure systems lift moist air high enough to form clouds and unleash the fury of Old Man Winter on places like the Mid-Atlantic and New England. Those of us who live near the east coast between Baltimore and Boston are shoveling our way out from the powdery offerings of Winter Storm Hernando—which broke snowfall records set by the notorious blizzard of 1978 in northeastern cities like Providence and Fall River, Massachusetts. Governor Maura Healey actually went so far as to place a temporary travel ban on southeastern Mass., so that state and municipal workers could focus on clearing the roads and freeways without having to deal with vehicles sliding off them.

These humbling, snowbound events can trigger Proustian flashbacks for those of us who grew up at a time when monster blizzards meant extra time for being cozy and rambunctious; an age when Snow Days were a thing that millions of families, couples, and single adults got to enjoy a few times each winter. A storm, by definition, forces the world to slow down. While juggernaut blizzards can be dangerous—in the event that local power lines are knocked out—they are a sleepier kind of storm and they lack the destructive power of a hurricane. The hazards posed by a blizzard are more connected to activites that we might choose to do when the storm is unfolding, such as trying to drive somewhere, or shoveling heavy snow when you’ve got a history of back injuries. So, if we’re confronted by a storm and told to stay home from school or work, many of us do exactly that. We treat ourselves to a day doing whatever may feel instinctual during a storm; reading, watching movies, solving a puzzle, cooking a stew, trying a new yoga pose, grabbing some late morning delight, you name it. And I’m sure plenty of people along the eastern seaboard got to experience this on Monday.

But Snow Days—arguably one of most essential, nourishing force majeure events of the human experience—are in a recession that’s worsening. And the catalytic force behind this recession is not climatological. It’s an injury we’ve inflicted on ourselves.

In December of 2019, around 10 million people were logging into Zoom each day to host or join remote meetings. Less than half a year later, as ICUs kept filling up with intubated COVID-19 patients and governments ordered their citizens to stay at home until the first lull of the pandemic, 300 million of us were using Zoom daily. At the time, video call technology that was relatively simple and user-friendly provided actionable solutions for a catalysm. It allowed people to keep in touch with friends and family in distant locales (and, in the worst cases, to say goodbye to loved ones who were taking their last breaths in quarantined hospital rooms.) But remote video calls also allowed workers to hold onto their jobs at a time when gathering inside a workplace wasn’t feasible. Given how many of us lost work, this was a serious relief.

Still, speaking as somebody who’s been working remotely for a decade, I watched the normalization of Zoom and video calls with trepidation. I was thrilled for all the people who were finally getting a breather from driving or taking a bus to work each day, and I was happy that they could hold onto their livelihoods during the pandemic. But the question that haunted me was whether Zoom would keep on growing once the worst of the pandemic was over. Unsurprisingly, as the storm began fading, those who once commuted to their jobs weren’t too keen on being forced back into a workplace. Most businesses responded in three ways. Some told their employees to come back or find another job. Others allowed everyone to continue working remotely. And quite a few adopted “hybrid” systems in which workers would do their tasks in-person some days and at home on others. The second and third approaches were hailed as victories for workers. Part of me used to believe this too. But in retrospect, I think this was actually a loss. It was the dissolution of a boundary that made it somewhat easier to separate working and living. A boundary that had already crumbling for American workers.

The growth of remote work, from a mid-pandemic crutch to a new normal, allows our employers to demand more from us; including special moments that we once had to ourselves, until recently. Most of the people I know in Boston had to spend the better part of their Winter Storm Hernando “Snow Day” logged onto whatever platform their employer uses for remote work. Any indulgences that they undertook between dawn and dusk were things they managed to squeeze in—as opposed to the pillars of their day. They lost more than just time. They lost the opportunity to revel in the beauty of a winter storm that people will probably be talking about for generations. Some of the kids whose schools closed for the day were partially spared, but others had to fire up laptops and participate in remote learning exercises, just as millions of students were doing when the pandemic was at its most infectious.

This is one of the things that I’ve feared, as a long-time remote worker. If you work for a variety of clients, on an irregular schedule, it’s somewhat easier to tell yourself, “I’m not going to look at emails today” when you’re feeling burnt out or when a major life event like a blizzard demands your attention. When you have a single employer, it’s a lot harder and riskier to brush directives and expectations aside, even just for a day.

None of this is good for us. It’s adding anxiety to our lives, it’s turning our homes into something less comforting, and it’s making people more estranged from the here and now—even during incredible, deeply humbling events like Winter Storm Hernando. It may sound fanciful, but I’m beginning to wonder if a flexible, work-free Snow Day is a right that should be guaranteed for all non-essential workers by the state. Something as basic and enshrined as the weekend (which was adopted as recently as the 1920s!)

Even those who get sniffy about the idea that people should be given more time for relaxation could probably appreciate the practical benefits of placing a hard limit on remote work during snow emergencies. Snow Days can be fun, but they also require their own forms of work, such as shoveling steps and walkways, or dealing with power outages or a window cracked by a falling tree branch. I spent over three hours outside between 8 AM and 5 PM on Monday, helping neighbors dig out their cars. I couldn’t have done that if I had been glued to a computer screen for eight hours! Getting time back isn’t just a victory for each of us. It’s a net gain for communities, because we can invest more of that time in each other. In the long run, I think it’s a win for businesses too. Employers benefit from having happier, healthier workers. But when you’re living in a cultural moment driven by short-term rapacity and the fiduciary duty that drives large businesses—rewarding shareholders, at any cost—you need the state to step in.

Again, it wasn’t that long ago when FDR legalized the 48-hour weekend by signing the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) in 1938. And the instructive word there is “labor” because if we are going to get anything close to Snow Day protections, it’s going to happen through the power and organizing of unions. Given that the Democratic Party abandoned labor unions back in the 1970s—to court upper-middle class voters—and seeing how the party’s current leadership still can’t decide whether it might be a wise idea for the party to realign itself with unions, we’ve got a grueling climb ahead of us.

But here’s a pithy sprinkling of good news. In 2025, membership for American labor unions pretty much stayed the same; as opposed to declining once again, like we’ve seen during other recent years. According to a 2025 Pew Research Center poll, most Americans now see the disempowerment and membership decline of unions as bad for not just workers, but for America in general. Whether this might have anything to do with our president gleefully gutting what few labor protections remain in place is anyone’s guess. Probably just a coincidence—similar to how pro-union sentiment is widening as more businesses turn to generative AI to replace some workers and to overburden the ones who survive the layoffs. By all indicators, we are building toward some kind of realignment with labor in the U.S., and if this actually leads to anything resembling a sequel to the FLSA, we could bake a LOT of good stuff into that policy.

So between now and then, I will continue to make the case for adding legal Snow Day protections to the mix. Because no one should have to tune out the howl of wind as it rattles the window, to better focus on spreadsheets, CRM templates, and video feeds. It’s not often that nature gives us the opportunity to witness a storm that’s titanic yet comforting—massive enough to widen your eyes and your appetite at the same time. For centuries, society managed to keep functioning amidst the seasonal humblings of blizzards and Snow Days. We can afford to preserve this tradition for winters to come.

As a New Englander, I made it all the way to my late thirties before I joined the crowds briefly fleeing the ice each February. But as a budget traveler, I didn’t head for Miami or any place where hotels are surge-priced at $300/night. Most recently, I sprang for a flatter, more parched locale that’s roasting by summer, but balmier during the winter months. Dallas is the city that my friend George relocated to from Seattle a few years ago, drawn there by a new job opportunity and intrigued by the chance to familiarize himself with a very different corner of America—which has been growing quite rapidly.

New York remains the fastest-expanding city in America, which isn’t surprising when you consider that it’s pretty much the only major city in the U.S. that’s not daunted by the prospect of building upward. (Propose anything taller than three stories here in Boston and you will be inundated with angry phone calls and emails on the ruinous impact of shadows.) But nipping at NYC’s heels in second and third place are Houston and Dallas. And instead of reaching for the heavens, the growth of both Texas cities is horizontal; the sprawl we typically see in regions with a large amount of level-ish land waiting to be developed for residential or commercial use. Since sprawl means having a vaster geospatial footprint, the main mode of moving around cities like Dallas is cars.

In 2021, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that less than 10% of the people living in the Dallas-Forth Worth metro area got around on the public buses and trains run by DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit) in the year 2019. And that was before most public transit agencies experienced a sharp drop-off in ridership during the pandemic; a gut punch that they haven’t fully recovered from. Some of this anemic buy-in for public transit in Dallas can be blamed on the limitations of DART; the modest roster of places where the train or bus can take you. But those shortcomings reflect a choice on the part of Dallas-Fort Worth leaders and by extension, DFW voters. This consensus—that shared transportation is something to be shrunken and avoided—is written in the landscape.

This is not unique to Dallas or Texas. It is a trans-regional mindset which has stunted mobility in plenty of other American cities from one coast to another, as millions of us give up on the idea that having fewer cars on the roads is good for public health and happiness. And for me, few things have illustrated the logical outcome of this mindset quite so grimly as a walk that George and I took at one of the few nature preserves in Plano; the suburb on the north side of Dallas where Frito-Lay and JCPenney are based.

I first heard about Arbor Hills—without quite realizing it—back in 2025, while reading a two-part essay from the journalist Hamilton Nolan on the expansion of conservative Christian mega-churches and 16-lane super highways around Dallas. The kicker of the first part is a scorcher. “Weary after a long day at church, I drove to Plano’s one nature preserve,” Nolan writes. “But I had to turn around and leave. The parking lot was full.”

There’s a 50/50 chance that Nolan was alluding to the 200 acres of upland forests and prairies that make up Arbor Hills, which is one of two Plano nature preserves offering wooded trails for walkers and runners (the other one is the more expansive Oak Point Park.) George and I ventured up there early on an overcast Sunday morning, enticed by the prospect of being surrounded by trees. This is not exactly an easy experience to have in Dallas. The scale of local development means that even at the few larger scale green spaces like White Rock Lake reservoir, there’s always infrastructure visible nearby. Parking there had proved to be a challenge for us on prior visits; a clear case of not just demand exceeding supply, but the means knocking the end out of reach.

So we braced ourselves for disappointment as we pulled into the crescent-shaped lot at Arbor Hills, already bustling and full of gleaming metal at 9:40 AM. We circled the parking area like a shark, looking for an opening that we could claim. Maddeningly, a couple of the vacant spaces that we did find had been rendered unusable by big-ass SUVs or trucks spilling over from the neighboring parking spaces. There’s something deeply emasculating about gearing up for some time outdoors, only to find yourself crawling at 5 miles-per-hour between rows of vehicles, hoping and praying that one of them will be merciful enough to leave soon. Luckily, our third pass was successful, as we saw a family piling into their Honda CR-V. We didn’t have a fourth pass in us.

Again, I don’t want to leave you with the impression that I’m indulging some sort of prejudiced resentment toward Texas (given that I’m from New England, which is not exactly known for being charitable to southern states, I think this bears repeating.) If you have ever gone hiking in Amercia, then you’ve probably experienced a version of trailhead gridlock. In the backcountry, this is inconvenient—the reality that parking capacity in conserved lands can’t be easily expanded. But in suburbs of major metro areas, where far more of us actually live, this is a more elemental problem. Frederick Law Olmsted, who basically created the public park as we know it, saw parks and city-adjacent conservation lands like Arbor Hills as spaces in which anyone who needed a breather from the stressors of the Industrial Age could find it. But when the only way to reach the closest green space is driving there and finding a place to park your car, the barrier of entry rises considerably. Both of these things are indirect admission fees, paid in money and time. And the result is fewer folks visiting or knowing about parks.

Maybe that’s why I had never heard whisperings of Arbor Hills on previous visits to Dallas, or why it took so long for George and I to scope it out, drive up to Plano, and take a look. The paved pathway that winds through the preserve’s grasslands and its twisted woods, with trees that looked almost blackened in their leafless state, was the main artery for hikers, runners, and families with strollers. The more raggedy dirt trails that tunneled through the dark branches and waterless gulches were strangely empty, and we decided to take advantage of their quietude. For the first time since I touched down at DFW airport—or maybe for my first time ever in the Dallas-Fort Worth area—-I felt like I was communing with something primordial. Something that had taken root in this region centuries before American Airlines and Texas Instruments went public.

This was pure, raw Texan wildness; something you would have to drive beyond the city limits to experience, were it not for the conservation of the Arbor Hills. Near the top of an especially tall and exposed hill, we arrived at a wooden bridge that connected the trail to an observation tower, where several visitors were drinking in the grandeur of the park. The view was layered, like sections of an onion. The first layer, surrounding us on all sides, was shaggy and rustic. But beyond there, wrapping around Arbor Hills, was a vaster sea of pavement and steel, stretching as far as we could see. It felt like an inversion of a typical mountain view, as you gaze out from the wilderness toward the glimmers of society beyond the trees. From Arbor Hills, that sprawl of pavement and steel felt like the real wilderness—dangerous, unforgiving, and difficult to get through.

That is my nightmare. A future in which we ask parks and green spaces to offer things that the broader landscape of our cities and towns should offer. Many of these places will need to get bigger soon; to accommodate more housing, as prices skyrocket! But the direction of growth is overlooked. Building farther and farther outward, instead of upward, can contribute to public perception that personal vehicles are the best way to move around town. It’s a misguided perception that lacks historic insight. (Hell, it used to be possible to ride trolleys from the city center to the bushiest burbs, which I wrote about a few years back.) And I suspect that’s one of the reasons why we still can’t quit car-centered planning, even as the costs and risks of driving everywhere keep adding up. Relying on a publicly operated train or bus to get across town might mean a little more effort than jumping into your sedan and hitting the road. But the conveniences that seem to come with driving are paid for indirectly, in far too many ways to count.

If George and I hadn’t been able to park the car at Arbor Hills—if we had been forced to abandon our hike—I hope the disappointment would have inspired introspection. As another friend once said to me, “You’re never caught in traffic. You are the traffic.” That reality doesn’t seem to have permeated the Arbor Hills vicinity though. A late 2025 story for the Quorum Report by journalist James Russell found voters in the northern Dallas suburbs, including Plano, on the verge of clawing back their shares of public funding for DART; on the divergent premise that DART’s trains and buses are under-used and bringing in crime and vagrancy from Dallas. The alternative, if Plano chooses to pull out of DART funding, could be lower-cost rideshare services from a company called Via, which already operates nearby in Arlington and Denton. By early February, Plano and DART leaders were engaged in a series of compromise talks. The outcome is still undertermined. But as I read the latest coverge from North Texas’s NPR station, KERA News, the headline image caught my eye. It captured a group of Plano residents who had turned up at Plano City Hall with signs, in support of DART funding. Two of the signs read, “KEEP TRANSIT PUBLIC.” It somehow left me feeling inspired and gutted in the same moment. This is where we are—on the razor’s edge of witnessing one of the most vital public utilities privatized in more American cities and burbs, generating more traffic and fewer opportunities for people who live there.

But even in Plano, overwhelmed by cars, some of those people were venturing out to fight back; stubbornly dragging the clear and healthier alternative back into the light.

• So many of you responded enthusiastically to the recent Mind The Moss story on the block party-like shoveling that took place on my street during Winter Storm Fern that I decided to pitch a similar story to The Boston Globe, which gave me the green light to revisit the moment. You can read the Globe story right here.
  

• Also, on the matter of appreciation, it’s been almost two months since I kicked off the newest incarnation of Mind The Moss, removing the paywall for all new Moss stories and digging deeper into the intersections of the outdoors, culture, and politics. That so many of you have continued to support the newsletter as paid subscribers means a lot to me. This financial support is what makes it possible for me to devote time to researching and writing a new Mind The Moss story every week; especially stories that involve field reporting. To be able to sit down each month, poring over the ideas on my story calendar (yes, that’s a real thing that I cobble together) and thinking, “Maybe I could go there and look into this,” has been the creative equivalent of nitrous oxide—making some of the most widely-read Moss stories possible. Thank you to all of you who have made this happen. And for anyone who wants to add some logs to the Mind The Moss woodstove for 2026, you can do so today with a monthly or annual paid subscription, which also includes the hundreds of stories and trip ideas nestled in the Moss archive.

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Most of us have at least one dream gig that we would sell assets or cross oceans to accept. And now, in the aftermath of Super Bowl LX, I’ve added a new dream job to my shortlist—playing a bush, as a backdrop extra in a Bad Bunny performance. The King of Latin Trap put on a barn burner of a halftime show on Sunday evening, and much has already been said and written about how Bad Bunny re-imagined what it means to be an American; at a moment when older versions of that idea are being used as a pretext to tear communities apart. But another awesome thing about the show and setlist was how deeply they were rooted in an orchestrated environment.

Instead of assembling one of those starship-like stages that most musicians use for stadium shows, Bad Bunny and his team transformed the football field into a Puerto Rican village. The rippling green tallgras was actually “played” by lots of background extras wearing bush costumes. Many of the backup dancers were dressed as sugar cane field workers, sporting Puerto Rico apparel staples like pavas—straw hats made from palm leaves. And those sparking telephone poles that Bad Bunny climbed while performing “El Apagón” (“The Blackout”) were a reflection of the song’s inspiration: the ongoing electricity outages in Puerto Rico, exacerbated by stronger hurricanes, the privatization of utilities, and gentrification. Throw in a real wedding, officiated in the midst of the show, and we had something bigger than a show. We traveled into a little world, full of characters, symbols, and stories. Orchestrated for one night only!

So you can understand why—if Bad Bunny ever orchestrates another environment in which people are needed to play the flora—I am getting my ass on a plane. If there’s any irony to how many of us have been inspired by Bad Bunny’s human bushes, that’s probably because dressing up as a bush or a tree is often seen as a humiliation; the pity prize offered to someone who tried out for the school play and couldn’t land a role with dialogue. But here’s the thing. While there’s plenty of prestige to be won from headlining a show or even being a part of an ensemble, the silent background extras receive a different kind of prize. Basically, they get to live in the orchestrated environment of the show for a few hours. And speaking as a two-time background extra myself, I can confirm that living in an orchestrated environment is a lot of fun.

Since the late 2000s, when The Departed won Best Picture and put Boston on the map for moviemakers, as a veritable hotbed of townie ritual and aggression, a ton of films and TV shows have been shot here. About a decade ago, intrigued by the chance to bump shoulders with visiting celebs, I joined Boston Casting (New England’s premier entertainment agency) by creating a free “hire me!” profile for background extra gigs. Yes, I lied in a few places, such as claiming that I had experience handling swords. And within a couple months of joining the agency, my ship came in. It was a thriller titled “American Odyssey,” about an unlikely trio—a soldier, a lawyer, and an activist—who discover a conspiracy involving corporations funding terrorism. Part of the pilot was being filmed in Boston’s Financial District, against the backdrop of an Occupy Wall Street-inspired protest encampment. They needed a lot of people to play protesters.

I got the call, along with a couple hundred other New Englanders with varying levels of experience or investment in the entertainment industry. We were booked for two days of shooting, in the middle of winter. Most of us weren’t fitted with costumes ahead of time and thus, we were asked to bring our own wardrobe. “You should look like you haven’t been home for a while!,” the instructional email from Boston Casting began. “Layers are good, things that keep you warm, nothing fashionable. Think ex-hippy, grunge, quirky, funky, artsy, alternative. Nothing bright. Stick to dark, muted colors. Jeans are good. Jeans with holes that we maybe see a thermal underneath is good. Nothing cute. Like you’ve just been outside, knits, hats, sweaters, etc.” Paired with a 5:45am call time, this gig had the trappings of an adventure. When I showed up at Post Office Square for Day One—bundled in a rattty wool coat that had I found in the back of my dad’s closet—I entered another kind of orchestrated environment.

The production team had done their homework. The replicated encampment, large enough to occupy more than half of Post Office Square, had built elements which I recognized from my 2011 visit to the Zuccoti Park encampment that materalized at the height of the Occupy Wall Street protests. There were tents, a library, a kitchen, a medical station, a bicycle-powered charging station for phones and laptops, and lots of drums and prayer flags. From dawn to dusk, the assistant directors shuffled us to various points of the encampment and gave us temporary background parts to play. Near 11am, I was on the frontlines with a throng of protesters shouting and shaking my fist at a bunch of well-dressed corporate lawyers exiting an adjacent building. By 6pm that evening, I was taking part in a big group yoga session in the encampment, doing my best downward dog and sticking my butt in the air just as the director and the camera crew swung by to shoot B-Roll footage that might make it into the pilot.

It was one of the most strangely enjoyable experiences that I’ve had: being part of the orchestrated environment of American Odyssey. Essentially, we were immersed in this alternative reality where we had limited agency—someone else was making most of our decisions for us—but where we were all working together to create something interesting. Meanwhile, our basic needs are taken care of. The production crew kept everyone fed and hydrated. A nearby office was procured for the extras, so that we could warm up indoors when the crew was setting up new shots. Of course, we got paid for each 12-hour day of shooting. But the check felt almost secondary to the more rarefied reward of getting to play Make Believe with so many other people, in this built environment with too many details to capture in the course of one scene.

That last part really resonated with me a couple years later, when I scored my second background extra gig for Greta Gerwig’s 2019 adaptation of Little Women. This time, I was an upper middle class Concord gentleman, dressed in a heavy black overcoat with extensions in my beard and a large stack of Christmas presents for my imaginary kids. For the first shot of the day—the March sisters walking down the main street of 19th Century Concord, which had been built from scratch in the nearby town of Harvard, Massachusetts—the assistant director placed me halfway up the wooden staircase on the bank building. I thought about the structural engineering it must have taken to ensure that actors could stand on the staircase, which would be lucky to get a second of coverage in the finished movie. That’s the thing about orchestrated environments, whether they’re assembled for a film, a play, or a concert. They need to be capable of hosting many actions and moments, including some that won’t actually be seen by an audience. I learned this the hard way when one of the assistant directors brought me down from the stairs and instructed me to walk past Saoirse Ronan. Every neuron in my brain was buzzing. She was on my left, the camera was to my right, and I took this as a sign that I had lucked my way into the final cut. But the moment barely made it into the trailer. In the movie itself, I was nowhere to be seen in downtown Concord.

But I would go there again in a heartbeat; just as a lot of us would consider spending four figures just to make it to Bad Bunny’s next orchestrated environment, if he ever decides to build one again. That’s number two on my aspirational list of background extra roles. The top slot belongs to the unlikely event that George Miller is allowed to make one more Mad Max movie. (The most recent sequel, Furiosa, was acclaimed by critics, but its box office gains paled to Fury Road.) If that happens, and if the call for extras makes it to Boston, I will be flying to Australia; driven by the dream of being outfitted with post-apocalytpic warts or tumors, dressed in leather and metal, placed on a moving vehicle in the desert, and given a name like “Splooge Boy” or “The Bone Carpenter.” That’s my hope, when it comes to visiting an orchestrated environment.

And I’d like to know what yours might look, or where it could ideally take you. Clearly, the Bad Bunny halftime show has inspired a lot of us to chew on that question—to envision a temporary world, shaped by the imagination and brought to life en masse, and the prospect of enjoying that world together. Some might see this as a means of coping with the uglier reality that we live in. But if we are ever going to transcend that scorched landscape, we should probably get into the habit of envisioning another one.

Of all the creative ways in which Minneapolis residents have been hamstringing ICE agents over the last few weeks, my favorite has to be the militarization of ice—as in, literal ice that forms within seconds in subzero temperatures. The thing you have to understand about people such as Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is that when they suddenly receive more than $170 billion in federal funding—as the DHS did last year—the money goes toward things like two Gulfstream G700 private jets, and not toward basic squad gear, such as footwear suitable for a winter city like Minneapolis. That’s why social media has been full of videos in which ICE agents are seen slipping and eating shit on ice while chasing Twin Cities residents. Some of the ice on the ground was naturally occurring, but other patches were the product of carefully-deployed buckets of water in areas with escalating ICE activity.

This is what creative grassroots resistance can look like, but it’s also a reminder that ice is one of the most understated hazards of winter. Each year, at least one person in my social network slips and lands hard on ice. Sometimes the result is inconvenient, like incurring a bone bruise, and other times, it’s completely debilitating. In August of 2021, I went on a few dates with someone who had spent the entire spring and early summer recuperating from an ankle fracture—which happened when she slipped an icy stretch of sidewalk that her landlord hadn’t salted yet. And with winters across the northeast getting soupier and less consistent in their conditons, those wretched days when every surface is glazed with bone-shattering ice are becoming more frequent.

Luckily, there’s something you can do about this; a tactical and material intervention that’s common in backcountry snow sports, but a lot less ubiquitous to the urban or suburban winter experience. If you live in a climate where ice is a recurring concern from December to April, then it’s time to start assembling a small arsenal of traction.

But before we begin, a housekeeping note. Those of you who’ve been reading Mind The Moss for a few years will know that I only write about outdoor gear on those rare occasions when it seems like highlighting a piece of equipment might help to address an acute problem or need. And I should also mention that I am not being paid by any manufacturer or PR firm to write about the gear that’s featured in the newsletter this week. (If any of you know someone who could make that happen, please hit me up!)

So…what is traction? It’s an accessory that you attach to the bottom of your shoe or boot; often a piece of flexible rubber that contains metal elements, which can dig into slippery surfaces like ice. Crampons—the razor sharp spikes that mountaineers use to scale snowcapped summits—are probably the form of traction that most people are vaguely familiar with. I find that ironic, because crampons are the monster truck of traction devices. Until we invent rocket boots, you can’t level up past crampons. And for somebody who’s just trying to get around town without slipping on sidewalk ice, crampons will be comically impractical. But just as there are trucks and cars more usable than a Monster Jam Megalodon, there are overlooked genres of traction that can be the difference between a more mobile winter, and winter spent in traction.

These are the ones that I consider to be the civilian-level “trilogy” of traction devices:

COIL TRACTION

Traction devices usually take one of two paths, and coil traction is the path that I’d imagine most of us have some experience with. Have you owned a pair of Yaktrax, or borrowed one from a friend? If so, you’ll recognize the structural design of a coiled traction device. It’s a slip-on piece of rubber, and the spiderwebby bottom that goes against the sole of your shoe features metal coils. And it’s the edges of those coils, combined with your bodyweight, that create traction and stability on winter ground.

Or at least, that’s the idea. I suspect that coiled traction like Yaktrax is one of the more common traction devices found in urban and suburban regions because they appear a world apart from the aggressive style of mountaineering crampons. And you can wear coiled traction without worrying about whether a misplaced footstep could pierce an artery in your opposite leg. The problem with coiled traction, however, is that people sometimes ask it to do too much. Coils tend to perform best on packed snow, when it’s still soft enough to dig into, yet still slippery. On ice, coiled traction is less reliable.

For that, you need something with bite.

MICRO-SPIKE TRACTION

When you live in a glazed residential area and coil traction isn’t cutting the mustard, I guess it makes sense to wonder, “What if we could have a baby version of crampons?” That’s what micro-spike traction is—miniature crampons that you strap to your boot with the same flexible rubber that coil traction devices use. The spikes are duller and much smaller than those found on traditional crampons, but with the power of your footsteps, they can still crunch into solid ice in a satisfying way. Micro-spikes are a common addition to a winter hiking toolbox, but more of us are starting to discover how useful they can be after winter storms in places we don’t associate with hiking.

Still, there are limits to consider. Because micro-spike traction is a device with literal teeth, there needs to be a certain amount of ice that the spikes can fully pierce. If the ice on the ground is a half-inch thick or greater, you’re in micro-spike territory. But if it’s paper-thin black ice, you might have trouble staying upright with spikes on your shoes or boots.

The other challenge with micro-spikes is that their surface-breaking ability doesn’t just apply to ice. When I was an early winter caretaker at one of the Appalachian Mountain Club’s huts—Lonesome Lake Hut, in the shadow of Cannon Mountain—I constantly found myself asking hikers to remove their spikes before treading across the wooden floors of the building. But nobody’s perfect and a few times, I forgot to this when I returned to the hut after hiking. Once, I actually left a visible bitemark in the floor of the kitchen. (If anyone from the AMC is reading this, please don’t NARC me out to executive management.) All of this is a way of saying that if you wear micro-spikes, you have to be ready to take them off as needed. On some viciously cold, chap-your-ass day in February, that can grow really annoying.

But what if there was a happier medium between the gnashing of micro-spikes and the gentler grip of coiled traction? Something that you could strap to your footwear before going outside in winter weather and basically forget about, with each step on ice and snow? This brings us to the traction device that I use most often each winter.

STUD TRACTION

Last January, when getting ready to lead scouting walks for Boston’s relatively new City On The Hills Trail (31 miles from West Roxbury to Castle Island!) I realized that I needed something a notch or two below micro-spikes, to safely navigate icebound parks and sidewalks. And a trip to the used gear section at my local REI yielded the solution—ice studs. It’s the same concept as micro-spikes and coiled traction, but in this case, the bottom of the strap-on rubber is dotted with tiny metal studs; sort of like the one that you often find at the tip of a hiking pole. The ice studs are modest enough that walking on clear pavement or on other hard surfaces doesn’t feel too weird, and the studs aren’t going to pierce those surfaces. But when you do bump into thinner stretches of ice, the studs dig in just enough to provide a safer passage.

While I wouldn’t trust ice studs to keep me from falling while ascending a seriously iced-up mountain trail, I’ve found them to be trustworthy on level-ish ground and stairways. And in the instances when I do forget that I’m wearing the studs, such as stepping onto the escalator at a subway station or ducking into a supermarket or a friend’s place, I don’t have to worry about leaving a trail of light damage in my wake.

So where does that leave you, as the potential traction owner and user? Should you plump for all three of the devices outlined above, or test the waters with just one? It really depends on the environment you live in, your budget, and your comfort level.

• If you live in a city or town where the winters regularly bring ice into the picture, I would invest in a pair of ice studs and a pair of microspikes. This will give you the ability to toggle between different levels of ice density and coverage.

• If you prefer to start with one device before spending more money on additional traction, go with the ice studs. (We’ll get to prices and models shortly.) This type of winter traction is the most versatile of the three models outlined above.

• If winter conditions on the ground make you feel very uneasy, then you might as well spring for the entire trilogy of traction devices. Coil traction, while probably the least helpful, still works on packed snow, and it’s the cheapest.

These days, you can pick up coil, micro-spike, and stud traction devices from most big box retailers that offer recreational gear. And that brings us to pricing and brands. The widening popularity of micro-spikes and studs had flooded the online market with a lot of low-priced options from manufacturers that you’ve most likely never heard of. The advantage of going with one of these mystery brands is the price, of course. But they usually don’t offer much of a warranty. And since we’re dealing something that’s kind of elemental, like not slipping on ice and cracking your femur, you might want to consider purchasing your traction device from a more known and vetted manufacturer.

So here are the brands I recommend—after years of field experience—for each device:

For coil traction, Yaktrax still reigns. A limited 90-day warranty is included and the price from the manufacturer is $22. (But look for for better deals from other retailers.)

For micro-spike traction, Kahtoola leads the way. The warranty for these puppies is 4 years, and they come in larger sizes than other spike models do. The price is $84.

For stud traction, Kahtoola also crushes it. That 4-year warranty applies to their NANOspikes (which are really studs in their shape and design) and they run for $64.

One last thing, before I attempt to venture outside without making a mess of myself. It’s pretty easy to pick up lightly-used traction on Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist throughout the year—even during the height of winter! A lot of people buy this stuff with the intention to use it for winter sports like hiking, only to find that winter sports aren’t really their bag. And by then, the return window has usually closed. So they’re forced to pawn the traction off to the masses. You probably won’t be able to get the warranty passed over (you can always ask the seller if they still have the receipt), but scoring a pair of barely-used spikes or studs from a good brand for $30 is a victory worth savoring. Maybe with a crunchy, post-storm saunter to the local park or pub.

If you live east of the Mississippi and you got the hell out of dodge this past Sunday morning or earlier…congratulations, I guess. The rest of us? We ain’t going nowhere.

For the next few days, at least. I’m writing to you from a neighborhood in Boston that looks more like a labyrinth of frozen Stalingrad trenches, surrounded by triple decker apartment buildings and snowbound vehicles. Winter Storm Fern has already earned its place on the Top 10 List of snow events in the city. There may be another round of accumulation this Sunday, but I’m actually not worried about it. Because last Sunday and Monday, I witnessed and participated in something rather beautiful on my street.

I enlisted in the Shovel Patrol.

When you live in a winter city or suburb, nothing ruins the ethereal ambience of snow like having to shovel it—before all that powder hardens into something heavier and more slippery. As someone who barely dodged a full-on lumbar disc herniation some years ago, I have to be really careful about rounding my spine too much when lifting shovelfuls of snow up from the ground. And if you’re shoveling your steps, sidewalk, or car for more than 20 minutes or so, maintaining proper form becomes increasingly difficult. I was dreading this as I stepped out of my apartment the other day, ready to spend at least an hour chipping away at drifts with my blue Snow Joe—as I did on the last street where I lived. But on my current, recently-adopted street, which two friends and I moved to last spring, the act of shoveling fresh snow is more like a block party.

The first sign that shoveling was going to be different this time greeted me as soon as I opened the door and saw the stairs leading down to our street completely cleared; compliments of our next-door neighbors, who had to get up extra early to clear their stairway and get to their hospital jobs on time. They had decided to shovel our steps too, as if they were an extra plate or mug that someone had left on the counter. And down on the street, I caught a gilmpse of the Shovel Patrol—small bands of roving neighbors, snow shovels in hand, digging out vehicles with verve and alacrity. Flakes were falling hard, miniature mountains of jettisoned snow were building up between the parked cars, but the air was alive with small talk and gallows laughter. All that was missing was a cooler of drinks and a portable speaker pumping out Van Halen songs.

Contrary to what you might assume, the Shovel Patrol was not organized in advance. While our street does have an email list, which people use for sharing information on local developments—whether it’s a yard sale or incoming ICE agents—the first round of collective shoveling seemed more instinctually spontaneous. For me, seeing those earliest rotations of the Shovel Patrol was inspiring enough to spark a major wave of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). And that’s how I spent the next hour hacking away at one subsumed vehicle after another, with people I hadn’t met yet, despite the close proximity of our apartments. Once the bitter cold had fully seeped into my gloves, I peeled off to thaw my fingers and rest my back muscles in the apartment; as each of us did at some point, on the understanding that someone else would show up soon.

Again, that’s pretty much how a good old rager works. You show up at the party and you contribute to the chaos for an hour or two. Then you stagger outside when you need a few gulps of fresh air or a stomach-settling snack from the closest 7-11. And then, when/if you’re up for it, you venture back into the melee and you run into new arrivals that look familiar—giving you a second wind and the power to rally. As the afternoon got darker and snowier, word about the Shovel Patrol’s latest exploits hit the neighborhood email list. “There’s a car in front of #47 and the owner has mobility limitations,” one person wrote. “I’m gonna get started on it!” Not wanting to miss this, I clomped back down our stairs in my snow pants and parka, already psyching myself up for re-joining the Shovel Patrol. The first person I saw was my landlord, wandering down the street with his own shovel. I couldn’t tell whether he was looking for some new action to plug himself into, or coming back in from his latest snow clearing shift.

As four of us worked on digging out the sedan parked by #47—with the snow piles now surpassing some of us in height—I found out that one of the patrollers actually lived in another neighborhood on the other side of town. His girlfriend, local and also part of our crew, had conscripted him when he arrived to ride out the storm with her.

“Does this sort of thing always happen here, when there’s a big storm,” I asked her as we scraped out the heavier road salt-infused snow from beneath the vehicle.

”Usually, but not always,” she replied. “This is the biggest turnout I think I’ve seen yet.”

By the time we finished our work on the sedan, I expected to feel physically wasted; in need of a shower beer and a protein-heavy meal. But to my surprise, I wanted to keep going! As did the rest of the crew. So we spent the next 40 minutes or so finding more facilities that needed some shoveling. Sometimes we worked together. Other times we would splinter off and tinker away at drifts individually, but within sight of each other. When I finally did climb the stairs back up to our front door and porch, which offers a nice view of the street below, I could still see Shovel Patrollers under the streetlights.

I’m assuming that Shovel Patrols are a seasonal feature for plenty of neighborhoods. My parents, who live in the suburbs north of Boston, were pleasantly surprised to find that one of their neighbors had shoveled their stairway mid-storm. Why these acts of mutual aid happen on some streets and not on others is an intriguing mystery to dig into. I have some loose threads to poke at. The last street that I lived on was the kind of place where you would often see gardening crews hard at work on lawns, while the people on my current street tend to approach landscaping by rolling up their sleeves and popping an Advil. But bearing in mind that last weekend’s Snow Patrol may have been the largest in a long time, I wonder if a more acute force could be at work here.

These last few weeks, millions of us have been watching one of America’s major cities struggling under what’s basically an occupation by ICE. And the horror of what ICE is inflicting on Twin Cities residents right now is at least matched by the power of how the people of Minneapolis and St. Paul are helping each other weather the storm. It’s incredibly humbling to see people risking their own safety to monitor and record the activities of ICE agents; to offer groceries and safe rides to neighbors who are at risk of being targeted. It’s an escalation of the mutual aid that many people who live in communities impacted by structural inequality have been practicing for a long time.

If nothing else, the events of these last few weeks in Minnesota have shown us that reaching out to help someone struggling can be deeply instinctual for a lot of us and less intimidating if approached collectively. As the writer Adam Serwer observed in a great essay for The Atlantic, that seems to have been a fundamental miscalculation by Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, and Donald Trump, in their joint decision to invade and brutalize the Twin Cities. They were banking on a majority patchwork of indifference and support for ICE operations. Instead, they’re running into just the opposite; a city that’s full of people who feel driven to protect their neighbors and push back. We’re seeing glimpses of the same thing up in Maine, where ICE is now targeting Somali-American communities across the state. In other words, they took us for a bunch of assholes, when in fact, millions of us are kind at heart, and compelled to act on this.

When I finally took my hot shower after the last round of Shovel Patroling, I changed into fuzzy pajama bottoms and queued up a classic episode of The Simpsons which I had suddenly remembered earlier that day. The opening is among my favorites. It’s movie night and Bart has procured a VHS tape; the real-life Clint Eastwood Western Paint Your Wagon. (“With blood, I bet!” Homer exclaims, practically salivating as Lisa and Marge roll their eyes.) But then, within seconds of Bart pressing PLAY, Paint Your Wagon reveals itself to be a jovial musical, with all the townsfolk square dancing and singing about exactly what the title suggests. Painting a wagon, and painting it good.

”They’re singing, Marge!” Homer cries, dismayed. “Why aren’t they killing each other?”

Winter in New England is one of the all-time great seasons for what I sometimes call Contrarian Travel—going against tourist wisdom and visiting a place at a time when most people wouldn’t think (or want) to be there. If you’ve ever witnessed a blizzard from the desolate beaches of Cape Cod in December, or shuffled your way across icy streets in Providence to some club where a hardcore punk show is imbuing the night with unlikely warmth, then you know what I’m talking about. The hulking mountains of New Hampshire and Vermont aren’t quite as forsaken during the snowiest months, given the regional popularity of skiing and winter hiking. But on the south end of the White Mountain National Forest, there’s one particular recreational feature that does feel strangely forgotten once the last wisps of the fall foliage have been blown away.

That feature is the Kancamagus Highway; the Granite State’s storied scenic byway that snakes and squiggles just over 34 miles from Lincoln to Conway, passing through the nexus of the Pemigewasset Wilderness and the Sandwich Range. This is a patch of the White Mountains that doesn’t incur the same level of feverish visitation as Franconia Notch or the Presidentials. But every September and October, the world suddenly remembers that this gorgeous mountain-climbing—and descending!—highway exists. And during those two months, “The Kanc” regresses into a ribbony parking lot, with thousands of cars competing for autumnal vistas from roadside overlooks, and top notch foliage immersion in places where the road weaves through deciduous forest.

Now, given the steep dropoff in Kancamagus action once the leaves have gone, you might assume that the highway is closed during winter; when a single snowstorm can easily blanket a scenic byway with 3 feet of powder. But The Kanc doesn’t close. Plows and road salt are deployed to keep the road passable and safe. This is remarkable for a coupe of reasons. It costs New Hampshire a lot of money to clear a highway like The Kanc, and yet, there’s no superlative recreation destination alongside the Kancamagus Highway that might easily explain such an investment. The closest downhill ski resort, Loon Mountain, is located at the western end of the highway in Lincoln. What you do find along The Kanc are quieter natural wonders. Hiking trails to curiously overlooked mountains. Waterfalls and ponds that stir in solitude. And the rocky bends of the Swift River—a roaring behemoth that’s upstaged by the neighboring Saco River. It speaks to the Granite State’s confidence and pride in the White Mountains that this byway is accessible to the public at a time of the year when most folks are hunkering indoors.

And this winter is your chance to visit The Kanc and see where that pride comes from.

When spending a shivery day on the Kancamagus Highway, I generally like to start at the west end in Lincoln. There’s something uniquely satisfying about launching from a place that’s teeming with ski resort traffic and transitioning into a calmer and ethereal realm; where you can really appreciate the luster of ice on evergreen boughs, and the occasional flare of color that breaks through the overcast sky, while you’re enjoying a mountain view from one of the highway overlooks. If there was ever a time and place for having a couple of Cocteau Twins albums in your car, it’s midwinter on The Kanc. The Scottish dream pop band’s magical melodies fit in perfectly here. But regardless of where you end up starting a Kancamagus drive, you’re in for a shitload of serenity.

What happens next, once you’re gliding along the undulations and occasional hairpin turns of The Kanc, really depends on your mood and your appetite for being outside amidst freezing temperatures and abundant snow or ice. If you sprang out of bed that morning, stared at yourself in the mirror as you brushed your teeth, and said, “I must climb something big on this day” (I imagine this is how most mountain climbing trips begin) the Kancamagus offers a nice range of doorways to summits. You could spend a few hours slogging uphill through boreal forest zones to Mount Hancock or the two Mount Osceolas, if you’re thinking of conscripting yourself into the 4,000 Footers club. And if you’ve logged some miles on winter peaks, you could challenge yourself with a Mount Chocorua ascent. The remarkably steep, pointy peak of this visually distinctive, 3,490-foot mountain often necessitates crampons—not microspikes—when it’s solidly iced up. Then there’s Hedgehog Mountain, a less severe destination that used to be the home of a University of New Hampshire forestry camp, for which the trail to the summit is still named. It’s a shorter, less quad-tenderizing hike, but it will still get you huffing and puffing—and sweating beneath all those insulating layers of winter wear.

Occasionally, I’ve found the inspiration to rally and set off for one of the summits off of The Kanc. But each time I’ve turned into the parking area for the Champney Brook Trail (the beginning of the route to Mount Chocorua) my actual destination has been well below the treeline. 1.5 miles of moderately graded climbing along this trail is all that it takes to reach the base of Champney Falls, which spills elegantly down a series of cliff faces during the summer, only to be frozen solid into a curtain of ice in winter. Better yet, directly across from Champney Falls is a deep gorge where an even taller cascade is hidden. Pitcher Falls, a 50-foot plunge cascade, is one of the finest White Mountain waterfall deep cuts. Odds are you’ll have it all to yourself on a winter visit.

The same goes for a more broadly recognized cascade near the midpoint of The Kanc, which requires less than a mile of gently angular hiking. Sabbaday Falls spills 35 feet through an even more impressive gorge, and while the wooden boardwalk and bridge at the top of the falls are closed each the winter, the real pleasure of seeing Sabbaday Falls is feeling engulfed by the elements. The plunge, the sheer cliffs, the prehistoric rock formations, and of course, all those pine conifers that creak in the winter winds. Should you feel the desire to spend more time with these natural elements, you can do that by following the Sabbaday Brook Trail beyond the falls to North and Middle Tripyramid mountains (also part of the 4,000 Footers list) and—if you really feel like tempting fate—to the mysterious and view-less peak that’s called “The Fool Killer.”

Personally, I prefer taking those gambles during seasons when other hikers are more likely to be around and in earshot of my profane cries for help. On my last midwinter visit to Sabbaday Falls, I ended up driving further eastward toward the Conways, so that I could finally lay eyes on a subtler water feature that’s mobbed in the summer. Lower Falls is more like a series of frothy rapids in the Swift River, occurring where the waterway starts descending into the valley. The roadside rest area beside Lower Falls is one of the most popular points along The Kanc—a proven place for picnicking, sun bathing, and actual bathing on the toastiest days. It’s probably dreamy on an evening in July, and the heft of the river seems somewhat understated then; especially if rain has been in short supply. But each winter, when the rapids and mini cascades freeze solid, the chaos and violence of the Swift River (as Werner Herzog might say) become much more visible and compelling. Lower Falls, in its frozen form, is the opposite of some glassy waterway winding through the countryside. It’s a jagged mass of ice and boulders. The occasional exposed jet of water surging amidst the riverscape can look like an arterial wound. It’s beautiful, in its gnarly, disordered quality, and I was the only person standing there gawking at it on the afternoon in January when I paid my visit.

Maybe I’m overestimating how essential these eerie, quieting midwinter experiences are to New Hampshire residents and state leaders. Perhaps the 4,000 Footers and the spells they cast are the raison d’être for plowing and salting The Kanc each winter. 10+ years of writing about walking and outdoor adventure has made me keenly aware that staring at a chunky frozen river on a zero degree day is something of a difficult pitch. But even if the prospect of some good midwinter brooding doesn’t speak to you at the moment, the year-round accessibility of The Kanc keeps that door open; should you change your mind one day. Our impulses and needs can transform unexpectedly, and what we do with our time outdoors is no exception. The idea of winter camping used to make me shudder. The thought of arriving at a tentsite, liberally marinated in sweat after hiking and crawling into a sleeping bag to stay warm, was repellant to me. But when my friend and hiking comrade Laura floated the idea of getting our feet wet with an overnight hike up to Mount Kearsarge near North Conway, something shifted in me. The prospect of a new, shared experience with someone whose company I like was enough to make me re-evaluate my strong feelings about winter camping. What made this possible is the fact that Kearsarge isn’t just there—it’s also easy to get to.

So my hat is off to the Granite State for resisiting its more libertarian-ish impulses and making it possible for people from all manner of backgrounds to experience The Kanc and its frost-burnt gems each winter. It’s easy to imagine a parallel universe in which the state allows the Kancamagus Highway to get so powdery and iced up that it’s only passable with snowshoes and quads of titanium. Luckily, despite the challenges we’re facing right now, we still live in a reality where this corner of the world is considered too enchanting and essential to lose for a quarter of the year. For that, I’m Kanc-ful.

Last summer, I got to spend some time chilling and catching up with an old friend from high school who was in the Greater Boston Area to recover from surgery and begin physical therapy. I would pick her up, we would drive to a coffee shop with shaded outdoor seating, and for the better part of the afternoon, we would talk, recaffeinate, and tinker away at work on our respective laptops. While this hadn’t exactly been part of her plan, my friend was wise to schedule the surgery for early June. Because if she had returned from the hospital today, hanging out together outside of the house where she was moving around on crutches would have been considerably more challenging. Not because of snow or ice, but because of space.

Or—more specifically—because we could use more Third Spaces; venues that are not home (the first space) or a workplace (the second space) where we can be with other people, for free or next to free. This may sound wonky or academic at first, but most of us have cultivated a few third spaces in our lives. That dive bar that still offers $5 PBRs and always puts on The Cure’s Disintegration after 9pm? Third Space. The loop path around the closest pond where you meet up with a friend to stroll, run, and/or people watch? Third Space. A plaza where people are shooting the breeze, tucking into sandwiches, and shooting “fuck around and find out” glares at pigeons? Third Space. These are a few examples of the Third Spaces one can find in America these days. But…did you notice the key difference about that first example? The dive bar?

A bar with cheap drinks and a culture of hanging out is a perfect example of an indoor Third Space. And this is where most American cities and towns really struggle to keep up with other parts of the world. A public park or green space in which you can work out, picnic, or meditate—with friends, or in the company of strangers—is a perfectly fine Third Space when being outside is safe and reasonably comfortable. But when it’s pouring rain, cold enough to make tree trunks buckle, or stifling hot, the open air kind of Third Space is effectively closed. You’re left seeking similar social refuge in a climate controlled environment that doesn’t come with a high price tag for just being there. I have had a pretty difficult time finding these in Boston and in other parts of the U.S.

I happen to live in a neighborhood where indoor Third Spaces are in short supply, and nothing magnified this like those scorching and steaming heat waves that the Greater Boston Area suffered this past July and August. Like many others, I live in an old triple-decker that was not built to withstand such heat, and there’s only so much one can do with window air conditioners. On days when I craved the presence of other humans, I would trudge through the blaze to the small handful of coffee shops and bars located within one mile of the apartment, only to find each central air-equipped space packed with others who had the same idea and got there earlier. There were no vacant seats, and the situation at the local library—not exactly a good place for talking animatedly with a friend—was no better. To hang out with other people outside of the apartment, in relative comfort, I had to take the train deeper into the city and expand my search.

All of this has been on my mind for the last few days. Not just because it’s colder and tougher to spend prolonged time outside, but because I just learned that one of the largest indoor Third Spaces in Boston—the Time Out Market food hall located near Fenway Park—is closing its doors at the end of the month. This was a crushing bit of news to absorb, because for all its shortcomings, this huge cafeteria-esque joint was one of the only reliable indoor venues in Boston for meeting up with friends without having to spend more than a couple bucks each on food or drinks. You could order an entire barbecue platter or a trilogy of overpriced cocktails if so inclined, but getting a single egg roll or even a small coffee was also acceptable. Hell, I sometimes met up at the marketplace with folks and didn’t a spend a dime. You could do that too! Because at the end of the day, Time Out Market was as much a gathering space as a business.

Losing Third Spaces like this, or suffering from a growing shortage of them, is what I would call a civic emergency. The “epidemic of loneliness” that former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy declared back in 2023 has gotten worse for millions of us, as we watch the world burn through our phone screens and in some cases, on our streets. And while growing recognition of this epidemic has inspired more of us to find ways of reconnecting with friends and community—whether it’s going on a group date or organizing mutual aid projects like getting hot meals to neighbors in need—we also need places outside of the home or workplace where these efforts can be talked out, planned, and potentially hosted. And the big obstacle that we keep runnning into in cities like Boston and countless towns is that it costs money to operate Third Spaces.

Consider the small businesses that we’ve long asked to perform the work of providing Third Spaces—coffee shops, bars, and restaurants where you can get a bite to eat for $10 or less. Some establishments do have business plans that account for customers hanging out and sipping their beverages at a glacial pace. But in the current economic climate, with food and beverage providers struggling to contend with rising expenses, the pressure to get patrons in and out the door faster is growing. Not long ago, I met up with a colleague for lunch at a ramen place in Cambridge, and we got so involved in conversation between slurps that the host walked over and bluntly told us that we needed to hurry up and finish our bowls, so they could seat the next party. Sure, it was rude, but it was also a reminder that asking small businesses to be Third Spaces has a ceiling. Today, with commercial rents and operating costs soaring, we may be hitting it.

So what could an intervention look like?

One of my favorite cities in the world, Berlin, has been running into the same problem when it comes to nightclubs. The legendary and sometimes notorious techno clubs of Berlin that began in derelict buildings after the wall came down were vital to the city’s rebuilding and rebranding as a hot travel destination. And when tourism escalated to gentrification and rising real estate costs, the owners of these nightlife venues saw the writing on the wall and began lobbying the government to reclassify clubs as “cultural institutions”—the same status bestowed on opera houses and museums, which carries tax breaks and more supports from the state. Their pitch was approved by the federal government in 2021, providing Berlin’s clubs some relief from the pressures of having to make more and more money to continue operating. And I find this rather inspiring.

If Germany’s parliament was able to recognize the cultural and economic logic for supporting clubs where you might find yourself dancing or experiencing your first threesome, maybe American cities and states can look at Third Spaces in the same way! Reliable places to gather, outdoors and indoors, aren’t just good for the soul; they’re good for business as well, because they encourage folks to venture out more often. Suppose I invited you to go ice skating at the Frog Pond on Boston Common on a blustery afternoon in February. Ehh, do I really want to be out in the cold for so long? you might wonder. Would we have to warm up in the vestibule of a Dunks or a Burger King near the park? But what if I told you that once we had our fill of skating, we could take shelter beside the ice in a toasty chalet with a crackling fire, couches, and optional hot chocolate and croissants that we could purchase, if we felt like it?

That fantasy is a reality in Montreal’s Quartier des Spectacles, where the onsite ice skating rink—the Esplanade Tranquille—is paired with a cozy lounge where you can gaze down at the skaters and recover from the arctic winds. For free! You don’t have to buy any of the refreshments sold there, or pay for admission. How is this possible? Because the Quartier des Spectacles is a planned cultural district with direct support and oversight from the City of Montreal, and several of the offerings found within are basically nonprofit entities that can operate at a loss; in a way that a normal brick and mortar business could not. And the Esplanade Tranquille is just one of those entities.

Protecting and creating more Third Spaces is a civic investment that we could choose to undertake at any point. As usual, the hurdle we face in America is mental; the idea that government can’t compete with the private sector, or work in concert with it, to provide essential goods. It’s a stubborn affliction, lingering in too many of our minds even as cost of health insurance, housing, and childcare pushes millions to the edge of solvency. Unfortunately, it’s going to take more time—and probably more suffering or disruption—for Americans to get past this cognitive roadblock, giving policymakers the confidence to support Third Space investment. So…what can we do in the interim?

As my friend reminded me last summer, there’s always the option of “stealing” a Third Space, whenever possible. She’s a resident of Brooklyn for most of the year (her family lives near Boston) and one night, as we pushed burritos into our faces in a streetside dining area, she spoke of something wonderful that I’ve seen on trips to New York; the way that New Yorkers will utilize a stoop, the edge of some bodega, or the interior of a hotel lobby for hanging out and catching up. In a city that’s as dense and expensive as NYC, you have to be bolder about occupying available space wherever you’re able. Yes, you might be asked to move along at some point, if you’re stealing a third space inside or around a business. But you and a friend may just manage to squeeze a solid half hour of hangout time from the place—or even longer! These days, that’s a victory.

I’m planning to do this tonight, actually. Since the late 2010s, I’ve beein going out to movies in Boston with my friend Steve, and our salvation has been the AMC “A-List” subscription program, which allows you to catch four weekly movies at AMC Theaters for less than $30 per month. And while this varies theater to theater, we’ve found that most of them will let you inside the ticketholder area long before your showtime. For us, this means having more time to catch up, trade life updates, and enjoy being there together, before we dive into a new cinematic world. This evening, that world will be 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, in which Ralph Fiennes plays a kindly doctor dealing with a zombie pandemic by using bones to build a monument to the dead…while Jack O’Connnell deals with it by running a Satanic cult—in which dressing like Jimmy Savile is a requirement—and terrorizing survivors scattered across the British mainland. This might sound unlikely as a foundation for continuing our friendship and appreciating the simple beauty of being out there in the world together, engaged and inquisitive.

But for the moment, it’s what we have to work with.

Welcome to 2026, Moss People.

Hopefully most of you didn’t have to go to through the elemental tribulations that Boston experienced this week. I woke up to find the whole city in that awful limbo when warming air causes most of the snow on the ground to melt, only for the temperature to ping-pong below freezing again, just in time to harden all the meltage and transform the streets and sidewalks into a big, bumpy hockey rink. Like most American cities, Boston municipally plows and salts the streets, but the hard work of clearing the sidewalks is entrusted to property owners, which yields predictably bad and inconsistent results. So this week was one of the rare times when I found myself persuading friends and family to avoid going outside. Because ice can break bones.

However, there is still a great amount of wandering space between taking advantage of delightful weather outdoors and staying inside when the forecast is looking nastier and less alluring. And most days in winter tend to fall into that second category. The act of being outside is tougher on the body and mind—your skin gets chapped, the cold inevitably finds its way into your layers of wool and fleece, and if there’s rain or sleet in the air, the addition of moisture makes being outside even more untenable.

And this winter, I am encouraging you to go outside more often on days like these.

Consider an experience I had just before New Year’s Eve. My housemates and I drove up from Boston to Montreal for the big weekend. The roads were covered in slush for most of the journey, which made for slow going. By the time we finally turned on to René-Lévesque Boulevard and started unloading our bags, it was well after sundown and the sleet had hardened into fat snowflakes. Nonetheless, I was determined to go and try a Belgian trippel at the the Dieu Du Ciel microbrewery in Mile End. And when I learned that I would be the only one of us emerging from the hotel that night and venturing up to the brewpub by foot and bus, I braced for a grim solitary expedition.

I had barely made it one block from the hotel when I saw something amidst the snow, sidewalk ice, and darkness that entranced me: In the same way that happening upon a stag in the forest would make your eyes widen and your breathing stop. I had veered left onto a residential street where a convoy of massive yellow snow removal machinery was slowly making its way up the road. A public works pickup truck with flashing lights led the way, like a lone horseman guiding an army into battle. Each of the hulking snow removal trucks was outfitted with different mechanical instruments, but all of them had gigantic wheels that were almost as tall as I am; which you would not want to slip and slide beneath from the sidewalk! So I stayed still and watched in amazement as Montreal’s nocturnal street stewards plowed and carved their way through the wintery roads. One of the huge trucks included a device that brought to mind a woodchipper—a duct from which freshly pulped snow and ice cascaded into the guts of the machine. And just like that, the shitty night was imbued with wonder.

When you’re able to bundle up and stay indoors during bad weather, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that many of us still have to clomp out and go to work; on weekends, after dark, you name it. Back in 2017, I shared an apartment with a friend who had just started working as a municipal recycling coordinator. This meant that when a blizzard blanketed Boston and immobilized traffic, the two of us would run into each other in the kitchen with very different agendas before us. Mine basically looked like a Snow Day and his involved driving a snowplow around town. Yes, he got some pretty sweet overtime pay for his troubles, but he still had to spend several hours being outside and uncomfortable, to help keep the city semi-functionable during the snowstorm.

Going outside on a day when the current weather or even what’s approaching on the skyline seems to say “NOPE” raises your odds of witnessing what it takes to keep the world running. Or even what it takes to make the world beautiful. Last August, I found myself in San Antonio for work, and despite the stupefying humidity and triple digit temperatures, I decided to explore some of the city’s renowned River Walk; a 15-mile network of walking paths along the rivers that converge near the center of town. The brutal temperatures and dew point meant that I would only be walking a mile or two before retreating into an air conditioned space to recuperate, and the downtown River Walk portions—bustling and alive during the magic hour on summer evenings—were near-empty in many places. Most of San Antonio was taking shelter indoors. But as I admired some built cascades along one stretch of the waterside path, I spotted a city worker in a straw hat and protective clothing watering adjacent plants with a hose. I wondered how long he had been out here, tending the greenery and keeping them looking resplendent for the big crowds that would converge here during the sunset.

Somehow, returning to the River Walk later that day—joining the crowds as they held court on restaurant patios and beer gardens with misting fans—made the River Walk and its cultivated ecosystems feel less like a “feature” of San Antonio and more like a little world unto itself. And this is what being outside in terrible weather can subtly illuminate; the reality that the world we live in requires tremendous care. From us.

Over the last few days in particular, stepping out into that world has felt unappealing to me. Not just because of all the ice that glazed Boston for 48 hours, but due to the headwinds traveling east and the horrifying news they carried. 2025 was the deadliest year of activity for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) since its founding in 2003. As reported by NPR, 32 people died in ICE custody last year, after being sent to overcrowded detention centers where food and hygiene supplies are scarce, where medical treatment is withheld, and where physical and sexual abuse have been documented. It was only a matter of time before this structural violence and devaluing of human life was turned against more U.S. citizens, and that’s what happened this past Wednesday when Jonathan Ross, an ICE officer, shot Minneapolis resident Renée Nicole Good in the face three times while she attempted to drive away from the scene of an ICE raid that she had just witnessed. Good was the mother of six year-old child. Her partner, in the passenger seat of the car at the time, witnessed her execution.

You can read every book and listen to every account of fascism to better understand how people have fallen in line with this self-destructive way of thinking throughout history, and sometimes an act of cruelty will still leave you at a loss for words. That’s how I’ve felt over the last year, with every new report of the horrors being inflicted on people by ICE, and the utterly despicable and sickening ways in which Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, JD Vance, and Donald Trump denigrate the lives of these people in their appraisals of the cruelty; self-pitying rationalizations of torture and murder. Already, the killing of Renée Nicole Good seems to have shocked America’s consciousness in a way that I haven’t seen or felt since the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis cop in 2020. And that’s why, in spite of the foreboding climate and its heightened sense of vulnerability, I felt the need to show up to a spontaneous protest in Boston last night.

This emergency gathering of kinder and outraged souls—just like the others that went down in cities across the U.S. last night—will almost certainly be the first of bigger and louder collective actions, in protest of ICE and the sadism of the Trump administration. The crowd that amassed outside the Park Street subway station last night was small compared to the legions that turned out for the No Kings protests; probably between 200 and 300 people, by my estimate. Even considering the eleventh hour nature of the event, I was initially somewhat disappointed that more Bostonians hadn’t shown up.

But as I stood there in the dark, listening to all of the speeches from local community organizers who’ve been dealing with ICE directly and feeling my ungloved fingers get cold and clammy, I realized that this gathering was something different than a protest. It was an affirmation that many of us will keep going out into the world—even when everything happening outside inspires sheltering in place. What I saw and heard out on the Common last night, just as I had witnessed on Montreal’s snowy streets and along San Antonio’s sun-baked River Walk, was a commitment to being out there and fighting for the things that make our world beautiful. In 2026, let’s do this more often.

Dear Moss People,

If you’ll indulge me—after last week’s back-to-back retrospective newsletters—I’d like to look backward in time once more. Briefly. Before we take a look at the road ahead.

Back in the summer of 2021, when I decided to start this newsletter and kick things off with a story about the rare, west coast-style switchback pathway that allows hikers to reach the bottom of Vermont’s Ball Mountain Dam, all of this felt like an experiment. I wanted to see how many people would be interested in reading stories that were too weird or niche to sell to mainstream magazines and websites in the outdoors sector. I was surprised by how many of you demonstrated interest by subscribing to Mind The Moss in those early months—and in several cases, even paying for subscriptions! Any writer will confess to suffering from imposter syndrome at times, and at first, I felt this too; intensely skeptical that running a weekly publication was within my wheelhouse.

Then, as months became years and I realized that I was running my own publication, I sometimes found myself wrestling with a different question. How long can this last?

I would imagine that quite a few of you subscribe or have subscribed to a handful of newsletters from writers you’ve enjoyed following. That’s because Mind The Moss was launched in the middle of a newsletter boom that shook the foundations of modern media. Basically, traditional media companies were losing revenue, cutting jobs, and scaling back coverage. Tech companies like Substack took advantage of this sectoral instability, by offering platforms that journalists and writers who were employed or contracted by media companies could use to start their own show; with the option of selling paid subscriptions. In fact, Substack lured some pretty big writers away from these companies with fat advances. One of the early adopters was neoliberal pundit and Vox co-founder Matthew Yglesias. Another—whose work I appreciate far more—was former Boston Globe film critic Ty Burr, whose newsletter (Ty Burr’s Watch List) began here before moving over to Ghost; another big player in the newsletter space.

As it happened, this newsletter bonanza was discussed in seismic terms that struck me as a tad hyperbolic, even at the optimistic heights of the boom. The idea was that paid newsletters woud facilitate better storytelling, create real competition for traditional media, and forge stronger connections between writers and readers. And I do believe in the third part of this! Because one of the great joys of writing and publishing Mind The Moss each week has been hearing back from many of you—whether you found a story nourishing, took issue with any points I raised, or simply wanted to put a couple of typos on my radar. Prior to setting up the newsletter, I found that anything I wrote that was published online yielded crickets (not even hate mail!) while stories of mine that appeared in print seemed to spur much more reader engagement and feedback.

I have a theory about this. Most of us are suffering from some level of digital fatigue, with more and more of our waking hours consumed by texting, apps, scrolling, and resetting passwords. So it means a LOT to me when I open my computer each week and find a couple of comments left on the most recent Mind The Moss story; a sign that several of you pushed through any such digital fatigue and read a story that is, technically speaking, a long and dense email that I sent you. That is…pretty special!

And again, it’s also quite remarkable that a lot of you decided that Mind The Moss has been worthy of monthly or annual investment—especially given the explosion of indie newsletters since 2021. Most literature on the newsletter business suggests that when you launch a newsletter, you can expect roughly 10% of your total subscribers to level up to paid subscriptions. Over the last three years, that percentage for Mind The Moss has been closer to 12%, and to be completely transparent, this has translated to about $11,600 of annual writer income (after Substack and Stripe have each taken their cuts.)

So when I say THANK YOU, it’s coming straight from the heart.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that this revenue has been career changing. A portion of that Moss income has been funneled into stories that would be difficult to sell to a household name publication—like my reporting on urban trails in San Francisco and around Chicago. And the rest has made it easier for me to sweat a little less about the brutal cost of living in America; a burden that so many of us have been struggling with.

That’s why I’ve always been a bit bearish about the notion that indie newsletters will be a long term game-changer for the media biz. As enlightening, entertaining, and intriguing as a newsletter might be, it’s a fundamentally different thing than a paper or magazine that offers direct access to lots of writers covering lots of topics. Getting the same experience from the newsletter landscape—which would mean subscribing to at least 20 different newsletters—would get really expensive, really fast. This would be a lot to ask of audiences in the most optimistic economic climates. But in a climate like this, with throat-tightening prices for housing, healthcare, utilities, transportation, and groceries, a lot of us are taking longer, harder looks at our budgets and trying to make every dollar go further. That’s why I decided to make all December stories for Mind The Moss paywall-free. In acknowledgment of what we’re suffering right now.

That decision is the start of the road into 2026, and where Mind The Moss is going.

Truth be told, I had been thinking about removing the paywalls for new “MTM” stories since last spring. I had a hunch that we were reaching the downslope of the newsletter boom bell curve—a moment when the sexy novelty of email newsletters would fade, and the ceiling of what newsletters can do would feel more palpable. Paired with the grim state of the economic landscape (from a consumer perspective), the worsening austerity we’ve experienced under the Trump administration, and the belt tightening that millions of us are preoccupied with, I wondered if it was time for a foundational change to how Mind The Moss works. The December experiment allowed for a taste of what that change might look like. It felt really good to have all of these new stories launching in a barrier free-way. It actually changed the manner in which I approached writing the most recent stories. And this also speaks to the future of Mind the Moss.

Those of you who arrived at the party on the earlier side alreadt know that Mind The Moss has undergone a bit of an evolution over time. The newsletter began as a more service-y publication focused on “unusual hiking in New England.” Each story would conclude with directions and maps for the featured trail or hiking experience. Back in 2024, the newsletter’s scope expanded to “the power of walking,” and the offerings changed too. Plenty of newsletters still finish with actionable adventure ideas, and others ended with more contemplative things to chew on. But since the beginning, we’ve looked at the intersections between the outdoors and the politics and cultural developments of our time. I do believe this is one of the things that makes Mind The Moss unique, given how often the outdoors is idealized as something pure, crystaline, and sequestered—a place where we can escape the cacophony and conflict. Having more freedom to write about all those intersections has yielded some of my favorite Mind The Moss stories to date and, judging by the data, some of your favorites too!

SO…..with the stage fully set now (thanks for bearing with me), here is what will be happening with Mind The Moss in 2026 and quite possibly for the longer haul too.

1. All new Mind The Moss stories will be published without paywalls—making the future of the newsletter free to the public! It will still be possible to purchase a paid subscription to Mind The Moss if you would like to support my work, and each paid subscription will still come with the perk of getting access to the hundreds of stories in the MTM archive. But having a paid subscription will no longer be a prerequisite for being able to read the latest newsletter each week. I’ve thought about this and it’s the direction that I feel best about, for continuing the long, strange trip of Mind The Moss.

2. As Mind The Moss approaches its fifth anniversary, expect more coverage of where outdoor recreation collides with politics and culture. If you enjoyed the recent story about the history of wassailing, my requiem to the art of walking home, or my early autumn PSA about why more of us should “touch grass,” good news. I’m planning to write a lot more stories like this in 2026 and beyond. 2025 was my first year of leaning harder in this direction, after 3.5 years of mostly covering “unusual hiking in New England,” and I’m looking forward to doubling down next year. That said, because I live in New England, many of the upcoming stories will be rooted here.

3. To simplify the format of Mind The Moss and honor its intersectional nature, I’m removing all “Sections” of the newsletter in 2026. This is the most technical change that’s coming. Back when Mind The Moss was primarily designed as a way of sharing hiking ideas, it made sense to have the newsletter organized into Sections. It began with six of them—one for each New England state. Then, during the evolution of 2025, I segued to a more thematic tri-sectional model. Today, stories are placed in one of three topical categories: A Walk In The Woods (backcountry stories), A Walk In The City (urban stories), and Walks Of Life (ideas-centric stories.) But the more I think of Mind The Moss and its intersectional nature, the less I feel that that these Sections make much sense anymore. So for the road ahead, I’m publishing and grouping all of the new and older stories under the simplest banner: The newsletter name and logo.

And finally, last but definitely not least…

4. Next summer, I will be releasing the first Mind The Moss book! As in, a real deal, physical book that you can leaf through, throw in your backpack, and/or loan to your friends—with a beautiful cover and a curated lineup of Mind The Moss stories; a few of which will be book exclusives! Why? A couple reasons: I’ve been thinking about ways to celebrate the upcoming half-decade anniversary of Mind The Moss, and after seeing the wonderful anthology book created by my friends at Mountain Gazette, the idea for a similar Mind The Moss book took hold of me. The timing of this also struck me as fitting, given the onslaught of digital fatigue that I touched on earlier. Finally, there’s the question that’s something of an elephant in the room, when it comes to the Internet and our chronically online lives. What if all of this suddenly disappeared?

That may sound overdramatic and I know it’s unlikely, but given how our economy is now built on top of an AI industry that could prove to be a bubble, I’m a little warier of putting infinite faith in our tech overlords and infrastructure than I was in 2021. Books aren’t impervious to calamities either, but they’re somewhat harder to…erase?

In any event, watch this space in May for more deets on the book and its launch date!

With regard to the first and biggest change for 2026 (nixing the paywall for all future stories), my ultimate hope is that this will make it easier for more readers to continue enjoying Mind The Moss amidst the turbulence and suffering of the present. At the same time, I can understand how this change might re-shape the value proposition of a paid subscription for Mind The Moss, and that’s why I’m applying the paywall-free approach to new stories, and not to the full archive. Hundreds of you made it possible for me to spend nearly 5 years writing and sharing hundreds of stories; creating that whopper of an archive and taking the newsletter from its gonzo infancy to the current crossroads. However you decide to continue down the road ahead, please know that being able to write Mind The Moss each week has been an incredible gift—and the ultimate ride. Kind of like those legendary waves of the “50 Year Storm” that Patrick Swayze surfs at the end of Point Break. The crucial difference, of course, is that Swayze surfs one wave—the biggest—and even as the newsletter boom that started Mind The Moss crests and spills, the water beyond it is already starting to froth and take shape.

That’s where I’ll see you in 2026. In the meantime, enjoy the last few days of the year with people you care about, food you appreciate, and the places that make your heart sing—natural or built. And also, please reach out if you have any questions. It’s a lot to digest, announced during a week when lots of us are already doing some digesting.

Thank you, and Vaya con Dios,
Miles Howard

(PS: If you’ve never seen Point Break, go watch the whole film before viewing this clip.)

#3: How to walk across a National Park

Getting to enjoy a National Park by strolling from place to place and peeling off of the trails for grub, grog, and rest is one of those fantasies that’s near-impossible to realize in most places—because, like America itself, most NPS sites are designed for cars first and foremost. But Acadia, the only National Park in New England, is an exception. The park’s labyrinthine trail network connects landmarks such as Jordan Pond and Cadillac Mountain to the neighboring towns! This, combined with the free shuttles that run in Acadia in summer and early fall, makes it possible to not just explore the park without a car, but to literally walk from one end of the park to the other. And while I originally reported and wrote about this for The Boston Globe, that feature story (included in the special Wild Issue from the Ideas team) was a partial re-telling of my cross-park hike. So…I laid it out in more detail for you all, and I added some How To seasoning.

#2: Long walk home

For those of you seeing the above image for the first time, that’s me during the spring of 2013—working as a seasonal caretaker at Zealand Falls Hut in the White Mountains and setting off for the long 8-mile walk from the hut to Route 302. Twice a week, I had to hike down to the valley and then hike back to the hut with fresh food supplies. This felt like a sole-crushing ordeal at first, but with time, it turned into one of my favorite rituals. It brought me back to the 1990s, when walking to school or around your town or city was fairly commonplace for a lot of kids. And it made me think about what we stand to lose, if we’re too burdened by work and plagued by car-centric planning to experience the cathartic power of a long walk home. Evidently, a lot of you have felt that power at some point. Because since this particular Mind The Moss story was first published in April, and it’s hovered near the top of the most widely-read stories in the newsletter’s history. This was the greatest surprise for me. It was a more personal and contemplative story, with no obvious outlet for hiking or traveling. I guess it worked!

But there was another story—published rather recently—that snagged the top spot…

#1: Did Mark Zuckerberg just buy a mountain in Maine?

In a way, I find it fitting that this story—in which the purchase of a beloved mountain near Moosehead Lake is linked to Mark Zuckerberg—caught more eyeballs than any other in 2025. We are living through a scourge of insatiable greed from the wealthiest people in the world, and the vast majority of us are paying for it, through the loss of public resources and safety net programs, and in cases like this, the seizure of lands that we’ve enjoyed recreationally. Whether the person behind the LLC that purchased Burnt Jacket Mountain and fenced off its hiking trails was actually Mark Zuckerberg is kind of beside the point. This kind of thing happens often enough these days that it’s wholly believable that Zuck yanked the mountain away from locals. But it could have just as easily been Larry Ellison—who’s hard at work acquiring more media companies and reshaping them in his own reactionary image. Or Elon Musk, whose net worth is about to surpass $1 trillion. As I mentioned the other day, public access to the great outdoors is intrinsically political, and we overlook this to our own detriment. Because once a place like Burnt Jacket Mountain is suddenly lost , it’s often lost for a long time.

That said, if there’s one thing that I’ve learned about Mainers, it was perfectly stated by Steve Yocom, a photographer interviewed by the New York Times for this story.

“The people at Moosehead will hardly trust somebody if they come to town doing good,” Yocom said. “But if you come to town and take something from them right off the bat? Good luck.”

Thank you all SO much for another full year of reporting and writing Mind The Moss! I can’t believe the path has brought us this far, beyond the Summer 2021 launch of the newsletter, when many of us were still getting our first COVID-19 vaccines. What a ride.

Sincerely,
Miles

One of my favorite things about end-of-the-year retrospectives is how they can shine light on things that we inexplicably walked past—multiple times—between January and late December. Last night, I led about 30 Boston residents and visitors on a hike through the shaggier west woods of Franklin Park, and as we approached our final destination (the great Drawdown Brewing), one of the hikers pointed to a gorgeous mural at the intersection of Granada Park and School Street that I had never seen before. It was a beautiful piece called BRILLA, from the artist Silvia López Chavez, and despite turning from School onto Granada too many times to count, I had missed the mural. Why? Probably because when I made the turn, I was anticipating the similarly gorgeous flowers at Chilcott and Granada Community Garden, just a few steps ahead.

I would like to think that revisiting a newsletter with the heft and frequency of Mind The Moss might offer similar belated “discoveries” for some of you. Especially if you’ve been receiving the newsletter on a weekly basis for a year or even longer. Inevitably, we miss things in the landscape, and that’s why I love re-reading books that stirred something inside me, or movies that I couldn’t stop thinking about after the initial screening. (If you saw and enjoyed One Battle After Another, watch it again and pay close attention to Avanti, the bounty hunter.) So to celebrate the fifth winter of Mind The Moss, I’ve combed through the archives and identified the 10 most widely-read stories of 2025. There were some surprises here, which left me feeling vindicated for taking the newsletter in some weird or risky directions at times. Thank you for that!

Now—without further ado—here are the Top 10 Mind The Moss stories of 2025:

#10: Meet me at Lantern Hill

Sometimes, I start writing a newsletter and I wonder, “How many people are actually going to follow me down this path?” I wasn’t sure how a story about the little-known woodland trails around Foxwoods—and the idea of trails as an escape hatch from our gambling addictions—would register. But apparently several of you were just as intrigued by the so-called Pequot Trails as I was when I went down there back in April to climb Lantern Hill itself. The view of Foxwoods’ blue-and-white citadel, which is owned and operated by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, is worth the rock scrambling once the snow melts next year. And hey, if you do end up following some of the trails to the casino itself, remember: A bit of analog gambling once in awhile is part of American life. Just try to remember the rustling world outside of the building.

#9: Weekend hike at Bernie’s

I can’t say I was surprised that a story about going on a community hike with Bernie Sanders in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom proved popular. But I do have to wonder if any elected officials or political staffers read this particular story. Because there’s kind of a brilliant idea at the heart of it; especially for politicians with star power. You put out the word that you’re leading a local hike, in lieu of a town hall. You use your star power to get people through the door. Then, once the hike has begun and the masses are moving, you pull an Irish Goodbye and slip into a vehicle staged along the route. That’s what Bernie did on that toasty Saturday morning in June. He tricked us into spending time walking and talking with each other. And we were all better off for it.

#8: Collecting snails

On the special occasions when Mind The Moss ventures overseas, I’m mindful of the risk involved. It’s very easy to write something that feels more like a vacation diary to audiences. But I had a feeling that the genius of the Slow Ways project—a grassroots effort to map walking routes between every town and city in the U.K.—would resonate with many of you. I mean, how do you hear a pitch like that and not get all tingly and starry-eyed? In the last two years, I’ve found two ways to get over there and explore a few of the 10,000+ routes that Slow Ways adventurers have created. (I recently wrote a big story about one of these rambles for the fifth issue of ORI magazine.) And here’s the thing to remember: more Slow Ways are being proposed! And they’ll need testing.

#7: Written on the mountains

As several of you will remember, Mind The Moss went through an evolution last year; expanding from a more nuts-and-bolts “Unusual New England Hiking” newsletter and wading deeper into the intersectionality between politics, culture, and the oudoors. In February, National Park Service employees suspended an upside-down American flag from Yosemite’s El Capitan—in protest of the Trump administration slashing the NPS budget and firing a ton of NPS workers—and the outdoor recreation community took notice. This was a moment that starkly demonstrated how access to the outdoors is inherently political. (A reality that a lot of people deny or overlook.) And now, with no end in sight to the austerity and Trump’s more recent dick move of revoking free entry to National Parks on Juneteenth and MLK Day, the ground is seeded for more protests.

#6: Punked by a pond

Now here’s one of those stories that you could probably never get published in one of the mainstream outdoor adventure magazines—a love letter to ponds that can kick your ass. Using Rhode Island’s Long Pond as the backdrop, I wanted to illustrate how suffering to reach a natural landmark that we associate with tranquility and peace can actually make the “reward” even more humbling and serene. I wonder if a few of you have been punked by a pond too. If so, I’d love to learn about some of the ponds that destroyed you. I need ideas for where to take cocky hiker friends visiting from Boulder.

#5: Marginalized

I used to bristle at the old Robert Frost chestnut which tells us that “good fences make good neighbors.” And then I took a walk on the Marginal Way of Ogunquit Maine—a seaside path with continuous fencing on one side, to keep walkers from traipsing onto the lawn of a resort or a mansion. Paired with fences on the other side of the path (to prevent people from tumbling down cliffsides toward the rocks and the water) the Marginal Way can feel like a corridor built for livestock. But here’s the thing: Maine is one of the few states where you can own the full extent of a beach, all the way down to the low tide line. And the Marginal Way, for all its limitations and scenic wonders, is a rare, successful example of what a public path through privatized land can look like.

#4: When you break a mountain

Climbing up to the old white marble quarry in Dorset, Vermont—where raw material for the Gettysburg National Cemetery tombstones was harvested—had been a bee in my bonnet for a few years. I expected to be wowed by the place in a visual sense, but what surprised me about the quarry was how palpable the shadows of history felt up there; in the same way that visiting the legendary Carrara marble quarries of northern Italy might conjure visions of the old anarchist laborers waging strikes after suffering too many workplace deaths. Or luring fascist soldiers into the quarries during World War II and dropping marble blocks onto them. This story was inspired by the news of Trump’s ballroom and all of the gold that will be needed for the interior. Where does that come from? And what impression does it leave on the landscape? Time will tell.

Due to Substack’s email size limitations, the Top 3 Mind The Moss stories of 2025 will be revealed tomorrow in a followup newsletter! Until then, enjoy this old banger by Cerrone.