By now, a frosted gray reality is setting in for thousands of us. We’re now in the jaws of winter. We won’t be getting out for quite some time. So we may as well make the most of this predictable cycle of bleakness and find ways to enliven the senses until the days grow longer and brighter again. And if the idea of slipping on microspikes and trudging into some remote and snowy forest just doesn’t get your gears whirring, what then? Where can you get your adrenaline bubbling with more limited exposure?

Once again, an answer lies hidden in Rhode Island. Very few states punch above their weight like Little Rhody, which is why I will always have a soft spot for this state; in the same way that Star Wars fans love Yoda, with his diminutive form, big ears, and bigger (and lethal) lightsaber skills. When Rhode Island isn’t upstaging the other five states in New England with its restaurants, art festivals, and local legends—like a burning ghost ship called The Countess Augusta, sometimes observed off Block Island in the winter—the Ocean State boasts some of the most scenically romantic coastal environments in the northeast. And as it turns out, one particular piece of the coastline near the state’s southwestern tip is home to what might just be the hardest hike in all of Rhode Island!

Whenever the Westerly-based neighborhood of Watch Hill comes up, the immediate association for most people is Taylor Swift, whose $17 million mansion looms over one of the beaches here. Watch Hill was already a shit-hot coastal destination among the gilded class before Swift breezed into town back in 2013. Local beachside resorts such as the Ocean House are reliably filled with guests and diners each summer. But what’s lesser known is the scale of Watch Hill’s beach, and what it leads to. A long and sandy spit (a pencil-shaped peninsula created by tidal transportation of sediment) juts out from the beach into Long Island Sound. And at the far end of this spit is a place called Napatree Point. In the late 19th Century, Napatree Point was transformed into a small naval fortress, as military strategists considered the vulnerabilty of the sound and its infrastructure during wartime scenarios. This coastal artillery installation was dubbed Fort Mansfield and activated in 1901. But a few years later, a war game simulation on the water revealed an artillery blind spot from which a ship could approach the fort without getting in range of the guns. And just like that, Fort Mansfield was scrapped.

You would think that the architects of the fort would have employed somebody whose only job was to check artillery angles—just like you’d expect a transit authority to have one staffer whose sole responsibility is taking measurements of all the train tracks, just to make sure that any newly-ordered trains will fit the tracks. (Apparently, in France and here in Greater Boston, this has not been the case.) But in any event, the closure of Fort Mansfield saw the naval installation reduced to a crumbling ruin, which is now tagged with graffiti and something of an under-the-radar destination for Little Rhody explorers. Getting there by foot appears fairly simple at a glance. You set off from the sandy end of Fort Road, steps away from Watch Hill’s historic Flying Horse Carousel, you hike the length of the spit to arrive at the craggy foundation of the lost fort, and then you walk back toward town on the opposite edge of the spit. Pretty easy, right?

Well, there’s a rather sneaky and consequential twist.

When an outdoor-adjacent destination is as storied and bustling as Watch Hill, finding a place to park your vehicle is going to be extra challenging. (There’s no public transit connection from Watch Hill to a nearby city or town, so driving is going to be the only option for most visitors.) While there *is* non-resident parking available by the beach, these spaces come with a strictly-enforced 2 hour limit. And the round-trip voyage to Napatree Point and back is just over 3 miles. Now, let’s do the math. In order to avoid a gilded class-level parking ticket, you must maintain an average hiking speed of 1.5 miles-per-hour for the hike. That may not sound like much, given that most of us walk at a speed of roughly 3 mph. But here’s the thing. Hiking out to Napatree Point means traversing sandy ground that constantly shifts beneath your feet—tiring your lower limb muscles faster and potentially cutting your normal pace in half. And we haven’t even touched on the question of how much time you’d like to spend poking around the point and the fort ruins themselves. There won’t be much time for lingering there.

This narrow window is what makes a hike to Napatree Point uniquely challenging and risky. It’s a more controlled exercise in flirting with danger that won’t potentially lead to an emergency room, as a high altitude winter hike in the White Mountains can. But a $50 parking ticket can still hurt, and if you attempt the Napatree Point Challenge in the summer high season, you’re pretty much guaranteed to pay if you’re more than a couple of minutes late in returning to your vehicle. Which means….we have officially entered the season in which hiking to Napatree Point carries the lowest level of risk! Winter in Rhode Island is quiet. The golden hordes aren’t chasing fried calamari and chartered yacht rides across the coastline. I’d imagine that the allure of Taylor Swift’s mansion and her occasional presence in Watch Hill attracts some evergreen tourists throughout the year. But statistically speaking, there’s no better time for attempting the hike to Napatree Point, if you’d like to dodge the fiscal danger and enjoy the fort.

My first and only foray to Fort Mansfield happened in early spring of 2022. I was on my way to Philly to see some friends, and I decided to take advantage of the balmy conditions and the modest crowds by making a sandy pit stop in Watch Hill. When I began trekking across the spit, I was expecting the squishy terrain and aching calves, and I managed to keep moving at a steady clip. But any sense of time management went out the window as soon as I arrived at the fort ruins. The slabs, festooned with spray paint, pratically begged to be climbed. The rusted chainlink fences around the fort’s bowels also sparked the impulse to climb. And when I gazed out toward the North Atlantic, I couldn’t help but wonder how it would feel to be the artillery gunner at Fort Mansfield—had the design flaw not been discovered—staring at an incoming enemy ship and realizing, in flushed panic, that it was approaching at an angle that the guns wouldn’t cover. In other words, Long Island Sound is about to be taken, because some guy at an engineering firm messed up or skipped a math equation. And you get to watch it happen. Do you take the rap…or jump the next boat for Canada?

I got so caught up in this nightmare scenario, chuckling to myself, that I burned too many minutes at the fort ruins! My passage back to the Fort Road in Watch Hill was sweaty and hasty—the kind of walk that ultimately sends you to a physical therapist’s office for an overuse injury. Somehow I managed to avoid pushing a tendon over the edge, and even more miraculously, there was no parking ticket waiting for me on the windshield of my car when I completed the hike, 2 hours and 20 after embarking on it. Stupid luck. The same unearned good fortune that makes it possible for you to cross a rotting wooden bridge over a creek, seconds before it collapses. Or to descend a long, steep scree slope without a single stone loosening beneath your boots. Successfully avoiding a Watch Hill parking ticket left me feeling like I had just gained money; just as surviving a dangerous backcountry hike can feel like winning another year of life.

I’m not sure why we do this to ourselves—dancing with danger, and in the case of the Napatree Point challenge, seeking danger in a seemingly benign place. As a naturally anxious person, I’m not drawn to ruination. But occasionally, it’s nice to be reminded that things *can* work out, in ways we can’t foresee; through a mix of effort and luck. Especially when it feels like the world is on fire and there’s no end in sight. If nothing else, hikes such as the Napatree Point challenge that require walking through the fire, demonstrate that everything ends at some point. And sometimes, it’s a good ending.

Napatree Point and Fort Mansfield
Hike distance: 3.1 miles out-and-back
Elevation gain: 32 feet
CLICK HERE for a trail map

Several years back, my friend Katie and I came up with an idea for a short film that I’m now putting out into the universe for free—in case anybody with resources and A-list connections subscribes to Mind The Moss. The premise is simple. An old codger buys a plot of backcountry land that includes a lonely mountain. He builds a home there, in sight of the mountain, but the new country estate doesn’t bring him any peace. The constant presence of that goddamn mountain drives the guy mad. He spends hours glowering on the porch, staring at the mountain with gritted teeth. At a family dinner, he starts sculpting his mashed potatoes into a mini mountain. (A little tribute to Close Encounters Of The Third Kind.) Eventually, he stomps into the woods with a gun, to try and kill the mountain. And he falls into a ravine while a squirrel looks on indifferently.

The mountain, as Katie and I see it, is an irrepressible reminder of something that the man does not want to reckon with: That there are tangible limits to his dominion, and some things which are notarized on paper don’t translate to ground realities. Both of us figured that in our current era of wealth inequality and insatiable greed, it was just a matter of time before some billionaire purchased a mountain that many of us know and love. But of all the places where that saga could play out—and all the billionaires who might pony up—neither Moosehead Lake nor Mark Zuckerberg were on my list.

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Here’s a little trade secret from the world of journalism. Most of the field reporting that we do for our stories ends up on the cutting room floor once it’s printing time. Journalism, by nature, is searching for a story within a landscape of infinite narrative windows and junctions. Back in May, I spent a couple of days in New England’s only National Park—Acadia—reporting for the Boston Globe about how NPS destinations could be more easily accessible; by having more lifelines like public transit around the park, and trails that connect a park to adjacent towns. Acadia demonstrates how this can be done, and to paint a vivid picture for readers, I spent two days walking across the park, from the quiet west side of Mount Desert Island to the center of Bar Harbor.

I’m proud of the article that the Globe Ideas team printed a few weeks ago, in their special outdoor-themed WILD issue. But since this was an Ideas themed assignment first and foremost, only select flashes of the cross-Acadia walk made the final draft. Since then, I’ve basically been sitting on a mountain of un-used “footage” from the adventure. And it occurs to me that right now—a moment when many are mourning the end of fall, bracing for winter, and looking ahead to next summer—could be an opportune time to illustrate why and how you can walk across Acadia National Park.

So today, I’m going to tell you about what it’s like to trek from one end of Acadia to the other. This might sound arduous, but it’s actually a world class walking holiday.

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Since the 2021 birth of Mind The Moss, we’ve been through four Halloweens together—with at least twice as many stories about really unnvering things that happen in the woods. But as we approach the finale of our fifth spooky season, it occurs to me that I still haven’t shared something foundational with you all. I haven’t told you what freaks me out, in the most primordial, limbs flailing, pants shitting fashion. That’s because my deepest phobia is something that you usually don’t have to worry about when you’re going for a walk. But there are occasional places where it can surface. Perhaps literally.

I can’t point to an early childhood incident that caused this directly, but for as long as I can remember, what scares me most is being pulled beneath the surface of a lake or the ocean by a giant creature with gaping jaws and lots of teeth. Now, a lot of people might mistake this for a phobia of great white sharks or saltwater crocodiles, but what makes me shudder isn’t the biological attributes of any specific water beast—it’s the instant realization that a large being is about to violently pull you into another world. A world of dismemberment by denticle and dissolution in stomach acid. And the idea that this could to you happen suddenly and without warning, when you’re out for a pleasant swim or paddle in a large, deep body of water, makes it even more terrifying.

I’m not kidding. If Nina Hartley took me boating on the open ocean and jumped into the water and invited me to join her—I would not join her. Because that would mean floating in a body of water so deep that I couldn’t see anywhere close to the bottom. And in the event that I happened to gaze down at the abyss, even just for a second, a blood-curdling vision would greet me. I would imagine an enormous set of mandibles rising toward me and opening up. This has happened to me in ponds, lakes, and coves where there’s a steep dropoff after the shallows. Each swim ended with me explosively swimming back to the shore. Now that I know and understand my phobia, I keep it at bay by being intensely discerning about where exactly I am willing to go for a swim.

One of the places at the top of my NOPE List is Northern Vermont’s Lake Willoughby.

You might not assume this because, well….Lake Willoughby is drop-dead gorgeous at first sight. Carved out by glacial movements over 25,000 years ago and flanked by two mirror-like mountains, Willoughby might be the most scenically epic natural landmark of the Northeast Kingdom. It’s a place that inspires awe in residents and visitors alike, from swimmers to kayakers to local bands like the Kingdom All Stars—whose single, “Willoughby Nights,” won a prize at the 2023 International Songwriting Competition. In fact, I wrote about Lake Willoughby for Boston Magazine earlier this year, as part of a travel feature on New England’s great lakes. But because this feature was meant to inspire excitement about the featured lakes, there were stories that I had to leave out.

The most widely-whispered of these tall tales—and the one which might seem closest to my phobia of big, toothy things in the deep places of the world—is the legend of Lake Willoughby’s water serpents. In August of 1868, a local newspaper published the following human-meets-cryptid interest story. “It is reported that the great water snake at Willoughby Lake was killed Wednesday of last week by Stephen Edmonds of Newport, VT., a lad of twelve years,” the article began. “Rushing boldly upon the monster he severed its body with a sickle. On actual measurement the two pieces were found to be 23 feet in length.”

This is the earliest record (that I’ve found) of someone observing a large serpentine creature in the waters of Lake Willoughby. Others have emerged since then, but one particular incident from the 1950s points to something that makes Lake Willoughby even more intimidating to me. A team of scuba divers had been searching the lake for the missing body of a man who had drowned. This must have been quite a daunting task for the divers, because Lake Willoughby is the deepest lake contained within the borders of Vermont—with a maximum depth of 328 feet. And as one of those divers approached the floor of the lake, he saw two things that surprised him; a great big hole on the lakebed, and around it, some very large eels that were as long as 8 feet!

The divers’ story seems to solve one mystery while introducing a much bigger and creepier one. A colony of XXL freshwater eels managing to survive and thrive in the depths of Lake Willoughby is one of those biological oddities that feels somewhat feasible. And if this did happen, then one of those 8-foot eels probably swam close enough to the surface to be spotted and snagged by that “lad of twelve years” who was featured in the local paper. But for me, all of this overshadowed by a different question: What the fuck is up with that large hole at the bottom of Lake Willoughby?

Yet another Northeast Kingdom legend nudges us in the direction of an answer. In the horse-and-buggy era, a team of horses and their owner attempted a risky mid-winter crossing of the frozen lake. The ice broke and the lake swallowed up the horses and the man. But it wasn’t until the following summer when the bodies were found. And what’s especially bizarre is that when those bodies finally surfaced, it wasn’t on Lake Willoughby—they materialized on the waters of Crystal Lake, in the nearby town of Barton. This macabre puzzler sparked rumors that Lake Willoughby and Crystal Lake are *connected* by a long underwater tunnel—a natural passageway created by the same earthly movements that carved the basin which would become Lake Willoughby.

This is more conceivable than the giant eels, if you ask me. Most of the world’s caves remain undiscovered—as much as 90% of them, per the recent estimate of National Geographic. And some of these hidden spaces have undoubtedly been submerged over time. As long as the subterranean landscape remains largely unknown, we will continue filling it with our dreams and nightmares. Quite often, those dreams and nightmares involve large creatures. Jules Verne charted this territory with Journey To The Center Of The Earth, imagining a hidden world with resident dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures beneath the bedrock. The recent American reboot of King Kong took us into a similar “Hollow Earth” where Kong swings from the branches of giant trees and makes snacks out of super-sized flying insects. And then there’s my most recent beach read—Greig Beck’s 2016 novel, Fathomless, in which scientists find a forgotten subterranean ocean through a cave system in Alaska. And of course, that ocean is populated by some really large and hungry creatures. Like a 60-foot shark.

Look: I’m not going to die on the hill that the hollowed places of the earth might be swimming with predators as long as two school buses. And I’m not even sure that I believe the legends surrounding Lake Willoughby, from the well-endowed eels to the mysterious hole on the lake floor. But still, enough questions and superstitions have floated around Lake Willoughby for over a century that I think some curiosity—and humility—are warranted. On the east shore of the lake, there’s a particularly big rock that contains a painting of Satan. Referred to as “Devil’s Rock” and only accessible by paddling, this stone speaks to the hair-prickling What If wonderings that Willoughby has inspired for decades. And even as some of those questions scare the bejesus out of me, I still enjoy wrestling with them; as long as I don’t have to get into the water of Lake Willoughby, beyond the shallowest section of the shallows. This is why so many of us enjoy horror stories and movies. Engaging with life’s unanswered questions in a relatively safe and controlled environment can be thrilling and even cathartic. But so far as Lake Willoughby goes, there is a land-based way to escalate your investigaton.

Remember those two mountains I mentioned earlier? The ones that wrap around the lake? Consider these two high points observation platforms for gazing down into the watery abyss of Lake Willoughby, without having to put a toe in the drink. To the east, Mount Pisgah towers over the lake—with great cliffs that the summit trails narrowly dodge. And on the west side of Willoughby, the lesser climbed Mount Hor boasts a more densely wooded slope. If you’re a believer in the 8-foot eels, stick to the west shore. But instead of going for the summit of Mount Hor, follow the rocky and rooty South Beach Trail as it ambles through the woods near the water’s edge. Eventually, this path becomes the Cliff Trail and ascends to some partially exposed cliffs on the mountainside. But even after this elevation gain, you’ll still be close enough to the water to spot a rather large eel slithering across the surface, if the sunlight is right.

If you’re thinking bigger than 8-foot eels—if you can imagine heftier lords of the deep in Willoughby, or if you can’t get that goddamn lakebed HOLE out of your mind—the summit of Mount Pisgah is your best shot at stealing a glimpse of either. Again, you’ll have to climb on a radiant day, when certain angles of sunlight might be just enough to reveal an enormous shadowy mass gliding through the waters of Willoughby. Or, if you’re really lucky, an orb of blackness within the already dark center of the lake. Just thinking about either makes me shiver, craving the security of curling up into a ball. I may be a little too scared of the depths and the things that lurk there to chase these mysteries in the field. But if you can’t resist their siren song, I look forward to hearing about your observations and theories. Do let me know if I’m paranoid…or vindicated.

The Mount Hor observation hike
Hike distance: 2.1 miles loop
Elevation gain: 308 feet
CLICK HERE for a trail map

The Mount Pisgah observation hike
Hike distance: 4.4 miles
Elevation gain: 1,650 feet
CLICK HERE for a trail map

Now that we’re more than halfway from the golden glory of foliage season to the splendid melancholia of stick season, it’s my editorial duty to inform you where the New England leaves are really popping right now. And it’s with a somewhat heavy heart that I point toward The Berkshires. I have nothing against the mountains of Western Massachusetts—but anyone who’s visited the Berkshires in October will understand that leaf peeping turns these mountains into a bit of a madhouse. It’s rather similar to what happens in Salem, Massachusetts each October. Hordes of travelers descend on the region, chasing local lore with wild eyes and apparently bottomless wallets, and the scenic charm of the region is temporarily trampled.

Still, as a destination, The Berkshires are much vaster and more layered than the City of Salem. And if creeping “uncanny valley” vibes are as much an autumn tradition for you as eating an apple cider donut, there are places in The Berkshires that can deliver. They’re not as obvious as a witchcraft museum or that pyramid of Jack-o’-Lanterns up in Keene, New Hampshire (where a pumpkin festival once collided with a town-wide teenage riot.) Rather, the spookier dimensions of The Berkshires are found nestled in the woods and ravines. There’s the western entrance of the Hoosac Tunnel; a doorway into the bowels of the earth, from which unexplainable echoes and unspeakable odors waft. And near Pittsfield, the mountain city of the Berkshires, traces of a lost world tell a different story—fascinating in its structures and events, yet eerie in its implications.

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Whenever the state of Maine comes up in this newsletter, I almost always refer to the wealth of Maine woods, waters, and mountains beyond the coastline—wild places that most Maine visitors never lay eyes on. Hell, I’d imagine at least 30% of Maine’s annual crowds don’t realize that the Pine Tree State is the largest state in New England, by a considerably wide margin. At 35,385 square miles vast—practically double the size of New Hampshire and Vermont combined—Maine is a monster that contains multitudes.
And I think, in 2025, it’s about time that we paid a visit to a natural landmark in Maine that vividly illustrates the gargantuan scale of the state that some call “Vacationland.”

This place, which occasionally pops up in guidebooks and brochures, waits in the KI Jo-Mary Woods east of Moosehead Lake (a part of the notoriously rugged Hundred Mile Wilderness segment of the Appalachian Trail.) But you don’t have to haul a 40-pound backpack into the Maine woods for days to reach this landmark. Unless you’re setting off from Bangor or Augusta, it does require a bit of a drive; 5-ish hours from Boston, or a punishing 9 hours from New York. Either way, you’re looking at spending at least one night in the Moosehead area. And whatever lodge or motel you check into will be your basecamp, as you make for the hollowed and hallowed Grand Canyon of Maine.

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It’s your first time wearing a fuzzy sweater in three months. You can still smell smoke from last night’s backyard bonfire in the fibers. The cappuccino in your cup holder has been spiked with a pump of dizzyingly-sweet maple flavoring. And as you merge onto the freeway, a flare of sunlight makes your steering wheel sparkle—thanks to the cider donut sugar that now coats the wheel. Yes, friends. Fall has arrived. We are in Valhalla.

And this particular fall, I am chasing the toasty seasonal amenities with more intensity than usual. Because two weeks ago, I signed a book deal with Moon Guides, and the assignment is a guidebook about fall foliage trips in New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and a handful of farther-flung regions. This was not my idea. The team at Moon was searching for someone capable of writing a book like this; somebody with tree sap in their veins, crunched up leaves in their soul, and a passion for the earthly delights of fall. Somehow, I got the call, and I basically said YES without a moment of hesitation.

What this means for all of you, my dear Moss People, is that I am going to indulge my inner foliage freak this fall…and you are going to get some super hot, freshly reported intel about where to admire crimson and auburn leaves between now and November. A few of these dispatches will come from locales that I’m visiting, which will be more thoroughly featured in the guidebook (which hits shelves in 2027.) But the trails and landmarks that I will be sharing with you are most likely not going to be part of the book. In fact, you might even call these callouts a series of New England Deep Cuts.

And today, I want to kick off that series with a unique and broadly accessible trail in northeastern Vermont—a trail that takes you into the autumnal foliage, in the most literal and vivid sense. How? By inventively redefining the concept of a canopy tour.

Most of the time, a “canopy tour” involves putting on a harness with a pulley attached to it, climbing a set of stairs to a platform in a tree, and zipping along a suspended cable to an adjacent platform. You repeat this several times before rappelling back to the ground. In theory, it’s a really cool way to savor the tree canopy. But that theory doesn’t account for those of us with unpredictable anxiety about high places. I spent most of the time on my first (and only) zipline canopy tour feeling like I was holding my lunch down. The internal questions were relentless. What if the pulley malfunctions and I get stuck in the middle of the zipline? What if I slam into the hard edge of the next platform and break my leg? What if I screw up the rappel and fall to an untimely death?

The people at the Vermont Institute of Natural Science (VINS)—a nature sanctuary in Quechee that rehabilitates raptors—had a different idea for engagement with foliage.
What if you could build an elevated and ADA-accessible trail through the tree canopy?

Elevated canopy walkways are not a new invention. From Kew Gardens in London to Costa Rica’s Monteverde cloud forest, canopy paths offer quality time with the leaves, without the existential exposure of climbing trees or soaring between them. But the concept is somewhat under-explored in the U.S., considering how many woodlands we have here and the millions of visitors they draw each year. Prior to the VINS team joining the party, two of the best known canopy walkways in the U.S. were found amid the oak and hickory trees of Myakka River State Park in Florida, and at Michigan’s Dow Gardens. (This 426-meter path is currently the longest canopy walk in America.) New England, not one to be upstaged by the south and the Midwest, was overdue for a walkway like this. And in the fall of 2019, after a full year of construction, a 900 feet-long loop path—elevated by the trees themselves!—opened to the sauntering public at the VINS HQ; just in time for the colorful heights of Vermont’s fall foliage season.

The VINS Forest Canopy Walk has since become the star attraction of the place. Or at the very least, a co-star to the beautiful hawks that are still brought back to health at the Institute. (You can visit them at their enclosure, on the short walk from the VINS visitor center and gift shop to the Canopy Walk entrance.) Short enough to be walked multiple times but long enough to offer some intimate time with the leaves, the VINS walkway features an enormous tower with spiral stairs. From the top, you can admire not only the local woodlands but the blue band of the Ottauquechee River, as it starts its approach to the mouth of nearby Quechee Gorge. Not far from here, a somewhat smaller tower offers an “Eagle’s Nest” perspective of the woods. (The elevation of the viewing platform is located around the point where eagles will nest in the trees here.) And there’s also a contraption known as the Giant Spider Web—a 20-foot web made from three layers of netting, which is meant offer visitors the POV of a local spider. As the VINS website puts it, giant spider web enjoyers can “lie in wait” or “walk across a woven web high above the ground.” I opted to gingerly crawl high above the ground.

If you’ve spent any time at family-oriented nature centers or theme parks, then you’ve likely noticed that exhibits which offer the chance to temporarily move like animals are almost always the domain of kids. There’s a supposition at play here: that crawling across a replica of a spider web or gazing out from an imitation eagle nest offers little more than two-dimensional amusement for visitors young enough to be enthralled by Bluey or the dreaded Cocomelon. But there’s a more noble intention behind many of these exhibits—allowing people to walk in the pawprints of other creatures—and I’ve sometimes found it strange that this valuable and irresistibly fun experience is usually seen as something that we outgrow. If anything, adults are probably the demographic most sorely in need of spending more time amidst the gnarled branches of a nest or the threads of a web. After all, we’re the ones who make decisions about how humans interact with the natural world. And we have not been cutting the mustard these days.

So I was heartened to see kids and adults making good use of the VINS canopy path’s surprising interactive attractions in equal measure. In fact, the only people making use of the giant spider web were a couple who seemed to be seconds away from learning about what it’s like when two spiders make out “on a woven web high above the ground.” And I think the presence of these exhibits says something about the deeper spirit of the VINS canopy walkway. Traditional canopy tours—again, the ones that require climbing gear and cable burn-resistant gloves—don’t actually involve much engagement with the canopy itself. The leaves are just a backdrop for a sequential adrenaline rush. Technically, you are immersed in those leaves when you glide from platform to platform or begin your first rappel. But are you really there, sensorially?

I spent about an hour on the VINS canopy walk, circling the route thrice, spending time with each interactive exhibit, and watching others ooh-ing and ah-ing as they followed the walkway through the tree trunks. I don’t think I’ve ever had a foliage experience that went this hard—that clobbered me, in the best way, with the serene ambience of foliage that millions of us will be chasing over the next month or two. When people talk about the benefits of forest bathing, they’re usually imagining a slow, savory walk on a path through trees like the beeches and oaks at VINS. But a forest bathing session on an elevated canopy walkway engages the senses more forcefully, and makes it clearer that we are guests in the home of many creatures.

If nothing else, I hope more of us can take that away from this fall foliage season.

CLICK HERE for more information about the VINS Forest Canopy Walk

Two weeks ago, I found myself wrapping up an essay for REI’s Uncommon Path (which you’ll get to read later this fall) and it forced me to sit with a simple yet lofty question.

Where do trails come from?

Almost all trails arise from a clear practical need. You want to get from Point A to Point B, you want to do this using your feet, and there’s no viable pathway. So you’re going to make one. That’s perfectly fine and straightforward, but I don’t think it fully answers the question. If I decide to walk from my apartment in Boston to Kowloon—the frozen in amber pan-Asian eatery on Route 1 where Sichuan is still spelled “Szechuan,” and where you can share a Pu Pu Platter with friends—that intention has roots of desire. It signals a craving for something more than chicken fingers and beef teriyaki on a stick; the urge to walk backward through time, into something that we’ve mostly outgrown.

Trails can be reflections of our day-to-day lives, our year-to-year evolutions, and the toasty nostalgia that we’re not yet ready to leave behind. And that first approach—a trail inspired by the ground reality of how we’re living—is exemplified by a path in southeastern Massachusetts that connects the forests of Mass. and Rhode Island.

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Something that I think partially explains the current situation in America is the number of U.S. students that are enrolled in foreign language classes. It is…not a big number.

In 2023, a Pew Research survey estimated that roughly 20% of America’s K-12 youth had access to foreign language instruction; which might not sound that bad until you hear that most European Union countries clock in at anywhere from 64% (Belgium) to 100% (France, Romania, Austria, and several others.) The U.S. still doesn’t have federal requirements that foreign language be included in public school curriculums. So I feel pretty fortunate to have learned, un-learned, and then re-learned Spanish starting as early as 6th Grade. While opportunities to practice the language in real life scenarios were a bit scarce in the Boston burbs, learning Spanish still exposed me to the notion that there were more communities out there; with their own traditions and cultural touchstones. Eventually, I got to engage with these communities as a resident of Los Angeles and more recently—and lastingly—as a denizen of Jamaica Plain, which has been home to a great deal of Boston’s Latino and Afro-Latino families for generations.

So a few weeks ago, when a very unexpected opportunity to visit the Caribbean side of Costa Rica suddenly materialized, I immediately grabbed my daypack and started stuffing tank tops and short-shorts into it. You don’t often hear about gringos like me paying visits to Costa Rica in late August, because it’s the country’s rainy season and the chances of sheltering in your hotel room as sheets of liquid drench the landscape are pretty high. But one of the lures of Costa Rica over the last few decades has been eco-tourism. Its environmental protection policies are among the most robust in the world. In fact, when I was a kid, my family and I went there to visit the cloud forests, the volcanoes, and the beaches where sea turtles come ashore and lay their eggs. If you spend over 24 hours in Costa Rica, you will see two iconic words splashed across a t-shirt at a shop, or you might hear them mentioned warmly, in passing: Pura Vida.

Consider this the Costa Rican equivalent of Boston’s “Wicked Pissah” or Philly’s “Go Birds.” While the basic English translation of “Pura Vida” is “pure life” or “simple life,” the phrase speaks to something complex—a deeper appreciation for the elemental things in life. The natural world is about as elemental as things get, and while being able to appreciate nature shouldn’t be a thorny topic, the pollution and privatization of beautiful rural places can make “Pura Vida” feel less like a slogan and more like a rallying call. And yesterday, amidst relentless humidity, sunny skies, and certainty of afternoon thunderstorms, I stumbled upon a coastal trail that illustrated the beautiful idea behind Pura Vida and its vulnerability in 2025, and the challenging years ahead.

A few days earlier, after taking a long bus ride from San Jose through the mountains and past banana plantations to the Caribbean coastline, I had set up basecamp in the town of Puerto Viejo de Talamanca. Here, the beaches come in black sand and white, and the sodas (family-run cafes) and shops that make up the colorful labyrinth of the town are visibly weathered from the coastal elements. And that’s part of their charm. I had arrived here wearing a flowery shirt, and within just a day, I had taken to walking around the beaches and the town in nothing but shorts and sandals. I had no agenda because in such heat and humidity, you have to do what feels right in the moment. It could mean resting in your abode midday, and it may also mean following your nose when wandering around and being open to diversions. Case in point: I was heading for a Jamaican patty stand that people raved about. But on the way, I encountered a sign on a tree that said “Costa Rica Trail,” with a red arrow pointing into the jungle.

A few minutes of Internet sleuthing revealed that this trail ran through the trees and beaches between Puerto Viejo de Talamanca to an adjacent village called Manzanillo; nearly 8 miles from the trailhead! There was no chance in hell that I was going to walk that distance. At some point, the humidity would knock me over like a felled tree, and by then, the crawling and biting denizens of the jungle would have their way with me. It was also unclear who had created the trail. Or who managed it. That Costa Rica Trail sign could have been nailed to the tree by anyone. But that’s part of what intrigued me. However it came to being, the path was obvious and legible. The collision of maritime and jungle elements was irresistible. And following the Costa Rica Trail for a mile would take me to Playa Cocles; an enormous white sand beach that most visitors reach by rental car, tuk tuk, or motorbike. Someone had the idea of creating a way to walk to this heavenly beach. I wanted to follow their footprints. So I entered the jungle.

In a lot of places with adjacent tree canopies, it can take some time to feel like you’ve left the built world behind and entered the Herzogian realm of nature. This is not the case in Puerto Viejo. From the moment—the moment—I started sauntering along the so-called Costa Rica Trail, I was greeted by signs of the jungle’s resiliency. Little orange and black crabs skittered out of holes alongside the sandy path. I could hear the cries of monkeys in the branches overhead. Several times, I glimpsed tiny pieces of leaves and other jungle detritus moving across the path, carried by lines of industrious ants.

What I didn’t see nearly as often, for the first half hour, were other people. Save for a young couple heading the opposite direction into Puerto Viejo—carrying a board of necklaces to sell at a stand alongside the town road—I was more or less alone. The only other humans I encountered during the early stage of my hike were workers and guests at the restaurants and hotels that the trail passed through. And the important word there is through. This was not a path like the Marginal Way of Ogunquit, Maine, where you’re always separated from resort property by a fence. Here, outdoor table seating areas and open-air concert spaces were kind of a No Man’s Land you could walk across, as you followed the trail from the heart of Puerto Viejo to Playa Cocles.

The other evening, while walking through a rising tide at Playa Negra—another local beach where the fine sands are the color of coal—I had witnessed something more reminiscent of hot coastal regions back in the U.S. One of the few resorts alongside the beach had an outdoor lounging area with cabanas and a thatched-roof bar. The property line ended at the sand, so that access to Playa Negra wouldn’t be impeded. But the boundary was marked in places by red flags on white poles; a reminder that you were toeing a line that you had better not think about crossing. Now, that’s not necessarily a problem for the broader public. Even in countries with “Right To Roam” laws, you can’t just walk up to the edge of someone’s house and crack a beer. But what I couldn’t help thinking about on my Playa Negra walk and my Costa Rica Trail adventure is, what happens if private property lines start to breaches the beaches?

As I’ve written about here, and in other places, that kind of exclusion is very much a ground reality in New England. Cape Cod visitors and residents alike find themselves being shouted off of the intertidal zone by adjacent homeowners. When Taylor Swift bought her storied beachside mansion in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, access to the part of the shoreline bordering her house was cinched off. (Security guards patrol the area through the year, even when Swift is somewhere else….which she is most of the time.) In any of these instances, the foundational impulse is wanting to experience the great outdoors without the presence of other people; especially the unwashed masses who aren’t ponying up for a $400 hotel room, or who couldn’t get a coastal mortgage. It’s not a stretch to imagine this playing out in Puerto Viejo. Because it’s already starting.

In any town or city that draws an international crowd—among which English may not be the most common language—it’s interesting to note which businesses have taken an English-first approach to signage and branding. This usually tells you who they are catering to, first and foremost. As I got closer to Playa Cocles via the Costa Rica Trail, one of the properties that I walked across appeared to be an outdoor party space with a wooden stage and crunchy, tie-dyed banners with New Age iconography and words such as “Let’s Raise Our Vibration.” It’s not surprising that Costa Rica, renowned for its natural beauty and culture of appreciation for the outdoors, is something of a hotbed for gringo hippies. (Fun fact: I saw my first KENNEDY 2024 bumper sticker on the back of a pickup truck in Puerto Viejo!) Where this gets messy is when visitors from the U.S. and other wealthy countries become so pervasive in a region that investors decide to get in on the action by acquiring land and transforming it into something that will be familiar to the visitors; something that’s not visibly weathered by Caribbean rains and winds, and which isn’t seasoned with local history and tradition. This is very similar to the gentrification we see in American cities, where lower income residents that made overlooked parts of the city interesting with innovative spins on art and food are the first to get displaced, once people with money are poking around the neighborhood.

For now, Puerto Viejo has been somewhat spared from the gentrification which has caused earthquakes for poorer residents of Costa Rica’s Guanacaste province on the Pacific coast. The allure of beach towns such as Manuel Antonio and Tamarindo has helped catalyze private development over there, targeted at tourists and expats with deep pockets. Sadly—and ironically—this gentrification is one of the probable forces behind something that could actually put a damper on tourism in Costa Rica; rising violent crime rates, as gangs with ties to cartels take advantage of rising inequality and fraying social cohesion in areas that have seen more tourism and displacement.

Still, let’s address the elephant in the room here. I’m writing about all of this from the perspective of having just visited the very place where the concept of Pura Vida is in the crosshairs of capitalism. I’m aware that writing about the beauty of Puerto Viejo, which I saw along the Costa Rica Trail and at the town’s dreamlike beaches, has the potential to contribute to the problem of over-tourism and displacement. But I also don’t believe that the preventative solution to gentrification is avoiding social cross pollination. The smarter response, in my opinion, is doing the opposite of what the colony-like resorts and restaurants want you to do—to engage with these beautiful places in a way that means interacting more frequently with people who live there.

What does that look like, in practice? It could mean doing the legwork to find a good family-owned hotel, instead of plumping for the shiny resort with an Instagram page full of jacked and tanned influencers chilling in the jacuzzi. (On this front, I will highly recommend Indalo Hotel, whose kind owner, Gonzalo, encouraged me to treat the place “like you would treat your home.”) The same goes for restaurants; the sodas of Puerto Viejo are storied places where some of the best casado—stewed chicken and beans and rice cooked in coconut milk—is hidden. Traveling like this may also mean taking some time to learn at least a few turns of phrase in the native language, as a means of ingratiating yourself to folks with whom you interact. It won’t always shake out that way, but trying usually paves the ground for a warmer exchange, even if the conversation reverts to English when your limitations become obvious. And if you find yourself flying home entranced by what you’ve seen, you could always come back and play a hands-on role in keeping the place resplendent and accessible, by volunteering.
As the twists of the Costa Rica Trail got leafier and bushier, I finally started to see more pathfinders. Some of them were walking the trail just like me, and we traded nods and offerings of “buenas” as we rambled onward. Several other people were basking in the aquamarine shallows of smaller coves and beaches beyond the jungle’s tree line. Near these oases, I would often spot a motorbike resting against a tree, and a rooty access road that connected to the main drag to Playa Cocles. I could see that main road from some of the more secluded swimming areas. I knew the traffic there was intensifying. But somehow, the jungle still managed to make those roars feel distant and abstract.

The Costa Rica Trail
Hike distance: 3.4 miles out-and-back to Playa Cocles
Elevation gain: 50-ish feet
CLICK HERE for a trail map

When political leaders want to stand on ceremony and commemorate something momentous, no expense is spared. Trump—never more convinced of his own power and glory, as the economy shudders and masked federal agents kidnap people of color off the streets—is now planning to build a $200 million ballroom on the White House grounds. The vision here seems to be transforming the White House into a franchise of Mar-a-Lago. And when he hasn’t been busy ripping health care away from poor people or ordering Texas to double down on re-districting before the 2026 midterms, Trump has also found time to add some luster to the Oval Office. How? With an infusion of gold furnishings. The ballroom, if built, will also be full of gold.

Once again, The Simpsons predicted this shit.

Still, Trump’s fixation with covering everything in gold is ostentatious, but his driving impulse to re-shape his surroundings in a way that reflects his mindset is not unique. London’s Palace of Westminster—in which the lower and upper houses of parliament conduct business—was built with sand-colored limestone from the Anston Quarry in South Yorkshire; an understated yet handsome building material for a country where good manners and repression go hand-in-hand. (Most of my distant ancestors came over here from the U.K., so I know what I’m talking about here.) And in the late-19th Century, when America was beginning to rebuild after the devastation of the Civil War, another kind of quarried stone was used to pay homage to those who died in one of the war’s most crucial battles; the one that turned the tide in the Union Army’s favor.

The battle of Gettysburg lasted for three days and once the last shots had been fired, more than 51,000 soldiers were dead; their bodies scattered across the fields and hills of south central Pennsylvania. Such a scale of death, in such a short period of time, is still difficult to comprehend. It killed the momentum of the Confederate States Army, which had been successfully advancing northward, and it was a much-needed morale boost for Union soldiers, who had suffered heavy losses prior to the battle. So when it was time to create a burying ground for the men who died at Gettysburg, generic old slate headstones weren’t going to meet the moment. The architects and policymakers behind the Gettysburg National Cemetery envisioned marble headstones that would allow for more intricate inscriptions or carvings. And for this, they turn to Vermont.

If you’ve ever looked at a mountain and wondered, “What is that thing made of?” the short answer is, “Lots and lots of rocks.” But when rock undergoes the process of metamorphism—in which extreme heat from within the Earth’s crust changes the composition of the rock—it becomes marble. Some mountain ranges are chock full of the stuff, and one example in my neck of the woods is Vermont’s Green Mountains. There are several places in Vermont where marble has been quarried to such a great extent that mountains are basically missing large chunks. Those of you who’ve visited Manchester, a sort of hybridized ski town and outlet mall on the far west side of the state, might have heard rumblings about one of these quarries hidden in the woods.

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Imagine how it must feel to be that person in a group of Wu Tang Clan fans who talks up Ghostface Killah when everyone else is gushing about GZA, RZA, or Method Man. Or the kid at a penny candy counter who proudly orders a fistful of Necco wafers, as the other customers go for brighter and tangier gummies. Well, now you know how I feel when talking about wetlands. Because I really love wetlands. Somebody has to.

Next to the grand scale beauty of mountains, waterfalls, or old growth forests, a vast squelchy wetland can be an acquired taste. And during the summer, a lot of us tend to avoid wetlands on the assumption that they’ll be smelly and full of biting insects. In some cases, this is true. But what’s highly underappreciated about wetlands is that in addition to giving reedy plants, birds, and bugs a reliable place to call home, wetlands are also veritable Cool Zones at the hottest times of the year. A wetland is basically a thick stew of botanical specimens, and a lot of wetlands are able to absorb heat from the sun and re-release a milder version of it. Consider the city of Colombo, Sri Lanka. At the most sweltering hours, the neighboring wetlands around the city are, on average, about 10°C cooler than the pavement-heavy areas in the city. A similar thing has happened in London during heat waves, with locals flocking to the Hackney Marshes to cool off.

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One of the subtler thorns buried deep within the Trump administration’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” is its cap on gambling loss deductions. When the bill goes into effect in 2026, the amount of losses that gamblers can write off will be limited to 90%. Now that may not sound unreasonable to the average American, but for bettors pulling in serious zeroes each year—a constituency that’s bigger than you might think—this tweak to the current gambling tax code means that if you netted losses on a few big bets, your tax liability could actually exceed your winnings; which kind of defeats the purpose of gambling.

I found this striking. Not because I’m a regular at the craps table or a DraftKings VIP player (though a couple of friends and I did exploit their bonus bet promotions for new players), but because imposing a regressive tax policy on bettors is another example of the Trump administration touching the third rail of American opinion. It’s not quite as seismic as ripping the wires out of Medicaid, but still, gambling is deeply intrinsic to American life and culture. Casinos are just the beginning. Online gambling apps like sportsbooks have become so eponymous that major celebrities like Jamie Foxx and Lionel Messi have inked endorsement deals with some of these platforms. As of last January, Americans had wagered over $450 billion on sportsbook markets since the Supreme Court legalized sports betting in 2018. And if you think about how America looks at wealth, the influence of gambling is more sinister. An alarming number of us have bought into this notion that we should keep giving tax breaks to billionaires and depriving ourselves of basic support systems such as universal healthcare because as soon as we become billionaires, paying those higher taxes will be really annoying.

All of that said, I don’t want to leave you with the impression that I hold a Puritanical outlook toward gambling. The occasional slot machine or roulette spin can satify the primitive id, just like a round of paintball or a summer hookup. Sometimes, a pinch of gambling can even be a garnish on a more well-rounded experience. Consider the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation’s flagship casino, Foxwoods. Like a lot of tourist attractions in Connecticut, Foxwoods is tucked into a vast bedspread of wooded hills; none of which are tall or prominent enough to stand as landmarks on their own. But earlier this year, I found out that one of these hills—Lantern Hill—contains a maze of hiking paths that are currently advertised on the Foxwoods website as one of many amenities that casino visitors can enjoy. “Beyond the excitement within the walls of the resort, the picturesque Connecticut woods offer their own exhilarating adventure,” the teaser begins, before ending with, “You might not have expected to find this kind of activity at Foxwoods. But, then again, you always get more than you expect here.”

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Every organization that creates and maintains walking trails has its Big Bad—a trail that’s tough enough to merit a warning like, “This is the most challenging trail in our network; tread carefully.” But the Big Bads that really intrigue me are the ones found under the banners of organizations that aren’t reputed for offering rigorous trails. The Audubon Society of Rhode Island is a good example. Their mission, “to protect birds, other wildlife, and their habitat through conservation, education, and advocacy,” does not revolve around rock hoppers and adrenaline junkies. Most Audubon Society trails are gentle and meandering enough to make a walk in the woods feel like meditation.

But when it comes to scenic footpaths, the Audubon Society of Rhode Island has a sting in its tail. You see, they’re the primary land steward for the Long Pond Woods Wildlife Refuge, which is sequestered away from the din of Providence and Newport in the leafy hills of southwestern Rhode Island. And if you spend any time trawling the various subreddits dedicated to life in Little Rhody, you eventually come to learn that the hike to Long Pond is considered to be one of the most grueling hikes in the state.

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Maybe it’s the chaos of the current moment and the feeling that we could wake up to world-shattering news any day now, but lately I’ve been thinking about opportunities not taken and the regret that can haunt you. The Simpsons, easily one of the most instructive texts of our time, sketched out this all-too-human dilemma in the Season 5 episode “Deep Space Homer.” Homer is selected by NASA to take part in a mission that involves sending an unqualified Average Joe into space—to improve their launch ratings on the major TV networks. Naturally Homer has second thoughts and when he calls Marge in a panic from Cape Canaveral, she urges him to think hard about how he might feel if he bailed. “You could end up regretting it for the rest of your life,” she says.

”You’re right, Marge,” Homer replies. “It’s just like the time I could have met Mr. T at the mall. The entire day I kept saying, “I’ll go a little later…I’ll go a little later,” and when I got there, they told me he’d just left. And when I asked the mall guy if he would ever come back again, he said he didn’t know.”

About a week ago, I came close to having a “Mr. T at the Mall” moment of my own. My friend, housemate, and hiking buddy, Katie Metzger clued me into a special event that she had learned about some proper Instragram lurking. On June 14th, as a corollary of the No Kings protests against Donald Trump’s cruelty and corruption, Bernie Sanders and his Vermont staff were leading a free community hike along the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail; a gorgeous multi-use path that runs across the northern Highlands of the state. (We’ve been there via Mind The Moss before.) This unexpected news made me go saucer-eyed for a few reasons. I volunteered on both of Sanders’ presidential campaigns and in general, I’ve admired his willingness to aim higher and encourage others to have more ambitious vision of a future; which feels severely lacking on the center-left side of the aisle these days. I’ve also felt that community hikes—which I often lead in Boston—are a unique form of social engagement that politicians can theoretically adopt. But the revelation that this Bernie Sanders hike was taking place on the doorstep of Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom in Morristown was the chef’s kiss.

I have to go, I thought, forgetting that I had to be back in Boston for a Sunday morning engagement. And as I remembered my prior commitments, I realized that heading up to northern Vermont for the Saturday hike would mean spending a ton of time in a car, for an event that probably wouldn’t last longer than two hours. My excitement began waning and I felt the gravitational pull of being able to sleep in on Saturday morning before venturing out to the Pride celebrations and the No Kings protests happening across Boston that day. But even as the rationale for staying home felt more practical, I still couldn’t shake the hunch that I was walking away from a once-in-a-lifetime event. In the end, I shut off the practical side of my brain, grabbed my boots, and drove north.

Now that I’m back, I’m going to tell you what it’s like to go hiking with Bernie Sanders.

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When was the last time that you enjoyed being anxious? For me, it was watching Tom Cruise cling to the wing of a soaring biplane in the new Mission: Impossible movie; an escalation of the greatest midlife crisis that anyone has ever had. But just as often, I’ve enjoyed tremors of stress and dread on the eve of a big hike—specifically, a hike that involves a big mountain that I’ve committed to climbing, with a lot of reservations.

While mountains are the main attraction for outdoor adventure journalism, a lot of us (probably a majority of us) experience the mountains as occasional hard-edged treats. In the same way that a shot of wormwood-infused absinthe or a fiery bowl of Sichuan boiled fish can test your limits once in awhile—with exciting and confidence-boosting results—a grueling and exposed climb to a summit can be invigorating. And part of the thrill ride is the heebie-jeebies that can flare up beforehand, when the reality of what you’re about to do fully sets in. Some of the best mountain adventures that I’ve taken caused me to lose sleep the night before. This summer, I’m encouraging you to experience some good insomnia too; by planning to climb a mountain that scares you.

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Maybe it’s because we just saw House Republicans vote for a budget bill that would cause a lot of austerity for anyone who’s never set foot on a Learjet before, but I’ve been thinking: When was the last time a lot of us received some serious pocket money?

By my estimation, our most recent mass windfall was 2021; Year Two of the COVID-19 pandemic. Amidst all of the viral suffering, mass death, and existential dread, billions of dollars were disbursed to individuals, businesses, and municipalities; with the core intention of keeping society from imploding. Lots of us suddenly qualified for beefier unemployment checks. Properietors could secure thousands in forgiveable loans by simply filling out an online form. And of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which amounted to $1.9 trillion, around $130 billion was sent to cities and counties. And the range of local programs and projects that this money supported might surprise you.

Consider Lake Williams—one of the bigger water bodies in Marlborough, MA. While the west edge of the lake has a smattering of hardwoods, Lake Williams is ultimately surrounded by busy roads; the kind that you have to sprint across, because there are no crosswalks. Until recently, the only way to traverse the shores of Lake Williams was to show up on a warm day with a pair of wader boots or a snorkel. But this changed in December 2023, when the City of Marlborough unveiled one of its ARPA investments; a 3,000-foot floating boardwalk trail across the rippling blue surface of Lake Williams.

If you’ve ever stepped onto a boardwalk that literally bobs in the waters of a marsh or a pond, then you know what it’s like to hear your soul squeal with childlike glee. Maybe I’m generalizing here, but there’s just something irresistibly fun and improbable about a buoyant path. But usually these water features are seasoning on a land-based trail. It’s much, much rarer to find a trail with a bobbing backbone. And in the case of Lake Williams, the floating boardwalk is actually serving a higher purpose. It’s opening up the lake to circuitous ambling, since each boardwalk end connects to a path through the woods on the lake’s western shores. So when I learned about this hodge-podge of solid and floating trails earlier, I instinctively reached for my keys and tick repellent.

Even at 8am on a breezy April morning, there were signs of life on the Lake Williams boardwalk that hinted at what the floating trail (and the entire lakeshore loop) might look like in the next couple of years. As I giddily arrived at the boardwalk path, I was overlapped by a silver-haired old timer in a tracksuit—the sort of guy you always see perambulating a pond or a lake every morning, who usually has a name like “Thurston Castlemilk.” As more Central Mass. residents learn about the new boardwalk trail, you might soon find yourself passing a squad of these guys. Similarly, as I started walking across the surface of the lake via the floating boardwalk sections, a younger couple approached from the opposite direction. Their faces were stoic and neither of them uttered a word as we passed. It’s another common sighting on lakefront trails, and it sometimes leaves you wondering whether the couple is breaking up, if they’re coming down from the adrenaline of burying a body in the woods, or if they’re just enjoying the silence and the morning mist. The ambiguity of people watching always satisfies me.

But as much as the Lake Williams floating boardwalk trail opens up the lake to more consistent and casual recreation for Marlborough residents, I suspect the real draw here is going to be the sheer joy of walking on top of water. Every so often, you find a trail that allows you to walk through a space where, in theory, walking would be near impossible. In New York’s Van Cortlandt Park, in The Bronx, the John Muir Trail runs between the crush-your-skull traffic of the Mosholu Parkway and the chip-your-skull golfers teeing off at the park golf course. How? By utilizing chainlink fencing on both sides of the trail to form a protected corridor of walking space, between these two territories that aren’t particularly friendly to walkers. The full-body buzz that I felt while sauntering through that fenced corridor last spring is the same sensation that Lake Williams’ boardwalk trail evoked. The thrill of being where you should not be. Safely!

But as cool as walking alongside a hair-raising parkway can be, it’s hard to compete with walking on top of water —when it comes to trails that defy physical reality. The Lake Williams floating boardwalk trail joins an illustrious sub-genre of trails that run across laketops, and one of the more legendary predecessors is actually located in New England as well. The next time you’re up in Burlington, Vermont on a sunny day, consider venturing northward to the nearby town of Colchester, where an old railroad bed arcs across the whitecapped waters of Lake Champlain to South Hero island! While it doesn’t bob in the water, the Colchester Causeway is nearly 3 miles long. And this is why most causeway visitors will bike the gravel path from the mainland to the isle. But if long meditative walks are your bag—and if you don’t mind spending a few hours on a narrow strip of exposed land, on a massive lake—don’t sleep on this one.

As it happens, the Colchester Causeway is now owned by the state, after being largely owned and managed by the Town of Colchester—which became a real problem when unusually strong storms damaged the trail and necessitated expensive repairs. Since the trail connects multiple Vermont communities and is used by thousands of visitors each season, it made sense for Colchester to be relieved of the burdens of keeping the causeway trail safe and accessible. Not only will the state invest more in the trail henceforth, but the causeway is allegedly being branded a state park, which should become official later this year. All of which demonstrates what’s possible when we think about trails as worthy vehicles of public investment, and pony up accordingly.

That might sound obvious. But at a moment when federal health care programs are being bled dry, to pay for yet another round of tax cuts for people with way too much money (and the neuroses to show for it), I can’t help but think about how many trails could be lost—or unrealized—in the years ahead. If you’re mad as hell about what’s happening right now, you will probably feel madder after walking the Lake Williams floating boardwalk trail. When you remember that the funding which made this great trail possible was a brief taste of a more optimistic and opportune America, before the ruling class began clawing everything back; to keep it locked up forever this time.

Still, as damaging as this could be in the short term, I don’t believe for one second that they’ll succeed. Why? Because the Thurston Castlemilks of the world will notice when their local lakefront trail is suddenly cordoned off, because the town ran out of money for maintaining the trail and the feds won’t help. And if the Thurston Castlemilks have one resource on their hands, it’s time—to investigate, pester, harrumph, and raise cane.

That could help. If we’re honest about what it takes to make trails and keep them alive.

Lake Williams floating boardwalk trail
Hike distance: 1.6 miles loop
Elevation gain: 39 feet
CLICK HERE for a trail map

Colchester Causeway
Hike distance: 10.9 miles out-and-back
Elevation gain: 127 feet
CLICK HERE for a trail map

While we’re on the subject of walking adventures, I have something of a cryptic favor to ask you all this week. It’s too early to spill the beans, but I’m currently in talks for a project that would involve walking in a number of U.S. cities later this year and maybe early next year. And I’m trying to map out potential places to sleep during these 2-3 day voyages. In short, I’m on the hunt for any lodging leads (a couch or bed, vacant condo, rusting trailer accruing moss in the yard, you name it) in the following places:

- Pittsburgh
- Miami
- Denver
- San Antonio
- Chicago

Any ideas will be appreciated and investigated! In the meantime, here are a few more stories you might dig, with some thematic parallel’s to this week’s Mind The Moss.

RECOMMENDED READING

- Five Ways to Grow Support for Trails, Walking and Biking (Joseph Reed, Rails To Trails Conservancy)
- "Amid Federal Funding Cuts, Trail Stewards Wonder: “What Are We Actually Doing?” (Nathan Pipenberg, Backpacker)
- Federal funding cuts, layoffs could hinder Appalachian Trail upkeep (Kathryn Carley, Maine News Service)

Some of you might be aware that I love good dream-haunting horror movies—the slow burn types that take their sweet time cranking up the dread before unleashing the full cascade of horrors. And within this illustrious subgenre, it’s pretty difficult to beat The Blair Witch Project. I was too young to catch the film during its monumental theatrical run in 1999, when the found-footage genre was still a novelty. But I remember seeing the sparse trailers for the film around that time, and even those creeped the hell out of me. The premise is arrestingly simple. Three film students ventured into the woods outside of Burketsville, Maryland to make a documentary about a local legend known as the Blair Witch. The students vanished without a trace and exhaustive search and rescue efforts uncovered nothing. Three years later, the students’ footage was found.

You could spend an entire lifetime writing horror movies and never come up with a narrative pitch this good. The Blair Witch Project is entirely comprised of the “lost” video and film shot by the ill-fated students—which tells their story in a manner that feels more real and visceral than 99% of the movies you encounter in theaters these days. And while the actors who portray the students are all performing at the top of their game (they pretty much had to live in the forest for the duration of filming), the one who viewers tend to remember most is Heather Donahue. She’s the director of the documentary project that the three are shooting. When the students get lost and start hearing strange noises outside of their tent after sundown—the first of several escalating signs that someone or something is following them—Heather is the one who’s most in denial about how fucked their situation is. But eventually, the horrors unfold to such a degree that Heather’s forced optimism shatters. And what we get, toward the end of the film, is a confessional monologue from Heather in which she turns the camcorder on herself and tearfully apologizes to her family and the families of her fellow students, for leading them into the woods. It’s a last testament done as a selfie, many years before the era of selfies, and it should have made Donahue a star.

Well actually, it did. Kind of. But not in the way that lots of us like to imagine stardom. Audiences responded so strongly to The Blair Witch Project that some were unable or unwilling to separate Heather Donahue, the lead actor, from her character who is also named Heather—a character whose confidence and self-delusions make the students’ predicament worse. That Heather is portrayed as a strong-willed woman, unwilling to take the blame from her fellow (male) students until things have truly gone south, no doubt touched a deep nerve with some viewers in the late-90s moviegoing climate; a landscape with a lot of internalized misogyny. While Donahue was able to leverage her sudden celebrity into landing a couple of supporting roles in mainstream movies such as the Freddie Prinze Jr. comedy Boys and Girls, she struggled to find work, still trailed by the shadow of the Blair Witch. And eventually, in 2008, Donahue retired from acting.

It was a decision that would lead Donahue to a different woodland in Freedom, Maine. And up here, within the town’s vast forest, is where this week’s story really begins.

As reported by Steve Greenlee for The Boston Globe, in a feature story that I strongly recommend reading alongside this one, Donahue became a Maine resident in 2017, after working as a medical marijuana farmer, writing a memoir, and launching a life coaching practice. This, plus a local gardening job, allowed Donahue to buy a small plot of wooded land in Freedom, where she spent a summer hiking and swimming. This was her gateway to off-grid living—she built a solar-powered house on the land after the first summer—but it was also Donahue’s surprise window into local politics.

As Donahue spent more time hiking in the surrounding woodlands, she became aware of a controversy surrounding Beaver Ridge Road—specifically a 1.5-mile portion of the road that’s basically a dirt path through the woods. Like others, Donahue had walked this path several times when she found out that the general public’s right of access to the path was being contested by homeowners whose property abuts Beaver Ridge Road. Some homeowners had begun putting up NO TRESPASSING signs on the path. Their argument, that the Town of Freedom had long since ceased maintenance of this piece of the road, was bolstered by accounts of snowmobilers and ATV riders making use of the road and creating enough of a ruckus to justify closing the road to the public; even to passive users like Donahue, who were just walking there.

This was one of the things that inspired Heather Donahue to run for Freedom’s Select Board; an interest in land stewardship, concentrated around the Beaver Ridge Road brouhaha. In New England towns, a Select Board is basically the executive branch of government. It’s a collective body charged with making policy decisions on a range of local issues. Donahue won a seat on Freedom Select Board in 2024. And according to accounts from the Globe, the Midcost Villager’s Carolyn Zachary, and the Portland Press Herald’s Hannah Kaufman, the board decided to tap Donahue as their Beaver Ridge Road taskmaster. This is what led to Donahue poring over decades-old maps of the road to determine its historic precedent as a public way, to help build the town’s case for keeping Beaver Ridge Road completely open to the public. Her work took on a new level of urgency when the lawyer representing one of the homeowners sued the Town of Freedom, which caused the town to accrue thousands in legal fees. It was a common escalation for Maine, where 94% of forested lands are privately owned, and there was a good chance that the Town of Freedom would lose the case.

And that’s when Donahue did something that shocked the Select Board and the town.

To illustrate the former arc and dimensions of the lost 1.5 miles of Beaver Ridge Road, which had since eroded into a rugged dirt trail, Donahue walked the path with a can of orange spray paint and marked some of the trees with large X’s. For the homeowners, this was a bridge too far. They insisted that in marking the trees on the path, Donahue had stepped onto private property and defaced it. Counter-arguing that the trees were on public property—IE, the footprint of the disappeared portion of Beaver Ridge Road—Donahue had once again touched a nerve. In Maine, private property rights tend to be treated as sarosanct. Even though the State of Maine stipulates that private property without any visible No Trespassing signs is fair game for passive recreation, the state also insists that anybody wishing to recreate on such lands must obtain permission from the landowner first. So it’s not much of a surprise that Donahue found herself facing a recall vote after spray-painting the trees. 122 residents of Freedom chose to kick Donahue off of the Select Board, defeating the 91 who voted against her recall.

One week later, the Freedom Select Board held a vote of its own—declaring whether or not Beaver Ridge Road was a public space that should stay open to the public. It was the culmination of Donahue’s research, and while Donahue herself was unable to take part in the vote, the Board ultimately decided that the road is indeed a public space.

I think there are two reasons why this story has been garnering so much coverage from our regional media. The first and most obvious is Heather Donahue’s connection with The Blair Witch Project. New England is somewhat starved for celebrity stories that don’t involve profesional athletes or the Wahlberg brothers. Anything concerning someone whose work is nichier is going to command attention. But the other reason why I believe that Donahue’s expulsion from a small town Maine Select Board was a headline story is because so many of us have found ourselves in Donahue’s position over the last few decades—outdoors and loving it, enjoying a walk across a beautiful stretch of countryside, only to happen upon a big NO TRESPASSING sign that wasn’t there the last time you visited. (A sign that might not even be legal!) The homeowners living alongside Beaver Ridge Road who tried to stop the wider public from using the dirt path segment of the road represent larger forces that many of us will recognize all too well; widening distrust in each other and an impulse to dominate what’s around us.

Last fall, I learned about a similar road of controversy in Concord, Massachusetts; the tony little hamlet with gorgeous forest paths connecting to neighboring towns’ trail networks. Estabrook Road, which runs around two miles from Carlisle into Concord, has also deteriorated to the point where much of the road now resembles a pathway through woods and meadows. And just like the Freedom, Maine situation, a group of homeowners whose properties abut Estabrook Road have been posting their own NO TRESPASSING signs along the segment of the road that passes their properties, and waging a legal argument that the road is part of their private domain. This case grew so contentious that back in October, the Massachusetts Court of Appeals weighed in and ordered the homeowners to stop installing the signs. That was how I found out about the legal battle. So I decided to go and check out Estabrook Road for myself.

When I reached the contested segment of the road, I was surprised to find several signs there. These were not anti-trespassing signs, however. They were miniature billboards, designed to ellicit sympathy for the homeowners. The largest featured extensive written legal arguments in their favor, and it had loudspeakers attached to the edges! From the speakers, you could hear an audio loop from the most recent hearing; specifically the bits where the homeowners are lamenting the nuisance of having other people walking by their homes each day. It must have cost at least $500 to create these signs. And then there was the unquantifiable cost of the homeowners’ disrupting their own peace and quiet, by blasting courtroom audio through the trees.

For me, this demonstrated something that a lot of us need to understand and accept. The forces of exclusion and dominance—the same forces, I would argue, that have seized our federal goverment—are willing to fight like hell and throw out all the stops, when it comes to guarding what they perceive as theirs. And even if we’re committed, to the notion that pushing back against these forces must happen within the realm of our legal system (something which I basically agree with), laws are not always going to stop people from claiming something that doesn’t belong to them. So….then what?

I’m not sure if painting X’s on trees that may or may not grow on public property would qualify as an act of civil disobedience, in the most technical sense. But in spirit and in practice, the action that led to Heather Donahue getting booted from Freedom’s Select Board does feel like of an engagement in civil disobedience. For me, it registered as someone resisting our learned deference to power, which often holds us back from bringing a real knife to a knife fight, legally speaking. And it’s also a reminder that civil disobedience that may initially ruffle feathers has a way of moving public consensus. Would the Town of Freedom have voted to keep Beaver Ridge Road open to the public if Donahue hadn’t drawn attention to the issue by marking those trees? It’s possible that Donahue’s archival research alone might have persuaded a majority of the Select Board, when it was time to vote on the issue. But how much thought would the board have given to the issue, if the dispute hadn’t been moved into the limelight? It’s actions like this which can snap us out of apathy and cause us to go, “Hey, hold on a minute….”

What I do know, however, is that people who decide to take action will often remain uncredited if their actions help bring about positive changes. And in many cases, the consequence of civil disobedience can follow you; impacting your ability to find work or to lead a peaceful life. There’s a not-zero chance that one of your favorite trails or roads for walking may have been the subject of a legal spat at some point. Someone could have gone to jail or lost a job, after standing up for public access to that trail or road. Take a moment and wonder, Where are they now? Where did the trail lead them?

Donahue, for her part, is still firmly rooted in Maine. Maybe even more so than before.

“Public access to woods and waters, self-sufficiency, food sovereignty and home rule are all worth fighting for,” Donahue said to the Midcoast Villager. “It seems in such a forested town as Freedom, there should be a place to take a walk in the woods.”

Outdoor recreationists tend to be an optimistic bunch. Just clocked off work and intrigued by that weird path with daisies and brambles behind the hospital, with an hour of daylight left? Take the path! Ever wondered how it might feel to wade into a pond on a sputtering January morning? Grab a wetsuit and go for it! Are the local mountains thawing, after a long winter of snow and ice? Put on your boots and climb.

Actually, wait…

No!

Please don’t do that!

At least, not quite yet.

Springtime in the mountains is kind of similar to how you or I might arise from bed after a Las Vegas Strip bender. It’s a hot mess—with olfactory surprises. As the snow and ice thaw, so does all the woodsy detritus beneath it. Decomposition sets in, mingling with the aromas of new plants emerging from the soil. Below treeline, in the deciduous woodlands, the spring transition gets seriously goopy and stinky, and fast.

But once you ascend to the boreal zone, where the trees get smaller and needle-y, the seasonal segue slows down considerably. And this is why mountain climbing in early spring—a time when it might seem intuitive to throw on your daypack, grab some jerky, and jump over the back fence—can actually be a more dangerous enterprise. So this weekend, as we shake off the hangover of winter and start making our grubby plans for spring foot travel, I want to take a moment to highlight some of the core reasons why you should consider saving higher altitude destinations for mid-May and after.

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I’ve spent the better part of three decades scrambling up rock stairs and slipping on roots in the backcountry. And of all the stuff that I’ve seen out there, one of the things that haunts me most, after all these years, is a photograph that was stapled to a tree.

It was fall of 2017. My dad and I were scaling Mount Lafayette—a 5,249-foot landmark in New Hampshire’s White Mountains which is named after the General Lafayette and is consequently popular among French-Canadian hikers. (You take your national pride wherever you can find it, I guess!) We were taking the Old Bridle Path and we had just completed the transition from yellowy and auburn deciduous woods to the angular boreal ridgeline that you have to climb to get to the summit cone of the mountain. And that’s when I saw the photo, attached to the thin trunk of a white spruce tree. It was an image of a young woman at home, beaming, and the photo print contained a few lines text explaining that she had been missing for upwards of a month, with no leads from the authorities. I stopped my dad and we spent a few minutes looking at the photo in silence, trying to fill in the blanks between this preserved yet fading moment and the terrible ambiguity of the present. As we resumed hiking, we found two more of these photos stapled to trees further up the trail—same image, same words, same silence.

The backcountry, as many of us know it today, is a place we visit to get away from our anxieties and tribulations. Just imagining the amount of anguish and desperation that must have compelled someone to put up MISSING photos in the middle of the White Mountain National Forest made the hairs on my back stand up. The odds of a passing hiker knowing anything about the disappearance of the woman in the picture were so slim that I wondered if the intent of the person who stapled the photos to those trees might have been more spiritual—an act of raw expression, in a place we disassociate from the pain of the “real world” that awaits beyond all those curtains of boreal trees.
When one of those pains makes its way into the backcountry and becomes visible, it’s a stark sign that things have reached a boiling point, for an individual or a community.

Last week, something happened in Yosemite National Park that offered a much bigger confirmation that things are getting seriously darker and stormier. In the wake of Elon Musk’s DOGE crew firing over 1,000 National Park Service employees—in the name of “efficiency,” but quite obviously in the service of paying for another big tax cut for the billionaire class—a group of Yosemite employees climbed to the top of El Capitan and hung an upside-down American flag from the summit. The inverted flag is a symbol of the United States experiencing a moment of profound distress, and the fact that this happened in Yosemite National Park of all places has the outdoor community buzzing at a volume level not heard in recent memory. And I think I know why that’s happening.

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As I write this, much of the American northeast remains encased in ice. It formed last weekend when a fresh dumping of snow started to melt, only to freeze into rock-hard foundational ice when the temperature suddenly plummeted. So we’re now living at the mercy of our thermometers; waiting for things to creep back into the upper 30s so that we can leave our houses and apartments without crampons. In my city, there are so many folks taking falls on the ice that our hospital emergency rooms are reaching capacity as patients stagger into the hospitals with cracked ribs, broken ankles, and concussions. All of which makes me miss the winters when the streets and sidewalks became fluffy corridors of accumulated powder—a more walkable winter wonderland.

But it’s worth remembering that dreamy tufts of snow have also aggravated walkers for centuries. As soon as loose snow gets into your boots, your ability to comfortably saunter in a snowy environment is literally dampened. Combined with the freezing air temperatures, getting wet can be dangerous. And this is why we invented snowshoes.

Well, perhaps using “we” is giving ourselves a little too much credit. While the origin of snowshoes cannot be traced back to a single time and place, historians often point to the highlands of Central Asia as the proving ground—where, around 4,000 B.C., people living in the snowy highlands tried to create a kind of footwear that would allow you to float on top of the snowdrifts, as opposed to sinking into them. The early snowshoes were really just pieces of wood with foot bindings. But as humans trekked into North America by way of the Bering Land Bridge, the snowshoe evolved by necessity. The classic form that we usually associate with eras past—wooden frames with lots of lacing—were engineered and augmented by Indigenous peoples like the Algonquin nations of the east, the Cree/Ojibwe nations of the plains, and of course, the Inuit Nunangat peoples of the Arctic territories. Snowshoes were a crucial innovation that allowed people to continue hunting, traveling, and being social in the middle of winter.

It might seem strange, then, how western culture has basically relegated snowshoes to the basement archives. You’re extremely unlikely to hear a friend or a coworker say, “Man, when that blizzard rolls in, I’m grabbing my snowshoes and hauling ass to the boreal zone.” And that’s because most of our contemporary winter activities are more adrenaline soaked and stimulating. Shred your way down a ravine on freestyle skis! Hop on a snowmobile and rip through the frozen woods like Slim Pickens riding the atomic bomb at the end of Dr. Strangelove! Hell, even strapping on microspikes and climbing a snowbound mountain has kind of an assertive energy to it—you’re able to scale the snowbound mountain because you’re piercing it with sharp pieces of metal.

Snowshoeing doesn’t fall into this force-foward genre of winter activities. It’s a more passive, meditative way of moving around outside. And it can also be really grueling.

I recently got to experience all of this firsthand in the heart of Canada. I was on a work trip to the brutally chilly province of Manitoba, and after spending a couple of days in Winnipeg—making a fool of myself on the ice skating trails that form along the city’s downtown rivers—I made a brief foray over to Riding Mountain National Park, which is contained in a boreal forest on Manitoba’s seemingly endless prairies. The wind-chill on the day of my arrival was -30 degrees. Skating on the park’s superlative water body, Clear Lake, and being vulnerable to its face-burning gusts was too dangerous. But the sun was out and the trails through the woods offered some shelter from the wind. The park’s onsite winter gear rental shop, run by a nonprofit organization, had entire racks of snowshoes ready for the taking. These were not the wood-and-lace snowshoes of centuries past, of course. Modern snowshoes usually have metal frames, with plastic bindings and a set of dull crampons on the underside, for stability on sloped surfaces. But what I realized as I set off on the Brûlé Trail—a 2.6-mile loop through corridors of conifers and the occasional open meadow—is that snoeshowing for the first time (or the first time in a long time) can feel like learning how to walk with a new set of feet.

Your gait subtly changes. Walking with snowshoes on top of powder will alter the way you move your lower limbs. It’s not just the weight and dimensions of the snowshoes themselves; it’s the squishy nature of the snowy surface you’re “floating” above. Often, the snowshoes do sink into the powder a little bit, and it only takes a couple minutes of sinking steps before a blissed-out forest jaunt turns into Surprise Leg Day. If you’re able to walk on a groomed trail, this isn’t quite as much of an issue. But even there, it quickly dawns on you that having these large, unwieldy things strapped to your feet enables you to walk slowly through a snowy landscape, at the cost of doing pretty much anything else. You can’t run while wearing most snowshoes (though I’ve heard of a few niche models that allow for this) and you can’t climb steep surfaces in them. And taking them off and putting them back on can be kind of a pain—requiring you to sit in the snow, take off your gloves, and fiddle with binding buckles as your fingers are chapped raw. Snowshoes have a way of forcing you to slow down and focus.

This was exactly what I needed, after a nightmarish month of events that only seem to be getting worse. As I crunched through the winding halls of the Brûlé Trail, admiring the great clumps of snow on the pine boughs and the occasional trees that had been knocked over by wind and splintered mid-trunk, it briefly occurred to me that I was snowshoeing across part of a winter landscape that Trump wants to steal. If this sickening thought had crossed my mind during the car ride to Riding Mountain, it would have turned my cheeks red and jacked my cortisol levels (especially if I had been using my phone at the time, as I wrote about last week.) But the vastness and stillness of the gleaming white, silent forest kept me grounded. The beauty of the Brûlé Trail and the sweat-soaked labor that I was performing to experience it left me with two clear thoughts. Trying to annex a country as enormous as Canada would be incredibly stupid. But of course, this is Trump, and if he and his acolytes really are that stupid, they will run into fierce resistance from Canadians, and they will eventually lose.

I realize these are actually really alarming thoughts! They involve escalating conflict between two historically allied neighbors. And yet, processing these thoughts while I walked through the white woodlands of Riding Mountain National Park on snowshoes made it easier for me to come to terms with the stark reality that in a global sense, we are at the mercy of a malignant narcissist who wants to push us into a war; for no other reason than to scratch an itch. Once you accept a reality like this, you are better equipped to do something about it; whether it’s brainstorming methods of resistance, forming new alliances, or just thinking about what you could be ready to do, if things do fall apart. As I continued along the trail, emerging from the trees into a meadow of fresh powder, I thought about what I could do to support Canada, if Trump went for it.

The strangest thing about this juxtaposition of serene scenery and fiery musings was that they didn’t feel discordant. I was moving at a glacial pace through an enchanting little pocket of a country that I’ve enjoyed visiting and getting to know for decades. At a time when that country is being threatened by my country, seeing the landscape and being immersed made me think about the sovereignty of this land and my relationship with it. And it also affirmed something I already knew, after spending time in Montreal, Winnipeg, and other Canadian cities—Canadians love their country and they will fight like hell to defend it. The pine trees on the Brûlé Trail seemed to ask, “Wouldn’t you?”

And that, my friends, is why snowshoeing will always have a special place in my heart, when it comes to poking around outdoors. There is an agony to it—the strain on your legs and feet, the amount of sweat that you expel as you struggle to keep moving, and the monotony of taking labored step after step through malleable snow. But through that grueling labor, you can find a unique symbiotic intimacy with the external and internal landscapes. When you realize that the two are connected, it feels ecstatic.

But don’t just take my word for it. Give snowshoeing a shot while we still have a solid month of winter ahead of us! Pick up a pair at any store that allows open box returns (in case you decide snowshoeing isn’t for you) or rent them from a gear outfitter. Get your half-frozen hands into your mittens after tightening all the snowshoe buckles and as you pick up a trail that’s caked with snow, don’t just expect serenity. Snowshoeing is a more bitter tonic. You will ache, you will tire, and you will adjust. And once things really slow down, outside and inside, you might even be able to hear your heartbeat.

I know I did, out on the Brûlé Trail. Once. I think.

Elon Musk’s ongoing and illegal dismantling of our federal government has now hit the National Park Service. As Katie Jackson reported for The Trek, thousands of park and forest workers have been laid off, as Musk and Trump continue their mission to slash government spending so that they can give themselves and their fellow billionaires an hefty tax cut later this year. On top of being heartless and unconstitutional, the layoffs are a crippling blow for park visitor safety, outdoor education, and the integrity of our public lands. As empty and gormless as it might feel to call your representatives these days (especially when the leadership of Democratic Party appears to be sleepwalking through Trump and Musk’s coup), we have to keep doing this; especially if those Reps and Senators are Republicans encouraging this austerity or Democrats failing to meet the moment. Find your members of Congress and call them. Be a thorn in their sides.

Oh, and speaking of mass layoffs, some of you might have heard that Outside recently put most of its editorial staff out to pasture. Why? Because, as reported by Adventure Journal (a great print-only outdoors magazine) the leadership of Outside Inc. wanted to buy Inntopia, a travel booking software platform used by many of the big ski resort brands like Vail. In other words, Outside Inc. is pivoting away from the storytelling field and breaking into the content field. The calculus seems to be that there’s more money to be made in expanding a tech platform than publishing a good magazine, and while that’s probably true to some degree, it’s reflective of a very bleak state of affairs in the outdoor media circuit. Maddy Marquardt, who publishes the newsletter Hello Stranger, has a post about this state of affairs that I found comparably cathartic and troubling.

This makes me all the more grateful to those of you who have chosen to support Mind The Moss by becoming paid subscribers. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I would not be able to afford the time and space that’s necessary to write this newsletter each week without your generous support. So truly, thank you. And if you’ve been thinking about becoming a paid subscriber to Mind The Moss, today is a great day to do it.