Dear Moss People,

Most of us tend to think of moss as this green fuzz that carpets the soggier places of the earth; as enduringly verdant as Nick Nolte’s voice is timelessly gravelly. But in fact, moss is constantly oscillating between color palattes. Whenever it’s exposed to lots of sunlight, moss can turn yellowy. And when it’s deprived of water, moss will start to brown. Certain pathogens or fungi can even add streaks of blue to sphagnum moss!

A newsletter about unusual hiking is no different. Since its inception in the summer of 2021, Mind The Moss has been shaped by two environmental events—the growth and diversification of modern hiking communities *and* the decline of the legacy media industry. I decided to launch Mind The Moss because I was getting tired of having to persuade editors at household name magazines and newspapers that there was an audience for hiking stories that featured gritty urban trails, ancient railroad corridors, or caves that once served as hideouts for arsonists. Even when I did persuade editors that these stories were worth telling, we often ran into the walls created by algorthims, which incentivize publishing the same old leaf peeping or peak bagging articles that we’ve read a hundred times. I could also sense a hunger for stories that re-imagined what “hiking” can be—stories that reached beyond the standard snowcapped peaks and expensive gear lists that still dominate the traditional outdoor media landscape.

Nonetheless, all of you blew my expectations out of the water. Over three years later, this newsletter has reached its highest subscriber count ever. The Moss is still green!

So happy three year anniversary (and a half) to all of us! And THANK YOU to all of you who made it possible to turn Mind The Moss into part of my career as a writer.

Whether you’ve joined the party recently or have been reading since 2021, I’d like to take a few minutes this week to tell you where things stand. And where we’re going.

It’s not a stretch to say that when Mind The Moss got crackling, during the second summer of the pandemic, we were living in a different time. I had hair that touched my shoulders. It was still cumbersome to travel beyond our regional surroundings without risking signficiant illness or the economic headache of an entire trip being axed. And the hiking bonanza that we’re now living through was still in the process of escalating. Given all of this, publishing a newsletter about unconventional hikes that would focus almost entirely on New England territory felt right to me. It was a natural extension of how I decided to approach hiking on a personal level at that time, when we were emerging from one of the most stressful, surreal years of our lives. (So far).

Until now, Mind The Moss has taken place in a post-disaster landscape; a beguiling, sometimes jarring period in which relief and catharsis have been paired with lingering anger, grief, and uncertainty. Those of you who read my recent story about the mirror mountains of Vermont and Quebec—Brousseau Mountain and Mount Pinnacle—might recall how I described this collision of feelings. It was this weird sensation of having scaled a great peak, while knowing that beyond the horizon, there were “much bigger and gnarlier mountains which would eventually come into focus.” We had just made it through the worst of a global pandemic, thanks to the development of vaccines, and yet, the cost of staying in a hospital could still be as expensive as buying a brand new Honda CR-V. A lot of people who had been struggling to afford housing had finally managed to buy property during the brief real estate plunge that occurred in the early months of the pandemic, before housing prices shot back up again, leaving millions more out in the cold. We had just made Donald Trump a one-term president, but the cruelty of his rhetoric on immigrants, women, and people with disabilities continued to fester and infect public forums. And then…well…we all know what happened next.

While I tend to keep my politics somewhat beneath the surface of Mind The Moss, it’s probably no surprise to many of you that I’m a person who believes that all human beings should be afforded rights that uphold the shared dignity in being human. And that the powerful should not be exempt from rules that govern society. So, for me and a lot of you, the dark place where we now find ourselves is the abrupt end of the post-disaster landscape in which Mind The Moss was created. The return of Donald Trump and the expansion of his base is a new disaster to deal with. Yes, it’s comprised of old demons, resentments, and profound immiseration for which neither one of our major political parties has offered real answers. But the scope of who’s vulnerable is new. The extent of what’s at stake and what will soon be demanded of millions of us (as we try to resist what’s coming and create an alternative to Trumpism) is also new.

In a disaster landscape like this, what should a newsletter like Mind The Moss do?

I’ve talked about this with quite a few of you over these last few weeks. I’ve mulled it over privately for the last few months—knowing that it would soon be time for Mind The Moss to grow beyond its roots, but unsure of what path to take. And today, as we approach the door of 2025, anxious but clear-eyed about how the color and texture of our environment have transformed…I have found a new path through that landscape.

Starting in January, Mind The Moss will undergo a metamorphosis, in three respects.

#1: After 3.5 years of being an unusual “hiking” newsletter, Mind The Moss will become a newsletter about the modern Renaissance of walking. Now, this might sound like a seismic shift, but the change will be subtler then you may assume. We’ll still be visiting many outdoor environments on foot—cities, mountains, beaches, suburbs, deserts, protected forests, and the moodiest industrial zones. The same countercultural spirit and “feel the burrito crumbs on your jacket” voice of Mind The Moss will endure. And one of the foundational intentions of Mind The Moss will still be getting you outside, whether it’s in your own “backyard” or a more distant locale.

The reason why I’m making this transition from “hiking” to “walking” is because I have spent the last three years attempting to demystify the word “hiking.” Why? Because our conception of hiking often brings to mind real or perceived barriers that dissuade many people from exploring the outdoors on foot. While I do think our idea of hiking is starting to become more agnosticized, the ground reality—which I’ve heard from a lot of folks in the field—is that “hiking” is still a loaded word that carries implications such as “must have lots of gear” and “only for the hardcore.” A tougher reality is that many experienced hikers don’t want our idea of hiking to become agnosticized. When I was pitching this recent story on Instant Urban Trails to Outside magazine, I was told, quite candidly, that stories based in urban areas generally got a lukewarm reception.

”Walking” is a more inclusive and less intimidating way to desribe what hiking is. I’ve leaned into that lately, in my writing and in my work as a trail builder in Boston. And it feels good. Seguing from hiking to walking feels like a way of recognizing the natural adventurism of many kinds of foot journeys, and it’s also a way to bring more people through a secret back door into the hiking landscape. That remains one of my goals.

And that brings me to the second thing that’s changing in 2025.

#2: The stoytelling scope of Mind The Moss will expand beyond New England, in a couple of ways. It has been nothing short of incredible to get to spend three years writing almost exclusively about localized hikes in my favorite nook of America. And it would be very easy to double down on this in 2025—turning inward and tuning out what’s happening beyond New England. While I do believe that localizing political engagment over the next few years (and hopefully beyond) is going to be extremely important—because local actions and elections lead to the most tangible changes in our daily lives—the range of walking stories I plan to tell in 2025 is national in scope. Some of them even take place beyond the U.S. Again, this change will be subtler than you might expect. We’ve occasionally ventured outside New England before, visiting destinations like the staircases nestled in Pittsburgh’s south side slopes, or the 66 Lakes Trail that encircles Berlin, allowing hikers to traipse between woods and clubs.

So expect more of this in 2025—more walking stories that illuminate the wider world of foot travel, the people who make our world interesting, and the ideas that can bring us together. And in addition to the grander geographic scope, expect walking stories inspired by what’s happening in the U.S. and beyond; stories that simultaneously offer a scenic reprieve from what’s happening and an alternative means of reckoning with what you’re seeing on the news or hearing through your social networks. For a taste of this, consider revisiting my recent story about exploring part of the Robert Frost Trail in Western Massachusetts and thinking about the contradictions of our luminaries, and our families and friends. If you dug that story, then you’ll really dig what’s coming.

The old tagline for Mind The Moss—”Unusual hiking in New England”—shall now be, “Walking into a better world. Literally.” Because walking is more than traveling from Point A to Point B on foot. It’s an intimate way of engaging with your home, with the unfamiliar places beyond your community, and with humanity in general. It can offer grounding and inspiration; sometimes on the same walk! And when I think about the way through the next few years—the important conversations, the collective actions, and the inevitable valleys of recovering and recharging—I imagine a lot of footprints.

Last but not least…

#3: Mind The Moss will have fewer paywalls. Starting in January, I will be removing the paywall for at least 50% of new Mind The Moss stories, to give the newsletter more room for growing. As some of you will remember, I took the opposite approach last winter—sticking most of Mind The Moss behind the paywall, after two years of offering a 50/50 ratio of free stories and paid subscriber stories. I did this because reader engagement with the newsletter and free-to-paid subscriber conversions had escalated to the point where I felt confident enough to lean into the demonstrated value of the newsletter that I had spent the last two years building. And many of you responded to this change by choosing to directly support the newsletter with paid subscriptions, which I’m humbled by and grateful for. That’s why the archive of Mind The Moss, from its 2021 inception to this point in 2024, will mostly remain paywalled.

But for the new chapter of Mind The Moss, I am opening up the newsletter more than ever before. Because I believe that walking and stories about walking will help many of us process the events that will shape our lives during the next few years, and I want to make these stories more widely available—to those who can and cannot afford a paid subscription. Many writers who’ve launched their own newsletters, like Heather Cox Richardson, Hamilton Nolan, and Mind The Moss guest author Bill Shaner (who publishes Worcester Sucks and I Love It) have employed this model successfully; cultivating large subscriber bases and persuading a small percentage to support their newsletters with paid subscriptions. I am going to be making this pivot myself next year—opening up more of Mind The Moss on the hope that “free” stories will not deter every Mind The Moss reader from considering a paid subscription to the newsletter.

Relationships between journalists and their audiences are increasingly starting to look more like the relationship between artists and patrons, or nonprofits and membership bases. The question of how we fund journalism in the near future has seldom looked murkier than it does now. The traditional paywalled and ad revenue-based model has been collapsing for the last decade, and one of the ripple effects of this collapse has been the growth of a so-called “creator economy” in which self-published newsletters from writers who once worked for big magazines and newspapers offer some of the same things we used to get from those magazines and newspapers. There are very few mainstream media outlets for travel writing in Massachusetts and I’m confident in saying that there are no outlets publishing stories like the ones that you’ve read in Mind The Moss. Or the new stories that I’m looking forward to publishing in 2025.

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So, that’s the scoop! Mind The Moss is becoming more colorful, more inclusive, and more reflective of these strange, unsettling times in which we find ourselves looking for a new map. I hope that learning about these changes to the newsletter leaves you excited for what’s coming. But I also recognize that all of you subscribed to Mind The Moss when the newsletter was still described as “Unusual hiking in New England” and I understand that these changes might impact the overall value that the newsletter has for you. However you decide to go from here, I thank you for making it possible for Mind The Moss to reach this evolutionary juncture. Prost! And happiest of holidays.

~Miles

I awoke for Day 2 of my Crosstown Trail hike at sunrise, feeling the past day’s mileage in my soles and also, my groin. Just before leaving Boston to hike the trail, I had gone cross-country skiing for the first time in two years and my adductor muscles were still going JESUS MAN. So in the soft light of my hotel room at The Mosser, I undertook an early morning ritual that I’d recommend for anyone going on a multi-day urban hike. I performed a bit of myofascial release on my soles and adductors by massaging them with a tennis ball that I had brought along for this purpose. I also decided to be more disciplined about taking regular breaks from hiking every two miles, to give my lower body a bit more of a breather from the pavement and the stairs I’d be climbing today.

Still, I knew it would take a little walking to warm up my soft tissues and transition into hiking mode. Thankfully, a bit of walking is required to pick up any urban trail again. By the time I reached the MUNI light rail station near the hotel, waiting for the train back to the Forest Hill station where I ended my hike the other day, I was ready.

Hopefully.

SECTION 3: FOREST HILL TO GOLDEN GATE PARK

Something was different this morning. The usual fog that briefly shrouds SF before the sun breaks through had coalesced into the first bonafide shower system that the city had seen in several weeks. It was hard to be that bitter about the rainy weather considering the net benefit this posed for the thirsty landscape around me. And as I soon discovered after exiting Forest Hills station and making my way up a hillside greenway behind the facility, the thicker fog offered a slight benefit on this particular section of the trail. It kept me from glimpsing what lay more than 100 feet ahead of me. Why is this a good thing? Because the midsection of the Crosstown Trail is a lung busting ascent up towering staircases and steep side streets to Grand View Park, a high point on Turtle Hill in the city’s affluent Sunset District. Personally, I find that when you’re gaining serious elevation, having a somewhat limited view of the ascent that lies in front of you can keep you from becoming demoralized. Plus, ascending all these stairs higher and higher into the fog had a slightly mystical vibe to it. At some point, the stairs would have to run out, but what exactly was waiting for me up there?

The image above is what Grand View Park looks like on a clear day. The image below is what I saw after ascending the final staircase—the Moraga Stairs—to the pinnacle.

In situations like this, when the weather deprives you of a rewarding outlook, you can succumb to disappointment or you can focus on other interesting elements of the hike: the construction of the trail, the vegetation flanking the trail, or in my case, the stairs that took me down from Grand View Park back into the residential maze. These two gargantuan staircases—the 16th Avenue Tiled Steps and the 16th Avenue Hidden Garden Stairway—are essentially giant mosaics. The colorful tiles that neighborhood volunteers embedded on the edge of each step depict mountain streams, exploding suns, and galactic starscapes teeming with all sorts of lifeforms. If you’re descending these stairs on a wet day like I did, keep a firm grip on the railing, but at the bottom of each section, be sure to turn around for a shocking explosion of color from the fog.

At the bottom of the stairs, the trail descended at a more patient grade past attractive single family houses with blooming patios. But not far ahead, I could see a great mass forest green beyond the houses. This wall of green is Golden Gate Park, and it also marks the point at which the Crosstown Trail segues away from visiting the lesser known green spaces of SF to bypassing its more superlative leafy realms. It’s also your first real chance to grab some coffee or a snack on this third section of the trail. After paying for a small black at a Starbucks near here, I grabbed a bushel of napkins from the dispenser—to dry my iPhone and face—and I stuffed another handful in my rain jacket pocket. Who knew what the last two legs of the trail would have in store?

SECTION 4: GOLDEN GATE PARK TO THE PRESIDIO

You would think the Crosstown Trail would take its time winding through the curated expanse of Golden Gate Park after passing through Breon Gate off of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. But the trail seems to be in a hurry to get through the park as efficiently as possible. With the exception of a brief stroll around Stowe Lake, where some ducks were happily paddling away beneath a medieval-style stone bridge, there aren’t many points of interest along this stretch, except for the abundant flora of the park (which is still pretty transcendent if you’re coming from a mid-winter climate like I was.) After swerving through the Rose Garden to exit the north side of the park, the Crosstown Trail arrives at the mouth of a more curious feature—the Presidio Park Greenway.

The words “Presidio” and “Greenway” might suggest an elegantly sculpted pathway to the palatial park near the Golden Gate Bridge. And utility-wise, that’s what the Presidio Park Greenway is. But what surprised me about this greenway was how untamed and rugged it often looked from the inside. It’s a thin corridor of dark and shaggy forest, running seven blocks north to the entrance gates of the Presidio Landmark (a former marine hospital that’s now a 220,000 square foot luxury apartment complex.) Two very busy roads flank the greenway from both sides and yet, the trees along the trail here were so thick and insulating that at times, I found myself looking over my shoulder when bushes or leaves nearby would suddenly rustle. I don’t know what I was expecting to pop out of them, but it really demonstrated how little square mileage it takes to bring the experience of being deep in the woods to the middle of a city.

If there’s any downside to the northern half of the Crosstown Trail, it’s the relatively slim pickings for trailside food and drink (the southern half of the trail, by comparison, hand, bypasses a great deal of savory joints.) Consider the Presidio Park Greenway your last chance for devouring something sweet or salty, and be ready to detour off trail for this. At the Balboa Street crossing, mid-greenway, I hiked an extra 0.7 miles east to order an El Jefe chipotle burger from Uncle Boy’s before backtracking to the greenway, adding an extra 1.4 miles to an already stacked hiking agenda. My hip flexors were starting to twinge here and there, and I couldn’t tell whether this was because I was walking too much or because my mind was fearing an overuse injury, despite taking breaks. I still had 4 miles to hike. But what lay in store for me along the final leg of the Crosstown Trail was about to supplant all of those troubled thoughts…

SECTION 5: THE PRESIDIO TO LAND’S END

Several months back, I wrote a newsletter about the thrill of hikes that make you feel like you’re trespassing, and that’s really what it feels like to finish the Crosstown Trail. From the moment you cross onto the grounds of the Presidio Landmark, hiking to the left of its iron gates and picking up a paved pedestrian trail around the lux apartment citadel, you cross into a preserved landscape of Californian coastal terrain that’s often bought up by billionaires and fenced off from the common riffraff like you or me.

First stop: a trailside overlook above Lobos Creek Valley, a pocket of dunes and coastal scrub that contains the last free-flowing stream in San Francisco and offers a vivid snapshot of what much of the city looked like before it was urbanized. The trail suddenly transitions from pavement to sand and descends into the valley through a spacious curtain of lone cypress trees, eventually picking up a snake-like boardwalk through the scrubby lowlands. I’m a sucker for a good bridge or boardwalk and this one ran for half a mile. But things got even sweeter after I crossed Lincoln Boulevard and entered a more cavernous stretch of woods. A little-used sandy path took me to the edge of a chuckling creek, with the foundations of fancy houses on one side and a chain-link fence on the other, practically choking the trail at points. Whacking aside branches and plants that had overgrown the pathway, I could hear a low monotone roar ahead and then, without any warning, the two towers of the Golden Gate Bridge appeared through the chainlink fence on my right and I emerged onto Baker Beach.

The Crosstown Trail planners could have concluded the hike right here, at one of the finest viewpoints of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. But an angled climb up some wooden stairs through more trees delivers you to the gilded streets of Sea Cliff. Here, I hiked past flawlessly-carved topiary, security cameras, and the enormous front doors of seaside mansions, exchanging brief nods with landscaping crews and the occasional perturbed resident walking their dog. But the image that’s haunted me as I reminisce on hiking through this corridor of wealth is the sight of a maid lugging two empty trash bins back toward one of the mansions, passing under an archway that perfectly framed the rolling expanse of the Pacific Ocean before disappearing behind the mansion, to an otherwise unseen life I had just caught a momentary glimpse of.

The final clifftop trail to Land’s End I’ll leave partially-cloaked in mystery in hope that a few of you may hike the Crosstown Trail, except to say that the views of the Pacific from this roller coastering trail offer the sense that you’re about to walk off the face of the earth into a watery blue yonder. While the trail does involve stairs, it’s wide and smooth and mostly gentle: perfect for allowing your mind to wander as you savor the final 1.4 miles of the Crosstown Trail. Sitting on a green bench at an ocean overlook, stretching my hamstrings again, I realized I was overcome by a creeping sadness to almost be done with the trail. But before I could wallow in grief, an elderly gentleman with a cane wandered into my peripheral vision, standing before the overlook toward the verdant fog-wisped hills of the Marin Headlands, directly north of Land’s End. I raised my iPhone to take a picture just in time for him to turn around and look right into the lens. I braced myself for a confrontation but instead, he just smiled, without any words, and returned to enjoying the view. We were here for the same reason, I imagine. And I’d like to think that years from now, if I’m using a cane or any sort of implement to continue hiking, I could find myself looking into someone else’s lens.

We’ve met before, pal, I might think.

The Crosstown Trail concludes at the Land’s End visitors center, where—if you’ve still got some gas in the tank—you can stumble down a set of winding stairs to the Sutro Baths, a set of cliffside saltwater pools filled by the Pacific and built by the millionaire Adolph Sutro during the 19th Century. (He actually envisioned the baths as something that all San Franciscans could avail themselves of.) A 40-ish minute ride east on the 38R bus will get you back to downtown SF in time for a four-figure calorie dinner and whatever else your body might desire after hiking 17 miles across a city. But don’t feel any pressure to hustle from here. There are plenty of benches by the visitor parking area where you can gaze out at the Pacific, which is what I spent an hour doing upon completing the trail. The salty breeze was whipping and picking up speed. There was a kid screaming nearby. My last protein bar, fished from the bottom of my backpack, had been twisted and squashed into a turd-like thing, even by protein bar standards.
But it was hunky dory. Because I had just taken the best urban hike of my life. So far.

The day after returning home on a red eye flight with a Chicago stopover, I looked at a map of Boston. I noted the city’s largest green spaces, from Bunker Hill to Hyde Park: well beyond the limits of Olmsted’s Emerald Necklace. I wondered if there was a way to connect these green spaces by trail and sidewalk. I fiddled with mapping tools for the entire afternoon. By dusk, I had something on my hands. A prospect to test-hike.

The spirit of the Crosstown Trail has afflicted me. And you know what? I’m fine with it.

New England is where this newsletter started, but I never said it would remain rooted here exclusively. While hiking with a more localized mindset can open up familiar landscapes in ways that can be surprising (“I didn’t know there was an old weedy trail behind the Price Chopper”) there’s something to be said for immersing yourself in a different locality—whether it’s an unfamiliar mountain range or a major city that you’ve never really poked around by foot, beyond the usual tourist haunts.

So this week, I’m reporting to you from San Francisco’s Crosstown Trail.

This 17 mile trail across the city’s under-sung green spaces and economically stratified neighborhoods is the ultimate urban hike—replicating the experience of hiking in the backcountry in the middle of a city. How does the Crosstown Trail pull this off? By taking you through a dizzying range of curious environments. Briny coves, primeval woodlands, sun-baked hillsides, hidden community gardens and footpaths, and gusty cliffs are just a handful of the places that I experienced while hiking on the Crosstown Trail. To demonstrate the power of this hike, I’m going to show you what I saw, in two newsletter installments.

But first, a little history. The Crosstown Trail was created by San Francisco residents who felt that an epic trans-city trail might be a possible thanks to the proximity of the city’s ample green spaces. By “simply” connecting the green spaces through carefully selected street walks, restored paths, and some newly built trail segments, one could hike from Candlestick Point to Land’s End. While the trail concept was sanctioned by the city government, the mapping and connecting was performed by a hearty coalition of volunteers. (In this way, it’s actually pretty similar to how the Cohos Trail of New Hampshire was greenlit by the state but built by the volunteers who dreamed it up.)

The Crosstown Trail opened in 2019 and since then, a handful of stories about the trail have propagated this idea that the trail could be something of a tonic for the horrifying inequality which has played out on the streets of SF. (More than 8,000 people here are currently unhoused.) While this sounded a bit trite when I first read about it—upzoning and building dense affordable housing would go a lot further—I was still moved by the concept of an epic trail that takes you from a relative working class neighborhood like Visitacion Valley to the seaside mansions at Land’s End and the Presidio. A long trail might not “fix” San Francisco but it could at least chip away at the privacy of the rich and take visitors into storied communities that most folks probably aren’t aware of.

With the help of maps and written directions from the Crosstown Trail website (these maps highlight transit stations and bathroom facilities) I planned to hike the trail over two days, using the city’s public transit network to access trailheads. You could crush the whole hike in one long day, but as we’ve discussed in prior newsletters, one of the perks of urban hiking is being able to detour into coffee shops, family restaurants, and libidinous-looking bars. In the mountains, your option for a trailside reprieve is often just a boulder or a log. So I didn’t want to rush my Crosstown journey. I wanted long mileage days with enough room for following scents and chewing on some scenery.

Thankfully, the Crosstown Trail is divided into five segments, so a “section hike” of the trail is easy to plan. I printed the maps, tossed some protein bars in my daypack, and went to bed the night before my hike in a budget hotel on Fourth Street (appropriately enough, the joint was called The Mosser.) I was so excited that I woke up at 4am.

SECTION 1 - CANDLESTICK POINT TO GLEN PARK

The traditional way to hike the Crosstown Trail is to start from its southern terminus on the bay and finish at the Pacific overlook at the trail’s northern end. From the city center, I caught two early morning buses—the 8 and the 29—to reach a quiet, foggy expressway that leads to Candlestick Point State Recreation Area. Candlestick Point is often cited as the former location of the city’s Major League Baseball stadium, but it’s also one of the city’s most marginalized neighborhoods, where the working poor have been relegated after decades of redlining and soaring housing prices. Bayview, the larger community to which Candlestick Point belongs, was once a historically Black neighborhood of San Francisco, but many residents have now been displaced.

The recreation area is used by fishermen who cast their lines in the lapping surf from the grassy shore and a handful of piers that jut into the water. But I got here so early that my only companions were a flotilla of chattering seagulls that reminded me of the civilian boats at the end of Dunkirk, crossing the English Channel. I saw them just a few minutes after I entered the park by hopping over a concrete barrier (to avoid walking along the sidewalk-less expressway to the main entrance.) Soon, I could also hear the sound of chattering men on fishing boats, somewhere nearby in the fog.

I expected to find a marker or beacon announcing the start of the Crosstown Trail but there’s not much physical signage along the trail: just a couple stickers affixed to sign posts here and there. This might be intentional. One of the main visionaries behind the trail, Bob Siegel, didn’t sound particularly keen on the idea of the trail blowing up when interviewed by the New York Times back in 2019. The Crosstown Trail is as much a rustic orientation exercise as it is a hike, and I appreciated that. I spent most of the hike with a paper map in one hand and my phone in the other, set to camera mode.

I set off along a little-used coastal path past fragrant marshes and lonely condos that materialized through the morning fog as the trail curved northwest, leaving the ocean behind and climbing into the foothills of Visitacion Valley. The apartments and houses around here are home to many of the city’s Asian and Latinx residents, and one of the most inviting small businesses along this stretch of the trail is Mission Blue, a coffee nook that sells Crosstown Trail apparel and art made by locals. With just shy of three miles under my belt, I rested here with a cortado and a “morning bun” (a churro muffin, basically) and I tried to ignore the nagging ache in my soles, knowing I had six miles of walking to go. The Crosstown Trail is half dirt and half concrete. Shoes with good cushioning are an essential if your feet become tender after hiking on rock surfaces.

Almost immediately after the trail passes by Mission Blue, things get very verdent and scenic in dramatic fashion. The Visitacion Valley Greenway takes you up through a charming greenway of blooming gardens tucked between hillside houses (the final leg of this greenway features some a cool wheelchair-accessible switchback trail.) Then, as the grade intensifies, you suddenly emerges from the residential area and climb even higher into John McLaren Park up an exposed sunny hill. It’s steep enough to get you sweating, but the views of Southern SF are thrilling and the trail soon levels out, venturing into a forest featuring redwoods. Through the towering arbors, looking northward, I could glimpse labyrinthine rows of houses closer to the city center, and some of the other mountain-like hills that I’d be slogging up further along the trail.

While it would be pretty lush if the Crosstown Trail were just green, it wouldn’t be truly representative of San Francisco. The reality of an urban hike is that you’re going to be doing some solid “street walking” between the green. To that effect, the makers of the Crosstown Trail have chosen some interesting manmade areas for directing the trail. After leaving McLaren Park, I entered a residential neighborhood called Excelsior and ambled past street art-festooned buildings to a long fenced-in footbridge over the 280 freeway. A quick push up another hill past a dog park and a longer sunnier stroll amid more upscale houses with roses bushes delivers you to the BART subway station in Glen Park. This was the site of my next trailside meal (a big ass carne asada burrito from La Corneta Taqueria) and it’s also the end of the first Crosstown Trail section.

From here, things escalate.

SECTION 2 - GLEN PARK TO FOREST HILL

San Francisco is full of “places in between” that have been transformed into heavenly greenways and the one near the Glen Park subway station delivers you to the entrance of Glen Park Canyon. The place is something of a shrine to civil disobedience. A small group of women known as the “Gum Tree Girls” stopped a highway from being built in the canyon back in the 1960s and the Crosstown Trail follows a semi-paved path that was named after the activists, entering the scrubby woods in the canyon. From here, the route gets rockier and brushier, seguing to a second hiking trail that was cut by a teacher and his students. Nearby homeowners didn’t want this trail to be built, citing their privacy, and the trailblazers basically told them to fuck off. Nellie Bowles wrote about this in a Crosstown Trail story for the New York Times. I couldn’t help but grin as the trail took me up to the sunny rim of the canyon, past elegant houses on stilts.

But Glen Park Canyon was just the salad in a smorgasbord of earthly delights. After a bit of road walking up Panorama Drive to one of the highest points of the trail (with a fittingly panoramic view of the city) I reached the main course of my day—the Laguna Honda forest. I recently wrote about these forgotten woodlands and the relatively new hiking and biking trails here that the SF Urban Riders built themselves. The Crosstown Trail follows their sidewinding paths down through the eucalyptus woods, past the Laguna Honda hospital and into a leafy ravine that used to be a garbage dumping zone. I kept an ear open for the grinding of mountain bikes (the trail here gets pretty narrow and is often flanked with poison oak, which makes diving out of the way of a bike more troublesome) but I scarcely encountered another soul. The green ravine, in particular, felt like something out of The Land Before Time, even as the large hospital grounds rattled and hummed less than a quarter mile away from this serene space.

It was now 2pm and the array of scenery along the first half of the hike had been so enlivening that my feet were now less sore than they had been earlier in the day (the dirt paths at Laguna Honda and Glen Park Canyon surely helped.) But as I descended a more illuminated hillside toward the Forest Hill light rail station—the Crosstown Trail route visits many convenient public transit stops—I could feel a strain of anticipation for what lay ahead the next day: a long, punishing ascent to higher grounds and then, a meandering pilgrimage to the edge of the land on which San Francisco was built. I reached Forest Hills station having walked 8.5 challenging miles and called it a day. I would take the light rail back to my hotel, get horizontal on the bed for an hour or so, attempt a brief recovery walk to the Lower Haight, and hopefully walk into some half decent tonkotsu ramen with extra BBQ pork. (When in San Francisco, live deliciously.)

The next morning, the hike would go on.

There’s a wonderful new film in theaters this week. Jackass Forever finds Johnny Knoxville and the original crew of MTV’s Jackass reality TV series reuniting at the apex of middle age to perform some of the stupidest and most disgusting pranks and stunts you’ll witness. Cast members are catapulted into furniture store ceilings, locked in a dark room full of mouse traps, subjected to swarms of bees from the waist down, shot out of 30 foot cannons, and at one point, soaked with a choice fluid that comes from a pig and rhymes with “demon.”

There’s an unlikely purity to Jackass that’s been noted lately, especially in this VICE piece from Jesse Miller-Gordon. I grew up watching the show and the earlier films, but these days, what I love about Jackass (besides laughing to the point of bladder failure) is the egalitarianism of the whole operation. Every member of the cast, no matter how famous, is subjected to the worst of the pranks and stunts. There’s a wealth of friendship behind all the bruises and bodily fluids, which actually moved me. And better yet, the Jackass crew will often stage their pranks in posh, snooty environments that are the opposite of friendly and egalitarian. Like golf courses.

You really need to watch the above clip. It’s a beautifully simple invasion of the golf course: a plush, often privatized green space for America’s bourgeoisie, guzzling up water and occupying valuable real estate. There are enormous membership-based golf courses and country clubs in expensive cities that can’t find the political will to build affordable housing or expand their public parks system. If you’ve tried walking on a golf course during spring, summer or fall, you were most likely shooed away by a belabored groundskeeper, and not without reason. An airborne golf ball could dent your dome, chip a tooth, or make it harder to have children. But each winter, in the regions of the U.S. that experience snow and ice, something beautiful happens…

America’s golf courses are temporarily abandoned, and hikers can take them back.

The first time I hiked across a golf course was in 2014. I had decided to spend my quarter-life crisis walking across Massachusetts from Pittsfield to Boston in early December. One raw morning, I found myself on a country road near Acton and I didn’t feel like walking on the narrow shrubby shoulder as cars whipped by. But I noticed something to my left—the immense grassy landscape of the Charter Oak Country Club, unguarded and practically begging to be tread upon by hiking boots. Within minutes, I was wading through sand traps, crossing fairways, and savoring the warmth of the winter sun on my face. There wasn’t a soul in sight. It was me, the golf course, and—as I approached the northern perimeter—the distant bark of some hounds that made me scamper through the woods, back to the road. I’m not sure if this detour was legal, but it transformed my conception of how a golf course may be used when the golfers aren’t teeing off. An empty golf course can yield a lovely hike.

Take Franklin Park, one of Boston’s biggest and most rustling parks, located at the crossroads of Dorchester, Roxbury, and Jamaica Plain. It’s the home of the second oldest public golf course in America—the William J. Devine Golf Course. While it doesn’t boast the gilded exclusivity of private golf courses that cater to the gentry, it’s basically off limits to hikers when golf is being played. But after the leaves have fallen and been stuffed in bags, the golf course becomes a snowbound moonscape where people sled, Nordic ski, or just clomp around. As the Franklin Park Coalition puts it, “Sledding, hiking and cross-country skiing is allowed on the golf course in the winter when the landscape returns to Frederick Law Olmsted's rolling meadow.”

So this week, in the rambunctious, proletarian spirit of taking back golf courses, I offer you three of New England’s finest golf courses for invading…I mean, for winter hiking. Think of this as an appetizer menu. If you’re willing to risk being hassled for trespassing, then you can try hiking any empty golf course where you don’t have to flop over a fence or bring a pair of bolt cutters. But if you’d rather stage your first golf course coup d’etat on firmer legal footing, then consider these three options:

MOUNT HOOD GOLF CLUB (Melrose, MA)

10 miles from the Zakim Bridge, spread across 300 acres of woodlands, the Mount Hood Golf Club connects directly to 2.2 miles of trails that meander through some adjacent forests, fields, and wetlands. Looking south from the golf course, you can glimpse the summit of nearby Mount Hood (259 feet above sea level!) and like Bilbo Baggins leaving his hobbit hole for the Lonely Mountain, you can set off across the fairway and hike to the mountain. Ironically, this recreational area is bordered by the commercial sprawl of Route 1 on the east side. But you’d never know it when you’re slogging across the snowy grounds on one of those ethereal winter afternoons.

PISTOL CREEK GOLF CLUB (Berlin, CT)

Now here’s a golf course that’s already been reclaimed by nature. Pistol Creek used to be a meticulously-maintained golf venue where the carts whirred along winding paths that offer nice views of the Middletown hills. But in 2005, the golf course was closed permanently. The town of Berlin scooped it up later, as developers eyed the course for single-family housing construction (not exactly a bastion of affordable or sustainable housing) and since then, the surrounding woods have slowly subsumed the abandoned golf course. There are still old bridges and clubhouse facilities to be poked around, as well as a ravine that’s located along a path on the western side of the golf course. The eastern side features some impressive cedar and birch trees.

MINGO SPRINGS GOLF COURSE (Rangeley, ME)

If you’re heading to Carrabassett Valley for skiing at Sugarloaf or the Maine Huts & Trails, make a pit stop in Rangeley and try hiking the 3.4 mile loop trail that circles the serene, remote Mingo Springs Golf Course. The loop actually consists of two connected paths (the red and blue trails) which run through hardwood forests past cedar swamps and clearings that offer some really arresting views of Bald Mountain and Rangeley Lake. While these trails are also open during golf season, you’ll likely have the place to yourself in winter. Your only company will be the murmur of the Maine wind (which, by the way, is extremely cold up here.) Given how quiet Maine’s northwestern realm is, you might need snowshoes to hike across the Mingo Springs Golf Course. Packed snow trails require foot traffic that doesn’t happen up here.

In bad news this week, REI—the co-op where many of us buy our hiking gear—is pushing back against a unionization effort being organized by employees at their Manhattan store. I’ll spare you my unabridged thesis on why I think unions need to return with a vengeance if American workers want a viable future, but suffice it to say, the REI employees clearly aren’t happy about their compensation and working conditions. One might think that a business like REI which has branded itself as a progressive leader within the retail landscape (remember the #optoutside campaign against Black Friday?) would be amenable to a union. But of course, it almost never works that way when labor asks management for more power. In a recent podcast, REI’s CEO Eric Artz and Chief Diversity and Social Impact Officer Wilma Wallace started the episode by announcing their pronouns (cool) and acknowledging the indigenous peoples who used to live on the lands from which they were recording (cool) before pivoting to the matter of unions and why REI doesn’t need one (wtf.) So clearly, REI is hoping that its loyal, generally liberal customers won’t notice that it’s trying to squelch a worker-led effort to form a union. If you shop at REI and this doesn’t sit well with you, I suggest submitting a comment at REI’s new dedicated webpage for the union busting effort, and buying your hiking gear at other stores.

If you’ve been inside a lot lately and are feeling that sense of mid-winter atrophy, a jaunt or two on local trails might help. This recent piece for Eat This, Not That! by Alexa Mellardo reminds us that hiking is not only a tonic for stress, but a subtle core workout that can improve your balance. It’s the uneven terrain that helps you achieve this, especially when you’re climbing and descending all those lumpy trails.

Finally, the San Francisco Chronicle reports that Napa wineries are adding hiking trails to their onsite amenities (along with horseback rides and Peloton bikes.) Why? To lure Millennials. Speaking as a Millennial who wrote a book about Millennials and how we graduated into the economic crater left by the 2008 recession, I’d imagine that most of my generational peers are more concerned with trying to buy houses right now. But maybe I’m wrong and living in a bubble. In fact, I’m going to the Bay Area in early March. Should I try a Napa winery trail? Millennial readers, let me know.