Dear Moss People,
If you’ll indulge me—after last week’s back-to-back retrospective newsletters—I’d like to look backward in time once more. Briefly. Before we take a look at the road ahead.
Back in the summer of 2021, when I decided to start this newsletter and kick things off with a story about the rare, west coast-style switchback pathway that allows hikers to reach the bottom of Vermont’s Ball Mountain Dam, all of this felt like an experiment. I wanted to see how many people would be interested in reading stories that were too weird or niche to sell to mainstream magazines and websites in the outdoors sector. I was surprised by how many of you demonstrated interest by subscribing to Mind The Moss in those early months—and in several cases, even paying for subscriptions! Any writer will confess to suffering from imposter syndrome at times, and at first, I felt this too; intensely skeptical that running a weekly publication was within my wheelhouse.
Then, as months became years and I realized that I was running my own publication, I sometimes found myself wrestling with a different question. How long can this last?
I would imagine that quite a few of you subscribe or have subscribed to a handful of newsletters from writers you’ve enjoyed following. That’s because Mind The Moss was launched in the middle of a newsletter boom that shook the foundations of modern media. Basically, traditional media companies were losing revenue, cutting jobs, and scaling back coverage. Tech companies like Substack took advantage of this sectoral instability, by offering platforms that journalists and writers who were employed or contracted by media companies could use to start their own show; with the option of selling paid subscriptions. In fact, Substack lured some pretty big writers away from these companies with fat advances. One of the early adopters was neoliberal pundit and Vox co-founder Matthew Yglesias. Another—whose work I appreciate far more—was former Boston Globe film critic Ty Burr, whose newsletter (Ty Burr’s Watch List) began here before moving over to Ghost; another big player in the newsletter space.
As it happened, this newsletter bonanza was discussed in seismic terms that struck me as a tad hyperbolic, even at the optimistic heights of the boom. The idea was that paid newsletters woud facilitate better storytelling, create real competition for traditional media, and forge stronger connections between writers and readers. And I do believe in the third part of this! Because one of the great joys of writing and publishing Mind The Moss each week has been hearing back from many of you—whether you found a story nourishing, took issue with any points I raised, or simply wanted to put a couple of typos on my radar. Prior to setting up the newsletter, I found that anything I wrote that was published online yielded crickets (not even hate mail!) while stories of mine that appeared in print seemed to spur much more reader engagement and feedback.
I have a theory about this. Most of us are suffering from some level of digital fatigue, with more and more of our waking hours consumed by texting, apps, scrolling, and resetting passwords. So it means a LOT to me when I open my computer each week and find a couple of comments left on the most recent Mind The Moss story; a sign that several of you pushed through any such digital fatigue and read a story that is, technically speaking, a long and dense email that I sent you. That is…pretty special!
And again, it’s also quite remarkable that a lot of you decided that Mind The Moss has been worthy of monthly or annual investment—especially given the explosion of indie newsletters since 2021. Most literature on the newsletter business suggests that when you launch a newsletter, you can expect roughly 10% of your total subscribers to level up to paid subscriptions. Over the last three years, that percentage for Mind The Moss has been closer to 12%, and to be completely transparent, this has translated to about $11,600 of annual writer income (after Substack and Stripe have each taken their cuts.)
So when I say THANK YOU, it’s coming straight from the heart.
I’m not exaggerating when I say that this revenue has been career changing. A portion of that Moss income has been funneled into stories that would be difficult to sell to a household name publication—like my reporting on urban trails in San Francisco and around Chicago. And the rest has made it easier for me to sweat a little less about the brutal cost of living in America; a burden that so many of us have been struggling with.
That’s why I’ve always been a bit bearish about the notion that indie newsletters will be a long term game-changer for the media biz. As enlightening, entertaining, and intriguing as a newsletter might be, it’s a fundamentally different thing than a paper or magazine that offers direct access to lots of writers covering lots of topics. Getting the same experience from the newsletter landscape—which would mean subscribing to at least 20 different newsletters—would get really expensive, really fast. This would be a lot to ask of audiences in the most optimistic economic climates. But in a climate like this, with throat-tightening prices for housing, healthcare, utilities, transportation, and groceries, a lot of us are taking longer, harder looks at our budgets and trying to make every dollar go further. That’s why I decided to make all December stories for Mind The Moss paywall-free. In acknowledgment of what we’re suffering right now.
That decision is the start of the road into 2026, and where Mind The Moss is going.
Truth be told, I had been thinking about removing the paywalls for new “MTM” stories since last spring. I had a hunch that we were reaching the downslope of the newsletter boom bell curve—a moment when the sexy novelty of email newsletters would fade, and the ceiling of what newsletters can do would feel more palpable. Paired with the grim state of the economic landscape (from a consumer perspective), the worsening austerity we’ve experienced under the Trump administration, and the belt tightening that millions of us are preoccupied with, I wondered if it was time for a foundational change to how Mind The Moss works. The December experiment allowed for a taste of what that change might look like. It felt really good to have all of these new stories launching in a barrier free-way. It actually changed the manner in which I approached writing the most recent stories. And this also speaks to the future of Mind the Moss.
Those of you who arrived at the party on the earlier side alreadt know that Mind The Moss has undergone a bit of an evolution over time. The newsletter began as a more service-y publication focused on “unusual hiking in New England.” Each story would conclude with directions and maps for the featured trail or hiking experience. Back in 2024, the newsletter’s scope expanded to “the power of walking,” and the offerings changed too. Plenty of newsletters still finish with actionable adventure ideas, and others ended with more contemplative things to chew on. But since the beginning, we’ve looked at the intersections between the outdoors and the politics and cultural developments of our time. I do believe this is one of the things that makes Mind The Moss unique, given how often the outdoors is idealized as something pure, crystaline, and sequestered—a place where we can escape the cacophony and conflict. Having more freedom to write about all those intersections has yielded some of my favorite Mind The Moss stories to date and, judging by the data, some of your favorites too!
SO…..with the stage fully set now (thanks for bearing with me), here is what will be happening with Mind The Moss in 2026 and quite possibly for the longer haul too.
1. All new Mind The Moss stories will be published without paywalls—making the future of the newsletter free to the public! It will still be possible to purchase a paid subscription to Mind The Moss if you would like to support my work, and each paid subscription will still come with the perk of getting access to the hundreds of stories in the MTM archive. But having a paid subscription will no longer be a prerequisite for being able to read the latest newsletter each week. I’ve thought about this and it’s the direction that I feel best about, for continuing the long, strange trip of Mind The Moss.
2. As Mind The Moss approaches its fifth anniversary, expect more coverage of where outdoor recreation collides with politics and culture. If you enjoyed the recent story about the history of wassailing, my requiem to the art of walking home, or my early autumn PSA about why more of us should “touch grass,” good news. I’m planning to write a lot more stories like this in 2026 and beyond. 2025 was my first year of leaning harder in this direction, after 3.5 years of mostly covering “unusual hiking in New England,” and I’m looking forward to doubling down next year. That said, because I live in New England, many of the upcoming stories will be rooted here.
3. To simplify the format of Mind The Moss and honor its intersectional nature, I’m removing all “Sections” of the newsletter in 2026. This is the most technical change that’s coming. Back when Mind The Moss was primarily designed as a way of sharing hiking ideas, it made sense to have the newsletter organized into Sections. It began with six of them—one for each New England state. Then, during the evolution of 2025, I segued to a more thematic tri-sectional model. Today, stories are placed in one of three topical categories: A Walk In The Woods (backcountry stories), A Walk In The City (urban stories), and Walks Of Life (ideas-centric stories.) But the more I think of Mind The Moss and its intersectional nature, the less I feel that that these Sections make much sense anymore. So for the road ahead, I’m publishing and grouping all of the new and older stories under the simplest banner: The newsletter name and logo.
And finally, last but definitely not least…
4. Next summer, I will be releasing the first Mind The Moss book! As in, a real deal, physical book that you can leaf through, throw in your backpack, and/or loan to your friends—with a beautiful cover and a curated lineup of Mind The Moss stories; a few of which will be book exclusives! Why? A couple reasons: I’ve been thinking about ways to celebrate the upcoming half-decade anniversary of Mind The Moss, and after seeing the wonderful anthology book created by my friends at Mountain Gazette, the idea for a similar Mind The Moss book took hold of me. The timing of this also struck me as fitting, given the onslaught of digital fatigue that I touched on earlier. Finally, there’s the question that’s something of an elephant in the room, when it comes to the Internet and our chronically online lives. What if all of this suddenly disappeared?
That may sound overdramatic and I know it’s unlikely, but given how our economy is now built on top of an AI industry that could prove to be a bubble, I’m a little warier of putting infinite faith in our tech overlords and infrastructure than I was in 2021. Books aren’t impervious to calamities either, but they’re somewhat harder to…erase?
In any event, watch this space in May for more deets on the book and its launch date!
With regard to the first and biggest change for 2026 (nixing the paywall for all future stories), my ultimate hope is that this will make it easier for more readers to continue enjoying Mind The Moss amidst the turbulence and suffering of the present. At the same time, I can understand how this change might re-shape the value proposition of a paid subscription for Mind The Moss, and that’s why I’m applying the paywall-free approach to new stories, and not to the full archive. Hundreds of you made it possible for me to spend nearly 5 years writing and sharing hundreds of stories; creating that whopper of an archive and taking the newsletter from its gonzo infancy to the current crossroads. However you decide to continue down the road ahead, please know that being able to write Mind The Moss each week has been an incredible gift—and the ultimate ride. Kind of like those legendary waves of the “50 Year Storm” that Patrick Swayze surfs at the end of Point Break. The crucial difference, of course, is that Swayze surfs one wave—the biggest—and even as the newsletter boom that started Mind The Moss crests and spills, the water beyond it is already starting to froth and take shape.
That’s where I’ll see you in 2026. In the meantime, enjoy the last few days of the year with people you care about, food you appreciate, and the places that make your heart sing—natural or built. And also, please reach out if you have any questions. It’s a lot to digest, announced during a week when lots of us are already doing some digesting.
Thank you, and Vaya con Dios,
Miles Howard
(PS: If you’ve never seen Point Break, go watch the whole film before viewing this clip.)