Some of the best meals I have ever eaten involved a camp stove, two plastic bowls, and a parking spot at the edge of nowhere. But somewhere between the hundredth lap of eating off my knees and the time a bowl of chili ended up in my lap thanks to a passing truck, I admitted … Read more
The last airport tea I ever bought cost $6.25, and I never got to drink it hot. O’Hare, Terminal 3, a January delay stretching from forty minutes to four hours. I stood in a coffee line long enough to memorize the menu, paid airport money for what is legally just hot water and a paper … Read more
The text came in at 4:47 on an October afternoon, from a stretch of the Wind Rivers where the nearest cell tower might as well be in another century: Standing water on the plateau. Watching the ceiling. Will move when it lifts. Fourteen words, beamed off a fist-sized device to a satellite 1,200 miles up, … Read more
There is a particular kind of dread that arrives around 6 p.m. at a boondocking spot: you are filthy, the sun is dropping, and the only water in the van is exactly as cold as the mountain air outside. For my first two years of van life I solved this the way most people do … Read more
I have a ritual now, and it starts before my suitcase hits the floor. Door closes behind me, and instead of heading straight for the fridge or the balcony view, I stand in the entryway and take one long, slow look around the place. Then the detector comes out of my backpack, and for the … Read more
Here’s a number that stopped me cold while planning our first cruise last winter: 37.2 million. That’s how many people sailed in 2025, a record according to CLIA’s State of the Cruise Industry report, up from 34.6 million the year before. The trade group projects 42 million of us a year by 2028, spread across … Read more
The first time fall genuinely ambushed me, I was a mile below a Blue Ridge overlook with twenty minutes of usable light left and a headlamp that had been in my pack, untouched, since spring. It clicked on at quarter power, blinked its little death pulse twice, and quit somewhere around the second switchback. I … Read more
There is a specific sound a knee makes when it decides it is done cooperating, and I heard mine make it last October, about 400 vertical feet above the parking lot at the bottom of a gorge trail. Wet maple leaves had glued themselves to granite slabs. My shoes were fine. My balance was fine. … Read more
The thermometer at the trailhead read 38 degrees when I laced up last Saturday. By the time my crew and I reached the overlook two hours later, I’d stripped my shell, tied it around my waist, and was hiking in a long-sleeve top that still smelled like it came out of the drawer. Three weeks … Read more
For eleven days in Alaska last month, my tripod and I fought a war I was losing. I’d set the timer, sprint into position on some glacial outwash plain, and capture exactly one frame of myself looking like a man interrupted mid-jog. My team’s photo editor reviewed the haul after day three and said what … Read more