There is a marble monument on a hillside in the Poconos holding the remains of a man who never once set foot in the town that carries his name. I stood in front of it last October, coffee going cold in my hand, while one of my researchers read aloud from a pamphlet she’d grabbed … Read more
There’s a number that should scare anyone planning a Salem trip this year more than any haunted house on Derby Street: October 31, 2026 falls on a Saturday. Combine that with a full month of Haunted Happenings programming — the festival runs October 1 through 31 this year — and you get the single most … Read more
The clock in the rental read 5:41 a.m. when I pulled out of Lincoln, New Hampshire, with a thermos hissing in the cupholder and my headlights the only ones pointed east on Route 112. My photographer was still assembling her tripod in the passenger seat, and neither of us said a word, because there was … 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
Three summers in a row, I drove Highway 1 through Big Sur and saw absolutely nothing. That’s not an exaggeration. The marine layer in July sits on that coast like a wet blanket someone forgot to take off — you get 400 feet of visibility, a gray Bixby Bridge, and a souvenir shop’s worth of … Read more
5:41 a.m. on Cadillac Mountain, and my hands are too cold to feel the coffee cup I’m gripping like a lifeline. The wind coming off the Gulf of Maine has teeth in early October, even when the valleys below are still sleeping in fifty-degree air. My photographer had scouted the Blue Hill Overlot two evenings … Read more
Every September, my inbox fills with the same question from friends who should know better: “Should I finally do Munich?” And every September I give the same answer. If what you actually want is steins, brass bands, pretzels the size of hubcaps, and a crowd that polkas like it means it, you don’t need a … 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
Every October, the same thing happens. Somebody in the family insists on a leaf-peeping drive through New England, and somebody else ends up white-knuckling a rented crossover down the Kancamagus Highway at eleven miles an hour with a bus on the bumper, catching roughly four seconds of actual foliage through the windshield. I have been … Read more
There is a moment, somewhere around 9:25 on the last Friday of September, when the crowd stops being a crowd. Twenty thousand people who have been drinking coffee and stamping warmth into their boots since dawn suddenly go quiet, all at once, because someone on a ridge three-quarters of a mile away has lifted a … Read more