For a hundred miles along US 62/180, the country between Carlsbad and El Paso does a convincing impression of nowhere: creosote flats, gravel, the occasional Border Patrol truck kicking up dust. Then the highway tilts upward and an ancient limestone wall fills the windshield — El Capitan and the ramparts of the Guadalupe Mountains, rising … Read more
Most observation towers make you earn the view the same way: a narrow metal staircase, a hundred steps of huffing, and a cattle-line at the top. Eagle Tower in Door County, Wisconsin, took one look at that tradition and built something else entirely. The centerpiece of the climb here isn’t a staircase at all. It’s … Read more
The alarm went off at 4:10 a.m. in a motel room in Winthrop, and I did the math every larch chaser eventually memorizes: headlights on the North Cascades Highway by 4:45, trailhead parking lot before 6:15, or surrender the spot and hike an extra mile from the shoulder. My crew and I had timed this … Read more
Every late September, my crew and I spread maps across the same scratched dining table and argue about October. This year the argument ended early. The vote was unanimous: Hocking Hills, the pocket of sandstone gorges an hour southeast of Columbus, Ohio, that somehow still flies under the radar of leaf-season travelers who assume New … 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
Every October, something quietly absurd happens about forty miles south of Rochester. A river that spent ten thousand years carving a 600-foot canyon through western New York gets framed by a few million maple, oak, and birch trees that all decide to ignite at the same time — and somehow, most of the country still … Read more
There’s a specific moment in Great Smoky Mountains National Park when you realize the season has turned. It happens somewhere along the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail, usually in the last week of August, when the light slants through the hardwood canopy at a slightly lower angle and the air carries a crispness that wasn’t … Read more
There’s a moment when the ferry pulls away from Mackinaw City and the engine noise fades into the wind off Lake Huron — that’s when it hits you. No cars. No traffic lights. No honking. Just water, limestone bluffs, and the distant clip-clop of horses on a dirt road. I’ve traveled to a lot of … Read more