For a half-second, I thought the naked man crutching toward me on the trail was a hallucination. But the 44 kilometer mark was way too early in the race for me to have been hallucinating. As I moved to the right side of the double track to give him some room, I noticed a crucifix hanging from a silver chain...

　　The 23 Best Places to Travel in 2024 　　Our expert travel writers circled the globe to find the next-best destinations to explore—and why to go now. From beautiful just-built wilderness lodges, to fun sporting events in perfect adventure locales, to the most stunning place to see the northern lights, here are the trips you should take this year. 　　5 Rugged...

　　This article is copublished with ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. 　　Black Butte is an inactive volcano that rises from the high desert in eastern Oregon. In May 2022, a turboprop plane approached its pine-blanketed slopes, carrying about ten men wearing bulky Kevlar outfits. They were smoke jumpers with the United States Forest Service, the agency that...

　　First, the good news: despite what you might hear, recycling is not broken and it does work. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the American recycling rate climbed from 6.4 percent in 1960 to 32.1 percent in 2018. Woohoo! Pat yourself on the back everyone. 　　But wait, there’s bad news too. As I’ve written about before, this dramatic uptick means...

　　We get it: It’s hard to hear bad news about how global warming is affecting the sport we love, especially when Mammoth stayed open into August and Alta broke historic snow total records just last season. Yet we still have to heed to what science is telling us, which is that U.S. winters are indeed getting shorter and shorter. 　　A...

　　For the seventh year running, Finland has been named the happiest country in the world by the United Nations’ World Happiness Report. The Nordic nation has long been known for its sauna culture, but the Finns’ enduring well-being goes beyond warm rooms and cold plunges. Some Finns have told the press that their citizens aren’t exactly happy so much as content...

　　The celebrity trial of the century, this was not. 　　On Thursday March 14, a district judge in Wyoming named Stephanie A. Hambrick presided over the court case of Irish movie star Pierce Brosnan—yes, he of James Bond fame. Brosnan, 70, was accused of breaking sacrosanct rules of decorum in Yellowstone National Park during his visit there on November 1. The Park...

　　Everyone knows cultivating a garden takes work. You must nurture it with sun and water and soil. But you’ve also got to prune it once in a while, and that’s the hardest part. How do you walk into a beautiful garden and start to hack at the greenery? But cut you must if you want it to flourish and remain...

　　Puerto Rico Why Now: After rebounding from a series of devastating earthquakes in 2019 and 2020—and Hurricane Maria in 2017—this U.S. territory (read: no passport required for Americans) quickly became one of the hottest destinations in the Caribbean. Although it has long been a favorite with surfers, 36 years have passed since Puerto Rico hosted the sport’s world championships. But...

　　While I was getting ready for a friend’s birthday party last year, a podcast came on about how almost anyone could run a marathon. There are few things I enjoy more than pestering my friends to do absurd things with me, so I spent the night trying to convince them that a 26.2-mile race could be fun. 　　I was probably...

　　We get it: It’s hard to hear bad news about how global warming is affecting the sport we love, especially when Mammoth stayed open into August and Alta broke historic snow total records just last season. Yet we still have to heed to what science is telling us, which is that U.S. winters are indeed getting shorter and shorter. 　　A...

　　If you’ve never heard the legend of Blowhole, I can tell you all about it, because I was there from the start. 　　My husband and I are dogsledders. Wisconsin-based, though we travel; when your life revolves around sled dogs, you’re always chasing snow. We met Blowhole in April 2018. I had entered the Kobuk, an unsupported, 440-mile race between seven...