How do you love a place that is sinking?
Essays & Criticism
The 19th-Century Hipster Who Pioneered Modern Sportswriting
More than a century before GoPro, Thomas Stevens’ around-the-world bike ride vaulted first-person “sports porn” into the mainstream.
The Emptying
“I’m amazed at our human capacity to adapt to the unbearable. Almost anything can seem normal if it’s inflicted on us long enough.”
The Cabin on the Mountain
“Sometimes, the mechanism of the answer is something ludicrously complex, a thing that must be pieced out bit by bit. Other times, the solution requires retooling your perspective.”
Dreaming of Water with Tiger Salamanders
“There is no more urgent form of communication than going extinct.”
Searching for the Mountaintop in Upstate New York
A family confronts its racial past along the Appalachian Trail.
What Death Means to Love and What Love Means to Death
“But perhaps it’s neither here nor there how we think about death. Perhaps the work that must be done is in how we think about life.”
Children in the Garden: On Life at a 3,100-Mile Race
Another beauty of endurance is that it is happening at all times. It is everywhere we look. To see someone, anyone, in this world is to witness someone engaged in a feat of endurance.
The Big, Bonkers, British, Christmas Pantomime
Oh, yes I did! An attempt to explain the bizarre tradition of the British Christmas pantomime.