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It’s around 11:45 a.m. on September 8, a perfect-as-usual Saturday along Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. The waterfront is already packed with tourists, their happy chatter intermittently overtaken by the barks of the famous sea lion horde over on Pier 39’s K-Dock. Nearby, a crowd of some 30,000 has gathered for the Rise for Climate, Jobs, and Justice March, an event that will culminate with the Global Climate Action Summit. The smell of pot meanders through the crisp air as convincing Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un impersonators pose for photos.

This is a big day for Boyan Slat, the 24-year-old founder and CEO of The Ocean Cleanup (TOC), a Netherlands-based nonprofit that wants to rid the oceans of plastic pollution. TOC has chartered the rusty, austere Harbor Emperor ferry to shuttle about 100 journalists out into the bay, where it will follow the Maersk Launcher, a 296-foot offshore tug whose day job is hauling oil and gas platforms to the Golden Gate Bridge. Today, however, the Launcher is towing TOC’s long-awaited, multimillion-dollar System 001—or “Wilson,” as Slat and his young team of more than 100 engineers, scientists, PR savants, and volunteers have nicknamed the boom-like contraption.

Over the next two weeks, the Launcher will tow the 2,000-foot, 380-ton apparatus 200 nautical miles offshore, where its survivability and efficiency will be tested for the first time in the Pacific’s tempestuous waters. If it passes this stress test, it will be pulled for another couple weeks farther west into the heart of the infamous Great Pacific Garbage Patch, where an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces—250 million tons—of plastic trash swirl, like a great, nebulous smog. The goal is to begin cleaning up this monumental man-made mess. If it does, TOC hopes to deploy 59 more Wilsons, which they say could clean up 50percent of the garbage patch within five years.

It seems an impossible task, but Slat faces it with a nonchalance that has become TOC’s brand. With his shaggy hair and lingering adolescent lankiness, Slat has been compared to a boy-band star. Indeed, as Slat speaks to the press on the Harbor Emperor, wearing his untucked baby-blue button-up shirt, tightish charcoal pants, and scuffed Vans, one journalist says, “Boy, he’s got great hair.” Slat’s style has become doctrine—his team, all young, all with great hair and great clothes, work happily and doggedly for the cause, seemingly unflustered by the enormity of their mission.

In 2016, I joined Slat and his team on the North Sea for the media-hyped launch of System 001’s first prototype, which resembled a 328-foot high-density plastic sausage string. It looked nothing like the giant, sleek, ray-like design that Slat had first imagined on a restaurant napkin when he was 16. Slat, who told me he designed and built “a very functional” wooden chair at age two, was confident that the prototype would work but was careful to remind me this was just a start. He had described the process of getting to that point as “throwing spaghetti at a wall.”

Back then, the United States and Europe seemed to be naturally moving toward an era that embraced the bold, if expensive, dreams of young environmentalist entrepreneurs like Slat. Today, the world—but particularly the White House—has changed, and ideas like Slat’s feel more distant. This past June, for example, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a UK-based anthropogenic climate change–denying think tank, published a report condemning plastic recycling. “Plastic pollution has become the favoured cause of environmentalists,” Breitbart wrote in an article about the report, “as it finally dawns that the public is heartily sick of being lectured about ‘climate change.’”

Despite the shifting political and cultural winds, TOC has raised some $20 million from donors that include the Dutch government and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. But they’ve also faced myriad engineering setbacks. Out in the green-brown bay, near the sandstone cliffs of Alcatraz, as the Launcher comes into view, Wilson in its wake, it is clear that both the beautiful ray design of Slat’s 16-year-old imagination and the sausage-string prototype have been mutilated at the hands of engineers and reality. Since 2016, TOC has conducted some 300 scale-model tests and six multimillion-dollar research trips, by air and sea, to the garbage patch. Now, System 001 resembles an enormous polyethylene fire hose with a heavy nylon geotextile screen dangling ten feet beneath it. Nevertheless, it has arrived—and two years ahead of schedule.

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Ambling through the friendly crowd of journalist-fans on the Harbor Emperor, as we follow the Launcher ever closer to the Golden Gate, it is difficult to imagine Slat and TOC having detractors beyond the Breitbarts of the world—but there are many. Within the scientific community, criticism ranges from Slat and his team’s youth to System 001’s inability to capture harmful microplastics to a question of execution. Wouldn’t it be easier, one popular argument goes, to implement systems at the source of the plastic pollution, like rivers?

I put this question to Laurent Lebreton, TOC’s lead oceanographer, who is, of course, young, a surfer, and wearing a stylish short-sleeve button-up with little octopuses printed on it. Lebreton, like Slat, doesn’t dispute the importance of stopping plastic before it enters the ocean and hopes that, one day, TOC can tackle that problem as well. But for now, he says, the team is focusing on the ocean. “We don’t want to be garbage men forever,” Lebreton tells me.

Another argument is that, especially today, TOC should be using its fundraising prowess and popularity to influence policies that could curb industry’s metastasization of plastics, especially of the single-use ilk. Slat has long held the opinion that it’s not an either-or question, that there is a place for both TOC and the other solutions. But by creating something bold like System 001, which the media and rich donors have gobbled up, “we can make a lot of people aware that this problem exists,” Slat says. “We can give it a bit of hope.”

As a believer in the power of policy, I’m not sure I can count myself as one of the journalist-fans onboard the Harbor Emperor. But in this current world of bickering, posturing, and feasibility study after feasibility study, I have to admit it’s refreshing to see a kid just going for it. “What I hope is that the Ocean Cleanup can become this example of how you should solve a problem,” Slat says as the Launcher slips beneath the shadow of the Golden Gate. “Instead of trying to complain or protest about something that you don’t agree with, try and build something that you do agree with.”

The wind turns cold and gusty, so I head down to the galley for coffee. A journalist next to me also orders a cup, then asks for a lid. The galley hand points to the little station with sugar packets, powdered creamer, wooden stirrers, and, well, plastic lids. Without thinking, I hand one to her, but she recoils. “It’s plastic,” she says. Worldwide, in the two hours we spent out on the bay, millions of pounds of plastic had been dumped into the ocean. I turn to the galley hand and say, “It’s so difficult.” He shrugs. In the distance, the Launcher has crossed into the Pacific, plowing into a stiff headwind, but plowing nonetheless.

Traveling on a vegan diet can seem daunting. These adventurers show you how to do it with ease.

In the summer of 2013, just months after going vegan, I embarked on a rambling road trip from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to Alaska and beyond. I’d barely heard of veganism before I converted, and as it turned out, most folks along the way knew even less. At a pizza joint in Anchorage, when I ordered a pizza without cheese, the server stood by, lemur-eyed, to observe how I could possibly consume such a meal.

In the years since, my travels have gotten measurably easier and dietary options more diverse; nevertheless, there are still challenges like language barriers and a continuing misunderstanding of what the diet actually entails. But don’t think you have to stick to visiting vegan meccas like Bali, Singapore, Tel Aviv, or Portland. “I choose my destinations solely on where I want to go,” says Amanda Burger, of the vegan travel blog Burger Abroad. “You can easily find vegan food anywhere in the world.” Here are some hard-earned tips and tricks my fellow vegan adventurers and I have learned to help you do just that.

There’s an App for That

Beta is surprisingly easy to come by, thanks to a host of vegan-focused apps. HappyCow ($4, iOS and Android) will steer you to the best restaurants in more than 180 countries, complete with reviews and photos so you’ll know what to expect. There are also free options, like goVegn (iOS), PlantEaters (iOS), or Vegman (iOS). “The world is full of delicious fresh fruits and veggies, grains, seeds, nuts, legumes, and plant-based meats,” Burger says. “And there are so many delicious creations invented by skilled, passionate chefs out there waiting to be devoured.”

Learn to Speak Vegan

“When I was on Manaslu, in the Nepalese Himalayas, the camp cooks would always feed me cinnamon rolls,” says mountaineer Kuntal Joisher, who in May mounted the first entirely vegan summit of Lhotse, the fourth highest mountain in the world. “I trusted that they were vegan, and on the third day I saw them breaking eggs into the dough. So I taught them and helped them veganize their entire menu.” Veganagogo ($3, iOS) will help you overcome language barriers by translating key vegan phrases in 50 languages. It also includes visual aids of animals and their products with lines through them.

Cook Your Own Food

It may require more effort, planning, and time, but taking care of your own meals means you won’t be limited to restaurant menus as you travel. “Grocery stores are your best friend,” says vegan ultrarunner Scott Jurek, author of Eat and Run. He’s a fan of staying at hostels with community kitchens, where your options are limited only by your creativity and the number of burners you can claim. “Something simple like a curry with chickpeas is a great way to interact with people and share the lifestyle.” Try the stir-fried chickpea and cauliflower curry and other one-pot recipes from Veganomicon.

Be Adventurous

Don’t let your diet hijack your experience. “Because I’ve been willing to try something new that on paper looked pretty grim,” Jurek says, “I’ve had food that I’d never heard of but is fully vegan.” Even if Jurek thinks he can’t eat at a restaurant, he’ll go anyway because he likes to learn about new cultures. “I want to talk to people and understand them.”

Pack Your Calories

On the ground or in the air, always keep a few snacks on hand. Airline food is better and more inclusive than ever, but some meal options remain bleak. On international flights, Jurek packs vegan Builder’s bars and veggie-based protein powders that he knows blend well with water. To wit: A frozen vegan burrito will thaw and be ready to eat at room temp sometime after your international flight’s second movie.

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Last autumn, I enrolled in the University of California, Berkeley’s massive open online Science of Happiness course to see if I might goose my felicity quotient through an understanding of the edicts dispensed almost daily by the USA’s happiness industrial complex. The course is free. It’s Berkeley. And its instructors, Emiliana Simon-Thomas and Dacher Keltner, have been teaching the material for years. (Keltner created UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center in 2001; the online program debuted in 2014. Other online happiness courses, as far I can tell, are derivative.)

The ten-week course kicks off with a robust introduction to the science of positive psychology,followed by seven weekly modules, parsed into themes: social connection, compassion and kindness, cooperation and reconciliation, mindfulness, mental habits of happiness, gratitude, and new frontiers of happiness research (like Keltner’s pioneering work in the phenomenon called awe—more on that in a bit). A midterm and final exam make up the remaining weeks.

My plan was to see the course through, no matter what. To guard against bailing, I shelled out an advance payment of $49 for a proof-of-completion certificate. If nothing else, I’d send the thing to my sister-in-law, the mindfulness crusader, who’s been at me for years to do something about my preternatural angst. Later, I would learn that of the roughly 500,000 enrollees, only 8,000 have received certificates—a completion rate of less than 2 percent.

The reason for so many lookie-loos? The workload, probably. All told, I plowed through more than 50 hours of material—reading, videos, experiential exercises, quizzes, and exams—while squelching my uneasiness about the squishiness of social science and the field of positive psychology with its reliance on self-reporting. I would later learn that while happiness researchers are employing new studies grounded in the physical sciences, many are simply getting it wrong, and worse: Some have even been censured recently for misinforming their readers.

As the course progressed, I’d come to view the science as commonsensical—simplistic even. To wit: Being a member of a supportive community confers positive vibes; quieting the mind alleviates stress; exercise tickles happiness hormones. Add to that the happiness insights passed down by the world’s great thinkers over two millennia—Confucius, the Buddha, Aristotle, and, uh, Sir Richard Branson, among others—and I would find myself wondering with each completed week: Why the science? Aren’t these practices time-honored enough by now for us to understand that they more or less work as advertised? (Apparently not. The United States’ ranking continues to drop in the annual World Happiness Report, where we currently sit in 18th place.)

Am I any happier after having taken the course? Not really. But if consuming the science failed to dampen my neuroticism, at least I walked away with a better understanding of the literature—both the research and the profusion of popular titles spilling off the self-help bookshelves. My conclusion? If I didn’t know any better—and I doubt the positive psychology community would admit this—I would guess that happiness science cops many lessons from Buddhism. After all, it was arguably the Dalai Lama himself who launched the positivity craze with his 1998 book, The Art of Happiness. “[T]he very motion of our life is toward happiness,” he wrote in the book’s opening paragraph.

“It's almost embarrassing how, at the end of the day, we end up noticing this idea that the middle path is most productive,” Simon-Thomas told me when I called her a few weeks after completing the course. “For some people, the biggest struggle from the course is self-compassion, really looking at themselves and taking the time to understand where their barriers and challenges to happiness lie, and making choices that align with happiness instead of suffering.”

If hewing to the middle way was the big aha I took from Simon-Thomas, Keltner, and all the rest, here are 13 smaller truths that helped point me and other happiness seekers in that direction.

You cannot measure happiness without defining it, yet on the murkiness index, happiness is right up there with “sustainability” and “wellness.” To some, happiness is the opposite of worry: enjoying good health, being free of troubles. To others, it’s living a meaningful life and giving to others, which is much closer in practice to the Aristotelian definition of happiness as serving the greater good. Sonja Lyubomirsky, a professor of positive psychology at UC Riverside and the author of The How of Happiness, characterizes it as “the experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile.” (Positive psychologists use the terms “subjective well-being” and “happiness” interchangeably.) The Nobel Prize–winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman identifies four levels of happiness: subjective, genetic, emotional, and sensate (like the feeling of a cool breeze on warm skin).

The bottom line: Researchers determine if someone’s happy by asking them if they’re happy. Don’t take my word for it: Ask yourself.

Happiness science is really no more than a fetching label for an amalgam of psychological, biological, and social studies, all of which measure a kind of emotional health. Research methods include observation, surveys, biomarkers, and measurement devices like fMRI to study such phenomena as relationships, self-compassion, concentration, affective state, and personality. Some of these findings appear to be at least once removed from a direct, evidential tie to happiness. I could be off here, but if researchers presuppose physical health is an important component of well-being, why do so many healthy folks feel perfectly wretched and go on to live long lives? In general, the happiness taxonomy seems as much art as science.

Attachment theory, first developed in 1969, suggests that the quality of the attention we received from our primary caregivers can affectthe intimacy and sustainability of our adult social connections—which are a major determinant of well-being, physical health, and even life expectancy. Infants who received consistent nurturing from their caregivers tend to enjoy stronger, more trusting relationships. Those with avoidant tendencies, which may result from neglectful caregiving, frequently find themselves on the outs with their romantic partners, which can set up a vicious cycle of relationship failure. But studies suggest that, with effort, the cycle can be broken.

Want to test for intimacy red flags in your relationships? Grab a partner and do this exercise together.

At least one landmark study reports that those who come into loads of money are no happier than folks who don’t. That said, if you’re destitute, money helps, but only up to a point: Kahneman postulates that point to be about $75,000 per year. According to the literature, we become habituated to sudden changes in our lives—like winning the lottery—a phenomenon called hedonic adaptation.

The good news: If an unexpected windfall won’t make you happy forever, then tragedy won’t permanently sink you either.

By now we should know that buying bright shiny things won’t get us to the promised land. Thing is, most of us are really good at making flawed decisions about the future, which means we suck at predicting what will actually make us happy. Thus, we miss out on opportunities that could provide a meaningful boost (spending time with friends or family, say) and invest in stuff that looks sexy on the surface but won’t ultimately budge our happiness needles for good.

Recommended exercise: Three Good Things from Berkeley.

Lots of scientists subscribe to set point theory—the idea that our internal genetic happiness levels are more or less predetermined. And you’ve probably heard that genetics is responsible for 50 percent of our happiness, with circumstance taking up 10 percent and individual initiative the remaining 40 percent. Although Sonja Lyubomirsky, who derived these pie slices, cautions that they’re not exactly Newtonian, that’s still a whole lot of genetics to overcome if you don’t have a predilection for joy or optimism. This means you’d be well-served by thinking of happiness as a lifelong practice, much like mastering the forward paddle stroke.

At the same time, there’s no such thing as single path to happiness, so scientists like Keltner and Simon-Thomas advise using a design-thinking approach to arrive at your best fit. “Think of it instead as a personal science experiment, or the ultimate word map; you don’t have to figure everything out,” Simon-Thomas says. “It’s like you’ve got all the ingredients in the kitchen and a couple of recipes, and you can try them and see which one tastes bad and which one makes you feel good.”

Acknowledging what you have—even if it seems like you have very little—was thetechniquethat most impressed me: simple, fast, effective, and, no, I didn’t morph into a complacent bliss monkey by counting my blessings. At least one study, co-authored by Lyubomirsky, suggests that habitually counting your blessings boosts positive affect, something that’s easily done by keeping a gratitude journal. While the task is simple—at the end of the day, record all the good things that happened to you—researchers recommend only three “doses” a week. Why? Simon Thomas told me there’s no perfect answer to the conundrum of why less is more when it comes to gratitude but recommended adopting a varied regimen of what works best for any individual. “For most of the so-called happiness practices,” Simon-Thomas said, “there’s always the possibility of diminishing return with forced or obligatory over-repetition, like, ‘Uh, let’s see, I am grateful for Post-it notes…for being lots of colors.’ Either it gets shallow or it makes us feel overextended. Think of it like exercise—if a person exerts themselves continuously in the same kind of motion, they risk getting hurt.”

Simon-Thomas and Keltner made clear that the goal of the course isn’t to teach you to surf a wave of bliss that never breaks. It’s futile to happify your way through life’s vicissitudes, which are an inescapable part of the human experience. “Angst and melancholy are fundamental human emotions that have a particular functional purpose in our evolutionary trajectory,” Simon-Thomas says.

Humans, irrational primates that we are, are often a pain in the ass, but we need one another. As Simon-Thomas and Keltner put it, we’re ultrasocial and wired to connect. In fact, there’s an evolutionary basis for collectivism: As a species, we’ve always gathered around a campfire, either literal or virtual. And apparently, although it seems counterintuitive, at least one researcher has found us to be a reconciling species. Besides, it’s fun to trigger each other’s neuropeptide called oxytocin, our endogenous “love drug,” evoked when we cooperate, attach, affiliate, and, yeah, make whoopee.

Perhaps no single wellness intervention has been the focus of as much scientific scrutiny as mindfulness, which has become a kind of panacea for all that ails the psyche, and for good reason: focusing on the present moment has been used to quiet humans’ capricious minds for thousands of years (recall my observation between Buddhism and happiness practices). Scientists claim mindfulness buoys well-being, strengthens attention, reduces stress, diminishes depression, and, hell, even slows aging. Different forms of mindfulness meditation—body awareness, compassion, and meta-cognitive—strengthen different aspects of well-being.

Yet these findings come with a caveat: despite the many studies validating the efficacy of a mindfulness, several meta-analyses have found little evidence that such practices influenced positive emotions. In some cases, it would seem that mindfulness hype has outstripped the science.

Evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson coined the term “biophilia” for humanity’s instinct to merge with other forms of life.Keltner has used the natural world in his research on the phenomenon called awe, which he defines as “the feeling of being in the presence of something vast and greater than the self that exceeds current knowledge structures.” Think hugging a giant sequoia, skiing under the northern lights, or wandering through wilderness.

Keltner’s emerging work in happiness identifies laughter and play as integral to well-being. Cobbled together, I thought of two good friends tackling a big backcountry climbing objective—or taking an awe walk.

While most well-being scientists laud the merits of a purposeful life, one 2012 study subverted that notion. “Happiness was linked to being a taker rather than a giver,” the research team wrote, “whereas meaningfulness went with being a giver rather than a taker. Higher levels of worry, stress, and anxiety were linked to higher meaningfulness but lower happiness.”

The paper made some key happiness researchers, including Lyubomirsky, not very happy. (More about that debate here.) “When I think about the importance of separating happiness and meaningfulness,” Simon-Thomas told me, “that’s where I hit a wall. If you’re truly living a happy life in this overarching way, a piece of that is that it’s meaningful to you.”

More than 20 years ago, University of Chicago’s Steve Porges introduced the polyvagal theory, which placed the vagus nerve at the center of human compassion. The love nerve, if you will. The vagus (Latin for “wandering”) is the longest nerve of the body’s autonomic nervous system, taking root at the top of the spinal cord and meandering down to the gut. The vagus nerve affects speech, how we direct our gaze, breathing, heart rate, digestion, and—of special interest to happiness researchers—our immune systems, inflammation responses, and the firing of oxytocin. In one experiment conducted in Keltner’s Berkeley lab, college students watched videos of people in distress. The students with particularly strong vagal tone demonstrated greater empathy, sympathy, and compassion than those who lacked it. So, how to strengthen your vagal profile? Exercise and mindfulness, for starters. Completing some random acts of kindness could help, too.

I found this “you’ve evolved to be kind” notion the most disarming factoid of the hundreds served up over the ten weeks. When I caught up with Simon-Thomas, I fessed up: I’ve always assumed that humans harbor ulterior motives for our kindly acts. “This is another common debate about altruism,” she told me. “Like, oh well, if you actually enjoy being nice to others, then you’re never truly altruistic. I find that to be a false dichotomy. Instead, it just means that, at a fundamental level, we’re wired to be altruistic over our basic design as a species.”

Her answer made me kind of happy.

Convinced? The next Berkeley Science of Happiness MOOC starts Sep 3, 2018. Enroll.

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When graphic designer Vernan Kee received an invitation to the winter Outdoor Retailer market in January 2017, he jumped at the chance to attend, hoping the opportunity would help him advance his career and build his client base. Like most Outdoor Retailer rookies, he was initially blown away by the innovative product designs and outdoor merchandise displayed by brand after brand. Outdoor Retailer is, among many other things, a chance for brands to debut new product lines and show off a bit.

But the more products and brands Kee saw, the worse he felt about pursuing workin the outdoor industry.

Kee is Diné, or Navajo. As he walked among the flashy booths, he saw the designs of his people plastered on everything from scarves to snowboards. Symbols like the sacred Dinétah diamonds that symbolize the four corners of the Navajo Nation, the traditional Spider Woman crosses that honor the culture’s history as weavers, and the sun-face graphics that symbolize prosperity were being used with no respect for their traditional meanings.

“I tried ignoring it at first, but it just got worse. Almost every brand had something Native American–related,” says Kee, who had at various points approached some of the brands for work but had never been hired. “A lot of them were using actual symbols that are sacred and mean something.”

This uncredited adoption of imagery and symbols has a name: cultural appropriation. Outdoor brands, like countless clothing, bedding, and furniture manufacturers before them, have put Native imagery on all sorts of apparel and technical gear for years. Only a fraction of that imagery has been created by Indigenous designers and artists. The problem is especially ironic as the outdoor industry has aligned itself with tribal interests in protecting public lands, from Bears Ears National Monument to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It’s time to elevate the work of Native people who are fully capable of creating that aesthetic on their own and have been doing it for untold generations before white people realized how good these designs look on Instagram.

“Let’s face it,” says Shain Jackson, a Coast Salish artist and lawyer based in British Columbia, “we are the most impoverished demographic in this country. Our artwork, nationwide, is our biggest source of private direct revenue. Handcrafts, arts, and designs are hardly scratching the surface, but we just want the benefit from the artwork to go to the right people, or at least a large part of it.”

Mainstream—that is, mostly white—culture continues to steal from and profit off Indigenous people who have already lost land, language, culture, and countless lives to colonialism and cruel policies. Using meaningful Native images on products simply for aesthetic reasons is a way of ignoring the context of colonialism and stolen lands.The trendiness of Native imagery compounds the problem even further by making it harder for talented, motivated Native people like Kee to break into the industry.

“We’re not stuck in the Stone Age,” Kee says. “I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in graphic design, and I’m implementing traditional designs in modern, artistic ways.” Kee’s client list includes NativesOutdoors, a B-Corp organization that works to support Indigenous people in the outdoor industry and beyond. (NativesOutdoors was founded by Len Necefer, a co-author of this article.)

This problem extends far beyond the outdoor industry, but it’s worth scrutinizing especially as outdoor brands publicize their politics, as they did in 2017, when Outdoor Retailer moved from Salt Lake City to Denver in protest of Utah’s position on public lands. Brands walk a fine line between a white savior complex and true allyship when they ignore other injustices in how they treat Indigenous cultures and artwork.

“Part of reconciliation is being honest about the history that is difficult to hear,” says Gregg Deal, a Native activist and artist who is very vocal about the relationship between Indigenous identity and pop culture. “And knowing your history isn’t just like saying, ‘I know Indians got a raw deal.’ Look at something like the Sand Creek Massacre,” in 1864, when U.S. soldiers raided a Cheyenne and Arapahoe village, killing hundreds. “Once you have that context, then you understand things like historical trauma.”

The outdoor industry, which is already making strides in upholding stringent guidelines in other areas, such as sustainability and specific standards on feather sourcing for down products, could give the same treatment to ethical standards when it comes to Native designs. “A good ally is someone who facilitates the opportunity for our people to speak for ourselves,” Deal says.

Customers should ask questions and make sure they’re spending money on real Indigenousdesigns, Jackson says. “Ask if an Indigenous design on a product is not only a real Indigenous design, but also if the artist has been remunerated for that design,” he says.

Over the past year, Jackson has partnered with Mountain Equipment Co-Op, Canada’s version of REI,to help the retail chain set standards of fairness to Indigenous artists. He educated MEC staff about the impact of cultural appropriation as the co-op began to remove products from its inventory that used Indigenous imagery but weren’t created by Natives.

“For me, it’s been an incredible learning journey,” says Shona McGlashan, MEC’s chief governance officer and internal leader of the company’s effort to remove appropriated designs from its shelves. “The first two or three times this question came up to me, I was like, ‘Yeah, this is no big deal.’ It has taken me a while to understand what I currently understand. You have to confront things that you were doing in the past that you maybe don’t feel that great about.”

MEC has been relatively quiet about this new policy, but the company now asks each brand it carries to prove a Native artist was financially compensated before placing an item with Indigenous symbols or graphics on its shelves.

If this sounds like a lot of work, it is. “It’s hard for people like me to confront the shoulders they’re standing on. It’s very uncomfortable, and it’s very necessary,” McGlashan says. “There are a lot of gray areas. If it was an easy question to have solved, we would have solved it.”

Still, consider that the outdoor industry contributes $373 billion to the U.S. economy, and brands have been known to brainstorm very long lists of potential product namesfor each jacket in their line. Why not put the same effort into making sure Native designs are properly used? Treating Native artists fairly isn’t a simple process,but that doesn’t mean that the line between right and wrong is blurry.

“There are things that somebody will consider egregious appropriation and others will think is fair artistic game,” McGlashan says. “When people say a product is ‘inspired’ by something, that’s already a red flag that has my ears pricking up. One of the things that I will say in my work on this subject is that art absolutely exists to challenge and critique society. Outdoor retail, not so much.”

Indigenous artists like Kee are ready to make their voices heard—with or without the support of larger brands and other potential allies. Toward this goal, NativesOutdoors partnered with the Colorado Commission of Indian Affairs and the Colorado Outdoor Recreation Industry Office to gather 20 tribes’ elected officials at this summer’s Outdoor Retailer show to discuss their involvement with the outdoor industry and public land management. This gathering is the first of its kind and will create a bridge between the industry and the tribes.

“I really wanted to make the industry aware that there are Native Americans here now—at Outdoor Retailer, in the outdoor industry, and purchasing products as outdoor consumers,” Kee says. “These brands should just be aware of that. Things need to change a little bit around here.”

Fast, cocky, and more than a bit reckless, the 28-year-old might be the best ultrarunner in the country. And he’s finally proven himself over a full 100-mile race.

Jim Walmsley is known for two races, the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run in 2016 and 2017. In 2016, Walmsley attacked from the gun, at times running as much as 45 minutes under Timothy Olson’s course-record pace. Jenny Simpson, the world champion 1,500-meter runner, used to train with Walmsley in Colorado Springs, and she tweeted updates on his progress, keying in a broader section of the competitive running world. It was a good story: an almost completely unknown runner was dismantling the course record of the country’s most famous ultra. Western States begins at altitude near the Squaw Valley ski area, in eastern California, then drops gradually westward to Auburn, outside Sacramento. By late afternoon, Walmsley was on pace to break Olson’s 14:46 record, but at mile 92 he made a wrong left turn and ran two miles off course. Discouraged and exhausted, he reversed direction at a walk and finished in 20th place. Still, the race was a sensation. Scott Jurek, who has won the race seven times, called to offer a mix of condolence and congratulation, and Hoka signed him to a sponsorship that allowed him to quit his job at a bike shop in Flagstaff, Arizona.

In 2017, Walmsley intended to prove that his race the year before had not been foolish. Myke Hermsmeyer, Walmsley’s friend and unofficial documentarian, produced an emotional short film about the 2016 race, and a group of his fans and friends came to watch and crew; many wore T-shirts that read STOP JIM, an homage to the STOP PRE T-shirts that Steve Prefontaine fans wore in the 1970s. One had been edited to read, in smaller letters, FROM GETTING LOST. In 2016, Walmsley had covered a steep early section of course fast, and in 2017 he went out even harder even though parts were snowed in. Shortly after the start, Ryan Sandes, a top South African racer, asked if Walmsley planned to attack the course record again. Walmsley said yes, and Sandes let him go. By midafternoon, however, temperatures were in the high nineties, and at mile 52 Walmsley’s stomach began to give out. He vomited profusely while leaving the Foresthill aid station at mile 62, and dropped out at mile 78. Sandes won in 16:19.

On June 23, Walmsley will race Western States for a third time. Unlike in either of his previous attempts, he is now both well-known and seasoned, with course records at half a dozen of the country’s top ultras, including the Lake Sonoma 50 Mile, where he broke his own record by nine minutes in April. At distances below 100 miles, he is the best ultrarunner in the country. Ultrarunning is a sport that favors a tortoise-over-hare mentality that irritates Walmsley and that his running style challenges. But he still hasn’t won Western States, and the question he has posed to the sport—why can’t he race 100 milers hard from the gun?—will again be the subtext of this year’s race. “He hasn’t stuck it yet,” said Bryon Powell, the editor of running website iRunFar. “He’s going for the 1080 flip that no one has ever done, but he hasn’t landed it.”

Western States “gets brought up every day of my life,” Walmsley told me in May. “It’s almost a part of me, I guess. If you can get it done at Western States, you got a good year.”

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Walmsley, who is now 28, is tall and gaunt, even for an ultrarunner. When I met him in Flagstaff on a warm Sunday night this spring, he was wearing sweatpants, sandals, and a large down jacket; Walmsley doesn’t have much body fat. In conversation, he would be a familiar character to anyone who has spent time around a college or high school cross-country program—he’s a running nerd. Over drinks one night a few days later, he took ten minutes to explain that closed-cell insoles absorb less water and are lighter than the open-cell insoles that come standard in running shoes. “I can talk about running forever,” he said.

Walmsley grew up in Phoenix, where he was a state champion cross-country runner and qualified for the Foot Locker National Championships. After graduating, he ran at the Air Force Academy, where he was a second-team all-American in the steeplechase, running 8:41. He had a PR of 13:52 for the 5,000 meters. Those are decent times for a D1 runner, but they stand out in the world of ultras, which more often attracts athletes who have a talent for grinding and suffering rather than running fast.

When Walmsley graduated from the Air Force Academy, he had hoped for a billing as a logistics officer near a major city, but was instead assigned to Malmstrom Air Force Base, near Great Falls, Montana, to pull 24-hour shifts supervising nuclear-missile silos. On a day off in 2013, after going for a 40-mile bike ride and a 14-mile run in the morning, he met a friend to go rock climbing. They hiked to a crag but realized they both had forgotten to bring a rope, and retreated to a bar. Later they met the friend’s wife for dinner and split a bottle of wine. On the 90-minute drive back home, Walmsley realized that he was dehydrated, sleepy, and had had too much to drink, and he pulled over to nap. He awoke to a Montana state trooper tapping on his window. After taking a field sobriety test Walmsley blew 0.081 on a breathalyzer and was arrested for operating under the influence. (In Montana, as in many other states, it is illegal to have physical control of a car while intoxicated, even if you are not driving it.)

The Air Force placed Walmsley on probation and pulled him off silo duty. Though embarrassing, the DUI likely wouldn’t have permanently threatened his military career. But around that time, a cheating scandal involving readiness exams for missileers consumed Malmstrom. According to Walmsley and various news reports, many officers viewed the tests as pro forma, and cheating had been common for years. More than 100 officers at the base were eventually implicated, including most of Malmstrom’s senior command and the commanding general, who later resigned. Junior officers were generally spared from serious punishment, but Walmsley had admitted to cheating, and, with the DUI, it became hard for the Air Force to keep him around. He was given a general discharge, a form of separation that is less serious than a dishonorable discharge but still indicates that something in his service went wrong.

Walmsley was humiliated. He returned to Phoenix depressed and suicidal, and moved in with his parents. “It felt like the first time in life that I was failing, that I failed,” he told me. His parents were supportive, and he began seeing a psychiatrist, who recommended that he make running a bigger priority; it seemed to help him cope. Last year, in the video that Hermsmeyer produced before Western States, Walmsley spoke openly about being depressed, and the rawness of that interview has since lead people with similar problems to reach out. But the post-discharge period still feels extraordinarily painful, and he avoids discussing it in detail. “People want me to talk about it,” he told me. “‘How did you get through it?’ In a lot of ways I never got through it. I just moved on.”

In 2015, Walmsley left Phoenix and moved to Flagstaff, and began training hard. He reconnected with Tim Freriks, a 2013 graduate of Northern Arizona University who Walmsley had known in high school, and entered a series of the country’s top ultras. Racing under the radar and without a major sponsor, Walmsley won the JFK 50 Mile, and set course records at the Bandera 100K and Lake Sonoma 50 Mile. Freriks and Cody Reed, another NAU runner, traveled to Sonoma with him, and Freriks finished second. After the race, the three started calling themselves the Coconino Cowboys, after the nearby Coconino National Forest.

Last year, Eric Senseman and Jared Hazen moved to Flagstaff, after helping crew for Walmsley at Western States. Both now run with the Cowboys and, with Reed and Freriks, qualified to race Western States this year. Except for Hazen, who withdrew this week with a hip injury, all will be on the starting line in California.

Hoka picked up Walmsley after his 2016 race, but the Cowboys are members of perhaps the only elite training group that is uncoached and not unified by a single sponsor. (They do have small deals with Squirrel’s Nut Butter, an antichafe balm, and Pizzicletta, where they eat for free on Sunday evenings.) Like small groups of friends across the world, they have the ability to be unambiguously cruel to each other and still sound loving: Hazen, who finished third at Western States in 2015, is called Tank, because he is physically small. At dinner one night, I heard Reed ask Tommy Rivers Puzey, who also trains with the Cowboys, if he would pace him after mile 60; Puzey said no, because he wasn’t sure Reed would make it that far. The next night, as Walmsley signed promotional posters for Squirrel’s Nut Butter, he told me that if Senseman tried to run with Walmsley for the win, he would “crack Eric like an egg.” Hermsmeyer, sitting across from Walmsley and trying to offer a note of moderation, said, “There’s equal shit talking.” Walmsley thought for a moment. “Tim doesn’t talk shit,” he said finally. “He’s a pretty nice guy.”

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Without the wrong turn in 2016, Walmsley thinks he would have finished seven or eight minutes under Timothy Olson’s course record of 14:46. There is a consensus among the group, which Walmsley alternately accepts and rejects, that he went out too hard in 2017. (Between the two races, he told me, “I’ve had 165 out of 200 miles go pretty awesome. I’m doing some things well.”) In 2017, after building a nearly 20 minute buffer over his 2016 pace, which was already quick, he gave it all back fighting through snow-covered trails on the descent to Robinson Flats, at mile 30. Then it got hot. By mile 62, he was off record pace but still holding a lead of an hour, and was greeted by a crowd of dozens and a film crew when he arrived.

“I didn’t expect how many people would be waiting,” he said. In retrospect, he should have taken 20 minutes to collect himself, cool down, and rehydrate, but the crowd spooked him. “The publicity and attention I was getting was all brand new,” he said. Instead of waiting, he chugged a bottle of fluid and took off, jogging a matter of feet before vomiting. That was the end of his stomach. (Two months later, with that experience under his belt, he fought off similar stomach distress to finish fifth, behind Kilian Jornet and Francois D’haene, at the 105-mile Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc.) “It wouldn’t surprise me if Jim does hold back a bit the first half, the first 30 to 40 miles,” Freriks told me. “Running super aggressive hasn’t paid off for him the past couple years. But who knows. Jim just likes going for it.”

In Walmsley’s view, going for it is the obvious way to win ultras. “You look at track, or the marathon, or cycling, there’s generally a pack,” he said. In those sports, races get broken open late, once fatigue has set in. “Ultrarunning, you can still run off the front from the beginning and get away with it.” Until the sport matures, Walmsley is willing to risk blowing up if it sometimes means winning spectacularly. He is also willing to telegraph his race plans. His approach, he said, is, “Tell them what you’re going to do, and go do it.” This is contrary to the style and ethic of the ultra scene, and helps explain why Walmsley is sometimes regarded as arrogant. “It’s off-putting to some people,” Bryon Powell said. “A hundred miles is a long distance—there are lots of variables, and things do go wrong, and maybe that’s why you should temper your own expectations.”

For the past several years, Walmsley has logged most of his training publicly, on Strava. Despite minor injuries in March and May, Walmsley has put in eight 100-mile-plus weeks this spring, including a 150-mile week with 35,000 feet of climbing. In Flagstaff, Walmsley lives in a room he rents from a retired W.L. Gore and Associates engineer in her sixties named Anita. Half of his bedroom wall is lined with blue boxes of Hoka shoes, and to their right is a framed map of the Western States course, on loan from a friend of Walmsley’s father. In 2017, Walmsley’s run up the early, steep section of the course put him far in front of the field; most everyone hikes this climb, which is the high point on the day, but he ran it. “This year, it would be nice to be a little bit slower, because I can’t fuck it up again,” he said, looking at the map. “But there’s free time right there.”

The author’s latest book features stories that are just as mired in the contradictions of humanity as they are in the humidity of the Sunshine State

Midway through Lauren Groff’s new collection of short stories, Florida ($27, Riverhead), a woman peers into a sinkhole near her home during a downpour on Halloween. The woman is generally anxious, and specifically anxious about the sinkhole, which she concludes must be the sign of a giant cavity and is distracting her “like a hole in the mouth where a tooth used to be.”

The woman has spent the previous 16 pages catastrophizing every thought that crosses her mind—about her husband, sons, friends, work—but it’s only after her anxiety drives the woman into the rain that her thoughts spiral in an opposite, ecstatic direction. “It feels remarkable, like a good cold blade across her skin,” she says of the water trickling into her raincoat. Her thoughts wander to William Bartram, who explored Florida in the 18th century and wrote about its wilderness with an enthusiasm that borders on sensual. “Florida, Bartram’s ghost has been trying to tell her all along, is erotic.” She’s still crouching over the sinkhole.

Florida isn’t always so explicitly, well, Floridian, but its characters all have some connection to the state. Groff, a beloved author of novels like Fates and Furies, also lives there. The 11 fast-paced stories in this book rely on the state being in the background—its wildness yanking away an element of control from her characters. Groff seems fascinated with what she calls the “Eden of dangerous things” that is her state. She sets her stories in remote hunting camps with a panther lurking nearby, or in the middle of a still, gator-filled lake, the main character without a paddle. There are moments of unsettling natural brutality, with descriptions of snakes caught in air-conditioning units and an otter eating a baby swan “in small bites, floating serenely on its back.” Even if you couldn’t care less about Florida, these details add to a feeling of foreboding that doesn’t let up.

Groff’s characters are often driven by heat-and-humidity-induced delirium, used most devastatingly in stories about young sisters abandoned on an island and about a homeless woman’s Sisyphean day-to-day. Most of them seem to feel a calm fascination with natural disasters, like a woman who gets astonishingly drunk during a hurricane and imagines that men from her past visit her in increasingly loony scenarios verging on magical realism. An old lover appears out of nowhere and then swan-dives out her window and back into the storm: “He imitated one of my dead chickens floating about in the water…Like synchronized swimmers, they swirled about each other, arms to the sky, and then, in a gulp, both sank.” Groff picks elements of her state that let her do what she does best: slow-cooking unease, relieved by wacky trips down the rabbit holes of internal dialogue that get to the heart of human weirdness.

For all its otherworldliness, the book is really about relationships, parenting, and resilience in a wild world. Groff keeps the action going—there’s some drama!—while always drawing the reader’s attention to the emotional plot. She writes believably from the perspective of men and children, but most of the stories are about women, and often mothers. Groff identifies satisfyingly specific thoughts and feelings, though some moments of inner dialogue feel a little indulgently dramatic for what they are. “I leave without the salts,” a woman thinks at a store while considering soaking an achy foot and remembering when she was younger, “because I am not ready for such easy absolution as this. I can’t.” Suit yourself! But Groff’s exploration of inexplicable emotions is overwhelmingly thoughtful and sometimes so real that you think she must have felt it herself.

In the final story, a mother of two sons (like Groff) travels with them to France so she can work on a book about Guy de Maupassant. (Groff also wrote about him, though she burned her manuscript.) The fictional mother drinks wine by the bottle and worries over her sons—the younger one sweet and clueless, the older one sensitive and brooding, even though he’s only seven.

At one point, the woman recalls what her husband once said about her older son: “He’s like a perfect, windless pond. You throw something in just to watch it sink, and you’re going to see it on the bottom staring back at you for the rest of your life.” It’s an apt kernel of parental dread that reads as somehow scarier than the lurking panther or coming storm. But the mother finds temporary relief one day on a beach (of course), as her son wanders far down the shore. “He has gone too far for her to save him in a calamity. Rogue wave, kidnapper. But the mother doesn’t call for him…He isn’t going anywhere, just away.”

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For the past several months, we’ve been searching for the perfect pair of running socks: socks that wick sweat, don’t stink or cause blisters, and feel good on the road and trail. To find these unicorn socks, a group of six experienced runners tested 59 pairs of socks from 16 top running brands in locations around the world. Ten pairs of socks stood out, and one pair emerged as a unanimous favorite: Smartwool’s PhD Run Light Elite, a merino-polyester blend that was tough, comfortable, quick-drying, and nonstinky.

Smartwool PhD Run Light Elite ($18)

The Smartwool PhD Run Light Elite is the only sock that made the top end of every tester’s list. The Run Light Elite, which comes in both mid-crew and no-show cuts, is a weave of merino wool, nylon, and a touch of elastane. It wicked better and dried faster than most of the 58 other socks we tested, seemingly regardless of weather or trail conditions. In A/B testing, when I’d wear a different sock on each foot to vet wicking ability more carefully, the Run Light Elite almost always felt drier. And once off my feet, it dried within minutes in direct sunlight, a perk for ultrarunners or anyone planning to take these socks on very long runs.

Smartwool gave the Run Light Elite a snug fit through the midfoot, which didn’t lose elasticity over the course of the test, and provided more material on the ball and heel, which I felt added a welcome amount of softness and protection underfoot and should increase durability in high-abrasion areas. Like all merino socks, the Run Light Elite also resisted odor better than fully synthetic options.

On the subject of durability: wool socks are notorious for wearing out fast, but I’m confident in the Run Light Elite. I didn’t find any holes during this test, and a pair of Run Light Elites I’ve been wearing since last year is still holding strong. That said, I did find signs of external pilling after a few washes, though it didn’t affect the socks’ functionality. I am further encouraged by Smartwool’s a two-year, 100 percent satisfaction guarantee, although it’s not quite as good as merino-sock rival Darn Tough’s lifetime guarantee.

Given a choice, these are the socks I reach for. They’re soft, fast-wicking, quick-drying, durable, and comfortable for a long time regardless of conditions. Of the 59 models of socks we tested, Smartwool’s PhD Run Light Elite was the cream of the crop. Material: 52 percent merino wool, 45 percent nylon, 3 percent elastane

Buy Men’s Buy Women’s

Balega Silver ($15)

Cushioned socks may not provide cushioning in the same way that your shoes do, but many runners like how they feel. And Balega’s Silvers felt great. They’re plush, roomy, and comfortable—as one tester put it, they’re “the Cadillac of running socks.”

We liked that these socks were super stretchy, never bunching up or sliding down during runs. And for very thick socks, the Silver’s polyester-nylon blend did an excellent job of wicking moisture, keeping our feet feeling cool and relatively dry even on warm days. The Silver’s antimicrobial silver treatment did seem to help fight odor, although it was even better at keeping the socks feeling fresh, allowing us to wear them a few times between washes if needed. Given how thick these socks are, I recommend trying them on first to be sure your shoes can handle the extra mass comfortably. Material: 75 percent Drynamix polyester, 23 percent nylon, 2 percent elastane

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Feetures Merino+ Cushion ($17)

Feetures’ Merino+ Cushion socks are smooth and, as one tester put it, “soft as a newborn kitten.” The Merino+ Cushion is a thick sock suited for running in cooler temperatures and comes in crew, quarter, and no-show cuts. (If you run regularly in warm temps, thinner socks such as Balega’s Hidden Dry or Darn Tough’s Vertex Ultra-Light Cushion felt lighter and more comfortable in our testing, but not as soft as the Merino+ Cushion.)

Feetures used a couple of standard tactics to dial in the fit with the Merino+ Cushion: there are left and right cuts, and stretchy fabric in the arch helps keep the Merino+ “from sliding and adds a bit of support,” according to one tester. Feetures has a lifetime guarantee, though as is common with most wool socks, the Merino+ Cushion had some superficial pilling after a few washes, which didn’t seem to affect their soft feel. Material: 37 percent rayon, 34 percent wool, 25 percent nylon, 4 percent spandex

Buy Men’s Buy Women’s

Swiftwick Aspire Four ($18)

Perhaps better known among cyclists, Swiftwick socks landed on every tester’s top-pick list, and the Aspire Four was a favorite among our trail runners. The selling point was a double-cuff construction that helped keep trail debris from getting into the sock and provided a little protection to the ankles. “Some crews can get itchy or fall down after long hours on the trail, but this was comfortable and stayed up well all day.” Another wrote that “the Aspire Four is thin, compressively snug, and snaps well into place above the ankle.” A couple testers did find the upper sleeve to be tight, and it might not work as well for runners with big calves. Material: 67 percent nylon, 28 percent olefin, 5 percent spandex

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Smartwool PhD Run Ultra Light ($16) and Darn Tough Vertex Ultra-Light ($16)

In side-by-side testing, these socks were indistinguishable, probably because of their nearly identical wool-nylon blends. Even on runs when I was sweating hard, neither pair retained sweat, and they seemed to wick better than any other socks in the test, including the overall winner, the PhD Run Light Elite, which is thicker. Both socks are thin and skintight, and I found them perfect for runs when I wanted a close connection to my shoes. These were the socks I paired with my racing flats, up-tempo shoes, or technical trail shoes.

The only notable difference is that Darn Tough offers a lifetime, no-questions-asked guarantee, whereas Smartwool is limited to a two-years-and-we’ll-do-our-best-to-make-it-right guarantee. I have no reason to doubt Smartwool’s sincerity, but I’ve personally returned two Darn Tough socks that developed holes. Sure enough, within a few weeks, brand-new socks arrived, no questions asked.

Buy Smartwool Buy Darn Tough

CEP Ultralight ($60)

Our testers’ favorite compression sock comes from German brand CEP. The Ultralight is made with an ultra-thin all-synthetic blend that yielded a fit that was snug without being too constricting. As one tester put it, “The thinner material is breathable but still equally effective at compression.” The Ultralight also got points for its seamless design and light padding in the foot.

We didn’t try to measure whether any of the compression socks in this test had actual performance benefits—there’s some evidence showing that compression socks may modestly improve performance and speed recovery—but rather evaluated comfort and wicking. The downside of compression socks is that they eventually lose some of their ability to compress. CEP estimates that the Ultralight will last between 150 to 200 uses, though our test didn’t last long enough to verify those figures, and it offers a six-month guarantee. Material: 60 percent polyamide, 25 percent elastane, and 15 percent polypropylene

Buy Men’s Buy Women’s

Stance Run 360 ($18)

I was a fan of the Run 360’s tight, supportive, almost compressionlike fit. There’s a small amount of padding under the heel and toes, while the top is kept thin and breathable. With designated right and left socks, I ended up putting the wrong sock on the wrong foot half the time, but once I got them on correctly they fit well. Since they come in a bunch of styles and colors, I often wore them around town Saturday night and then again on Sunday’s long run. Material: 66 percent nylon, 24 percent polyester, 6 percent combed cotton, 4 percent elastane

Buy Now

Darn Tough Vertex Ultra-Light Cushion ($17)

Darn Tough calls these socks Ultra-Light Cushion, though I would classify them more as a medium-cushioned sock—they fit somewhere between socks like the Feetures Merino+ Cushion and Smartwool’s PhD Run Ultra Light or Darn Tough’s Vertex Ultra-Light. I found them to be among the best-fitting socks of the bunch, easy to put on with an immediate second-skin-like feeling. The test group reported that the material was comfortable and resisted the typical wool pilling. Material: 50 percent merino wool, 45 percent nylon, 5 percent Lycra spandex

Buy Now

Balega Hidden Dry ($13)

One of our fastest testers wore these during her first marathon and ran an Olympic trials qualifier. Afterward, she said, “The heel doesn’t slip despite being so thin. I never had to stop and adjust my socks during the race, and I felt like the socks were working with me the whole time.” As an added bonus, at $13 these socks are among the least expensive we tested. Material: 43 percent Drynamix polyester, 25 percent microfiber, 30 percent polyamide, 2 percent elastane

Buy Now

I’ve been a competitive runner for more than 25 years and a full-time running coach since 2014, when I founded Run Your Personal Best. I’ve tested hundreds of running products, and I test road and trail-running shoes for the Outside Buyer’s Guide.

For this review, I recruited six experienced runners and gear testers, three men and three women, to evaluate 59 pairs of socks from 16 brands. The team included trail, road, and ultra runners, and we tested socks in Southern California, the mountains of Colorado, the French Alps, and North Carolina.

Each tester was instructed to spend as much time as possible running, hiking, biking, and walking in each pair and name 12 top socks. The testers were further asked to make note of the best socks in several subcategories. Once each tester narrowed down his or her top 12, I compiled their rankings, checked their observations against my own findings, and included in this review the socks with the most votes.

Socks, while not the sexiest pieces of running gear, are pretty important. Think about it—multiple fabrics tightly woven together, capable of wicking moisture and withstanding an incredible amount of friction, designed to perfectly fit countless foot shapes and sizes.

Purchasing a good pair of running socks is easy, as long as you avoid cotton, which absorbs moisture, leaving your feet wet and more susceptible to blisters and hot spots. Unfortunately, wool and synthetic socks are more expensive than cotton. The typical price range for a single pair of performance running socks is $13 to $20, with compression socks reaching upwards of $60 per pair. To help save you from a painful trial-and-error process, we’ve compiled a list of four criteria to consider.

Thickness

Socks come in thicknesses ranging from ultra-thin to ultra-cushioned. Companies will typically indicate the thickness of a sock in the model name or on the packaging. Thickness is a matter of personal preference, but it is extremely important to match the thickness of your socks to your running shoes. Where possible, aim to try on socks in person before buying.

In general, thin socks will fit tighter and breathe better, so they’re more suited for hot days. Less fabric between your skin and the shoe gives you a better connection with the shoe. This is why I prefer thin socks for fast road running and trail descents when I’m pivoting through technical terrain. I generally find thicker socks more comfortable for most other running circumstances, as the thicker fabric adds a soft cushioned touch.

Fabric

Understanding the minute details, such as the exact ratios of wool to polyester or whether some particular sock has 5 percent versus 4 percent, is not important. It is important to buy socks made with performance fibers, which wick sweat away from your feet and reduce the odds that you’ll develop blisters.

The three main performance fibers are wool, polyester, and nylon, and nearly all performance running socks on the market today use a blend with at least one of those fibers. This way, sock makers can mix and match performance characteristics, optimizing for stretch, say, or wicking. Of the 59 socks we tested, all but four employed at least three fibers.

Fit

A properly fitting sock should be snug around the heel, midfoot, and arch. Tension should ease a bit toward the toes, allowing them to splay naturally. Wearing socks that are too tight around the toes can create hot spots from skin-to-skin friction.

Today most running-specific socks are seamless, and every sock we tested used seamless stitching. Always avoid overlock seams, which you can identify by turning the socks inside out. If you see a raised ridge around the toes, choose a different pair.

Some socks are specially designed to enhance fit. The most common type in this group is anatomically cut, meaning there’s a designated right and left, or the socks are cut to the shape of your foot. Another special consideration is built-in support, most often seen around the arch. Makers will blend in stronger, directional fabric to add structure. A more distinctive and rather niche fit is the toe sock, popularized by the brand Injinji. Some runners swear by the glovelike separation of the toes for preventing blisters.

Height

Socks are offered in a wide variety of heights, also called cuts, defined by where the top of the sock sits on your leg. While terminology for a sock’s cut will vary from brand to brand, we generally feel there are four distinct categories: no-show, mid-crew, crew, and knee height.

No-Show

No-show socks, such as the Balega Hidden Dry (pictured above), sit aligned with the shoe’s ankle collar, leaving the ankle exposed. For trail runners, this low ankle cut can pose a few challenges. First, dirt and debris can more easily find its way between your skin and the sock, increasing the chances of irritation. It also lacks the leg protection of taller socks, which would guard against scrapes from low-lying plants and trail obstacles. Road runners, on the other hand, can benefit from an exposed ankle that can freely breathe.

Mid-Crew

Actual height will vary quite a bit depending on the brand, but mid-crew socks may rise from just above the ankle to an inch or so below the calf. Also known as one-quarter crew, half crew, three-quarter crew, or low cut, mid-crew socks are a great option for trail runs because, unlike no-show socks, they’ll ward off dirt and debris but still sit low enough to avoid overheating.  [/photo]

Crew

Crew socks sit just below the calf and are generally favored by trail runners and fashion-conscious road runners. The height adds some protection on the trails while allowing sock makers to get creative with design and coloring.

Knee

Most socks that fit up to the knee are compression socks. Originally designed to prevent blood clots in hospital patients, compression socks are now used by athletes in an effort to optimize blood flow from the legs back to the heart and enhance recovery. In practice, they may have a small positive effect on performance.

Badass Women Chronicles

This Seamstress Conquered Bike Racing in the 1890s

Cyclist Tillie Anderson came out of nowhere to shatter records, dominate her competition, and earn the world champion title during the late-19th-century women’s racing craze

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May 31, 2018

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May 31, 2018

Cyclist Tillie Anderson came out of nowhere to shatter records, dominate her competition, and earn the world champion title during the late-19th-century women’s racing craze

Soon after she arrived in Chicago, in 1889, Swedish immigrant Tillie Anderson decided she needed a bicycle. While scraping together a living as a seamstress in a tailor’s shop, she spotted women sailing by on the new contraptions, looking very free, and she wanted to try it, too. Among her siblings, Anderson was known for her steely will; after two years of saving, she bought her first ride. Cruising through the streets of Chicago, however, Anderson quickly realized that she wasn’t satisfied with pedaling slow graceful loops like other Victorian ladies. She wanted to go fast.

In October 1895, Anderson entered her first race: a 100-mile test of endurance on Illinois roads between Elgin and Aurora. While bicycle riding was fashionable for women at the time, competitive racing was still a novelty—though a fast-growing one. In driving rain, Anderson outpaced the previous women’s course record by 18 minutes. Several months later, in January 1896, she entered her first six-day race, in Chicago. Athletes competed for several hours each night on steep-banked wooden velodromes to see who could ride the farthest. By the last day, Anderson had left nearly everyone behind and was trailing only top pro Dottie Farnsworth. In the last four laps, the crowd thundered and shook the walls as Anderson pushed past Farnsworth and sprinted to victory.

“When the last gong sounded and the race was won the crowd went into a delirium of excitement,” a reporter from the Chicago Tribune wrote the next day. “Men bellowed hoarsely and women screamed. Garments were waved frantically and hats were juggled on canes and thrown into the air.” Because Anderson beat the country’s leading racers, the reporter dubbed her the speediest woman rider in America. Anderson clinched a new record for a six-hour distance, 114 miles, but perhaps more important, she found a new career and her life’s calling.

In the 1890s and very early 20th century, women’s cycling became one of the country’s great sporting spectacles, drawing crowds of as many as 10,000 in cities across the country—often more than college football games or even professional baseball at the time. Women raced the ungainly high-wheel penny-farthings throughout the 1880s, but the advent of the safety bicycle, with its equal-sized wheels, chain drive, improved braking, and lower cost, made the sport more accessible. Women took to the road by the thousands, experiencing newfound mobility and freedom, to the extent that women’s rights activists hailed the invention as a great emancipator. “I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel…the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood,” Susan B. Anthony said in 1896.

At the time, male cyclists raced in their own harrowing versions of six-day races. Starting on Mondays, they’d race around the clock as spectators filtered in and out, cheering and heckling. They’d stop only to dust themselves off from a bloody pile-up, down drugs (widely accepted, if not encouraged), or nap on the infield. By the time the racers finished, they were a pathetic lot, staggering off their bicycles and devolving into hallucinations.

According to Roger Gilles, author of the forthcoming Women on the Move: The Forgotten Era of Women’s Bicycle Racing, women’s participation in cycling races led to innovations in the sport that made it a lot more fun—and less gruesome—to watch. Because women were thought to be the weaker sex, organizers set them up to race for only two or three hours a day for six days, turning the event into fast-paced, highly entertaining chaos.

The women competed on small, temporary wooden tracks built inside armories and theaters, with banks as steep as 35 degrees. They sped along at 22 or 23 miles per hour and sprinted around 30 mph—faster than many spectators had ever seen a human being move—elbowing each other, zigzagging around, and sometimes winning by only the length of a bike. Brass bands clanged loudly and paced their tempo with the riders’ speed. Race promoters shouted through megaphones, and rowdy crowds tossed their hats and screamed, tearing down pennants and hoisting up bicycles at the end of the race. In comparison to the men’s races, it was quite civilized.

“The men’s races were more working-class, cigar-chomping affairs, whereas women’s races would attract the mayor, society people, women, and families,” Gilles says. (Although there was still plenty of betting.) “I think it helped a lot to develop what arena sports could be in America…These women need a place in history.”

Among the professional women racers of the 1890s, Anderson was undoubtedly the best. Over the course of her seven-year career, she entered 120 races and won all but 11. Newspapers and promoters played up rivalries between the racers, such as Farnsworth and Lizzie Glaw, but Anderson’s mix of professionalism and fitness helped her to dominate. Although she was sometimes ridiculed for it, Anderson was among the first to train systematically by taking regular training rides, lifting weights, and watching her diet to maximize performance. She was competitive and stoic, leaping up valiantly after crashes, and sported a Muhammad Ali–like swagger about her strength and abilities—couched, naturally, in prim Victorian parlance.

“Three years ago I was very fat in the legs, almost as much so as Miss Peterson, one of my competitors in the St. Louis race, is today,” Anderson told the St. Louis Republic in 1897. “My muscles were not at all developed, though it was but a short time when the fat began to peel off and give way to sinewy strength.”

Anderson also had the advantage of a trainer, fellow bike racer and future husband Phillip Shoburg, who recognized her talent and quit his own career to support hers. Shoburg helped her schedule races, secure lucrative sponsorships, tune her bike, and pace her on training rides. Between her prize money and sponsorships, Anderson was making between $5,000 and $6,000 a year, the equivalent of $140,000 to $160,000 in today’s dollars. But not everyone thought this line of work was becoming of a woman.

“The popular reception was unambiguous—they loved it,” Gilles says. “Thousands and thousands of people went to these races and they had no problems whatsoever. But just like today, the pundits—or the vocal minority—were holding on to these mores and values of a Victorian era and trying to steer people against it.” Some of Anderson’s own friends wouldn’t speak to her after seeing some of the scandalous outfits the women racers wore—long tights, clingy shorts, and curve-skimming sweaters. “Oh, they really thought I was wicked,” she once said.

Anderson herself was unselfconscious. She was proud of being a serious athlete and unapologetic about her muscular physique. Anderson even submitted herself to an examination by physicians interested in studying the effects of exercise on a woman’s body. Newspapers across the country published the results and an illustration of her bare chiseled leg. Her mother was horrified.

“Although Miss Anderson’s limbs are not as regular from the artistic viewpoint…her general health is better,” proclaimed one article in the St. Louis Republic in 1897. “From a comparative feebleness she has grown into robust strength. From head to foot she is a mass of muscles.”

Throughout the heyday of women’s six-day racing, the League of American Wheelmen discouraged women from racing and men from supporting them. Some publications in recent years have reported that the league actually banned women from racing in 1902, but there are no records to confirm that. The sport likely declined for a host of reasons. The advent of automobiles and motorcycles ended the great bicycle boom of the 1890s, shuttering bicycle manufacturers and drying up sponsorship dollars. In 1902, two of Anderson’s best competitors died—Lizzie Glaw of typhoid and Dottie Farnsworth of a cycling accident sustained in a circus performance. Societal discomfort with female athleticism may have also played a role. By 1902, there were no longer any women’s races.

Tillie Anderson pedaled her last race that year, soon after her husband died of tuberculosis. Although suitors courted her, she never married again. She became a Swedish masseuse for wealthy families in Chicago, helped establish bike paths in Chicago in the 1930s, and spent summers at a lakeside cabin in northern Minnesota. Anderson died in 1965 at age 90.

For decades, Anderson was largely forgotten by the general public, but in 2000, with the help of her grandniece Alice Roepke, she was inducted into the U.S. Bicycling Hall of Fame. In 2011, author Sue Stauffacher took interest in Anderson’s story and wrote a children’s book about her life, Tillie the Terrible Swede: How One Woman, a Sewing Needle, and a Bicycle Changed History. This fall, in addition to Roger Gilles’ book, British author Isabel Best will release a yet-to-be-titled book about Anderson and other legendary women riders.

Anderson’s racing calendars, photos, and notes still reside in her Minnesota cabin, where her racing bike is still on display. Her descendants continue to use the cottage and fondly remember her. “She was always really proud of what she did,” Roepke says. “These races would be on the front page of the smallest little town newspapers. People would talk about it around the kitchen table. It surprises me that it was just lost to time.”

While women raced in sporadic events in the first half of the 20th century, women’s cycling didn’t take off again until the 1970s. According to Gilles, based on her times, Anderson would likely keep up with the professionals of the late 20th and 21st century. “It does not fatigue me in the least to take part in these long-distance races,” Anderson once told a St. Louis newspaper. “I am just as fresh after a two-hour’s run as when I commence.”

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“What’s up, hustlers! I’m Robin, this is DJ John Michael, and welcome to this 45-minute live DJ ride!”

Robin Arzon is already pumping her legs on the stationary bike, facing the class dead-on while John Michael bobs in place next to her, queuing up music. “We are gonna bring you so many good vibes, and if you are joining us for the first time, wow-wow, welcome.” Arzon looks and sounds thrilled that you’re here, talking fast and beaming while she launches into rapid-fire instruction. She runs you through the three most important metrics of the spin class—cadence, resistance, and output—never losing breath or rhythm.

Her class, however, is happening on a screen, and the participants are strapped in and ready to ride in their own living rooms. This is Peloton, a six-year-old company valued at $1.25 billion that provides virtual cycling classes and has developed a cultlike following, seemingly able to get just about anyone on board after their first ride. Its customer base covers a huge range of ages and athletic levels, and nearly all reviews, ratings, articles, and anecdotes about the experience are overwhelmingly positive.

Arzon’s class is one of more than 8,500 videos available through the program. Peloton streams about a dozen live classes every day and stores previous classes in an on-demand library for anyone who missed them. To access the classes, though, you have to be a member of this exclusive community, meaning you own the brand’s proprietary $1,995 aluminum and carbon steel stationary bike and pay a $40 monthly subscription fee. The bike is sturdy and sleek and souped up with a 22-inch HD touchscreen. Today, there are roughly 113,000 bikes (a number that’s steadily growing) in homes across the United States alone, and each live class brings in an audience of as many as 1,500 riders (out of Peloton’s 1 million–person user base).

“The first time I got on the bike, I felt instant camaraderie,” says rider Brooke Bower. “You feel like you have a relationship with the instructor and the other people in the class and then feel some accountability to try harder.”

The company unveiled its first bike in 2013, promising to bring the intensity and devoted following of cycling classes like SoulCycle and Flywheel into the home. Founder John Foley, a former e-commerce executive at Barnes and Noble, created a Kickstarter video that helped him raise just over $300,000 and began generating industry attention. The next year, the company had to scale up its fundraising to create a bike that could be tested by real people and sold to consumers. At the end of that fundraising, Peloton had a few more bikes and its first brick-and-mortar studio, but it was taking way too long to get the bikes into peoples’ homes, significantly limiting growth. It wasn’t until 2015 that things started to take off. Over the course of that year, the company received almost $100 million in total investments, allowing it to speed up bike production and delivery, hire more instructors, expand its software team, create the monthly subscription model, and increase the number of streamed classes available. Today, Peloton claims to sell a bike in every state every day and has opened nearly 30 brick-and-mortar showrooms across the country. The company even livestreamed classes from Pyeongchang during the 2018 Winter Olympics.

Part of Peloton’s popularity stems from its role as a social network. Just like your Facebook or Strava account, you create a username and upload a profile picture. That name is then used to rank you on a leaderboard while you ride, allowing you to compete in real time against everyone else taking the class, no matter their location. The networking doesn’t end there: Many people follow individuals they regularly identify in their classes and strike up friendships independently through another forum, namely Facebook or Instagram. Although there’s no formal relationship with Peloton, the two social media platforms have become de facto headquarters for users to socialize and talk shop. Peloton diehards point to this social network creation as proof that you don’t lose out by spinning in your home rather than at a studio or gym.

Bower and her husband, Drew, are two converts in Fort Worth, Texas, and are representative of the sort of evangelical fervor the classes can inspire. The Bowers estimate that they’re personally responsible for at least a dozen friends buying bikes. “We’ve had our bike for two years, we’ve done over 1,400 rides on it, and we just can’t get enough, ” Drew says.

What exactly riders can’t get enough of is another question. Despite many conversations with home riders, I was never able to get a single narrative on what makes Peloton so compelling—there’s the camaraderie, the cross-country friendships, the competition, the drive to edge out other riders, the personal improvement, the sense of focus, the customization, the convenience. Nicole Steele, a home rider in Pittsburgh, picked up cycling after reconstructive surgery on her knee and started Peloton as a way to stay active after hearing from a friends who had picked it up as an alternative to running. Steele liked that she could choose from a variety of levels, intensities, and types of classes, from 60-minute cardio rides to ten-minute technique tutorials.

In spite of all the evangelism, there are some serious drawbacks. As Bryan Jarrett, the group fitness director at the massive Chelsea Piers Sports and Entertainment Complex in New York, points out, it’s hard to know if you’re doing something improperly without an instructor giving you live feedback. “We train our instructors to not give basic cues like ‘butt back, shoulders relaxed,’ that kind of stuff,” he says. “We’re focusing on specific people.”

For Becky Cerroni, the owner of the studio JoyRide Texas, the simulated group setting isn’t a substitute for a real crowd. “Having a person next to you, you can’t replace that with a leaderboard.”

Still, the company reports a 96 percent retention rate. Though the initial cost is high (again, the bike runs $1,995, while most at-home stationary bikes are nestled securely in triple digits), you pay just $40 each month for unlimited classes. By comparison, a single SoulCycle class is $34 (or, at best, $28 per class if you buy a 30-pack), and a Flywheel class starts at $30 (or $27 if you buy 20 classes). What’s more, in June 2018, the company released Peloton Digital, which gives users access to content without the hardware.

To maintain quality control, Peloton does almost everything in-house. Using a team of more than 70 engineers, the company has produced its own bikes and screens, as well as the Android-based software. The company has its own delivery mechanism, in many markets delivering bikes in Peloton-branded vans and dispatching employees to set up the bikes and help new customers find the right classes and instructors that suit their tastes. Eliminating middlemen allows Peloton to deliver parts or assistance immediately, contributing to a heralded culture of customer service.

The company pays that same level of attention to what senior vice president Carolyn Tisch Blodgett calls “beautiful brand experiences,” largely because Peloton considers itself a lifestyle and content company, not a fitness company. It has created a number of products and events around helping you take Peloton with you off the bike: an online store that sells standard fitness gear like clip-in shoes and heart rate monitors alongside branded swag like tank tops and necklaces; rider events at the New York headquarters; instructor meet and greets at showrooms across the country; and active outreach to users who haven’t been to a class in a while.

Now Peloton’s gearing up to grow even bigger. At last year’s Consumer Electronics Show, it unveiled Tread, a $4,000 treadmill that will stream group classes for running, hiking, and bootcamp-style workouts. Blodgett compares it to Orange Theory or Barry’s Bootcamp, saying, “When we thought about launching a treadmill-like product, we were pretty specific about not launching a treadmill.” That’s because treadmills have a bad rap, and most people who buy one end up not using it. Since Peloton is so dependent on subscriptions, the company had to steer clear of the dreadmill model and emulate the HIIT studio workouts that have started to incorporate running.

Why all this success? Walt Thompson, president of the American College of Sports Medicine who oversees an annual survey of fitness trends, blames the economy, often a driving force behind health and wellness trends. According to the ACSM survey, group training in particular has been surging in popularity. “Even if I just go back three years in our survey, you didn’t see group training,” Thompson says. Maybe it’s a stroke of luck, but Peloton happens to be where it is at the perfect time, as group exercise, wearable tech (and, by extension, obsessing over your personal metrics), and working with credentialed professionals all enjoy unprecedented popularity.

For all the praise, though, there’s still something about the whole thing that sounds at least mildly dystopian. You can get all the rewards of going outside and training with others, all without ever actually having to put up with the hassle of making it happen or dealing with other people.

So do we lose something when we find one more reason to stay home, even though we’re digitally right next to hundreds of other people all pedaling to the same Britney Spears song? I asked Mark Eys, a sports psychologist specializing in group dynamics, and to my surprise, the question was more theoretical to him than anything else, pointing out that the biggest hurdle people have for exercising is the perception, real or not, that they don’t have enough time for it.

“Would it be better if they’re out in nature and doing all those things with other people? Sure,” Eys said. “From what I see with physical activity rates and the lack of activity across the population, if it works and gets people active on an ongoing basis, then that’s great.”

Ulyana Nadia Horodskyj is an ice scientist who’s done research high on Everest—and after working with NASA, she’s aiming even higher.

Name: Ulyana Nadia Horodyskyj
Job: Founder of Science in the Wild, part-time mountain guide, visiting professor at Colorado College
Home Base: Broomfield, Colorado
Age: 32
Education: Bachelor of Science in Earth Science, Rice University; Master’s in Planetary Geology, Brown University; Ph.D. in Geological Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder

Ulyana Nadia Horodyskyj has always been an explorer, interested in the mysteries of planet earth and the space beyond it. One of her first research projects investigated how solar sails could be used to deliver supplies into outer space. (Elon Musk, if you’re reading this…) While earning her master’s degree at Brown, she investigated how Iceland could be used as an analog for Martian exploration. By the time she attended graduate school at the University of Colorado, she had conducted research on all seven continents and started her quest to climb their highest summits. 

Eventually she combined her love of science and alpinism for her Ph.D. research on glacial lakes in the Himalayas. She launched the Sherpa-Scientist initiative in 2011, working with Sherpas in Nepal to study the effects of climate change on the country’s glacial lakes and how that would affect mountain communities.

“When my scientific work has application and can be used to help people, it holds a lot more meaning for me,” says Horodyskyj. Plus, she and her team got to use drones and robotic submarines and hold rubber duck races in glacial streams, which was just plain fun. In 2016 she founded Science In the Wild, an initiative that takes educators and the public on science-based expeditions. One trip might have participants probing snow in the Andes, while another sets up Mars analog sites in the Mojave desert—teaching participants how to drive on another planet. Fun factor aside, Horodyskyj publishes a majority of the research conducted on these trips, providing valuable data on a variety of climatological questions.

Also in 2016, her scientific and expedition chops earned her a spot in NASA’s Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA) project: With three others, she was locked into a faux space station in a Texas warehouse for a month to simulate the physical and psychological effects of long-term space travel. Having once spent three frigid weeks hunkered down in a tent with two other scientists on Canada’s Baffin Island, being stuck in a windowless pod the size of a large closet was a cinch. Now, she’s one of 100 applicants that NASA selected out of 18,000 to potentially become an astronaut. “I’m really interested in the moon,” says Horodyskyj. “I’ll see it from a mountaintop and think, ‘I want to stand on that.’ The ultimate places to visit in the outer solar system, though, would be Europa and Pluto. I’m a bit obsessed with ice.”

On How She Broke into Her Profession: “I grew up loving the outdoors and my parents were always taking us camping and hiking. I got into science as a preteen, competing in science fairs and doing experiments. I’ve been working on blending these two things together, science and the outdoors, my whole life. I created Science in the Wild to do that.”

On Her Morning Routine: “I’m actually kind of a night owl. I stay up pretty late and I do make a point to get enough sleep. When you’re training really hard for an expedition, you have to. I get out of bed after eight hours, then I wake up and eat a really good breakfast. I love fried eggs, usually with a beef frank, spinach, and some vegetables. It’s all protein, carbs, and fats, and it’s really good. Then, I check my email and go work out.”

On Her Craziest Day at Work: “I was in Nepal on a solo expedition where I would come and go from the field, which was a glacial lake, a lot. I had this buoy with a lot of data and measurements out on the lake, but the ice was really thin and the buoy was sinking, so I had to go rescue it. I was spread eagle on this really thin ice, crawling out to go get it so I wouldn’t lose my data. It was cold and I was working around 15,000 feet. I assessed the terrain and the risk, and decided to rescue my buoy out on this lake.”

On the Biggest Misperception About Her Job: “People think I’m asking for money to climb, but the scientific research is always the biggest component. I’m a scientist before I’m a climber; even when I blend the two, it’s not a vacation. We’re helping people and always adding to the body of knowledge. I try to be really transparent in my research and funding, I think that’s really important, and that’s why I always take people out into the field with me.”

On Her Hero: “Carl Sagan was really influential to me. I love how he’s able to communicate science so well, and I really want to emulate that. I want to add my own component of being in the outdoors and doing science, but use those same techniques of analogies and storytelling. My whole goal is to reach people with stories and science.”

On the Best Advice She’s Ever Received: “My parents always told me, ‘Remember, your attitude determines your altitude,’ and that applies to everything—climbing, science, space exploration.”

On Her Favorite Thing In Her Wardrobe: “My Fjallraven Keb trousers – they’re burgundy in color (I normally wear black or jeans, so it’s a nice switch). They’re rugged but also stretchy, so I can run, hike, and climb in them.”

On Her Favorite Thing to Travel With: “I always travel with a good book. Right now I’m reading Denali’s Howl about the biggest accident on Denali. I like adventure books to get lessons from and get inspired. I love the smell and feel of a physical book. I used to have a Kindle, but it froze at high altitude.”

On Her Favorite Daily Ritual: “Stretching. It feels relaxing and it’s very important to do in order to keep flexible and injury-free while on expedition.”

On How to Maximize Time Outside and Minimize Desk Work: “Thankfully, most of my work is outdoors! I work as an assistant guide for my boyfriend’s company, Alpine Expeditions, which means a lot of time in the mountains. While teaching at Colorado College, I make sure that the students go on field trips and get a chance to work outside. Given an upcoming expedition to Denali, I’m also training really hard, so that means a lot of time hiking, biking, and winter mountaineering. I actually don’t mind the desk work either, especially if it involves analyzing my own data. It’s fun to see what the data show and write the science story to share with the public through scientific journals and on social media.”

On How to Apply to Be an Astronaut: “It’s just on a website. The qualifications are really basic. It’s surprisingly easy to apply, but obviously really hard to get in.”