Outside July/August 2022

We’ve Been Doing It Wrong One of the hoariest clichés in the outdoor universe inspired our cover story this month: Food tastes better outside. I am not ashamed. When an expression crosses the line from clever to hackneyed, it’s usually because it’s absolutely true. Food does taste better outside, even if there’s not a single scientific paper to back it up. I’ve been fortunate enough to dine in some incredible restaurants during my adult life, but ask me to recall my most memorable meals and the ones I enjoyed in nature spring to mind first. Ramen noodles mixed with peanut butter eaten from a dirty bowl on an outcrop in Washington’s Goat Rocks Wilderness. Chili mac and cheese shared with my two eldest kids at the base of New Mexico’s Jicarita…

BACK IN 1989, I was restless college freshman looking for a spring break alternative to South Padre Island. So I hopped in a van crammed with several fellow geology students and one brave professor, and we drove 1,400 miles from Minnesota to Big Bend, the first national park I had the opportunity to visit. The 1,252-square-mile southwest Texas expanse was stupefying in its beauty and immensity. We felt like we had the whole place to ourselves, which was almost true; that year, Big Bend recorded 281,728 visits, an average of less than one person per square mile per day. In 2021, the park received 581,000 visits, more than double the 1989 figure. Along with 43 other national parks, it set visitation records last year, driven largely by widespread cabin fever at…

NEW YORK CITY had a vibrant street-food scene long before the coronavirus outbreak put indoor dining on the back burner. In the late 19th century, working-class families patronized pushcarts selling oysters and sweet corn. The city’s famous hot dog stands have been a sidewalk staple since the Progressive Era. More recently, immigrant food-truck operators like the King of Falafel and the Dosa Man have become beloved figures. Yet the city’s outdoor dining scene had never experienced anything like the COVID-19 pandemic, which prompted thousands of restaurants to go alfresco. Yet “people were adamant about showing up for their favorite locales,” says Brooklyn photographer Brad Ogbonna. “They were going out in winter and pretending not to be cold in sidewalk seating arrangements.” Even though indoor dining is an option again, New…

THAT MONOLOGUE running inside your head—you know, the one that can unfurl at a rate exceeding several thousand words per minute—has been having a moment of late. It’s the topic of numerous sports-psychology studies and the star of the 2021 bestseller Chatter, by University of Michigan psychologist Ethan Kross. Taking control of one’s inner voice has transitioned from pat self-help bromide to battle-tested, evidence-based performance hack. That’s what we’ve been led to believe, anyway. In practice, once you get past the basic claim that the words inside your head matter, evidence that they can be turned to your advantage gets pretty thin on the ground. What exactly should you say to yourself? How often? And in what circumstances? These are the sorts of practical questions researchers are aiming to tackle. One…

A DECADE AGO, Cheryl Strayed had $85,000 in credit-card debt. She was a working mom taking care of two small children and grabbing whatever time she could to write. In April of 2012, while on a book tour for her new memoir, she got a text from her husband saying the rent check had bounced. The book she was promoting was Wild, her account of a 1995 hike covering 1,100 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail—from the Mojave Desert in Southern California to the Bridge of the Gods, which crosses the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington. During the hike she was 26 years old, on the trail alone, and fleeing the demons of divorce, heroin, and the untimely loss of her mother to cancer. She was carrying so much baggage,…

ADVENTURE athletes are among the most fearless people in the world—summiting exposed peaks during lightning storms, dropping off cliffs on bikes, and generally pushing the limits of what’s possible outdoors. Growing up, I aspired to nothing less. I skied on a downhill-racing and freeride team, and always felt strangely grounded when scaring myself in the mountains, whether I was dropping into a couloir on my favorite pair of Line skis, jamming down a steep rock garden on my bike, or sleeping in the woods on a camping trip. But as an adult, that courage was altered by a force I wasn’t prepared for: anxiety. Eventually, my grounded feeling in the backcountry was replaced by a tightened throat, a pounding heart, and a spiraling mind. I’d ask myself things like: What if…