

In 2018, Mario Rigby completed his two-year trek walking and kayaking the length of Africa—from Cape Town, South Africa to Cairo, Egypt—and adventure that for many would seem wild and impossible. This expedition allowed…
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On a freezing night in early May, a search and rescue crew set off into a squall on a high-stakes mission: a 63-year-old man had vanished somewhere near Franconia Ridge. He’d been missing for three...
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In 2018, Mario Rigby completed his two-year trek walking and kayaking the length of Africa—from Cape Town, South Africa to Cairo, Egypt—and adventure that for many would seem wild and impossible. This expedition allowed…
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Returning for a second episode on the history of Black explorers, J.R. Harris takes us on a journey to the California Gold Rush, where we meet freed slave and Black frontiersman James Pierson Beckwourth, then…
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When recalling the history of Black explorers, J.R. Harris says the list is short. That’s not to say that that Black explorers weren’t out there, just that their stories are overshadowed by the familiar names…
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Growing up in rural South Africa, Sibusiso Vilane knew little of the world outside his own village. He had never hiked, never slept in a tent, never even seen a photo of some of…
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I want to smile, but I shiver instead. I should be happy. I’ve been planning my redemption tour of the Pemigewasset (Pemi) Loop, in New Hampshire’s White Mountain National Forest, ever since I had…
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Perched high in the rugged boreal forest in New Hampshire’s Franconia Notch, Liberty Springs Tentsite is a haven for backpackers seeking a place to bed down for the night and rest their aching muscles…
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The following essay—adapted here for length and style—appears in an anthology being published by members of Lois’s all-girls high school in Philadelphia. I love to walk. It is what I do. It is who…
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Kim Nilsen is leading me into a buzzing marshland, a couple of klicks northwest of New Hampshire’s White Mountains, when he suddenly nods toward a heaping pile of animal pellets. “One time,” he says,…
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New York’s 47,500-acre Harriman State Park—the Empire State’s second largest park—is an outdoor lover’s dream, offering pristine hiking, quiet water paddling, and remote camping a 30-mile car or train trip from Manhattan. AMC’s first camp in the area, the Stephen & Betsy Corman…
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