Editor's note: This story was originally published on Sept. 21, 2024, updated on Dec. 19, 2024, to reflect the EXPLORE Act's passage in the U.S. Senate. The leg...
For those who have served in our nation’s military on land, by water or in the air, time spent in nature can be particularly meaningful. For some, being outside...
I was cross-country skiing up a long hill the first time I noticed my fingertips turn ghostly white and numb. It wasn’t bitterly cold out and I was wearing warm...
It’s the giving season, which means it’s time to start thinking of those special people on your list. But before you consider buying items shiny and new, we hav...
In 2015, REI Co-op closed its stores on Black Friday for the first time, giving its employees the day off to #OptOutside and encouraging others around the count...
As a certified forest therapy guide who helps people experience how healing immersion in nature can be, I often invite my forest bathing participants to share a...
Even during Antarctica’s warmest months, the temperature on Mount Vinson Massif plummets to -40°F, a cold made worse by katabatic winds exceeding 40 miles per h...
In August 2007, I packed up my childhood bedroom and moved an hour south to Richmond, Virginia, for college. During that last month of summer and the warm fall ...
A deceptively wise young man in Wayfarer shades once reminded us how quickly life goes. “If you don't stop and look around once in a while,” Ferris Bueller says...
In Chicago, I don’t summit mountain peaks and I don’t carry a heavy pack. My outings in nature include hikes along wood chip-covered trails at my neighborhood p...
Imagine yourself in a park on a sunny afternoon, surrounded by a swirl of laughter, birdsong, maybe a breeze blowing through the leaves. Or on the beach some su...
You probably know Amy Tan from her novels The Joy Luck Club and The Bonesetter’s Daughter or from her memoir, story collections and children’s books. But the Na...
