Growing up in Bellevue, Ohio, just south of Lake Erie, Brian Kaiser heard stories about locals who went ice sailing, gliding their boats across the frozen Great Lakes during winter’s most frigid months. In January he got a chance to learn more about this obscure sport at the North American championship, in which DN iceboats—a class of vessels conceived in the U.S. that feature a minimal hull and a perpendicular crosspiece with attached skates, or “runners”—raced across Black Lake, in Michigan. He donned crampons to tread the eight-inch-thick ice and taped a hand warmer to his camera after it began to freeze amid the zero-degree conditions. “This sport is a labor of love,” Kaiser says. “The weather is incredibly fickle, and some have to travel hundreds of miles in the dead of winter to get to the lake.” Ice sailing requires two key elements: strong winds to help propel the 12-foot boat, and a lake surface solid enough to support its 150-pound weight, plus the pilot. While this year’s competition went off without a hitch, ice sailing’s long-term future is uncertain. Climate change is causing milder winters in the region and has drastically decreased the lakes’ ice cover. While shooting these photos, Kaiser was as interested in spotlighting this unique pastime as he was sharing what may eventually be lost to the environmental crisis.

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All travelers planning to enter the Mount Everest region are now required to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, local officials . The new requirement comes after a disastrous spring, when dozens of trekkers on the mountain fell ill with the virus and several expeditions were canceled.

In an August 23 statement, officials said that only fully inoculated travelers will be allowed to enter the Khumbu region of Nepal, where Everest is located. Then, later in the statement, they conceded that unvaccinated people could in fact enter, as long as they provide a negative COVID-19 test. It’s unclear how this will be enforced, and unvaccinated travelers may have trouble finding tests.

“Getting a PCR test in the Khumbu is likely to prove very challenging,” ���ϳԹ��� contributor Kraig Becker wrote on . Plus, he explains, it doesn’t guarantee safety: travelers could be tested in the window between their exposure and contracting the virus, meaning they’d get negative results and fall ill several days later.

Over the course of the pandemic, Nepal’s government has employed an uneven defense against COVID. It initially tried to downplay the impact of COVID-19 on Everest, even denying the on the mountain. But it also implemented various travel restrictions, including requiring a negative test upon arrival in the country, a quarantine period, and a second negative test. However, as ���ϳԹ��� reported in April, these rules seemed to be solely self-enforced.

���ϳԹ���’s Everest contributor, Alan Arnette, who runs a summit coaching service in the Khumbu region, worries that the new requirements will suffer the same fate. Anecdotally, he says officials appear to be taking the COVID testing seriously, but he hasn’t heard of anyone having to quarantine because of a positive test. He also hasn’t seen the vaccine requirement enforced in the two weeks since the announcement.

Coronavirus cases in Nepal surged over the last month, as in many parts of the world, due to the Delta variant. So far, Nepal has seen a total of , with 17 percent of the total population being fully vaccinated. Local officials claim that 98 percent of residents in the Khumbu region over the age of 18 have been fully inoculated.

Guiding companies have developed their own safety protocols. Many outfitters, including U.S.-based outfitters Alpenglow Expeditions and International Mountain Guides and Austria-based Furtenbach ���ϳԹ���s, require staff and clientele to be vaccinated. IMG also canceled its fall season due to the Delta surge.

Lukas Furtenbach, founder of Furtenbach ���ϳԹ���s, expressed concern about how the regional vaccine requirement will be enforced, but he sees it as a step in the right direction, particularly for the regional economy. “Every requirement or safety protocol that is implemented is good and important since it will help the tourism industry,” he says.

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In nearly every interview, skateboarder Mariah Duran is asked about what it’s like to be a woman in a male-dominated sport. It’s easy to understand why: about of all skaters are male, and the sport has grappled with sexism over the years as female skaters for equal pay and fair sponsorship opportunities.

Yet almost every time she gets the question, Duran essentially says the same thing: she doesn’t think much about being a woman on a skateboard. And why would she? She’s just a skater working toward her goals. “It is kind of crazy how there is a pressure for women to try to break the gender barrier,” she says. “But it’s really like, we’re breaking our own barriers, and we just so happen to be women.”

As a two-time national champion and the United States’ in street skating—a style where skaters perform tricks on urban obstacles like stairs, handrails, and park benches—her hard work has paid off. Now the 24-year-old is headed to the Summer Olympics, where this month, for the first time ever, skaters from 26 countries will have the chance to compete, joining a handful of other newly debuting sports, including climbing, karate, and surfing. Duran is best known for executing a��, a difficult move she’s excited to show off in Tokyo.

It’s been a long path to get to the Olympic stage. Raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Duran got her first board when she was ten years old. She fell in love with it almost immediately and grew up skating with her two brothers, Elijah and Zeke. There was always a new trick to master, and the process of trying and failing felt limitless. Although she played several other sports, including baseball, softball, and basketball, she decided to focus solely on skating during her senior year of high school. Her mom was initially hesitant for her daughter to go all in with skating, but it soon became a family affair as Duran and her brothers began heading to competitions around the globe. “I had a good relationship with my brothers before we started skating, and this has just helped it grow so much,” she says. “We travel together, and we trust one another.”

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In May��2018, Claire Nelson was hiking on the Lost Palms Oasis Trail in California’s��Joshua Tree National Park��when she got lost and fell 25 feet while trying to scramble over a boulder field. Her pelvis shattered, leaving her unable to move. With no cell signal to call for help, the��36-year-old waited��for��four days before��rescue crews found��and airlifted her out. Her story quickly made ��and became one of the park’s most publicized rescues in recent history.

In a new memoir, , Nelson gives readers an intimate look at the near-death experience and how it reshaped her life.��In recent years, fatalities and injuries��have become all too common in Joshua Tree, where an ��has��dangerously coincided��with limited search and rescue resources. In April, another hiker while climbing a boulder there and had to be airlifted to a nearby trauma center, and the park’s search and rescue team estimates it could spend 12,000 hours this year on trainings and active cases—a significant jump from the��3,589 hours it��spent on both in 2019.��Yet Nelson’s story stands out for its seemingly miraculous ending; it isn’t often that a person survives four days alone in the desert heat with minimal food and water��and a severe injury to boot.

Originally from New Zealand, Nelson moved to London in her early twenties to work as a freelance writer before becoming an editor at a food and travel magazine. After 13 years in the city, she needed a change, so��she decided to move to Canada to start fresh. Soon after arriving, Nelson traveled to Joshua Tree to house-sit for some friends, eager to find solace and meaning in the outdoors. That’s when she set out on the day hike that went horribly wrong.

After falling into a hidden canyon far off the trail, Nelson prepared to die. She had less than five liters of water with her, so she began to drink her own urine, nibble at her lip balm��for sustenance, and record videos on her camera for her family and friends to watch after her body was found. She hadn’t told anyone about her hiking plans before leaving, and there was little hope that anyone would discover��her.

The lack of water quickly grew unbearable. “Dehydration is a god-awful business,” Nelson writes. “It starts in the mouth, the initial pang of craving quite subtle and easy to ignore, but the signals get more insistent. Over time your tongue becomes increasingly dry and scratchy, thickening like a woollen mitten, sticking against the sides of your mouth, like Velcro… From there you feel it in your head; a slowly increasing pressure throbs inside your skull, as if your brain is shrinking in on itself, withering like a piece of dried fruit.” She started fantasizing about Diet Coke, among other refreshments, willing them to be real.

Despite her dire situation, Nelson got crafty. In an effort to more easily capture her urine and keep herself clean (a near impossibility since she could barely control her bladder), she used tweezers to cut off her underwear. To protect herself from the unrelenting sun, she covered her body with the belongings she brought in her daypack: a park map, a bandana, and a spare T-shirt. She tried to stay cool by dragging her body into the sparsely available shade, though this caused excruciating pain in her pelvis. On the second day, she fashioned a sort of umbrella with a grocery bag held up with a stick.

The book would be complete as a survival narrative, but Nelson is��also attempting to tell a personal story in the vein of��Cheryl Strayed’s : she intersperses her account of the accident with descriptions of the experiences that led her to Joshua Tree, including her struggle with depression in London and formative moments as a child in New Zealand. Though Nelson’s writing about her time in the desert is vivid and unique, these background sections sometimes feel stagnant.��She frequently brings up her tendency to push people away and her inability to ask for help because she “hated feeling weak” and was “embarrassed to have a weakness,” using language that can��occasionally feel repetitive. This structure, however, allows readers to understand how the fall was��a moment of reckoning for Nelson:��her prolonged isolation helped her come to terms with her insecurities and loneliness��and understand that it’s OK��to need support from others. Nelson is hardly the first person to have had these kinds of revelations after a near-death experience, but the universality of the struggles she faces in her personal life is��part of��what makes her story engaging for a wide audience, whether readers have spent a lot of time in the backcountry or not.

On the fourth day, Nelson was drifting in and out of consciousness when she heard the sound of a helicopter. She screamed and waved her makeshift umbrella as the helicopter flew overhead, in the hope that the rescuers inside would see her. Then, finally, a voice yelled out, “CLAIRE, WE SEE YOU… WE’RE GOING TO COME AND GET YOU.” Reading this, you can’t help but feel emotional; rescuers later said they didn’t expect to find Nelson alive.

After taking time to slow down and focus on her health, Nelson found herself back in Joshua Tree the next year with friends, on the same trail. “I thought of those bleakest moments when I believed I would never again do something like this, never again be back in the land of the living,” she writes. “But hiking in the desert with friends… It was the most discomforting and wonderful and humbling feeling.”

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In December, the driver of a box truck plowed into a group of cyclists��riding along U.S. Highway 95 south of Las Vegas. Five people died in the crash, and it was later discovered��that the driver had��methamphetamine in his system. At ���ϳԹ���, we were horrified by the tragedy,��which was covered in and news, but we also knew it was part of a troubling trend: record numbers of��cyclists (and��thousands��of��pedestrians)��on our nation’s��roads are being killed by drivers often without any media attention beyond a brief��local news story. In 2018, in crashes with drivers, the deadliest year for people on bikes since 1990. In 2019, while the total number of deaths , cities like New York recorded their highest number of cyclist fatalities ever.

Last January, in response to those disturbing numbers,��we launched the��#2020CyclingDeaths project, which aimed to track every person on a bike killed by a driver in the U.S. over the course of the year.��In the end, we recorded 697 cyclist deaths.��Since we were only able to count deaths reported by local media, the actual total is likely significantly��higher.��The five victims of the Nevada crash were numbers��662��through 666��in our database.

In late December, we partnered with the nonprofit , founded by Trisalyn Nelson, a professor in geographic information science at the University of California at��Santa Barbara. BikeMaps.org has been collecting crowdsourced information about cyclist crashes, near misses, traffic hazards (like potholes and road construction), and bike thefts in the U.S. and Canada since 2014. Its��team helped us analyze the data we collected and synthesize the information. While the overall number of cyclists deaths in 2020 appears to be lower than the past couple of years, likely because of the spring lockdowns in response to the pandemic, there is no sign that our streets are getting safer. Here’s what we found.

Number of Cyclists Killed by Drivers��in 2020: 697

The vast majority were men.

Percentage of Deaths That Were Hit-and-Runs

In more than a quarter of the crashes we recorded, the driver fled the scene.

Where the Deaths Happened

We found that fatal crashes were occurring all��over the country. We recorded deaths in 47��states and nearly every major metropolitan area.

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In the early hours of June 11, Ezra Smith��was sleeping in a tent a short ways from the Beehive Basin Trailhead in Big Sky, Montana. Smith, a 20-year-old junior at��the University of Colorado Boulder, was camping with a friend, but they soon realized they weren’t alone.��

Here’s her story, as told to ���ϳԹ���.

Around 3 A.M., I woke up to my friend Leah screaming. I was confused. Just six hours earlier, we’d settled into our sleeping bags inside our tent. I’d been sleeping soundly, but even before I could get my bearings, I realized what she was yelling about—the top��of our tent had fully collapsed onto our legs, and we were being crushed by something.

I’ve spent the past couple summers in Montana cross-country��ski training with the CU��Boulder ski team. The winter season starts in November, but we begin training in May. Each morning��the team drives from Bozeman to Big Sky, where we ski during the day before returning to Bozeman in the evenings. The night before our first day in Big Sky, though, my teammate Leah and I wanted to do something different. Instead of driving out with the team the next day, we thought a night camping at Beehive Basin��would be fun.

The drive was short—just an hour—with a few stops along the way to pick up some gear, a canister of bear spray included. We parked off the Beehive Basin Trailhead and walked about 500 feet to set up our tent along a pine tree–wooded ridge. By 9 P.M., after eating some tofu stir-fry for dinner, changing into clean clothes to sleep in, and stuffing away��leftover food inside the Subaru, we were ready to sleep. I usually bring a snack inside the tent with me, but tonight I didn’t.��I’d recently heard stories about bear attacks and sightings in .

Before tucking in, we thought about��how exactly we should sleep—a decision all campers have to make once they realize they set up the tent on an incline—and ultimately decided it would be better to have our feet facing downslope. We zipped in and chatted about our plans for the next day before drifting off.

When I heard the animal’s heavy breathing, I knew immediately that it was a bear. There was so much��pressure growing in my left leg, like nothing I’d ever felt before, but I figured it was from the bear’s weight. At that moment, all I could think about was grabbing the bear spray. But it was useless to us now, located at the bottom of the tent—under the bear. I don’t know how long Leah and I screamed, but we must have disturbed the bear enough. The animal climbed off our tent and was gone. We never saw it.

Leah and I sat in our tent��crying and shaking. I didn’t know much about bears, but I was worried it would come back to fight if it felt provoked, so I began searching for the bear spray. We didn’t want to be caught dashing uphill to the car if the bear was hanging around outside��the tent. After��an hour, we decided to move to the car. No bear in sight, we ran. Upon making it to the car, we headed to the trailhead—Leah driving, me in the passenger seat—to wait for our teammates.

As we drove down the mountain, I was reminded of my leg, which hurt when I ran from the tent to the car, though I was still too worked up to think about much pain. Pulling off my pants, I gasped. My entire left leg was swollen, and on my thigh were four perfectly placed punctures. But oddly enough, my pants weren’t ripped at all. I assumed the bear must have stepped on me. A couple hours later, my coach and teammates arrived, and my coach had the same suspicion: I was stepped on. We figured that, if I felt up to it, I might as well ski. So I did, for three and a half hours. I felt all right, though by the end of my cross-country runs, I was in severe pain as my leg continued to swell.

We drove to a hospital in Bozeman, where I was sure the doctor would tell me what I already knew: that I’d been stepped on by a bear. My doctor couldn’t be certain, so he conferred with a wildlife specialist from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. The specialist, on the other hand, was confident: these were bite marks, likely from an adult bear, though it was hard to know whether��it was a grizzly or black bear. The wildlife specialist estimated that the bite wasn’t��aggressive, and that the bear probably��got caught up in our tent while sniffing around it. “Initial details of the incident indicate the bear’s behavior was likely investigative, not predatory, and that the bite was defensive,” the FWP later said in a . If it were a real bite, they told me, my leg would have been completely ruined.

I was given some antibiotics and instructed to wrap and ice my leg. Though the muscle and tissue in my thigh quickly turned squishy with damage, and I wasn’t able to do physical activity for a week, less than a month later I was back out skiing. The FWP patrolled the area where Leah and I camped��but unfortunately wasn’t able to track the bear. It rained that week, so they couldn’t find the bear’s tracks, which was a bummer.

A couple things stand out to me as I look back on the experience. The summer before, I was warned repeatedly to buy bear spray before going to Montana, but I didn’t.��Even though we didn’t end up using the spray this year, the reminders to buy the stuff felt like a foreboding of what was to come. I also shudder to think about what would have happened if Leah and I had slept with our heads at the other end of the tent, which��we considered. Leah could have suffocated, and I might have been bitten on my face.

Two months later, I’m now back in Boulder for my third year of college. Though we’re not sure there will be a regular ski season due to the pandemic, I’m still training, grateful to have recovered so quickly��except for a couple lasting marks on my leg. I was lucky��but still feel traumatized by the experience. I don’t plan to camp again anytime soon—if I do, it’ll be in the desert. I know bear attacks are rare, but the fear of waking up at 3 A.M.��to another one at my mountain campsite may keep me away for just a while longer.

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Across the country, camping and RV rentals are soaring as Americans heed the words of COVID-19 health experts: it’s safer to be outdoors than indoors. Rather than use your campground as a base camp, why not treat it as destination in and of itself?��These sites offer plenty of adventure right from your tent and breathtaking views to enjoy during your downtime. Be sure to��check individual websites for COVID-19 guidelines or restrictions before you head out.��

West

Cape Lookout State Park Campground, Oregon��

Located 80 miles from Portland, this��park has ten miles of hiking trails and more than 170 beachfront ��(from $21) along a two-mile peninsula. Hike the 2.6-mile trail to the tip of the cape for views of migrating whales in fall.

Southwest

Mogollon Campground, Arizona

The Mogollon Rim is a 200-mile-long��limestone and granite cliff located two hours northeast of Phoenix. After hiking along the 4.2-mile ��or kayaking on secluded , pitch your tent or park your RV at the ��(from $18). A short walk will take you to the rim’s edge for sunset views over .

Midwest

Old Man’s Cave Campground, Ohio

Two hours east of Cincinnati, is teeming with impressive forest��and waterfalls. This ��(from $23) offers the easiest access to picturesque Old Man’s Cave via the two-mile Rim Trail. Mountain bikers will enjoy the park’s shady trails.

Northeast

Hither Hills State Park Campground, New York

While you might not expect such an expanse of wildnerness right next to the Hamptons, Hither Hills has 190����(from $7) tucked away in bluffs that border the Atlantic Ocean, a 40-acre freshwater lake, and lush woodlands. Wake up to waves crashing along the shoreline, then explore the dunes at Napeague Harbor, take a hike through Russian olive and pine trees, and surf or kayak in the ocean.

Southeast

DeSoto State Park Campground, Alabama��

Located 100 miles northeast of Birmingham, this park is situated��on 2,392-foot Lookout Mountain, which is coated with vibrant foliage every fall. Its 3,502 acres include��94 ��(from $15),��half a dozen waterfalls, and nearby��Little River Canyon, which has some of the toughest rock climbing in the state.

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When Emily B. Martin was a kid, she had lots of dream jobs, including��writer,��illustrator, and��National Park Service��ranger. But all three at once? She never imagined she’d hit that jackpot. Today, however, that’s exactly what she’s doing,��using her experiences as a park ranger��as inspiration for��popular adventure-fantasy novels.

Martin’s latest book, ,��is an engrossing story��that takes place in a��troubled world full of dramatic landscapes. It��covers hefty themes like conservation, human trafficking, and gender equality, and its settings��are inspired by environments��Martin knows well.��“I first conceived of Sunshield when I was working in Yellowstone as a ranger,” she says. “Like many of my stories, it was really the natural setting that fueled the story.”��

It is the first title��in a duology that Martin is calling��The Outlaw Road, set in the fantastical Eastern World that��she created��and��explored��. Martin illustrated the maps of the Eastern World that are included in the beginning of the book, helping readers better visualize��the land��as she does: the dusty deserts and canyons of the country of Alcoro were inspired by her time working at , located in the��Sangre de Cristo Mountains of��New Mexico, while��the lush scenery of Moquoia, another Eastern World nation,��is meant to invoke��the maple, cedar, and redwood forests of the Pacific Northwest.��

Sunshield is��noticeably absent of vehicles and technology and seems��to take place sometime during the 19th century. It��follows three protagonists��as they fight to end a slave-labor system that powers��factories and mining quarries, tears families apart, and physically abuses and exploits bonded workers. The main characters’ lives intersect to reveal how an individual’s choices influence the people and landscape around them—a cornerstone of conservation philosophy that Martin wove��into the plot. First, there’s��Lark (also known as the Sunshield Bandit), a Robin Hood–like outlaw who rescues bonded workers by holding up the stagecoaches transporting them. Then we have��Veran,��a sometimes-insecure diplomat hoping to dismantle the labor system. Finally,��Tamsin is a prisoner captured for speaking the truth about the system’s corruption, a narrative that becomes��the focal point of the book’s climatic rescue mission.��

Martin��tackles subjects like human-rights abuses��and socioeconomic inequality in a compelling way.��The bonded workers Lark rescues, for��instance, have all experienced emotional and physical traumas, which are��discussed��frankly. Many characters have dark skin—a far cry from fantasy literature of the past, which��reflected predominantly white men. There’s also��feminist bent to the story, one found in��Martin’s��books more generally.��“As a park ranger, I work with women who are firefighters, cops, and bear researchers,” Martin says. “Strong female characters are the least fantastical part of these stories.” The result is a��believable—and better yet, relatable—set of female characters.

The book also contains subplots��about topics��like ecological interconnectedness and species loss.��At one point in the story, hundreds of thousands of birds begin��to die��outside Moquoia’s glass palace after flying into its transparent, man-made walls; simultaneously, people start to get sick with a deadly flu caused by mosquito bites. Martin raises questions about the overall ecology behind those��events in her fantasy world: Could the influx of mosquitoes be related to the dying birds? Are the birds’ deaths preventable?��

Martin, who now spends her summers working as a ranger in Yellowstone and Great Smoky Mountains��National Parks, knew a thing or two about the American landscape and how to get people to care about it even before she was an author. She has a master’s degree in parks management, and her��graduate studies focused on assessing how ranger programs could more effectively encourage visitors to support preserved areas.��“The more we start to see the impact we have, we can’t get away from it,” she says.

Martin hopes her stories will start a larger conversation��about��social issues��and the environmental catastrophes that she sees in her��ranger work.��“The power of fiction is introducing these issues in such a way that you see it played out on the page, but you’re removed from it,” she says. “Awareness can start in a fantasy or fiction novel.”

It’s this attitude—that together we can change the turbulent state of our world—that Martin relays to readers in Sunshield, using the plot to show how individual actions can make a big difference. Even if that ethos feels fantastically optimistic during these��grim times, it’s a step in the right direction.

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When returned to the skies in January, the newly revived brand didn’t know��that a global pandemic would soon halt nearly all air travel around the world. Yet while COVID-19 has grounded most flights from major airlines, Eastern has found a way to keep busy, working in partnership with the State Department to help bring��stranded U.S. citizens��home from��Central and South America.��

For those who remember, the name Eastern Air Lines (formerly spelled as such) sparks��memories of the golden age of air travel. A prominent player for most of the 20th century, the Miami-based airline��hit its peak in the 1950s before bankruptcy grounded its fleet in 1991. An initial��, in 2015, was short-lived, but in��January, Eastern returned with a flight from Guayaquil, Ecuador, to New York City, along with a whole new for the 21st century. The airline planned to introduce its next flight, from New York City��to Georgetown, Guyana, in mid-March, and another route to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, later this year.��

Then the pandemic hit, and Eastern had to re-strategize. As airports around the world began to close, thousands of American tourists became . The State Department reached out to Eastern to help get citizens home from Guyana after the airline successfully flew��charters��to return medical students based in Grenada and Panama City to the U.S. in early March.��The airline then started��a repatriation flight from Georgetown to Miami��on March 13. This came just as the State Department launched a on March 19, ordering a plan for��government-funded charter flights��to��be��conducted by commercial airlines. Repatriated passengers would��be expected to��eventually ��upon their return.

Eastern saw an opportunity. Unlike that are repatriation flights and determining fares based on an agreement��with��the federal��government, Eastern��sets its��own fares and only works with the��government to determine how many passengers to expect on each flight. Its repatriation flights cost up to $2,000 one-way, which CEO Steve Harfst��says is because the airline flies the planes from the U.S. empty, so passengers are essentially paying for a round-trip ticket. The cost is relatively comparable to��other airlines, with examples that include a $1,000 United from Lima, Peru, to Houston, and nearly $1,500 from Marrakech, Morocco, to any of ten��U.S. cities via various airlines, according to .��

Since Eastern’s��inaugural flight, it has returned��17,013 passengers��on 102 flights from 15 countries across Central and South America, including Peru, Argentina, and Nicaragua. It has��also flown 3,412 non-American travelers from the U.S. to their home countries.��On average, repatriation flights have been 68 percent full, and the airline hasn’t turned a significant profit. “On some of the flights, we’ve lost money. Some of the flights, we haven’t. On average��we’re probably just barely above breakeven,” Harfst says. “We make a commitment to fly the flight, so we’re somewhat taking a risk and believing that the U.S. embassy is being real with the numbers [of passengers] that they expect. But if 30 people showed up, we’d still fly the plane.”��

Coming from a fledgling airline with fewer than 200 employees, this initiative is surprising. Before the pandemic, Eastern was banking on business from a specific demographic: adventurous millennials. Calling itself the “explorer brand,” it hoped that a combination of budget fares to underserved adventure locales, a liberal baggage policy (one bag of up to 70 pounds free of charge), and smart marketing would win over a generation that prides itself on spending money on experiences, not stuff. Eastern’s 2018 internal study deemed Guayaquil, Georgetown, and Cabo San Lucas up-and-coming South American adventure destinations.

But some weren’t so convinced that the approach of tapping into such a specific market would work. “It could be tough to sustain a business with such a narrow focus,” says Lori Ranson, a senior analyst at the Sydney-based . She points to Air France’s attempt in 2017 to target younger travelers with its now defunct subsidiary,��,��through things like budget fares, colorful seats, and casual flight-attendant attire.��However, Harfst says these are “airline frills”��that don’t add value to a traveler’s experience, adding that Eastern wants to provide “hassle-free service”��for its passengers.

In February, before the pandemic hit, Harfst told ���ϳԹ��� that he anticipated Eastern’s flights would be 50 to 70 percent less expensive than other airlines, citing cost-cutting measures like operating wide-body aircraft that allow for more seating and luggage. (JetBlue does not have wide-body aircraft, though other airlines, like American and United, do.) The company also owns its fleet. (According to a 2018 ��by the Centre for Aviation, half of the world’s commercial planes are leased.)��Ranson noted that the company’s spending costs would need to be “well below its competitors” in order to meet its proposed fares.��But over the course of February and early March, Eastern’s fares were comparable with its��competition.��

When we contacted Harfst��again this month and asked if those��cheaper fares would still be possible following the pandemic, Harfst says he didn’t know, though he expects all airline fares to increase after a complete return to travel. While there may be initial deals to attract fliers back, airlines will eventually have to make up for lost revenue. “The costs [of flying] don’t change,” he says. “It’s��fair to assume that, regardless of what does happen, fares are going to be more expensive.”��

As for the future, Harfst believes that Eastern could come out ahead of other airlines post-pandemic. As a small business, it received support from the CARES Act, but Harfst says its low-cost structure makes the company more resilient. He notes that as a startup company with fewer—and newer—employees, it doesn’t have to cover the higher compensation of tenured members (though he adds that Eastern pays its employees a competitive wage). In addition to lower labor costs and the fact that it owns its own planes, Harfst says��the shrinking travel industry will result in more underserved markets, allowing for Eastern to pursue its original business model. “We think that there’ll be domestic opportunities that will be open to us, as routes and markets are either abandoned or left with less capacity,” he says, citing the airline’s��recent application for a domestic nonstop flight from New York to San Diego. “There are still people all around the world who will need to or want to travel that now won’t��have that opportunity—or if they do, it’s a two- or three-stop flight. Those small markets are still very attractive to a company like Eastern.”

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In late March,��the United Nations published the , a comprehensive look at what makes the most contented countries work so well. For the seventh year in a row, the Nordic nations of Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden dominated the top ten. While rankings are based on several factors, including political rights and economic equality, these countries have a few key metrics in common: low corruption rates, universal public services, and great access to the outdoors.��

For many of these countries, not only is nature within easy reach, but it’s an important part of their cultures. For the Scandinavian nations that take up six of the top-ten��spots, the term friluftsliv, which literally translates to “open-air living,” denotes “a philosophical lifestyle based on experiences of the freedom in nature and the spiritual connectedness with the landscape,” according to��“,” an article in The Canadian Journal of Environmental Education.��

Sweden, which ranked seventh on the list, that nearly one-third of all residents participate in outdoor recreation at least once a week and, in a country that strives for economic equality, nearly 50 percent of the population has . Denmark, ranked second, has for children to encourage learning in the outdoors at a young age, and one found that children from greener neighborhoods were less likely to develop mental illness. The country is also home to the world’s most bike-friendly city, Copenhagen (though it’s not alone: many of the happiest countries have ). And Finland, which topped the list, boasts��188,000 inland lakes and forests that cover 75 percent of the country.

Finland, Norway, and Sweden also have “freedom to roam” policies, or which allow residents and visitors alike��to hike or camp nearly anywhere, including on private land. It’s also part of the region’s approach to work-life balance: many businesses in Scandinavian countries encourage employees to go outside each day, even that set aside time in the workday for fresh air. The most important part of their outdoor philosophy, though, is how they embrace the cold, dark winter months, as is expressed in the popular saying��of Norwegian origin that’s now used throughout the region:��“There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes.” Parents in Scandinavia are known to let their����in freezing temperatures to help them sleep better and��longer, Finns embrace harsh conditions with their sauna culture, and when the Danes and Swedes aren’t skiing, sledding, or to tobogganing, they’re practicing hygge, which loosely translates to being cozy.

The other countries that rounded out the top ten—Switzerland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Austria, and Luxembourg—are also well-known adventure hubs. With its iconic snowcapped peaks, Switzerland is one of Europe’s most popular ski and hiking destinations. New Zealand has a system of ten Great Walks that allow even relatively inexperienced backcountry hikers to experience some of the country’s most beautiful landscapes for days and weeks at a time. The Netherlands is an established��haven for cyclists, with residents making of their daily trips via bike.��

The UN’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network bases its annual report on six categories: GDP per capita, life expectancy, social support, trust and corruption, perceived freedom to make life decisions, and generosity. The rankings are largely based on findings from the , a yearly survey conducted in more than 160 nations that evaluates respondents’ perceived quality of life .��

By comparison, the U.S ranks 18th in terms of overall happiness, a move up from 19th in 2019. While this can be seen as a good sign, the fluctuation among the top 20 happiest countries is marginal. The U.S. has never cracked the top ten, perhaps in part because Americans are spending less time outdoors. According to an Outdoor Foundation study released in January, nearly half the U.S. population doesn’t participate in outdoor recreation, with only 18 percent of people getting out for physical activity at least once a week. In addition, Americans took one billion fewer trips outside in 2018 than they did in 2008.��

Beyond their appreciation for the outdoors, additional aspects of the top-ten��societies likely contributed to their residents’ well-being. Most have universal health care systems, offer free college education, have substantial��, and are among some of the wealthiest countries in the world. By comparison, the unhappiest countries include Afghanistan, Yemen, and Palestine, which have continuously been racked with wars and conflict in recent history.��

It to think about what the future will look like, as social-distancing guidelines cause feelings of isolation and��cabin fever,��and . But if you’re looking for ways to increase your own well-being and set in motion a more outdoors-based lifestyle once this is all over, start now by following these rules for getting outside safely.

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