Imagine a freezing city in the dead of winter. But instead of people tucked away inside and events and gatherings canceled until the snow melts, the city brings life to the coldest season of the year by throwing parties around fire pits, holding outdoor concerts under twinkle lights, and encouraging its residents and visitors to get outside on ice skates, bikes, andÌęcross-country skis. These cities around the world celebrate the chillier months in a big way, proving that frigid weather doesn’t have to mean being shut in.

Denver, Colorado

From downtown Denver, you can see the snowcapped Rocky Mountains towering on the horizon to the west. A love of winter runs deep here. From held outdoors at Red Rocks Amphitheater to a in February, there’s no shortage of things to be excited about during the colder months. To get people exploring downtown during the season, the city sets up a two-mile , plus , with prizes for those who successfully make their way around Denver’s art, landmarks, and history.

, a hip zone that opened in Denver’s LoDo neighborhood in 2017, was designed to be utilized year-round, with heaters, lights, and patio dining. This year the block is hosting an every weekend between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and a February Mardi Gras celebration. The block’s boutique 172-room (from $154) has a Snowed In package that includes cookies and hot cocoa with your stay. Or head to the renovated , the historic train depot that’s now full of cafĂ©s and shops, where you can ride a from downtown straight to the slopes of the —slated to launch on weekends in early January and run through late March.

žé±đČâ°ìÂáČč±čĂ­°ì, Iceland

This close to the Arctic Circle, there’s very little daylight at the height of winter (less than four hours of sun on the shortest day of the year), but Iceland’s capital city makes up for the darkness with ampleÌęfestivities. A free-to-access pops up each winter in a downtown square, the festival celebrates contemporary music in January, and a brightens up the streets in February. To honor the Norse god Thor, some žé±đČâ°ìÂáČč±čĂ­°ì restaurants host Thorrablot, a midwinter feast with traditional foods to celebrate the season.

Indoor food halls are a fun way to dine on street fare in a warmer setting than the street itself: what used to be the city’s bus terminal is now the indoor , and a former fish factory in the old harbor district is now the nine-vendor . Want to be outside? Go soak in one of the city’s many year-round geothermally heated pools—there’s even a free-to-access sandy geothermal beach at . The (from $183) rents cruiser bikes for exploring downtown all winter long.

Cambridge, Massachusetts

The college town of Cambridge gets plenty of winter storms—the Boston area averages around 50 inches of snow annually—but that doesn’t mean residents stay inside when the weather turns cold. This is the city that refuses to close its farmers’ market just because it’s icy. The popular , held on Saturdays from January to April, will return to the gym at the Cambridge Community Center this year, with vendors selling local produce, seafood, and baked goods.

In Cambridge’s , what was once a parking lot has been transformed into a year-round pop-up market, with over a dozen mini storefronts selling their wares, and outdoor murals, string lights, and warming stations enhancing the atmosphere. The city is working to design protected bike lanes for snowy conditions and currently offers city-run on winter bicycling basics, where you’ll get tips on route planning and layering while bike commuting during inclement weather.

Copenhagen, Denmark

The Danes invented the concept of hygge, that now global trend of creating a warm, cozy atmosphere, so it’s no wonder the capital city of Copenhagen maintains a good vibe come wintertime. Cycling is a main mode of transportation here, and that doesn’t stop in the colder months. With shorter days at this time of year, the city even swapped out its streetlights for smarter, more energy-efficient bulbs that shine brighter when a cyclist approaches.

Things to do come winter: Take in a jazz concert at , a nationwide festival held in February. Enjoy the , also in February, with light installations throughout the city. Or ski down a former power plant at . Additionally, you can ice-skate for free at public squares, like , or skate and grab food from , a street-food market with an ice rink. To warm up, go soak in a hot tub or sweat in a sauna with views of the city at , a collection of floating and stationary tubs in the harbor of northern Copenhagen. Winter swimming is surprisingly popular here—last yearÌę were added to the harbor.

Edmonton, Canada

A decade ago, city planners in Edmonton got together to change the city’s approach to winter. Instead of building indoor malls and sending people inside, how could the city help people love the frosty season? Their solution was , which united a team of urban-planning experts tasked with making it easier for Edmontonians to get outside in the cold.

Local ski clubs offered free ski lessons to newbies, bike lanes were cleared of snow to promote winter cycling, and winter outdoor markets popped up around the city. Public spaces and outdoor patios were redesigned with fire pits, string lights, and heated seats. All those winter improvements now reappear every year starting around November. This February, the ten-day will feature ice skating, snow sculptures, and music, or you can compete in ax throwing and canoe races down a ski hill at Ìęthat same month.

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Minneapolis is the city where ice fishing and pond hockey get folks outside in subzero temperatures, where bike paths are plowed for winter cyclists, and where the taproom and outdoor beer garden at Ìęare popular no matter what the weather is doing. The take place here each January, and at the ten-day , held in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul in late January, chefs cook over outdoor grills, artists and filmmakers debut their work, and experts host workshops on everything from winter bird-watching to walking meditation. This winter you’ll be able to walk through LED-lit ice sculptures and tunnels as part of the new installment.

At Theodore Wirth Regional Park, winter recreation is king: the city-owned park hosts an in February and has 20 miles of cross-country trails, affordable ski rentals and lessons, sledding hills, singletrack for fat-tire biking, and lakes for ice fishing. There are many other places to cross-country ski and snowshoe, too. The state’s gets you access to any trails within state parks or state forests; it costs $10 a day or $25 for the year. In addition,Ìę offers free snowshoe rentals in many city-owned parks.

Sapporo, Japan

Host of the 1972 Winter Olympic Games, Sapporo is known as one of the snowiest cities in the world, with an average snowfall of about 16 feet. But instead of getting buried by all that powder, citizens carve it into giant castles and snow slides. The city’s now famous , held at Odori Park in February, attracts millions of people and has been running since 1950. It features elaborate snow and ice sculptures as tall as buildings.

The festival isn’t the only thing to do in Sapporo in winter. located within the city and accessible via city bus, is open until 10 P.M.Ìęand has lessons and gear rentals for beginners, as well as the biggest halfpipe in Japan for everyone else. Afterward, slurp a bowl of steaming ramen at , an alleyway lit up by paper lanterns, with a collection of over a dozen ramen shops, or soak in an onsen at , a hot-springs resort just outside the city.

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In late March,Ìęthe 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.Ìę

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-tenÌęspots, 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 toÌę“,” an article in The Canadian Journal of Environmental Education.Ìę

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, boastsÌę188,000 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 alikeÌęto 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 sayingÌęof Norwegian origin that’s now used throughout the region:Ìę“There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes.” Parents in Scandinavia are known to let theirÌęÌęin freezing temperatures to help them sleep better andÌęlonger, 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 establishedÌęhaven for cyclists, with residents making of their daily trips via bike.Ìę

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 .Ìę

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.Ìę

Beyond their appreciation for the outdoors, additional aspects of the top-tenÌęsocieties likely contributed to their residents’ well-being. Most have universal health care systems, offer free college education, have substantialÌę, 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.Ìę

It to think about what the future will look like, as social-distancing guidelines cause feelings of isolation andÌęcabin fever,ÌęČčČÔ»ć . 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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On a cold, windy December day in Denmark, Amager Bakke might look, at least through severely fogged goggles, like any other ski slope. Near the top, helmeted skiers slalom down steep black-diamond runs, while at the bottom, headphone-wearing snowboarders hit jumps and rails. An instructor schools children in the art of the pizza wedge, while two friends giggle after one takes a tumble near the safety netting. At the nearby lodge, people enjoy glasses of aprĂšs-ski glogg.

Wipe the goggles, and a whole other reality emerges. Amager Bakke, or CopenHill,Ìęas it’s been dubbed, is a 462,848-square-foot waste-to-energy plant—which just happens to have a ski slope on its roof—rising like a glittering aluminum iceberg from the flat plains of a semi-industrial section of Amager (pronounced, inexplicably, “am-ah”), an island that comprises part ofÌęthe city of Copenhagen.

Standing at the 279-foot summit of what is now one of the city’s tallest structures presents a surreal spectacle: skiers whooshing down a vast carpet of green Neveplast, a synthetic “dry skiing” surface from Italy, amidÌęa staggeringÌępanoramaÌęthat’sÌędominated by the smokestacks of nearby biomass plants and, behind them, the gloomy, fog-shrouded expanse of the North Sea, dotted with massive wind turbines. Like the writer Don DeLillo’s “postmodern sunsets,” it’s at once inspiringly beautiful and vaguely apocalyptic.

Walking around the windswept peak, I run into Chemmy Alcott, a now retired English ski racer and four-time Olympian, who’s filming a segment for the and has just completed a run on silicone-coated skis (a required lubricant on CopenHill).

“It’s really quite epic,” she says. No stranger to artificial snow, she tells me that she finds the stubbier Neveplast faster than she’s used to. “It’s not boring,” she said of Amager Bakke, praising the “undulating terrain” and the strange experience of skiing through the vaporous plumes of steam being vented by the plant. “For a momentÌęyou lose awareness, and then you come out the other side,” she says. “It’s like when you skydive and go through a cloud.”

CopenHill, which, along with the plant below, is ownedÌębyÌę (ARC),Ìęoffers more than skiing. You can simply hike to the summit on the marked trailÌęfor the best view in Copenhagen, stopping to admire the wild strawberries growing on landscaped sections to one side of the slope (where a fox was recently spied). You can also run that path up (there’s already a Strava segment).ÌęIf you’ve any gas left, there are CrossFit bars at the top. “Last weekend we had a race with 450 people dressed as Santa Claus,”ÌęCecilie Nielsen, CopenHill’s head of customer relations, tells me. “It was awesome.”

Come spring, one of the world’s tallest climbing walls, a twisting and weaving ascent, will openÌęon a corner of the building, which will eventuallyÌębe laced with greenÌęas the structure’s built-in aluminum window boxes begin to bloom. And, lest they forget why they are there, climbers, as they traverse along the holds, will get occasional views into the plant itself,Ìęwhere soaring apses supportÌęthe huge and complex workings that turn Danish garbage into Danish heat and electricity.

That aÌęcutting-edge waste-to-energy facilityÌęnow also boasts the best skiing in Denmark—call it the powder plant—is thanks to native son Bjarke Ingels, one of the world’s best-known architectsÌęand an espouser of a way of thinking he’s called “sustainable hedonism,” a near oxymoronic philosophy that dares to ask the question: Can saving the world be fun?

Ingels seems to have a thing for roofs.

When I first met him in Copenhagen in 2006, we were standing atop a building he’d designed along with his former business partner, Julien De Smedt. Called the , it serves asÌęa sailing club with a youth center. Lacking outdoor space, the architects fashioned the roof into a swooping, skateboard-park-like deck.

Strolling through the vast range of his subsequent work that was on view at the this past fall, this seeming penchant for upwardÌęthinking was on abundant display—from residential projects like the MountainÌęin CopenhagenÌę(a building that happens to look like a mountain)Ìęor Stockholm’s 79th andÌęPark,Ìęwhose roof is comprised of terraces, many planted with greenery,Ìęto the in-progress design for the new Oakland A’s stadium, which features a tree-lined linear park running along a curved covering that dips toward the ground. The projects of theÌę (BIG)Ìęoften look like dramatic staging grounds for some extreme sport or another (to take one example, the proposed Google campus in Sunnyvale, California), so it’sÌęsmall wonder thatÌęIngels—and some of his work—appeared in a film about parkour.

When I ask Ingels, as we sit in the DenaliÌęconference room inside the waste-to-energy plant beneath the ski slope, if any sort of line can be drawn between the small-scale Maritime Youth House and the huge CopenHill, he smiles. “In a very literal way, there is the idea of doing things you’re not supposed to do on the roof,” he says. “But more fundamentally, there’s this idea that if we’re going to do something, we might as well do it the most exciting way possible.” This is a man, after all, who once compared his architecture to a game of Twister, which only becomes fun—more “acrobatic and enjoyable”—as you start “pouring on more demands.”

The idea of a hill loomed, by necessity, early in the project. The engineers, Ingels says, had dictated a basic envelope for the building, based on the machinery inside. “It was this kind of tiered series of blocks that got taller,” he says, like an ascending stereo-equalizer display. “The diagram was already mountainesque.”

Initially, BIGÌęadded “the simplest kind of sloping roof,” adorned with a rooftop park. But he felt they were “staying in the realm of cosmetics,” like “putting lipstick on a pig.” He wondered if they could do something more transformative. On a site visit, Ingels noticed the nearby Copenhagen Cable Park, which whizzes wakeboarders around the harbor via overhead wires. “It just became so clear: the skiers had already arrived, but only in the summer.”

That part of Copenhagen wasn’t hurting for open space, but what it lacked—what the entire country lacked—was an enticing ski hill. “You have to drive four hours to Isaberg, in Sweden,” he says. “And Isaberg is not a very large mountain. The main slope is only a 150-meter [492-foot] drop. So it dawned on us that we could actually do two-thirds of a real mountain ski slope.” It seemed far-fetched at first. They talked to a ski-resort operator. They talked to Team Denmark, an elite-sports organization. No one told them it couldn’t be done, if only because no one had done it. “We started getting an understanding that we couldn’t actually shoot the idea down.”

Not that it was easy. As Jesper Boye Anderson, a designer at BIG, had told me in the firm’s Brooklyn offices: “You don’t open the code books and then look how to do a ski slope on top of a waste-burning plant.”

In one unconventional twist, the building is designed so that, in the event of a fire or an explosion, the walls will give way before the roof, as a safety measure for the skiers up top. The company, too, had to get the topography right from the get-go. “Once you mount concrete slabs,” AndersenÌęsaid, “you’re kind of locked on the geometry.” On top of those slabs, a layer of soil was attached, on which grass was plantedÌęto cushion skiers’ falls and help with drainage. On top of thatÌęwentÌęthe Neveplast panels, andÌęskiers’ blades trimÌęthe grass thatÌępokes through.

But BIG’s architects didn’t like the joints between the seven-by-five-footÌępanels, which could expand with warm weather. “You’re afraid that you’ll get your skis caught in the joints,” AndersenÌęsaid. So the company’s R&D wing, BIG Ideas,Ìęworking with Neveplast, created nearly invisible joints within the pattern itself, so it’s one long carpet of ski surface, 107,000 square feet of upturned hairbrush.

One of the things that attracted ARC’sÌęCEO to BIG’s proposal, Ingels believes, “is that it makes blatantly obvious something that would otherwise be completely invisible.” The company’s former waste-to-energy plant, located just next door and currently being dismantled, was hardly on anyone’s radar. And a new facility, even one that claims to be one of the most efficient garbage-burningÌęfacilities of the world—part of Copenhagen’s seemingly achievable goal of being carbon-neutral by 2025—would hardly be a bucket-list destination for most people.

To make itself known, says Ingels, “they would have to make ad campaignsÌęor shout it from the rooftops.” Now, he says, people see it—its towering apex and steamy stack is hard to miss anywhere in town—and note that “it’s clearly something different, and, wait, how come there’s a ski hill? And then you start learning the story.” It becomes “a way to communicate what’s great about this power plant compared to others,” he says.

So far, it’s working. Since opening in OctoberÌę2019, CopenHill has hosted a constant stream of media and foreign delegations (that afternoon, according to a screen in the lobby, South Korea’s environmental minister was scheduled to visit), not to mention tourists, who come to ski, hike the hill, or merely gawk and take selfies by the thousands. It’s easily the world’s most Instagrammed waste-to-energy plant, a virtual advertisement for itself.

There are actually two mountains at Amager Bakke.

One is the 1,312-foot-longÌęski run, with its black, green, and blue sections. It’s a festive, daytime world, with breathtaking views.

The other mountain is a mountain of trash, cloying and festering, that lurks deep inside the structure, fed by the 200 to 300 garbage trucks that visit the facility each day. Sune Scheibye, ARC’s communications point man, takes me to the best place to view this towering, ever shifting aggregation: aÌęsmall control room, normally empty, where an engineerÌęsitting in a massive swivel chair worthy of the bridge of the USSÌęEnterpriseÌęsilently tracks the performanceÌęthrough a large glass window, asÌęa set of automated cranes move clumps of debris from one side of the huge chamber to another. I feel like I’m living in The Terminator, and Skynet is definitely winning.

“It looks like one of those kids’ games, where you have to try to grab a prize with the claw,” I offerÌęto one of the men, who is terse and soberÌęin that Scandinavian way. “Except in this game, you actually grab something,” he says, cracking the smallest of smiles. “But not something you want to take home, by any means.”

From here, the trash is fed into one of two massive furnaces, each burning at 1,832 degrees Fahrenheit, an otherworldly orange glow visible through small glass portals. “The ash is used to build roadbeds,” Scheibye says. In 2018, the heat that was generated powered district heating for 70,000 homes in Copenhagen, while steam-powered turbines generated electricity for another 32,000.ÌęMuch of the plant is occupied by a series of huge,Ìętwisting tubes and silos, which scrub more than 95 percent of the various noxious elements contained in the smoke.

The plume—mostly steam, with a touch of CO2—that gushes from the peak of CopenHill looms like a perpetual beacon on the city skyline. Ingels, working with the Berlin-based artists’ group Realities:United, had a thought, early on in the process, to have the emissions come out in giant smoke rings. “The idea was, if we could express that the plume was not this kind of toxic thing of the past,” he says. The project’s principals weren’t willing to fund this extravagance, but they weren’t exactly opposed to it either. So BIG, working with a local professor of airflow and turbulence, constructed a functioning one-third-scale prototypeÌęfed by a ring of 24 nozzles. But a change in the project’s management put the idea on the back burner. “I said, ‘OK, let’s open the ski slope, celebrate some successes, and then we’ll try to get it done.’”

For Ingels, the smoke rings were a sort of living, breathing symbol of his philosophy of sustainable hedonism, “like smoking a cigar and puffingÌęsmoke rings,” he laughs. At the same time, it could serve as a potent symbol of the environmental gains being made. “I was thinking it could be linked to an emission count—let’s say every time we’d reduced the emissions of CO2 by a ton, or 100 tons, or whatever, by replacing the old power plant with this one, it would be celebrated by puffing a ring.” Like a contemporary twist on a church bell, it would playfully signal social gains.

Much of the discourse around sustainability has becomeÌęalmost inescapably freighted with negativity, he argues. “Either scaring people into actionÌęor this kind of Protestant idea of taking cold showers. We felt that’s not very desirable.” But what if a sustainable life could also be a more enjoyable life? “That would be so much more powerful,” Ingels says.Ìę

It’s become a rather common urban trope for the cast-off products of industrialization to be turned into contemporary sources of pleasure and ennoblement; think of London’s Tate Modern, housed in the former Bankside Power Station,Ìęor New York City’s High Line, an arterial park fashioned from a defunct stretch of elevated freight rail. “We thought,ÌęWhat if you don’t have to wait until they shut the power plant down before you make it enjoyable?”

That plant’s machinery, as one , will, too,Ìębe obsolete in a number of decades, replaced, one hopes, by ever more efficient technology. “But he was quite certain that, in the end, the building will last,” Ingels says, “not because of its core purposeÌębut because of these extra ideas that we invented.”

Standing at the windswept summit of CopenHill, where a Christmas tree glittered daintily next to the towering smokestack, its grayish-silver silhouette nearly the same brooding color as the Danish sky, I felt as if I were neither quite fully in nature nor quite fully in the city, like I wasÌęinhabiting a new space pried open by the human imagination. Nursing a knee injury, I—sadly, reluctantly—didn’t want to test myself on the fast (and newÌęto me) Neveplast. Instead I watched the surreal sight of skiers as they pushed off and slalomed down towardÌęa watery straitÌęringed by industrialÌębuildings. That sentence upsets our normal mental geographiesÌęand doesn’t quite make sense at first, but then again, neither did a ski slope on top of a giant trash incinerator.

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Thirty-five years ago, a young researcher at the University of Delaware conducted .ÌęHaving spent his childhoodÌęsick with kidney disease, in and out of “gloomy, sometimes brutal” hospitals, Roger Ulrich was interested in finding ways to improve “the environments where patients are treated.” So he sought to test the potential influence of an old friend that had brought him comfort as a child: a solitary pine that he could view through the window by his sickbed. “I think seeing that tree helped my emotional state,” he recalled .

That small study would give birth to thousands of replications and expansions—and an entire movement in architecture. Ulrich managed to find a hospital ward where, for years, patients had recovered from gallbladder surgery in identical rooms that overlooked either a small stand of deciduous trees or a brick wall. After pouring through nearly ten years’Ìęworth of ward records, Ulrich found that patients with a view of the trees fared far better than the miserable patients with nothing but a wall to look at, even if their cases were identical. Those with a view took fewer painkillers, were rated by their nurses as being in better spirits, and, on average, left the hospital nearly a day earlier than those without a view. What was going on?Ìę

We’ve learned a lot about nature and the brain since then. After Ulrich’s foundational work, more than 100 studies have investigated the potential . From these studies—many of them small, observational, and imperfect—we believe that nonthreatening natural stimuli (as opposed to, say, a nearby lightning strike) can play a profound role in the regulation of our autonomic, or involuntary, nervous system. Natural settings that, to quote Ulrich, are “favorable to ongoing well-being or survival” appear to signal our brains that it is time to take a breather, allowing us to turn down our fight-or-flight system, restore our resources, and approach things that are good for us, like finding food or socializing. Specifically, we have learned that nature tends to result in reduced circulating levels of the Ìęand the inflammatory marker immunoglobulin A. It is also associated with lowered blood pressure,Ìę (or short-term emotional experience), blunted “perceived stress” after , and lower short-term levels of . We also appear to after we’ve spent time in nature, a phenomenon distinct enough to appear as differences in neural activity during brain scans.

But while compelling, that evidence base has left one glaring question unanswered: Does exposure to nature actually, lastingly improve our mental health? Two groundbreaking new studies have, in part, helped to answer that question.

Imagine that the day you were born you were assigned a personal code, much likeÌęa Social Security number. You used this code when you enrolled in school, visited your doctor, filled a prescription, paid your taxes, got married, got divorced. But unlike a Social Security number, this code tracked your every move, inscribed in a massive system of interlocking data registers that could tell a researcher almost anything they wanted to know about your life. Such a personal identification system is the norm in Nordic countries, where the government provides a wide net of services for its citizens and consequently monitors their health, needs, and use of public services. This year, researchers in Denmark used this system to generate the largest and most comprehensive observational study of mental health and the environment yet undertaken: one million young adults, or from 1985 to 2003 and still living there by their tenth birthday.

The research team, led by Kristine Engemann and Jens-Christian Svenning at Aarhus University, combined long-term data on mental-disorder diagnoses from the Danish Psychiatric Central Research Register (which tracks inpatient and outpatient psychiatric care) with years of land-cover data derived from satellite imagery. They then asked if children raised in homes surrounded by more nature—specifically green vegetation—experienced better mental health as they grew into adolescents and young adults.

The researchers considered 16 distinct mental disorders, from schizophrenia and depression to anorexia and personality disorders. Based on prior evidence, they had reason to expect that rates of depression or anxiety might be lower among children raised in greener neighborhoods. in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in March, they found, to their surprise, that children from greener neighborhoods were less likely to develop nearly any diagnosable mental illness.

Because those areas tend to be wealthier, the authors adjusted their findings for levels of family and neighborhood affluence, using the rich personal data available, under lock and key, to epidemiologists working in Denmark. They found that the link remained significant for 14 out of the 16 examined disorders. “We thought maybe we would see an interesting association within a band of disorders,” Engemann says. “But there was this general association that being surrounded by higher levels of green space in childhood was associated with lower risk.” This was regardless, she says, of where in Denmark children lived or how nice their neighborhoods were. “This was not a localized phenomenon.”

All told, children raised in the least green neighborhoods were 55 percent more likely to develop a mental illness than their peers who grew up in the greenest neighborhoods, regardless of social standing, the area’s level of affluence, or parental history of mental illness.

“This was a really powerful study,” says Ben Wheeler, an epidemiologist at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health, who designs large-scaleÌęstudies of nature and health. “I was quite surprised by the scale of the effects.”ÌęA few years ago, Wheeler was involved in a similar, albeit smaller, study in the UK, monitoring the mental health of over 1,000 people as they changed residences across many years. His team found that when people are living in greener environments, they report better psychological well-being and less psychological distress, regardless of what else is going on in their lives or neighborhoods. The new study from Denmark suggests that this lower distress can be measured in actual mental illness averted. “Once you look at the numbers,” Engemann notes, “that adds up to quite a large number of yearly cases.”

Of course, correlation does not prove causation. That’s where the second study comes in, this time observing differences among people exposed to different levels of greenery by actually manipulating the environmentÌęon a city scale.

In a first-of-its-kind randomized control trial, the Journal of the American Medical Association Network Open in July 2018,Ìęresearchers from multiple U.S. universities, funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, discretely altered the environment of an entire city to ask if changing the quality of open and green spaces results in a detectable shift in residents’ safety, criminal behavior, and mental health. “We presented this as how a randomized trial for a new drug would go—but for spaces and places,” recalls one of the project’s leaders, Charles Branas, chair of the department of epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

Branas and his colleagues selected 541 vacant lots across the city of Philadelphia and randomly allocated each to either receive no intervention, receive regular trash removal and mowing, or be turned into open pocket parks, with trees and a pleasant, short wooden-perimeter fence. Survey teams blind to the intervention were sent out to question residents at randomÌębefore and after the great experiment, eventually interviewing nearly 450 people about their mental health. When the study was complete, its architects found that residents of neighborhoods where lots had been greened were much healthier psychologically than those whose lots had merely been cleaned. Around greened lots, neighborhood-level rates of feeling “depressed” dropped by 42 percent, feeling “worthless” by 51 percent, and having generally “poor mental health” by 63 percent.

“It’s a big finding,” says Eugenia South, the study’s lead author, a doctor of emergency medicine at Presbyterian Medical Center of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania. “This is the first study to show that changing the environment prospectively can change the way people feelÌęand improve their mental health.” She notes that interviewed residents were not always aware that a change had necessarily occurred in their neighborhood, which suggests that you may benefit from having nature around you even if you aren’t conscious of it.

For now, these recent studies provide suggestive but compelling evidence of nature’s lasting effects on our mental health. But one mystery still remains: just how precisely it calms us down. Does the magic happen through autonomic stress reduction,Ìęhaving a place to meet people and get active, or just by seeing something beautiful every day? “We still don’t know,” says Kathleen Wolf, a social scientist at the University of Washington who has studied this phenomenon for decades. While her younger colleagues call these new studies “game changing,”Ìęshe can only shake her head in amazement at the recognition and funding that the field is finally getting.

But the lingering questions shouldn’t stop us from filling that free mental-health prescription by spending more time in natural settingsÌęregularly and intentionally. As we reported in șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű’s May issue,Ìęclinicians, public health departments, and even some health insurers are deciding that they don’t need to wait for more evidence before acting. Many are beginning to experiment with using the outdoors as the stage of the next great health intervention. Maybe you should, too.

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New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has always billed himself as a progressive. Back in February, in his State of the City address, he boldly announced that he’d transform this town of $1-million studio apartments and Ìęinto “the fairest big city in the world.” But here’s the thing:

You can’t have a truly fair city unless you start beating back all the cars.

“Nonsense!” you might say. “Denying me the unfettered use of my Freedom Machine is the very antithesis of fairness!” Well, sure, it may seem unfair to you and your SUV—especially when you’re looking for a parking space. But letting people in private vehicles run roughshod over the city causes crushing traffic jams, delays public transit, pollutes the air, creates noise, wastes public resources, and takes up an obscene amount of space in a city that doesn’t have enough of it. Oh, and there’s also all the people these automobilesÌękill.

To de Blasio’s credit, under his administration the city has continued to add bike lanes, even defying certain cyclist-hating community boards when necessary. The city has also been experimenting with dockless bike share, as well as with dedicated car-share parking spots. By American standards, we’ve done a lot to provide and promote alternatives to car ownership. In fact, you could even go so far as to say that in this country, we’re on the very forefront of enacting bold car-free policy.

So does that mean we’re doing an excellent job when it comes to cutting back on cars? Sadly, no. We’re great at a lot of stuff here in New York (making bagels and complaining about stuff both come to mind), but having the most progressive transit policy in the U.S. is like having the best bagels in Topeka: the competition is not exactly cutthroat. Then there’s climate change. Shit’s getting real out there and :

Scientists described the quickening rate of carbon dioxide emissions in stark terms, comparing it to a “speeding freight train” and laying part of the blame on an unexpected surge in the appetite for oil as people around the world not only buy more cars but also drive them farther than in the past—more than offsetting any gains from the spread of electric vehicles.

Indeed, when you see what other cities in other countries are up to, you see that New York City doesn’t even come close to real bike-centric progress. Here are just a few examples:

Paris

In Manhattan, cars with Jersey plates choke the streets and throngs of pedestrians are so starved for sidewalk space they spill over into the bike lanes. In Paris (where car trips have since 1990), Mayor Anne Hildago is hacking away at car dominance by pedestrianizing swaths of the city, on the first Sunday of every month, and announcing plans to of gasoline-powered cars by 2030. So how would Parisiens get around in this socialist Hemi-free hellscape if she gets her way? Why, on bikes, scooters—and , of course. Ìę

Copenhagen

Ìęof Copenhageners commute by bike. In New York, the fancy new protected bike lane you’re riding on will eventually just , leaving you to slug it out with truck traffic. In Copenhagen, they’ve got connecting the suburbs to the city. Mayor Frank Jensen wants to from entering the city by 2019; Denmark is moving to eventually the sale of fossil fuel cars entirely. They’ve even got in Copenhagen, for chrissakes! Here, the closest you’ll get to that kind of amenity is perching yourself on the running board of a Cadillac Escalade at a red light.

Madrid (and Beyond)

Madrid Ìęin some parts of the city by setting tough new vehicle emissions standards. Elsewhere in Spain, Seville turned itself into a cycling city in four years—you know, by . And the city of Pontreveda has after realizing the following:

“How can it be that the elderly or children aren’t able to use the street because of cars?” asks CĂ©sar Mosquera, the city’s head of infrastructures. “How can it be that private property—the car—occupies the public space?”

Meanwhile, in America we call not being able to use public outdoor space “freedom.”

London

New Yorkers suffer from a bad case of exceptionalism; “This isn’t [insert lesser city here]!,” we cry whenever someone proposes a new idea. “That shit ain’t gonna fly in this town.” And yes, some of these other cities are somewhat diminutive compared to our mighty metropolis of over eight million people. But you can’t say that about London, a fellow global powerÌęthat’s equally huge in population and cultural and commercial clout. Sure, they’ve got their just like we do, but they’ve also got cycling superhighways, motor-vehicle-congestion pricing, and soon, an . Here in New York, the best we’ve come up with so far is “,” which is basically a handful of days a year we politely ask people not to drive.

Tokyo

In New York City, space is at a premium, and this is some of the most expensive real estate in the country—yet we give away much of our curb space for private vehicle storage. This glut of cars has a seriously negative impact on our quality of life. Yet if I owned fifteen cars I could park them all out on the street for free, and while some might say I was simply exercising my rights as an American, what it really makes me is an asshole. But in Tokyo (another gigantic global power city), you can’t even buy a car without showing proof that you’ve secured a parking space for it—and , because overnight parking is illegal.

So basically, our international peers have had it up to their unshaven armpits with cars, and they’re doing something about it. Meanwhile, back in New York City, our mayor wouldn’t even move the needle on the International Progressive-O-Meter. “I just don’t like the idea, personally,” he of e-bikes and e-scooters. He’s also resisted congestion pricing on the basis that it’s a “regressive tax” on low-income New Yorkers, even though who are driving into the proposed congestion pricing zoneÌęand even though it would help fund the transit system on which lower income New Yorkers (and really all New Yorkers) depend.

As for climate change, de Blasio,Ìęeager to show the world that he was ready to help lead the fight, kicked off 2018 by that the city would sue the big oil companies—a case that has since been . So much for that. He also continues to travel from Manhattan to Brooklyn in order to work out on a stationary bicycle.

For better or for worse, some may think New York City is an aberration in this land of pickup trucks and firearms, but it doesn’t get much more American than that.

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Consider Amelia Boone. The world-champion Spartan racer is a Type A pusher. When she’s not winning Spartan events or racing ultramarathons, she’s a corporate lawyer for Apple. Boone has always set high expectations for herself, and that has undoubtedly helped propel her to the top.

But after a string of serious injuries in 2016, including a femoral stress fracture, her athletic performance declined. At first, Boone expected to recover quickly from her injury. When that didn’t happen, she was disappointed. Once she finally recovered from the injury itself—slowly, over the course of many months—Boone found that she had “underestimated the length of time needed to rebuild as an athlete after a year on the sidelines,” she told me. Disappointment yet again.

Striving for big, hard-to-reach goals is good. Up to a point.

In a recent blog post reflecting on her experience, Boone that she was tempted to wait until she felt fully ready to race again, “until I’d regained all the strength I’d lost, until my running paces had come back, until I was sure I could go out there and dominate.” But she realized this attitude may have been setting her up for even further disappointment. What if she never felt fully ready? What if her strength and running paces never completely returned?

“[I realized] I could set aside my ego, toe the start line feeling less than confident, and accept what my current limitations were,” writes Boone. “I could accept that I’m rusty, accept that I’m scared, and accept that the results may not be what I like. Essentially, I could accept where I am in the process and be okay with that. There’s freedom in realizing your expectations are only constructs you create in your own head.”

The problem with placing too much emphasis on your expectations—especially when they are exceedingly high—is that if you don’t meet them, you’re liable to feel sad, perhaps even burned out. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t strive for excellence, but there’s wisdom in not letting perfect be the enemy of good.

In 2006, epidemiologists from the University of Southern Denmark set out to explore why citizens of Denmark consistently score higher than any other Western country on measures of life satisfaction. Their findings, in the medical journal BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal), zeroed in on the importance of expectations. “If expectations are unrealistically high they could be the basis of disappointment and low life satisfaction,” write the authors. “While the Danes are very satisfied, their expectations [compared to other countries] are rather low.”

In a more recent that included more than 18,000 participants and was published in 2014 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers from University College in London examined people’s happiness from moment to moment. They found that “momentary happiness in response to outcomes of a probabilistic reward task is not explained by current task earnings, but by the combined influence of the recent reward expectations and prediction errors arising from those expectations.” In other words: Happiness at any given moment equals reality minus expectations.

Still, it’s worth reiterating that setting high expectations is integral to personal, athletic, and professional improvement. If you don’t aim for progressively higher targets, you’re liable to stay where you are, or maybe even stagnate. But it’s equally important to realize that if you are setting unreasonably high expectations, you won’t be too happy (at least not for long), and it’s hard to be on top of your game when you’re feeling down. Another way to think about this is that, yes, you should set goals, but you should make sure they are achievable—and try not to stress over what you can’t control. And after you’ve set them, perhaps you should spend a little less time focusing on the goals (expectations) and more time on doing your best in the moment (reality).

In the of Jason Fried, founder and CEO of software company and author of multiple books on workplace performance: “I used to set expectations in my head all day long. But constantly measuring reality against an imagined reality is taxing and tiring, [and] often wrings the joy out of experiencing something for what it is.”

Brad Stulberg () writes șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű’s Do It Better column and is the author of the new book .

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The majority of us—TV viewers, fantasy strategists, and OlympicsÌębingers—think of our athletic heroes as having high-powered nutritionists at their side, serving a militant diet where everything is as plain as oatmeal with a dot of honey. But many athletes around the world eat things that would surprise even the ChoppedÌęjudging table.

“Most of the international athletes I’ve encountered tend to prefer what’s common in their home country.ÌęI’ve found that they don’t have bland diets,” says Shawn Arent, sports medicine and performance expert and director of the Center for Health andÌęHuman Performance at Rutgers University. “We’ve even seen a problem when foreign athletes come to the U.S. and access more processed foods. In many cases, I’ve seen those athletes gain quite a bit of weight as they adapt to different foods.”

We connected with athletes around the world to discover what’s in the training mealÌę(or cheat meal)Ìęthat they can’t get enough of.

Adam Ondra, Rock Climber, Czech RepublicÌę

In the Czech Republic’s southwestern city of Brno, climberÌęAdam OndraÌęrelies onÌęlocal produce from the lowlands for superfoods. Colder months yield a side dish of raw sour cabbage that’s chock-full of vitamins.ÌęPoppy seeds are in every bread and bun on the plate or blended into a smoothie. For the traditional Czech taste, though, he turns to svickova: a thin cut of beef served with cream-based gravy, bread dumplings, and cranberry topping. The dish is made by the masters (grandmothers), and Ondra indulges once, maybe twice, a year—one must stay lean on the cliff faces.

Mira Rai, Trail Runner, Nepal

The petite, 108-pound Mira Rai puts away the remarkable amount of calories trail runners need by eating the traditional dish,Ìędal bhat. The Nepalese staple includes a heaping pile of white or brown rice;Ìęa side bowl of lentils, spinach, and other mixed veggies;Ìęoccasional slices of meat;Ìęand a spice mix of coriander, cumin, garam masala, and turmeric. Like all Nepalese dishes, dal bhat isÌęeaten with the hands.

Atsede Baysa,ÌęMarathonÌęRunner, EthiopiaÌę

This year’s Boston Marathon winner, Atsede Baysa, lives and trains 45 miles west of Ethiopia’s centrallyÌęlocated capital ofÌęAddis Ababa, in a small town near the Chilimo-Gaji forest. She supplements standard starch and protein combos of pasta and fish with national treasure injera chechebsa. Injera is Ethiopia’s sour and spongy bread, rich in both iron and carbohydrates.ÌęChechebsa, commonly known as kita firfir, is fried injera seasoned in a berbere sauce made with hot red pepper powder, all served with honey. The dish provides protein and fat for Baysa, who eats it with a tilapia-like white fish called Nile perch.

Jain Kim, Rock Climber, South Korea

The summer heat in South Korea calls for cold noodle soup, and climberÌęJain Kim favors the wildly popular naengmyeon. Seldom served in other Asian countries, the buckwheat noodle soup comes with sliced beef, cucumbers, Korean pear, and a soft-boiled egg. A simpler variation, called mul-naengmyeon, relies on beef broth alone, but Kim opts for the bibim-naengmyeon, which incorporates spicy red chili peppers into the broth.

Max Matissek, Windsurfer, Greece

Some of the best local produce in Naxos, Greece, are juicy tomatoes, which windsurferÌęMax Matissek eats on top of daily salads with Naxian cheese—imagine a hybrid of cottage cheese and feta. His protein comes from chicken souvlaki, the lightly marinated meat skewers over rice, with a side of Naxian potatoes—oven-roasted and mixed with local olive oil, garlic, lemon, and pepper.

Mo Hrezi, MarathonÌęRunner, Libya/United States

As aÌęformer Italian colony, Libya boasts cuisine with Mediterranean, North African, and Middle Eastern influences. The country’s residents take the preparation and sharing of food seriously, and MoÌęHrezi, a Libyan-American runner with a carb-heavy, spicy-infused diet, is no exception. When he visits his parents and sisters in Tripoli, where he hopes to one day move back after finishing college, his most savored dish is rishdet burma, a warm, soupy, spicy bowl of homemade pasta with a tomato base, chickpeas, fava beans, lentils, fenugreek, and gideed (dried and salted meat).

Farida Osman, Swimmer, Egypt/United States

For Olympic swimmer FaridaÌęOsman, the late-morning spread in her Zamalek neighborhood of Cairo includes ful medames—local beans seasoned with olive oil, lemon,ÌęČčČÔ»ć cumin—and traditional molokheya, made by mixing the dish’s namesakeÌęplant leaves with coriander, garlic, and chicken stock. Keeping with the sharp flavors of Egyptian cuisine, Osman tops her dishes with roumy, the nativeÌęcrumbly cheese similar to a manchego.Ìę

Irina Sazonova, Gymnast, Iceland

In her hometown of Reykjavik, the nation’s capital, 24-year-old gymnast Irina Sazonova prefers meat-centric dishes like kjötsĂșpa (Icelandic lamb soup). The lean meat is raised more responsibly than anywhere else in the world thanks to Iceland’s robust agriculture regulations. Cuts are often served bone-in, and the soup adjoins plenty of thyme, oregano, carrots, cauliflower, potatoes, brown rice, and rutabaga (turnip). Ìę

Annika Langvad, Cross-Country Mountain Biker, Denmark

When in Copenhagen, childhood staples reign supreme for daytime snacks, and it’s all about the nationwide-favorite smĂžrrebrĂžd at lunch. ForÌęLangvad, a small, thin slice of Danish-style rye bread serves as the base for the open-faced sandwich.ÌęHer favorite topping combination includes warm leverpostej (liver patĂ©Ìęmeat spread) with pickled beets and fresh herbs. The Danes often take their smĂžrrebrĂžd simple, like Langvad’s, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find tricked-out combinations, like a smoked halibut rillette with pickled radish, capers, and rosemary.

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For the past two years, Squamish, B.C., photographer had been sitting on an idea: capture a skier on a slope silhouetted by a total solar eclipse. It’s a once-in-a-career opportunity for many reasons—primarily because solar eclipses are only visible from a given location once every 200 years, on average. And seeing one can take much longer. Los Angeles, for instance, will go more than 1,500 years between total solar eclipses.

Plus, Krabbe needed his eclipse to cast above somewhere with snow and mountains—a rare combo. After researching the astronomy calendar, the 24-year-old realized he would get his chance during the March 20, 2015 eclipse, which would be visible from two places: the Faroe Islands of Denmark, and Svalbard, Norway, a mountainous archipelago in the Arctic that happens to have spectacular skiing.

Krabbe pitched his idea to , which produces the popular series. To the surprise of Switchback directors Mike Douglas and Anthony Bonello, Salomon bit on the Svalbard idea. At a cost of more than $100,000, the trip would be the most expensive in Freeski TV history. “You guys do understand that one cloudy day and this could be a bust?” they told Salomon. “Yeah,” came the reply. “But if we get it, it could be really incredible.”

Bonello and Krabbe enlisted pro skiers Cody Townsend, Chris Rubens, and Brody Leven, as well as a British expat guide named Steve Lewis. The team of ten people, including filmmakers, skiers, and support staffers, spent two weeks camped on a glacier in polar bear country to get photos and footage, a process that is chronicled in “Eclipse,” a 31-minute film that premieredÌęWednesday at the and comes out online onÌęNovember 10.

The group arrived in SvalbardÌęonÌęMarch 10, two weeks after the sun returned from its annual six-month absence during fall and winter. (Most skiers go in April and May when the days are longer and warmer.) They spent ten days scouting for the perfect location to capture the eclipse, a process that wore on the skiers. “It’s hard when you’re suffering, you’re freezing your ass off and expending so much energy just to survive, and your only bastion of fun is to go skiing,” Townsend says. “So when we’re spending multiple days looking for the right terrain for this photo, you’re kind of like, this is ridiculous. It’s just one person’s goal.”

The team endured vicious storms on the glacier during the lead-up to the eclipse. But the morning of March 20 brought sunny skies—along with a minus-22-degree wind chill. Krabbe and Bonello positioned themselves a mile away from the skiers, who waited on an alpine ridge. For nearly an hour, the eclipse built toward its two-and-a-half-minute “totality”—the golden window the crew came for—which started at exactly 11:11 a.m. Bonello called what followed “the craziest thing I’ve seen with my own eyes.”

“Unless you have those , you can’t tell that the sun is disappearing,” he says. “Then, very quickly, [the sunlight] just starts shutting down. Thirty seconds out, there’s this insane shimmer on the snow. It’s like the place is on fire. Nothing prepared any of us for that. You can’t feel it, but it’s like this electric current all over you.”

Watching the film, you can’t help but grin when you hear Townsend, Rubens, and Leven hoot and holler from the top of a mountain in the middle of the Arctic, watching one of the rarest natural phenomena in the world.

“Oh my goodness, that was better than I thought it could’ve been!” Krabbe exclaims while holding his camera. “I hope I didn’t fuck that up.”

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This road to the North Cape of Europe was not far from the home of my interim Sami family on the Norwegian island of MagerĂžya in Finnmark. Sometimes a caravan of tour buses would come barreling down the road, or perhaps a few bicyclists who were near the end of a long journey. But more often than not the land was silent, and the animals went about their business as if the road was an extension of nature. This was a large reindeer buck, owned by the family that housed me, but free to roam for hundreds of miles in the Norwegian Arctic.Ìę

TOOLS: Canon 5D Mark II, 50mm f1.2L, 1/250 second, f/4, ISO 100

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It used to be, you could get to the airport. Thankfully, the great urban two-wheel boom has seen dedicated lanes and other cycling infrastructure added to airports worldwide. Thus, it’s no longer that strange (or seemingly suspicious—sheesh!) for a cyclist to pedal to a flight.

Behold, our picks for the most cyclist-friendly airports in the world, based on and , a communications company dedicated to all things biking.Ìę Ìę

Portland International Airport (PDX)

The boasts secure bike parking, an assembly and repair station, tools for rent (pedal wrenches, air pumps, etc.), and paths that hook up with the regional bike trail system for the very doable 9-mile ride to and from Portland’s central business district.

San Francisco International Airport (SFO)

Similar to PDX, offers assembly stations, five parking areas throughout the airport (including valet parking on level four of the domestic garage—score!) and tools at the airport travel agency in the international terminal. Best of all? Bike parking here is free of charge.

ZĂŒrich Airport (ZRH)

A large swath of is a dedicated nature reserve, including the “Klotener Riet” conservation area between the two runways. Stuck in soul-crushing layover? Rent a cruiser from the ZRH’s service center and hit the Klotener Riet’s trails, which wind through reed meadows, marshes and woodland. The bikes run around $22 for a half day (up to four hours) and $39 for the full eight hours.Ìę ÌęÌę

Other Notables: Dedicated lanes make biking to and from a breeze. As an added bonus, Schiphol sells bicycle boxes at its basement baggage depot. In addition to its close proximity to the city center, offers free covered and uncovered bike parking throughout the complex—though plan accordingly as the spots are known to fill up quickly. Veteran commuters to in Chicago know to park their rides at the remote parking lot E and take the free train to the main terminals. They also know they can access the showers for a small fee at the Hilton Health Club across from terminals 1, 2, and 3.

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