Bill McKee was an avid outdoorsman: in 10 years of vacations to Colorado, he and his sons fished backcountry streams, hiked for miles, and summited several fourteeners, until a motorcycle accident in 2002 put him in a wheelchair. Afterward he felt unable to do many of the things he loves most. Trying the Action Trackchair, a beefy, battery-powered wheelchair with tank-like treads, last year changed that.

“Being on a trail in Colorado was a blast from the past,” the 64-year-old McKee, of Garland, Texas, said. Developed in 2008, the Trackchair, which can handle rugged terrain that would stall a traditional chair, “brought me full circle to the adventurer and explorer that lives inside me,” McKee said.

While a volunteer-led program launched in 2016 at Staunton State Park, near Denver, is considered the granddaddy of adventure-wheelchair loaner programs, others are now blooming. On November 4, a collaboration between the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and the debuted a fleet of 12 all-terrain wheelchairs for use, free of charge, at 11 state parks and historic sites across Georgia. This past spring, the Department of Natural Resources launched a pilot program to provide track chairs at five state parks. The Department of Natural Resources, which received its first track chair, donated by , in 2017, now has 15 loaners spread over each of 11 state parks and recreation areas. The Department of Wildlife and Parks offers track chairs at eight state parks, while has one chair and has two at state parks; and Wisconsin has the chairs at stations in 12 counties through the nonprofit . Two years ago Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in Michigan was the first national park to offer a track chair. It now has three.

In a massive shift, public land managers across the U.S. are beginning to look at accessibility as an integral part of park improvements and additions, rather than a separate and possibly expendable line item in the budget. “We are really following the path of improving accessibility as we improve our overall infrastructure,” said Jeremy Buzzell, manager of the Park Accessibility for Visitors and Employees (PAVE) program at the National Park Service, adding that accessibility “has to be baked into everything we do, so that it becomes a part of the culture.”

The Staunton initiative, which started with one chair donated in memory of the avid outdoorsperson and quadriplegic Mark Madsen, now has five battery-powered Action Trackchairs and three and is leading similar efforts, according to Kristin Waltz, program manager. This year alone, park personnel have consulted with organizations from upstate New York, Florida, and Brazil on bringing track chairs and greater accessibility to their regions.

The Georgia initiative, known as All Terrain Georgia, provides people with mobility impairments with and easy access. A visitor to popular sites like Panola Mountain State Park and Cloudland Canyon State Park simply needs to complete an program to learn how to operate the chair (which costs roughly $12,500 retail), then make a reservation for a hike via the organization’s –no doctor’s note required.

“All Terrain Georgia bridges the gap between accessibility and wilderness,” said Aimee Copeland, director of the Aimee Copeland Foundation, a nonprofit that aims to create outdoor experiences for people with physical disabilities. Copeland has used a wheelchair for ten years since losing her hands, a foot and one leg to amputation following a ziplining accident and bacterial infection at age 24, and tested the track chairs herself. The chairs can go up banks, across streams, and even over fallen trees. “I love that these chairs allow me to safely explore with my friends who love camping,” she said, “without putting the chair I rely on every day at risk.” She hopes to extend the program in the Southeast and South, she said, and into the national parks.

The Minnesota program has met with resounding success, taking off immediately. “The chairs were used often in the first six months of the program, especially on weekends,” said Jamie McBride, state parks and recreation area program consultant at the department. “Feedback from users as well as park staff has been overwhelmingly positive.”

, 13.7 percent of U.S. adults report living with a serious mobility disability. That’s over 28 million people. Though the Park Service’s PAVE program has been around in some form since the 1970s, it’s largely focused on maintaining existing ADA-compliant campgrounds and paved pathways, like South Rim Trail and many of Valley’s trails. Yet the world of mobility devices is rapidly evolving.

“There’s all kinds of stuff out there that even ten years ago didn’t exist,” said Buzzell.

At the moment, is the only unit within the NPS that offers a track-chair loaner program, and it might take some time before larger national parks ramp up. “Our preference would be for organizations that represent the disability community to partner with us, so that the devices can be provided,” said Buzzell. He added that the NPS wants to ensure visitors’ safety by making sure that the people checking out the chairs have the necessary training and assistance. Some parks, like in California and , Colorado, already provide special sand-specific devices, and many more have standard wheelchairs available at visitor centers.

“There has been a lot of interest from the public about us being able to provide better access to mobility devices,” said Buzzell. “Obviously, there’s a considerable expense involved in transporting them from home.”

Syren Nagakyrie, founder and director of , cited “a combination of a lack of awareness and motivation, lack of funding, and complicated protocols” as the biggest hurdles facing improvement of access programs in parks today, while saying that well-designed trails can benefit everyone. For example, an accessible boardwalk leading to a remote campsite at Apostle Islands, in Wisconsin, also helps prevent erosion caused by visitor foot traffic.

When used properly, the burly Action Trackchairs should also leave no trace, even on dirt trails, said Copeland: the chairs are all-electric and quieter than they appear. “Stigma around all-terrain chairs due to misuse and misinformation is an issue,” she said. “When operated properly, the chair’s impact is no more than footprints.” She called this generation of chairs “truly spectacular.”

The age of all-terrain wheelchairs in our parks is instigating a strategy shift in how trails are labeled, too, because these modern devices have the power to travel deep into the backcountry. Rather than marking some paths as “accessible,” because they meet a series of , land managers are instead compiling as much trail information as possible (like grade, surface pack, length, and stair count) and letting visitors decide what works best for them. “What we call an accessible trail might not be accessible to everyone, and what we say is not an accessible trail might be accessible to plenty of people,” said Buzzell.

Buzzell believes all Americans, regardless of their ability level, deserve to experience what he called the magical national park “aha moment.”

“We can design trails that are sustainable and accessible,” he said. “And that’s going to improve the experience for everyone.”

At Staunton, McKee, accompanied by a volunteer, takes gravel trails through dense forests, to airy vistas of high mountain peaks, and even small tarns stocked with trout.

“To be back in the wild and coming across wildlife and smelling the pine-scented air was emotional and satisfying,” McKee said after riding the track chair at Staunton, which he called “a very pretty place.”

“You are in the forest most of the time and there are several small streams and then open fields with wildflowers and some views of large cliffs. There is an accessible area to fish and some small ponds … so you can add fishing to your accomplishments for the day.”

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The day was getting late, and the flathead catfish inside the holding tank secured to the bed of Nate Williams’s maroon F-150 was, much like its captor, only getting more stressed out.

It was five o’clock, and Williams needed to get to Wacker Park, 60 miles away in Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, by six for his catfish to be entered in the June 2021 ,��where the grand prize was $2,000. He’d won the tournament three times before, and with bigger fish than the one in his truck. The 85-pounder he’d used scuba equipment to capture in 2019—a tournament record that still stands—netted him a $3,000 payout. There was also the 73-pounder in 2017 and the 60-pounder two years before that. All winners. All caught with his own hands.

Williams’s thoughts raced as he idled at an intersection, waiting for a passing train. He had about an hour before the deadline, and a lot could go wrong before then: He could fail to deliver the catfish to tournament officials on time. The fish could die in transit. It could live and just be smaller than he’d estimated—you never know the precise weight��until the fish tips the scale. And of course, there was the chance another noodler had pulled out a monster somewhere on the far side of the state.

Finally, the train rumbled on, and he floored it for Pauls Valley.

Noodling is an acquired taste. The term comes from the practice of wiggling your fingers underwater like wet noodles to bait a catfish. The fish actually bites your hand, then you fight like hell to catch it. While they call it grabbling, hogging, or handfishing elsewhere in the U.S., noodling is the nomenclature used in Oklahoma.

Three types of catfish are native to the Sooner State: flatheads, blue cats, and channel catfish. Flatheads (often called mudcats) live the longest and grow to be the largest, but they lack the jaw power to do much damage when they bite. Blue cats, however, are a different story. “It doesn’t matter if a blue cat is ten pounds or 40 pounds, it feels like somebody slamming your hand in a car door,” says Cory Belter, a past Okie Noodling champion. Channel catfish, meanwhile, are small but nasty, with sharp spines on their dorsal fins that can poke through flesh.

Williams, stocky and thoroughly tan with a dark brown chinstrap beard, lives in the central Oklahoma town of Shawnee with his wife, Miley, and three sons: Jayce, 19, River, 13, and Phierce, 11. Williams, who is 35, coaches basketball and teaches middle school geography about 40 miles away in Norman. But his passion is noodling. He competes in tournaments around the state and as far away as Texas, and he leads guided tours for his company, Adrenaline Rush Noodling. His boys have noodled since they were three years old. Phierce estimates that they spend six days a week on the water during spawning season, which runs from May to mid-July, when the fish retreat to their holes, often in pairs, to feed on worms and insects and lay eggs.

The Okie Noodling Tournament was started by Bradley Beesley in 2000 as a conclusion to his student film, an exhaustive documentary called Okie Noodling. Since that first summer, when Norman firefighter Tim Suchy won with a 52-pound flathead weighed in at Bob’s Pig Shop, Beesley’s homespun competition has grown into the largest noodling competition in the nation. The rules are pretty straightforward. “You can fish anywhere in Oklahoma,” says Jaclyn Woods, who has served on the festival-planning committee for five years. “And when you bring the fish in, it has to be alive.”

Competitors register in advance—according to city officials, about a hundred do so each year, though fewer than that actually show up to Saturday’s weigh-in fish-in-hand. The four award divisions are women’s, scuba, natural (noodling without scuba gear), and youth (age 17 and under), and an additional award is given to the noodler who brings in the event’s biggest fish. In 2017, Nate won biggest fish, Miley won Noodling Queen—something of a country beauty pageant—and Jayce finished as runner-up in the youth division, which he’s won twice.

“There’s always a big stink with regard to whether somebody cheated,” Beesley said. Festival organizers said that the most commonly reported cheating allegation is fishing outside of state lines or outside of the allotted time frame. Once, at a smaller tournament in Lake Eufaula, Nate��exchanged words with some jealous competitors at a bar. They tried to push him down the stairs, he says. His wife stepped in. Jayce got involved. Nate took a rock to the head. “They thought they did something,” says Nate, “but it was just one lucky shot.” Everyone involved was banned from the next tournament. Jayce entered under his first and middle name anyway, won, and took home the cash prize and trophy before anybody realized the ruse. The Williamses all got a stern talking-to, and the host warned them not to show up the following year.

Due to altercations like this, a few years back the Okie Noodling Tournament instituted what might seem like a rather extraordinary measure for a small-town fishing festival: a polygraph.

“It cuts down on some of the yeah-yeahing that goes on between some of the participants,” says Jennifer Samford, the parks and recreation director for Pauls Valley.

The mood at Wacker Park was festive. Corn dog trucks, merch tents, and Coors Light vendors catered to families seated in clusters of lawn chairs. Periodically throughout the day, an air horn interrupted the plucky slide-guitar music on the speakers, a signal for spectators to rush the stage to check out the latest weigh-in.

All three of the Williams boys weighed fish before their father. River and Phierce, both barefoot, took turns climbing the stage, their fish hanging limp over their shoulders. Phierce was taller than his catch, though not by much. A guy in overalls yanked several catfish out of the holding tank in the back of his pickup, dropping the biggest into the bed with a sickening thud. Then a long stretch of afternoon passed without anybody weighing fish.

“It was flooded in all these lakes down here. Everybody’s having problems,” said Tyson Pearson. He was in the lead for most of the day, thanks to a 47-pound fish he’d extracted from a culvert in northwest Oklahoma earlier that morning with the help of his brother, Jake. In a decade of noodling, it was the biggest fish he’d ever caught.

Nate rolled up to the park with just ten minutes to spare. He needed both hands to steady his catch. The crowd hooted and hollered as he laid it on the��table for examination. The catfish fought a little while they tagged it and slid it into the bucket used to measure weight. The crowd’s cheering quickly turned to awe—the scale read nearly 64 pounds, a bona fide monster. A pair of smoke machines blasted. The winningest noodler in the history of the Okie Noodling Tournament claimed his fourth title.

A few weeks after the 2021 tournament, Nate drove to an undisclosed central Oklahoma river with Phierce and his friend Mike Cook, a veteran hobby noodler. He was hungover. They’d spent the night before catching up and playing pool at a bar. “We could strike out, or we could catch ten fish,” Nate said as he put away a plate of biscuits and gravy at a Braum’s, off the nearby highway. If he’s not competing in a tournament or taking out a paying client, Nate’s scouting the state for holes. The bigger they are, the greater the��potential. “You average maybe a hole a mile if you’re lucky,” Nate said. Aside from just making the noodling experience more exciting, having several leads on big, reliable holes gives you a leg up come competition season.

At 9:30 A.M., they slid down a riverbank clumped thick with red dirt and into the water, which looked more like a clay tennis court than something you’d swim in. A million cicadas buzzed, amping up the summer heat.

Equipped with just a couple of 16-ounce water bottles, Uncrustables sandwiches, and a pair of GoPro cameras for the daylong expedition, the trio began a seven-mile hike downriver. Nate wore a T-shirt, swimming trunks, and an old pair of diving boots. His calves powered smooth, easy steps. He walked when the water was low, and floated along when it got high. Occasionally, he paused to feel along the banks for holes where catfish could be hiding. Anytime the group encountered a large rock formation or a foreign object—a sunken washing machine, say—they stopped to examine it closely, gathering around in discussion like a group of contractors conferring about a broken pipe.

Recent rainfall had washed out many of the usual mud holes along the river, a fact that clearly annoyed Nate. But he was undeterred. Forty-five minutes later, he and Mike came along their first reliable catfish hole, a rusted-out pickup that was half underwater, half lodged into a thicket of dead branches. Mike took the engine end, Nate took the bed. They both submerged entirely. If it weren’t for Nate’s baseball cap sitting on the truck, there’d be no sign of their existence whatsoever. Underwater, visibility was zero, and their gloved hands felt around for any sign of catfish—a sudden disturbance in the water, the flick of a fin.

Mike popped back up, clutching a long stick he’d used to poke around beneath the truck. Nate surfaced a few seconds later, asking, “How much farther it goes up there, you think?” Mike couldn’t tell. He suggested that Nate grab his legs so he could investigate deeper into the hole. After a few more minutes of poking, prodding, reaching, and working whatever leverage they could produce, they concluded the hole was a bust and moved on.

Eventually, they reached a boulder they call Old Faithful. Upon close examination, it appeared to house at least one fairly large catfish. But not for long. Once spooked, a catfish will often blow out of a hole. If the fish makes it to open river, you’ve squandered your chance to catch it. An experienced noodler, then, will account for that by blocking the exit however they can, sometimes with their body. It’s like stopping a living torpedo with your chest.

“It kinda comes under, undercuts all the way down here,” Nate said, mapping out the shape of the hole with his hands, “but the better part is up here.” Mike jammed the GoPro handle-first into the riverbank and took a position where the hole got biggest, sliding his legs into it while his chest and head remained above water.

Nate slipped below the surface to block the smaller end of the hole. He was under for nearly 30 seconds. At the angle he chose, Mike couldn’t quite reach as far as he needed to. They reconvened topside and agreed to try again. Nate went under, Mike scraped out some debris and reached, this time with his left hand, and—whoomf!—a mudcat swallowed his arm up to the elbow. Mike got the fish into a headlock with his right biceps, and Nate slid a stringer through the gills.

The entire violent affair was over in a few seconds. Ugly as sin, with a fat white scar over its left eye, the mudcat had little divots in its face and chunks of flesh missing above its mouth. It was about a foot wide, mottled green and yellow in color. The underside was white. Its tiny eyes stared dumbly out, and you could see perfectly the little sandpaper teeth that just scraped Mike’s hands. Nate estimated it at 30 to 35 pounds, and while excited by its capture, he didn’t seem impressed by the size. Mike slung it over his shoulder to show it off for the video, and its gills flared out, revealing red organs.

After some ceremonial photos and a triumphant call to Nate’s wife, they let the fish go. Most noodlers catch and release, with the hope that they can catch an older, bigger version of the fish further down the line. Considering Nate’s skill in the water, they’ll likely meet again.

This year’s Okie Noodling Tournament kicks off Friday, June 17, with the final weigh-in taking place the following day.

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Jennifer Brindley Ubl had become obsessed with tracking down something that most of us hope never to see: tornados. Every spring, she would close up her portrait photography business in Milwaukee and head off to capture images of what she calls “beautiful storm systems.” Seeing a twister left her in awe—and always wanting more. Then, one day, she found herself fleeing for her life from the largest tornado ever recorded. In this episode of our Wild Files series, we hear the story of how the monstrous El Reno tornado changed her relationship to storms and to herself.

This episode of the ���ϳԹ��� Podcast is brought to you by the all-new 2021 Ford Bronco Sport, a 4×4 SUV with seven available G.O.A.T. modes that enable it to go over any type of terrain. Learn more at

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I’ve been hooked on tornadoes since I was a kid. I used to dream I was lying in my backyard as a black funnel cloud passed silently—and safely—over me. A shrink later told me the dream represented “safe danger,” but I never understood half of what he said, including that. As I grew older, I became a climate dilettante. I read about global warming and the coming ice age, wondered why barometric pressure affected dogs, and drew cloud charts in my daily planner. I saw Twister,��of course. And I kept having that dream.

I wanted to see a real storm��for myself, but there was the business of finishing grad school and raising kids. So I back-burnered tornadoes��for decades and nearly forgot about them. Then,��last winter, I saw a blurb in a travel magazine about stormchasing tours. I thought only Hollywood actors or meteorology nerds were allowed to chase tornadoes. But for $2,300 a week, I could, too. I justified it to my��now adult children, saying that if I died, at least it would be while doing something incredibly cool.

And I did. Not die—do something cool.��

I decided to book the��Mayhem 1 tour with , one of some 20 stormchasing outfits in the country, which��promises a 90 percent chance of seeing a tornado over the course of six days. Not only��was the company vetted by the review site��, it had fewer people per van��and was relatively affordable compared with��others (many run��$2,500 and up). All��trips are based out of Tulsa, Oklahoma, the epicenter of Tornado Alley, a swath of land that runs from central Texas to South Dakota and��spawns many of the approximately 1,200 events each year.

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Jim Cummins was not only the founder of one of the world’s best-known gravel-bike races, the Dirty Kanza, but he was also its public face—the man at the finish line in Emporia, Kansas, waiting to give each returning rider a hero’s welcome after 200 miles of rutted roads, headwinds, and tire-sucking mud. That is, until June 17, when Cummins posted a video on his personal Facebook page��calling the shooting��of Rayshard Brooks,��a 27-year-old Black man who was��killed�� on June 12��when Brooks��was found sleeping in a Wendy’s drive through lane,��“justified” and inviting anyone who disagreed to “unfriend” him. Many followers did so, and even more expressed hurt and anger about the post on social media.��

Cummins’s reach in the bike world is considerable. The race he dreamed up in 2006 as a solo, self-supported tour of Kansas’s��rolling Flint Hills has since grown into a marquee event��attracting not only top professional racers but amateur riders from��all over the country—the closest thing the burgeoning gravel scene had to a World Tour. Last year��the Dirty Kanza attracted thousands��of riders to its 25-, 50-, 100-, 200-, and 350-mile events. The race put Emporia on the map as a top U.S. cycling destination, a new and unexpected reputation the 24,000-person town was happy to adopt.��

In 2018, Life Time, a national chain of races and fitness companies, the once scrappy gravel grinder and kept Cummins on as its “chief gravel officer.” Until that post went up. Within 24 hours, Life Time had “parted ways” with Cummins, according to the senior vice president Kimo Seymour. The company describing his Facebook comments as “inappropriate and insensitive,” and clarified its��mission of making gravel racing “a more inclusive and progressive place where all feel welcome and represented.”

Cummins declined an interview, but in a statement shared with Road Bike Action, he , “I��chose my words poorly” and “[I]��hope that, some day, I can��help to heal the wounds that I have caused.” But his words landed during a summer marked by civil rights protests and in a cycling world grappling with a historical lack of inclusivity, particularly for Black and Indigenous riders.��

His dismissal also reignited another��long-simmering, racially charged controversy surrounding the Dirty Kanza.��

Race director LeLan Dains has a long history with both this region of��Kansas and the race. An Emporia local, he first competed in the 200-miler in 2008��and joined the four-person staff five years later. Then��someone approached the event team about the problematic nature of the name of the race itself, which some argue is a racist slur against the��Kaw people native to the land on which the race is held.��Translated as the “,” the Kaw were given the name “Kanza,” or “Kansa,” by early French traders and other European settlers. But��it’s the pairing of “dirty” with the tribal name that many argue turns the race’s title into a historical racist stereotype.��

Dains says that there were no ill intentions behind the name of the race. “We named it ‘dirty’ for the gravel roads and the dirt you get on your legs and body when you ride them,” he says, “and ‘Kanza’ for the state, which gets its name from the Kaw tribe.”��

Still, over the years, Dains says members of the organization made several unsuccessful attempts to contact the Kaw Nation’s leadership for their thoughts on the name.��

In 2019,��Cummins��was finally able to meet with Lynn Williams, chair of the Kaw Nation Tribal Council. The two convened at Kaw Nation headquarters in Kaw City, Oklahoma, on February 26 of that year��and ultimately agreed that the name would stay as is. Seymour says, “The last time we spoke, Williams said the Kaw Nation took no offense to the name.” (Williams did not respond to requests for comment.)

But continuing criticism��raised the question of whether Williams’s decision accurately reflected her community’s feelings as a whole. In fact, according to by��Bicycling, a few months before he met with Williams,��Cummins was forwarded an email on November 9, 2018, “signed by 45 members of the Kaw Nation, along with academics, advocates, and allies” saying that��“the name was offensive to many people in or associated with the Kaw Nation,” James Stout wrote for��Bicycling. (Dains says he’s not “personally aware of a petition that potentially contained 45 members of the Kaw Nation.”)

In April of 2020, Christina Torres, the founder of��, an independent publication focused on “sharing knowledge and the stories of BIPOC and FTW [femme, trans, and women]��folx in cycling,” launched a urging the race to change its name. The issue felt personal to Torres, as an avid cyclist and a Kawaiisu Shoshone-Paiute descendant of the Tejon��Indian Tribe, she . “The Kaw Nation of Kansas, now of Oklahoma, has survived adversity and today is a federally recognized, self-governing tribe seeking to recover its cultural heritage and land,” . “To preface the Kanza people with ‘dirty’ shows a disconnect of America’s legacy of anti-Indigenous violence.”

The petition drew more than 1,200 signatures—many from Indigenous people across the country—and the attention of the team in Emporia. In response, Cummins issued in April 2020 revealing his 2019 meeting with Williams��and said that the race name would not be changing. The statement also clarified his��intentions behind choosing its name. Though Williams’s signature appears on the open letter, her voice seemed to be absent.

At the time, the Dirty Kanza wasn’t the only gravel event confronting the impact its name might have on Indigenous groups. In late 2019, Bobby Wintle, founder of the gravel race in Oklahoma, announced that��he had changed the race’s official title to .��Wintle VeloNews that when he first named the race, he was “unaware that the name held negative connotations for many still living today.” The Oklahoma land rush��was named as such because a , effective April 22, 1889, allowed 50,000 white settlers to seize two million acres of Indigenous land. (The land run of 1893 saw settlers take a further six million acres.)��“Once our small crew and myself realized that the correlation with the original land run of 1889 was offensive to others, we had to make a change,” Wintle said in .

To many, the Dirty Kanza was one more example of the way Native-derived names often ignore the voices of the very people they purport to honor, raising the question of who gets to grant permission��to use those names. “One person from the Native community saying, ‘I think it’s OK’ is no different than someone saying, ‘That’s not racist, because I have a Black friend,’” says artist, gravel rider, and Indigenous activist Gregg Deal. “You’re talking about an entire community of people, which means there are different ideas and schools of thought.”

Deal bemoans the fact that Indigenous people aren’t given agency or authority in matters so deeply tied to their culture. “People will tell you straight to your face, ‘It’s not offensive, that’s not the intent,’” he says. “Most Americans in that school of thought feel like they get to decide what’s offensive, what’s not offensive, and what’s an honor, what’s not an honor. But that can’t exist without a true dialogue or relationship of some kind.”��

That dialogue is finally being attempted on more of a national scale. Just this week, the NFL’s Washington, D.C., team announced plans for a to replace its long-protested racist one, California’s Squaw Valley Ski Resort reportedly for a less offensive moniker, and Yeti Cycles they’d stop using the word “tribe” in their marketing.

Torres declined an interview, and while she didn’t provide her reasons, the naming saga had become heated and sometimes personal.��Once Cummins issued his open letter, many thought the issue was settled: the Kaw Nation had granted an ostensible stamp of approval on the race name. This prompted a fair amount of online backlash to the petition. Commenters unleashed their usual gripes about cancel culture, some of which spilled over into personal criticism of Torres. “Stop looking for ways to be offended!” read one��of the tamer responses on Instagram.��

And then came Cummins’s June 19 Facebook post, which renewed the��push to change the race’s name.��Activists began a second petition.��Titled , the petition is a “campaign to end the use of the slur ‘dirty Kanza’ as the event name of DIRTY KANZA (DK) in Emporia, KS.” The authors��have decided to remain anonymous��but��are described as a “united collective of Indigenous advocates, cyclists, people of faith, educators, elders, youth, local Kansas residents and builders of a just world.” I reached out to the authors��through an intermediary, and they declined to comment. As of today, the petition has been signed by more than 6,500 people.��

This time, the team in Emporia was ready to listen. In a June 22 , race organizers committed to changing the name. Dains confirmed over the phone on June 24 that they were in the process of landing on a new race title, which they would announce in “eight to ten weeks.”��He added that the petition had accelerated the decision, but that the name-change conversation had remained open for some time.��

“We know now more than ever that words have meaning,” Dains says. “At the time we made that announcement in unison with the Kaw Nation, we felt we were right in continuing with the name. But at the end of the day, we can be legally ‘right,’ or��we can be kind. We’re going to choose to be kind and change the name.”��

For many, that change can’t come fast enough. Support for the petition and further demands—including more acknowledgement of the Indigenous groups who have long opposed the name and have had their complaints ignored—continues to grow after the announcement, even among past riders and winners. Amity Rockwell, the winner of last year’s race, requests for the organizers, including a name change and a BIPOC athlete-sponsorship program.��

The decision to change the name is a “good move, in good faith,” says Deal, adding that it’s one “that won’t change the hard, grueling nature of the race.” It’s a move toward better accountability to the Indigenous communities whose names and images have long been appropriated to represent the outdoors.��But it’s not the finish line. That will come into sight, Deal says, when Indigenous people are given true agency��over the use of their names and symbols, and when bike races create more opportunities and accessibility for riders of color.��

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Walking might be the . OK, it’s not as flashy as its cousins, running and hiking, but that a moderate walk is just as effective at battling high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease as a vigorous run or an uphill trek. And it does the job with a lower risk of injury. Some even suggests that walking can make you more creative. One of its��advantages��is that you can do it just about anywhere, but some routes��are more beautiful than others.��Here are ten��of the most scenic trails that��allow access greenery without leaving the��city.

Spanish Moss Trail
Beaufort, South Carolina��

Charleston gets all of the love, but the smaller coastal town of Beaufort, an hour and a half to the southwest, has just as much southern charm, with a fraction of the tourists. And it’s incredibly walkable, thanks in part to the , a ten-mile paved path that follows the former Magnolia rail line through the best of South Carolina’s Low Country��landscape. The trail starts in an old rail station near Depot Road and carries you over creeks, through expansive wetlands, and amid��stately neighborhoods shaded by live oaks thick with the iconic Spanish moss.

Jack A. Markell Trail
Wilmington, Delaware��

This paved path combines culture, history, and wildlife on its eight-mile journey from downtown Wilmington to the historic town of New Castle. Start��at , explore��open-air markets and seafood restaurants, and��finish��at New Castle’s , a sprawling green space on the Delaware River with a new pier that overlooks��a replica of a��Swedish merchant ship from the 1600s. In between, the trail dips into the , one of only a handful of urban wildlife sanctuaries��in the U.S., home to��a 212-acre marshy��preserve��for fish and other fauna��in the heart of the state’s largest city.

Boardwalk Trail at Lady Bird Lake
Austin, Texas��

The ��isn’t like anything else in Texas. It’s a 7,250-foot-long concrete pedestrian bridge hovering above the water on the edge of Lady Bird Lake. The views are stunning—you have the lake itself, full of people��in kayaks and on stand-up paddleboards, as well as Austin’s skyline just beyond the shoreline—but walking this��boardwalk is also a��deep dive into��an exploration of��Texan��culture. Keep an eye out for an installation of 36 bronze western-style belts integrated into railings etched with song lyrics from Texas artists.

The Scioto Trail
Columbus, Ohio

The first greenway to be built in Columbus, follows the river of the same name for more than 12 miles, connecting the city’s neighborhoods with its expansive park system. The most beloved stretch of the trail is the Scioto Mile, which cruises along the downtown waterfront through a series of green spaces and city landmarks. Keep walking��and you’ll hit , a wildlife sanctuary where thousands of migrating birds make a pit stop��on their way south. The 120-acre park, which has its own system of walking trails that pass beneath the tree canopy and through restored wetlands, features one of the largest free-climbing walls in the nation��a massive man-made arch covered with holds set against the��backdrop of the Columbus��skyline.

The California Coastal Trail
San Francisco, California

This is one of the most dramatic in the country, spanning 1,200 miles along the Pacific Ocean. For a shorter option, focus on the 2.4-mile section near the Presidio, in San Francisco, which hits a collection��of the city’s landmarks. Start on the south end of this segment, and you’ll pass the rocky bluffs of Baker Beach right out of the gate before hitting the Marin Headlands and ending at the Golden Gate Bridge. The��shoreline is a near constant companion and a number of connecting paths meander into the Presidio.

Bert Cooper Trail
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma��

Ten��miles north of downtown Oklahoma City,�� is a 2,500-acre reservoir with a yacht club and a lighthouse. The forms a 9.5-mile loop around the lake and offers lots of��water views. Birders in particular love this trail because Hefner marks��an important stopover for migratory species. Start at , at��the southern end of the reservoir, and amble��through forested areas and neighborhood streets. Be sure to walk the peninsula out to the lighthouse, which makes for the perfect picnic spot.

Lakefront Trail
Chicago, Illinois

On one side of the 18-mile-long , you have Lake Michigan, unfurling into the horizon like an inland sea,��and on the other, you have the city of Chicago and its towering skyscrapers. You could spend an entire day along this trail, bouncing from beaches to parks and back again. Just make sure you hit , with its��traditional Japanese garden and��a koi pond, as well as the , a 100-acre park full of prairie grass and trees.

Lafitte Greenway
New Orleans, Louisiana��

This 2.6-mile ��opened in 2015, and in just a few short years, it has become a��major artery for pedestrians and cyclists moving about New Orleans. The paved path runs from the French Quarter to the neighborhood of , offering a string of nature in the heart of one of the South’s most vibrant metro areas. Shaded by live oaks, bald cypress, and pecan trees, the route passes along the Saint��Louis Canal before crossing over Bayou Saint��John. From the northern trailhead terminus, it’s a quick walk to the 1,300-acre City Park itself, full of green space and wetlands, while the southern��terminus is��, on the edge of the French Quarter.

The East Coast Greenway
Washington, D.C.

When it’s eventually completed, the will run for 3,000 miles from Florida to Maine. More than 30 percent of this massive walking and biking trail is currently built, and some of that��passes through Washington, D.C. It cuts through��the National Mall and crosses the Memorial Bridge over the Potomac River into Virginia, where it connects with the . While the capital’s monuments��are big attractions, be sure to make stops along the trail at the ��and the , the oldest continuously operating public garden in the country,��with more than 65,000 tropical and subtropical plants.

The High Line
New York City, New York

If there’s such a thing as the most famous U.S. greenway, it’s . This elevated trail, a repurposed��abandoned freight line on��Manhattan’s West Side, is an infusion of nature in the most populated��city in the country. The 1.45-mile bridge is designed��with public art, interesting architecture, and edible gardens. Various overlooks give you a bird’s-eye view of some of the borough’s most iconic neighborhoods, while certain sections feature��a full canopy of trees, providing an escape from the cityscape. Hang out on lounge chairs on��the sundecks, enjoy views over the Hudson River, and catch a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty.

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The podcast ��starts with a murder. In 1999, angry about his wife’s roving eye, Patrick Dwayne Murphy, a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, stabbed George Jacobs, another Creek, and left him to die on the side of the road.

The murder isn’t the complicated part—Murphy quickly confessed—but exactly where it happened is. Trying to avoid the death penalty, Murphy’s public defender, Lisa McCalmont, argued that the murder took place in Indian country, on the tribe’s��reservation, so��the state didn’t even have jurisdiction to prosecute. The state argued that the reservation no longer exists, because it had already been broken up through allotment, a process of giving Native Americans U.S. citizenship if they signed individual land titles to separate where they lived from their tribe. In 2017, the Tenth��Circuit Court ruled, saying that the reservation did exist, so the state couldn’t prosecute Murphy, but Oklahoma appealed. Now the case, Carpenter v. Murphy, is before the U.S.��Supreme Court, which is supposed to issue a decision by the end of June. And that’s where things get really messy.

The case gets into a much deeper question about the tenacity of tribal land rights and who owns the land in Oklahoma, which encompasses 19 million acres of five tribal reservations, about half the state. If the decision goes in favor of the tribe, it could be the largest restoration of tribal land in U.S. history. In This Land,��host Rebecca Nagle, a journalist who covers tribal politics, digs into current policy and the backdoor ways that industries have been chipping at tribal sovereignty for decades. It’s a story that reveals a bigger picture of how tribes have been treated for all of U.S. history.

Nagle is an enrolled member of the Cherokee tribe—one of the five tribes in Oklahoma—and her ancestors, John and Major Ridge, signed the 1835 Treaty of New Echota that removed the Cherokee to a reservation in present-day Oklahoma in exchange for their ancestral land in the Southeast. She told�����ϳԹ�����that��they thought the treaty was their best chance for survival, because of the ways tribes were being eradicated as white people claimed their land, even though many other tribal members were opposed. John Ridge was murdered by members of the tribe for signing the treaty, which ultimately wasn’t upheld. It cracked when Oklahoma became a state and the reservation was broken up through allotment, which is part of the state’s argument in Carpenter v. Murphy—that Indian country no longer exists.

Nagle says she’s worried that if Oklahoma wins this case it will set a dangerous precedent for how tribal sovereignty is upheld. The track record isn’t good. In the past 40 years, 117 cases about tribal law have gone in front of the Supreme Court, and only 12 have been ruled in favor of tribes. That’s the core of this podcast: to show how tribes have been marginalized and disrespected. Laws have bent to chip away at their rights when it’s convenient for states, the federal government, or lobbying interests like oil and gas. “Our sovereignty is boxed in through the creation of reservations,” she says, “but the U.S. doesn’t even respect that box.”

Through��a mix of interviews and narrative on the podcast, she interviews folks about the murder, steps back to look at case law and history, and digs into her own experience. “I am not telling the story of my family and my tribe to ask the Supreme Court to change the law. I tell this story to ask that the law be followed,” Nagle wrote in a�� about the case’s initial oral argument, which spurred This Land.

Nagle says it’s hard to predict the Supreme Court case’s outcome. She says it’s likely the court will be split, which will uphold the sanctity of the reservation��but doesn’t move the needle. Carpenter v. Murphy is part of a class of cases that cuts down tribes’ rights, like the recent Brackeen v. Zinke case, which challenges the Indian Child Welfare Act. “No tribe in the U.S. hasn’t had a piece of their sovereignty taken away because the government decided it could,” she says. “But it’s really about the types of arguments that people are using that are really dangerous. I want listeners to have enough information to know what they should be paying attention to.”

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In the feature-length documentary��, a group of novice Australian cyclists departs from Oklahoma to replicate the iconic journey taken by the Joad family in the American novel The��Grapes of Wrath. They start out with $420, the same amount as the��family had in the book (adjusting��for inflation, of course). Their goal is to reach California by bike and explore the��region's long-standing communities.

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Big storms really do��keep meteorologists awake at night, but the most dangerous ones aren’t the epic disasters you see on��the Weather Channel. No, the greatest threat to your safety likely isn’t a scale-topping hurricane or a tornado that scours a hole in the earth. Instead, it will be a��preventable tragedy, the result of an everyday storm we ordinarily wouldn’t think twice about.��

Take some examples that all happened this summer. Strong winds ahead of a severe thunderstorm in July on a lake near Branson, Missouri, killing 17 passengers—the highest death toll of any single U.S. thunderstorm since 24 people died in the EF-5 tornado that tore through Moore, Oklahoma, in 2013. Fourteen people were in August when a strong thunderstorm struck a casino in Oklahoma City where people were waiting for a concert to begin. Earlier that��month, an intense in Colorado Springs injured 16 people when ice pelts as large as baseballs hit the area.

What can we learn from these incidents? The threat posed by storms��at outdoor events is far greater than you might think—but the harm is also entirely preventable. ��

Now, I’m not here to feed potential weather phobias; I've spent years����in a way that counters the hype you hear everywhere else. The weather on most days will behave normally and most people will get through most thunderstorms just fine. But things can change in a hurry and staying a step ahead of mercurial weather could make all the difference—especially if you’re going to be spending an extended amount of time outdoors.

The thing is, severe-weather warning systems��have��improved by leaps and bounds over the past few decades, which means you really have no excuse to venture outside—be it just into town or into the backcountry—without some inkling of what type of weather to expect. Weather models and forecasting techniques have advanced to the point that NOAA’s can issue accurate severe thunderstorm forecasts many days in advance.��Doppler weather radar allows meteorologists to see damaging winds and tornadoes before they strike, giving people in harm’s way up to an hour of warning, in some cases. While meteorologists still have plenty of work to do on the —it's around 70 percent for tornado warnings and 50 percent for severe thunderstorm warnings—most dangerous storms are predicted accurately��in advance.

You carry all this tech in your pocket. Modern smartphones are equipped with wireless emergency alerts that push flash flood and tornado warnings right to our screen with an annoying tone to catch our attention. Severe thunderstorm and tornado warnings also come across most reputable weather apps, television, and radio the moment they’re issued.

It’s up to us to hear and heed those warnings. Here are the best ways I’ve found to do just that.

Check the��Storm Prediction Center Website

The best way to keep up with severe weather forecasts is to check the ’s website at least once per day. The agency issues severe weather outlooks on a 1-5 scale ranging from “marginal risk” to “high risk.” These forecasts are also relayed through local offices and local news broadcasts.

Download the RadarScope��App

You can keep up with storms in real-time by downloading weather apps capable of displaying��radar. The best app for this is RadarScope (found on and ). The only downside is that the app costs $9.99. I'd argue that $10��is well worth it if you’re serious about tracking storms, but if you’re only looking for the location of storms at a glance, radar images from free apps like Weather Underground should work just fine.

Use Your Phone Like a Radio

Always keep your activated—at least for tornado warnings. You can also receive watches and warnings in real-time through any reputable app like those run by the Weather Channel, Weather Underground, AccuWeather, or WeatherBug. It’s also a great idea to have a on hand. These devices are like smoke detectors for the weather, sounding a loud siren when a watch or warning is activated for your preferred counties.

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It seems needless to say that driving after tornadoes in a truck is a dangerous hobby. And yet, for the first half-century that stormchasing existed, not a single chaser died from weather-related reasons.

In May 2013, 30 miles outside Oklahoma City, in El Reno, an uncharacteristically volatile storm—2.6 miles across, with multiple spinning vortexes moving as fast as 175 miles per hour—killed 22 people. Included in the body count were the first three chasers ever to die in a storm: Carl Young, Paul Samaras, and Paul’s father, Tim.

The men’s deaths were well-chronicled soon after the disaster, including in a feature in ���ϳԹ���. A chaser being caught in a storm, though seemingly inevitable, still sent a shockwave through the community. That it was three well-regarded chasers who had reached a modicum of fame while appearing on Discovery Channel’s Storm Chasers��made it especially tough to bear. But if reality TV flattens a character and sharpens his edges, eulogies soon after a tragedy tend to smudge the complicated parts of a man. Now, five years later, Brantley Hargrove’s The Man Who Caught the Storm tells the story of the life and death of Tim Samaras, the self-taught storm-chasing savant, with love, admiration, and, at moments, clear enough eyes to ask: Why keep putting yourself in front of a deadly tornado?

Though Hargrove’s biography spans all the way back to Samaras’ childhood love of ham radios, the tornado in El Reno always hangs over the narrative. As we see the young engineer fall in love with storms, and then design a probe to gather data from inside the tornado, and later bring his son along for the ride, it’s impossible to forget the grim conclusion. But Hargrove writes in perpetual present tense, which forces the reader to stay right in the front seat next to Samaras, desperate to discover what it’s like inside the storm.

In the ���ϳԹ��� feature after Samaras’ death, Weather Channel meteorologist Mike Bettes says he was “the most cautious guy out there.” But Hargrove’s biography, at times, paints a different man. Unlike Joshua Wurman, who runs the Center for Severe Weather Research and has three degrees from MIT, Samaras was a high school–educated tinkerer who constantly needed to prove himself to receive grants and funding each season. His turtle probe, which he successfully managed to deploy in front of tornadoes before fleeing the oncoming storm, required him to enter “no-man’s land”—the turbulent, hail-peppered area right before the storm. Samaras seemed to have an innate understanding of tornadoes, but his other advantage was that he was willing to take risks.

In Stratford, Texas, during the tense moments before one of his first successful deployments, Samaras tells his co-pilot, “We’re gonna die.” One of his colleagues on that mission, South African chaser Anton Seimon, decided against another deployment with Samaras, believing it too precarious a gamble. He told Hargrove, “You can only roll the dice so many times before things go wrong.”

A few times, Hargrove explains moments when Samaras could have taken the safer path. Wurman offered Hargrove a place on his well-funded and prestigious VORTEX2 research project, but Samaras bristled at what he saw as a slight from the tornado expert, who asked him to change the design of his probe. And at the time of his death, in 2013, already 55 years old, Samaras was working on a study of lightning—a much safer and better-funded research field. On the day of the fatal storm, Samaras was supposed to be bringing his Lightning Intercept Vehicle, equipped with 360 degrees of turreted Phantom cameras, to the team. Instead, he saw a nearing giant form about 100 miles in the distance above El Reno. He couldn’t keep himself away.

Hargrove portrays Samaras as a loving husband, attentive father, and engineering savant. But he also paints a man who was so driven by a desire to understand violent winds, or perhaps to prove himself, that he frequently risked everything to enter the storm. Hargrove spoke with Samaras’ widow, Kathy, for the biography and writes of her confusion when he first started driving into tornadoes: “What was he looking for out there? What did he expect to find?”

Hargrove does well tempering the romantic prose that usually overwhelms storm writing, never forgetting to communicate the pungent monotony of chasing (bad hotels, fast food, hours upon hours in cars). And while Hargrove keeps himself from the prose, the scenes chasing storms feel lived in because he had access to hours of footage (tornado chasers film everything), and as he mentions in the author’s note, Hargrove spent weeks on the road chasing storms with Samaras’ closest friends.

In the best biographies of the obsessive dead, like those written by Jon Krakauer, the writer begins to chase whatever his subject, now passed on, has spent his life pursuing. Hargrove is no different. In that same author’s note, he mentions that even though his research has ended, he still finds himself hopping in his truck as storms form overhead. But the best Krakauer also has a touch of disdain for the subject. Hargrove’s shared passion (and close working relationship with Kathy) allows him incredible access to Tim’s world, but it keeps him from really scratching at the question the book ultimately leaves undisturbed. Was it wrong of Samaras to chase that tornado in El Reno? How much culpability does he have in widowing Kathy and bringing Paul into the storm?

The Man Who Caught the Storm manages to be both cinematically thrilling and scientifically wonky. Hargrove clearly admires Samaras, the high school–educated engineer whose ingenuity and bravery helped scientists understand the inside of a tornado. Hargrove’s narrative of Samaras is one of a man who was well-loved, hardheaded, constantly curious, and unendingly driven. But also, perhaps, a man too reckless or too hubristic—or maybe just unlucky to have driven into a storm like none he’d seen before.

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