Hi, hello, and happy almost summer solstice.

This issue is full of ideas for living well this summer, but you get to decide what that looks like. For me it means reading, running, hiking, and spending time outside with people I love. Less time online, more time paying attention. I think most of us are looking for a little more balance there, and summer feels like a good time to be intentional about it.

One thing that's helped me lately: what I've started calling little rituals, small repeatable moments that mark the transition from one part of the day to the next. A few of mine:

A cold finish to my shower (the dopamine hit is real)

A post-shower body oil that smells really good

Lighting a candle once the kitchen is cleaned up

A Calm meditation while falling asleep, specifically the ones set on a train somewhere 🤷‍♀️

A backbend or two after a long day at my desk

I didn't design any of these intentionally. I just noticed, at some point, that they'd become part of my day and that my day felt better for it. We have some summer ideas below to help you find yours.

Rob’s-Olympic-Moose Puddle Loop
Length: 6 miles | Elevation Gain: ~1,100 ft | Modes: Bike • Hike • Run
Trailhead: 2520 Bear Hollow Dr, Park City, UT 84098

We’re bringing you a super versatile loop today that you can hike, bike, or run. I’ve done all three and its always a good time. It takes about an hour and checks all the boxes: scenery, a solid climb, and flowy downhill singletrack.

This is the trail I recommend when someone has an hour, decent fitness, and no strong opinion about what they want to do. It works for everybody.

Segment 1: Rob’s Trail (2.1 mi uphill)
Start at the Bear Hollow trailhead (parking is tight, so overflow at the Park City Community Church). Rob’s eases you in with shaded switchbacks under pine and aspen. Around mile 2 you’ll spot a memorial stone bench for Sam Jackenthal. Pause here for views of Canyons Village framed by bright yellow hillsides.

Segment 2: Olympic Trail (1.2 mi)
Take a right onto Olympic, which rolls across the hillside with views all over. It’s short but scenic, climbing toward the saddle above Utah Olympic Park.

Segment 3: Moose Puddle (1.9 mi downhill)
Up next is a couple miles of downhill, flowy singletrack. Moose Puddle is a local favorite for a reason with wide turns and big views.

Katie Arnold is an elite ultrarunner who flipped her raft on the remote Middle Fork of the Salmon River and shattered her leg. What follows isn't a comeback story. It's a Zen meditation wrapped in a memoir about what happens when the thing that defines you is taken away, and what you find when you stop running from stillness long enough to listen. Arnold writes the way the best runners move, efficiently, with nothing wasted. Her Zen practice isn't precious. It's practical, earned, and honest.

Read it if: You're in a season of transition and need permission to slow down without losing yourself.

The word "enough" does a lot of heavy lifting in this book. Melissa Arnot Reid became the first American woman to summit Everest without supplemental oxygen. But this book is really about the question that drove her up it: am I enough? Arnot Reid writes with ruthless honesty about a difficult childhood, failed relationships, loss, and the way the mountain became both sanctuary and mirror.

Read it if: If you need a reminder that even the most accomplished women feel imposter syndrome.

When Emily Halnon's mother died of a rare cancer at sixty-six, she did what runners do: she ran. Specifically, 460 miles across Oregon on the Pacific Crest Trail, faster than any woman, or man, had done it before. What makes this book remarkable isn't the feat. It's the portrait of her mother, a woman who took up running in her late forties, swam her first laps at sixty, and rode her bike until the final weeks of her life. This one will make you cry. It will also make you want to sign up for something impossible and call your mother.

Read it if: You've ever used movement to process something your brain couldn't hold alone.

This book is the antidote to the seriousness above. It doesn’t always need to be that deep - sometimes it just needs to make you laugh. It made me laugh! Bryson is hopelessly underprepared, his companion even less so, and he is delighted by almost everything. If the other three books ask what the mountain demands of you, this one is about what the woods offer when you stop trying so hard.

Read it if: You need to be reminded that not everything has to be a journey of self-discovery. Sometimes you're just a person walking through the woods.

If you're like me, you don't list "scrolling" as a hobby on any about-me list … and yet here we are, phones in hand, summer slipping by on a screen.

The world seems to be feeling it too. There's a whole movement around giving kids a "90s summer" and reclaiming analog hobbies. Adults could use the same prescription.

September comes fast around here. And I want to look back on it and actually remember something. So we built you a list: 25 things that require being present, being outside, or being with someone worth your time. Pick 8 or 10. Make some of them hard. Let summer be something you did, not something that happened to you.

June is almost behind us, but it's going out with a full moon and the summer solstice. If the analog summer is about anything, it's about actually marking the moments, not just watching them pass on a screen. This weekend is one worth feeling.

She won the whole race (men and women). In May, Rachel Entrekin became the first woman to win the Cocodona 250 outright; 253 miles across the Arizona desert, nearly 39,000 feet of climbing, finished in 56 hours and 9 minutes. A new overall course record, beating defending men's champion Kilian Korth to the line. She'd already won the women's race the two years prior. The gap between men's and women's performance shrinks the longer a race gets, and ultrarunning is one of the few sports where that's visible in the actual results. Entrekin proved it on the clock.

41 days, 2,187 miles, a record no woman had ever held. In 2024, Tara Dower set the overall fastest known time on the Appalachian Trail, beating the previous record by 13 hours. She's also held speed records on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail, the Colorado Trail, and the Benton MacKaye Trail. Less than a decade earlier, she didn't make it past 80 miles of that same trail. A panic attack ended the attempt. The Appalachian Trail is where her thru-hiking career started, and where it nearly ended too. Dower raised over $50,000 for Girls on the Run along the way, an organization that’s dear to my heart.

The quiet record you didn’t hear about. In February, Ashley Paulson ran 12 hours, 19 minutes, and 34 seconds for 100 miles, a new women's world record, on a 1.19-mile loop around a pond in Henderson, Nevada. No mountains, no dramatic finish line backdrop. Just 84 laps, faster than any woman ever has. Paulson, with her signature pink hair, is a mother of four, and a grandmother. Remarkable doesn't require remarkable scenery. Sometimes it's just a really long day, done better than it's ever been done.

Amanda @Summit & Sage