I am landing in your inbox later than usual due to the most Monday of all Mondays. Keeping it short today.
Here’s what I’m a reading
Meet the Cowboys and Cowgirls of the Mississippi Delta: For more than a century, the African American cowboy has been almost absent in popular media. This photographer wants to change that. [Rory Doyle for Outside]
Is Mushroom Coffee Good for You? I drank the stuff for two weeks and lived to tell the tale. I'm still skeptical about the health benefits. [Grace Perry for Outside]
This Woman Paddled 730 Miles Up the Green River to Save Our Water Systems: Water management is risk management, too. [Heather Hansman for Newsweek]
Patagonia Will Not Comment on the Finance Bro Vest: And really, who can blame them? [Marc Peruzzi for Outside]
It's OK to Be a Lovelorn Sack of Potatoes: What would happen if you went outdoors, to your favorite places, with the specific intention of grieving your lost love? [Blair Braverman for Outside]
The hotshots of Helltown
Last fall, when the deadliest blaze in America in a century blew through Northern California, thousands of people—including those in the tiny community of Helltown—were forced to flee. This is the story of four friends who stayed to fight, by Robert P. Baird for GQ:
Already the fire was so big and so fast that there was no question of trying to put it out. The first responders in Paradise had two main priorities. One was to keep the roads headed out of town open as long as possible. The other was to set up temporary refuge areas to protect people who couldn't escape. Neither task was a given, and a car was not necessarily a safe place to be. The first five confirmed fatalities from the fire, and several more thereafter, were people who died in or near their vehicles while fleeing the flames.
Kontaxaki was nearly one of them.
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