Back in 2008, environmental activists saw two possible paths to pressure the U.S. government on carbon emissions. The international climate talks at Copenhagen, the 15th time leaders had met to discuss the issues issues, posed an opportunity for a real agreement to restrict greenhouse gases. It also seemed possible that Congress would pass a cap-and-trade bill that would put a price on carbon and de-incentivize its use.
Now we know that neither path resulted in an agreement to cut down on carbon emissions and begin to address climate change. Activists began reconsidering their strategy, asking themselves what they could do in the absence of government action. In the fall of 2010, leaders including writer and climate campaign Bill McKibben and the Rainforest Action Network’s Becky Tarbotton came up with one answer: “Mass direct action must play a bigger role in this movement,” they wrote.
This past weekend, they made their first big push in that direction. Starting on Saturday, protesters camped out in front of the White House in opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, which will pump tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, down to Texas refineries. Extracting and processing tar sands oil produces dramatically more carbon than conventional oil production: a Canadian environmental agency has estimated that in the next decade, carbon emissions from tar sands production will be equivalent to twice the country’s total carbon savings. Protesters plan to sit outside the White House every day for two weeks in hopes of persuading President Obama to stop the pipeline. Over the weekend, 110 people were arrested, and 2,000 people in total have committed to risking arrest over the course of the protest.
The protest organizers say part of the goal of the protest is “reclaiming civil disobedience,” says Jamie Henn, who works with McKibben at 350.org and is acting as a spokesperson for the event. “Breaking the law for something you believe in has become something it seems only far-out radicals or professional activists engage in,” Henn wrote to GOOD.
The tar sands protest is meant to demonstrate that people fighting against climate change aren’t members of fringe groups, but average citizens. Organizers asked participants to wear business clothes in order to set the tone for the protest.
The arrests over the weekend showed that authorities are taking this action more seriously than a routine protest. The U.S. Park Police originally told organizers that anyone who was arrested would be fined $100 and released, as per usual procedures, but dozens of protesters arrested on Saturday remained in jail on Monday morning, waiting for a 2 p.m. hearing.
Over the next two weeks, more groups of unconventional protesters will take their turn at civil disobedience. Today, landowners and farmers in Nebraska, who would see the tar sands oil pipeline cut through their home state, will risk arrest. Activists from Montana, Appalachia, and the Gulf Coast are slated to protest as well. At the end of the two weeks, organizers are planning a larger rally for people who’d rather not risk arrest. As activists’ frustration with government leaders mounts, “we think a mass sit-in like this is the most pragmatic thing we can do,” Henn says. And given the overall goals that McKibben and Tarbotton have outlined, the Keystone XL protest may well be the first of many.
If you grew up in the United States in the 1980s or ’90s, chances are you remember The Oregon Trail. For many like me, it was our first computer game and our first introduction to wilderness survival. We hunted buffalo, forded rivers, broke wagon wheels and, of course, learned about dysentery years before Google even existed, all while hoping our group would make it to Oregon City alive.
Lately, the game has found a second life. Nostalgic social media posts, memes and updated versions of the game have introduced The Oregon Trail to a new generation while reminding millennials just how unforgiving that grainy computer screen journey could be.
As a physician who specializes in emergency and wilderness medicine, I started thinking about how much of what the game taught me about surviving in the wilderness still applies today. After all, modern hikers and campers have access to tools the pioneers could never have imagined.
Surprisingly, I’d argue that more lessons from The Oregon Trail hold up than you might think.
Clean water is crucial
The Oregon Trail game made dysentery famous for an entire generation. Fortunately, advances in sanitation, hand hygiene and antibiotics have made large outbreaks like those that wagon trains and military camps experienced much less common, at least in the United States.
That doesn’t mean gastrointestinal illnesses have disappeared. Traveler’s diarrhea and cholera are still an important cause of illness around the world. Untreated water, poor hand hygiene and contaminated food can still derail any trip.
Simple habits such as purifying drinking water, washing hands before meals and after using the bathroom, and practicinggood camp hygiene remain some of the easiest ways to stay healthy outdoors.
Water purification is important with wilderness travel in the United States and in many areas of the world. There are many easy and cost-effective ways to purify water, such as boiling, filtration and treating with chemical disinfectants. Each method has its benefits and downsides.
Boiling is often the most accessible method. While it can kill bacteria, viruses and parasites, it will not remove water contaminants such as heavy metals, including lead and arsenic, or industrial contamination such as pesticides. Consider boiling your water for at least one to three minutes, depending on your altitude, to purify it. Water filtration is an easy option for backpackers but is less effective at removing viruses.
You may no longer have to ford the river with oxen, but rivers, lakes and other bodies of water present unique hazards that outdoor adventure enthusiasts can overlook.
Moving water can be more dangerous than people realize. Even the best swimmers can drown in rip currents.
Cross bodies of water only when absolutely necessary. Avoid any water crossings after recent rainfall, as the water level often rises and the current can be faster and stronger. Submerged objects – rocks, fallen trees and other debris – as well as changing weather, flash flooding and strong currents can make crossing more dangerous.
It’s not just a broken wagon axle that can send a trip sideways. One thing The Oregon Trail captured well is how distancechanges everything. A sprained ankle in a city usually means an inconvenient trip home or to the doctor, but a sprained ankle 5 miles from the trailhead may mean that someone will need to carry you. The same is true for other common wilderness concerns, such as dehydration, heat illness, infections or even blisters.
Preparation is about packing a first aid kit and thinking ahead. Ask yourself what you would do if your hike took twice as long as expected or if you unexpectedly had to spend the night outside. Research your route and carry more food and water than you think you’ll need. Check the weather and be prepared for it to change, with extra clothing and options for rain.
No one tackled the Oregon Trail alone because it meant you would not survive. There is a lesson here in solo travel and solo mountaineering.
Traveling alone means that a minor injury such as a sprained ankle could mean crawling to the trailhead to call for help or waiting until you are identified as missing. If you cannot find someone to travel with you, provide an itinerary and travel location to a trusted person. Make sure they know when you should be returning and plan to check in. If you do not return as expected, they can call for help.
Respect the wildlife
Large animals still pose a threat across the country. While there may be fewer bison than previously seen on the Oregon Trail, animals in nature deserve respect.
No selfie is worth being attacked by a brown bear. If you see a dangerous wild animal, avoid approaching and immediately leave the area.
Venomous snakes are present throughout much of the United States and continue to cause significant injury and death around the world. If someone is bitten, please don’t try to cut the wound or suck out the venom. Instead, keep the person calm, minimize unnecessary movement, and focus on getting them to professional medical care. Antivenom is available in many major hospitals in the United States.
Even smaller and more docile animals such as deer and squirrels should not be fed. It is dangerous for an animal to get used to receiving food from humans. Additionally, animals carry diseases, such as rabies and leptospirosis, that can be fatal to people.
Don’t attempt to get close to any animals, no matter how calm or asleep the animal appears to be.
Technology is a backup, not a plan
One of the biggest differences between today’s outdoor adventures and those of the Oregon Trail is the ability to communicate.
Cellphones, GPS apps and emergency beacons have made it possible to call for help from places that were once completely isolated. However, while those devices are incredibly valuable, they shouldn’t encourage you to take bigger risks, as help may be far away, slow to arrive, and injuries in the wilderness can be fatal.
Travelers can use a smartphone with GPS capacity to avoid getting lost, but downloading any needed maps for offline use can help prevent lack of service from derailing your trip.
Additionally, an unlocked smartphone that isn’t restricted to one carrier is a great way to store and communicate critical data, such as travel plans and copies of your medical history.
The Oregon Trail travelers worried about river crossings, disease and harsh weather. Today’s hikers face different challenges depending on where they are.
Desert hikers may struggle with extreme heat and dehydration. Mountain travelers face rapidly changing weather, lightning and high altitude. And coastal explorers can face problems such as riptides, waves, cliffs and unexpected rocky surfaces.
Altitude illness is often unpredictable and can sneak up on you. Most people experience acute mountain sickness within 24 hours of ascent, developing symptoms such as headache, fatigue, nausea or problems with sleep. Any confusion, difficulty walking, shortness of breath or coughing up significant phlegm should prompt an immediate descent.
There are commonly used prescription medications to help prevent and treat altitude illness. The mountain will always be waiting for your next attempt.
Some lessons survive every software update
Part of what made The Oregon Trail game memorable is that every decision mattered. Success often depended less on luck than on planning ahead, and that lesson still applies.
When people ask me what one emergency medicine skill everyone should know before heading outdoors, my answer is usually preparation. Thoughtful planning prevents far more emergencies than any single piece of equipment.
For people who spend a lot of time outdoors, I also recommend taking a wilderness first aid course. These courses teach practical skills to provide medical care in a wilderness environment.
Nature is no less powerful or unforgiving than it was on the Oregon Trail, and treating it with respect is essential. Combining advances in modern medicine with thoughtful preparation helps stack the odds in your favor so that, just as every Oregon Trail player hoped, everyone in the party makes it to the end.
Along with the pumpkins and costumes, the candles and cobwebs, Halloween is all about storytelling. From tales of haunted houses to accounts of demonic possession, ghost stories are part of the holiday’s appeal.
As a professor at the University of Maine who specializes in ghost stories, I’ve thought a lot about what makes one unforgettable. My field research has taken me from the coast of Maine to the Amazon jungle, but some factors remain constant in an unforgettable tale.
One factor is what I call “creep value,” which includes the scare factor but also the elements of a story that might be simply unsettling or uncanny.
Take, for starters, the ghost of Catherine’s Hill along the Blacks Woods Road in Maine. The story warns that, against all intuition, even a lone driver at night must always stop and offer the phantom woman a ride. If not, as the story goes, she will appear when least expected in the back seat of the car to cause a fatal accident.
But there is more to account for than creep value in an unforgettable ghost story. These stories can keep alive the memory of a dark past. In my research I have come across tales that preserve memories of injustices that might otherwise have been forgotten.
Dark histories
One story, about a ghost ship that can be heard but never seen, preserves the little-known history of the smuggling of enslaved people.
A full moon over Seal Harbor.Marcus Librizzi
The legend goes that on foggy nights, during the full moon, those standing at the Cooksey Drive Overlook in Seal Harbor, just outside Acadia National Park, can hear the slaves in the hold of a sinking ship crying for help.
The story goes back to the Pride of the Seas, a ship that smuggled enslaved Africans into the United States after the trans-Atlantic slave trade had been abolished but slavery remained legal. The account specifies that the smugglers scuttled the ship to evade the law. In ghost stories that circulate by word of mouth on Mount Desert Island, the screams of those left behind can still be heard.
Pennsylvania coal miners offer another example of past grievances passed down in the form of ghost stories. At the sites of deadly accidents, people have reported the sound of a pickaxe or the groans of a dying man. An extensive archive contains multiple accounts of coal miners witnessing ghostly knocking, disembodied voices and apparitions of mangled men. One story involves an innocent coal miner, condemned to death in 1877, who left a handprint in his cell at the Carbon County Jail that no amount of sanding or paint has been able to erase.
Today, it is widely known that coal miners of the 19th and early 20th centuries experienced ruthless exploitation and hazardous working conditions. Years ago, their plight went unrecognized in official histories and government policies, but ghost stories helped keep these experiences in the collective memory.
A South American perspective
When I collected ghost stories in South America, the same pattern held true: Some tales preserved history that would otherwise be lost.
In the Amazon jungle of northern Brazil, I traveled to a gloomy site where people, over several generations, have claimed to see the spirits of young men in the murky water. These stories keep alive injustices from the 19th century involving enslavement of Indigenous people. The location was a former sugarcane plantation notorious for cruelty, and accounts of apparitions in the water are a reminder of this history.
In Rio de Janeiro a well-known ghost story involves the apparition of a young girl in a mansion known as the Castelinho do Flamengo. All the accounts of her story agree that this young heiress, named Maria de Lourdes Fernandes, witnessed the deaths of her parents; her guardian then locked her up and drove her to suicide to get her inheritance.
Her soul is said to remain in the mansion she tried to escape. The tale is not just about an individual tragedy but one that exposes inequities involving the mistreatment of juveniles and the corrupting influence of power.
The past that isn’t past
Ghost stories don’t simply recount memories – they can revive them and bring the past back into the present.
The unsolved 1898 murder of a 52-year-old woman, Sarah Ware, in Bucksport, Maine, illustrates how ghost stories can have historical significance and flood the present with the past.
In the 1980s a woman and her daughter began having nightmares about a long-haired woman in a long dress struggling to rise from the bottom of a lake. When they realized they were having the same recurring dream, they partnered with an author, and their research led them to a conclusion that the apparition was the ghost of Ware.
Official records document that when Ware’s body was recovered it was badly decomposed and her head had completely detached. Her head remained in the courthouse until the 1990s, when it was buried in Ware’s grave. According to local lore, however, Ware’s headless body is not in that grave but instead in her original grave, now located at the bottom of Silver Lake. In the oral history of the area, workers moved only the tombstones when they flooded the paupers’ graveyard – the cemetery for the poor – to make a reservoir in the 1930s.
Ware’s ghost is believed to have appeared again in 2006. When a young woman went scuba diving in Silver Lake in Bucksport, she reported seeing a woman in a long dress struggling to rise from the bottom of the lake. When she swam over to help, the figure’s hair floated back with the movement of the water to reveal she was a faceless apparition. The sighting of the faceless ghost revived the history of the unsolved murder all over again.
Ware’s case highlights the violence and injustice and their connection to gender and social class in 19th-century Maine. Missing evidence and recanted testimonies suggest that powerful men might have interfered with the investigation to hide their own complicity in the murder. As an independent woman of the time, Ware was the subject of gossip, and the treatment of her body shows how social class affects even the honoring of the dead. As a ghost story, the history of Sarah Ware is not past but rather part of the here and now.
So when you’re out and about telling ghost stories this Halloween, remember that the unforgettable ones are all about creep value in the context of a dark history that flows back in again like the tide.
Imagine you have a bag you really like. It felt like “the one” when you bought it.
Over time, it starts to look worn. There are some scuffs on it. Nothing is actually wrong with the bag, and it still works exactly as it should. Yet, once you notice those imperfections, you start thinking about buying a new one to replace it.
Consumers do this all the time. They replace phones that still work, furniture with a scratch and sweaters with a small snag. Often, what has changed is how people see these items.
We are marketingresearchers who study why people buy, use and get rid of stuff. This obsession with perfection began when one of us, Aprajita Gautam, moved from India to the U.S. in 2019. She was struck by how different the culture of buying and owning things was in the two countries.
In our peer-reviewed research paper, published in August 2026 in the Journal of Consumer Research, we identified one reason for this pattern: Some people care much more than others about having flawless things. We call this penchant a desire for perfect products.
Not the same as perfectionism
We began by interviewing 17 people in Austin, Texas, in 2023. They included real estate agents, entrepreneurs, stay-at-home mothers and people employed by an nonprofit that promotes reuse. We asked them about their possessions and what made things seem perfect or imperfect. We then surveyed about 540 more people, some online and some in a university research lab.
The results suggested that people who strongly preferred flawless items had more elaborate ideas about what their ideal product was and were sensitive to even small deviations from those ideas. Their standards also kept rising. Seeing something better than what they owned could raise the bar further for them.
Next, we developed questions to assess how much people care about having flawless possessions. We used people’s answers to determine how strongly they desired perfect products.
We also found that this tendency is related to but distinct from perfectionism. While perfectionists hold themselves to high or even impossible standards, people who want perfect stuff hold what they buy and own to lofty standards. You might easily shrug off a bad day at the office but be far less forgiving of a scratch on your new coffee table.
For people who feel they have to own perfect products, even a small imperfection can overshadow everything else they like about something they own.
Finally, we conducted 12 experiments where we recruited participants – University of Texas at Austin students and online workers participating in crowdsourcing marketplaces – to test the behavioral effects of the desire for perfect possessions.
It can affect how you shop
In our first online experiment, we asked 402 consumers across the country to imagine booking a hotel in California’s Napa Valley using filters like those on travel websites, such as star rating, Wi-Fi or a spa.
Consumers who desired perfect products used more filters and set higher cutoffs, narrowing their search to hotels that came closer to meeting their standards.
Newness itself also had value for them.
In another online experiment with 301 consumers, those who cared most about owning flawless possessions were quicker to upgrade to the latest iPhone, even when it offered little real improvement over the previous one.
This urge can be costly. It can mean paying extra for something new when the old one works fine, or spending more time searching for a product that meets every standard that may not actually matter.
Makes people less open to repairs
This preference also affects what people do with the stuff they already own.
In our next online experiment, we asked 1,004 U.S. participants to chose between two options: an insulated coffee mug and an insulated water bottle. When told that the product they chose had a small dent on the bottom, those who were most bothered by flaws in their possessions were more likely to swap it for the other option.
We found a similar pattern with repairs. In an online experiment with 601 consumers, we found that those who want to own perfect products were less interested in fixing a broken keyboard when the replacement key wouldn’t match the color of the other keys.
This highlights a problem with repairs that isn’t usually part of discussions about sustainable consumption: Fixing something can restore its function without necessarily making it look as good as new.
A factor for donations
Consumers with exacting standards for their things also applied their high standards to items they were getting rid of.
In an experiment we conducted in a university behavioral lab, we asked 339 students to help with a “Clean Out Your Closet” drive. They examined pieces of clothing that others had discarded and sorted them into two bins: one to donate and one to recycle.
Those who strongly preferred flawless items were less likely to donate imperfect but still usable clothing. This attitude can shorten a product’s useful life.
That becomes harder if small imperfections make otherwise useful products seem less valuable.
Learning to value imperfection
Our research suggests that how someone responds to flaws in their possessions can vary depending on what those flaws mean to them. We were inspired in part by the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, which finds beauty and value in imperfection and change.
In our final online experiment, 1,203 consumers learned about hoodies with subtle variations in color and pattern. When those variations were described as making each hoodie unique, consumers who love having perfect products responded less negatively to them.
A mark on a well-used object can be seen as a flaw, but it can also become part of its history. And replacing products because of minor imperfections can lead consumers to waste their money.
None of this means consumers should keep everything forever. Mugs break and clothing and shoes get worn out. Sometimes people simply want something new.
But consider that bag again. Its scuffs could mean it is no longer the perfect bag you originally bought. Or they could mean you’ve carried it hundreds of times because you like it.
