On Nantucket, interior designer Nina Liddle is spreading her wings with Birdie, a new boutique that brings her playful, design-savvy mix of home décor and fashion to the island.

Named after her childhood nickname, Birdie reflects Liddle’s penchant for curating the unexpected. The light-filled Washington Street shop brims with distinctive finds from Europe and Africa—pieces that surprise as much as they delight. “I wanted it to feel very curated,” Liddle says. “Things people aren’t seeing everywhere else.”

Liddle has long dreamed of opening a store, even before launching her successful design firm, Nina Liddle Design. But with her interiors business flourishing, retail was put on hold—until now.

Inside Birdie, her vision comes to life. Decorative Jean Roger ceramic frogs sourced in Paris sit alongside whimsical South African pottery by Cape Town artist Gemma Orkin. Handmade Fermoie lampshades, their patterned textiles glowing in the windows, signal Liddle’s signature style: chic yet lighthearted.

Fashion, too, finds its place here. Racks are filled with breezy womenswear from designers such as Paris’s Thierry Colson, New York’s Merlette, and India’s Hemant & Nandita. Accessories—from South African jewelry to handknit Mexican handbags—add an international flair.

Perhaps the most personal touch is a custom pillow program, which allows customers to select from an array of fabrics to create bespoke designs. It’s an idea straight from Liddle’s interiors practice, where textiles often transform a room.

For Liddle, Birdie is the fulfillment of a long-held vision: a boutique that blends her interior design sensibility with her instinct for discovery. More than just another shop, it’s a reflection of her eye, her travels, and her playful approach to living well.

Gioia Cafe & Bar

Whatever else you do at Gioia, make sure to order every pasta dish. It’s a bold move worthy of this audacious 2023 addition to Little Italy, serving chef co-owner Avi Szapiro’s well-sourced wood-fired fare right across from Frank Pepe Pizzeria on Wooster Street. Thankfully, the handmade pastas come in two sizes, so you could stick to smaller versions and reasonably enjoy all five at once, including butternut squash ravioli filled with brown butter, fried sage and hazelnut breadcrumbs. Save room for appetizers like broccolini with golden raisins, grandma-style pies called Wooster Squares, pistachio gelato you won’t forget, and superb drinks due to the influence of co-owner Tim Cabral, whose downtown cocktail bar, Ordinary, is another New Haven highlight. Gioia really is the total package: The gorgeous place also has a chic market for imported and house-made goods, a takeout gelato window, and, when the season permits, one of New Haven’s few rooftop patios.

150 Wooster St., New Haven, Connecticut, 475-250-3451, gioianewhaven.com.

Hachiroku Handroll Bar & Tapas

It’s hard to believe Hachiroku Shokudo & Sake Bar and its slightly newer sibling, Hachiroku Handroll Bar, have only been open since 2022, as they already feel indispensable. (A third business, an all-day Japanese restaurant and market called The Loop By Hachiroku, opened two years ago to further demonstrate the group’s prowess.) Co-owner Yuta Kamori has nailed a hip, elegant simplicity and thoughtful sake list at both restaurants, offering a slightly wider spread of Japanese tapas with a bit of sushi at the original spot downtown and swapping the focus at this more intimate East Rock location with fewer than 20 counter seats. The selection changes frequently, so look for small bites like chawanmushi with snow crab and ikura, steamed monkfish liver with house-made ponzu, and bluefin tuna smoked and dried like prosciutto, as well as sushi full of uni from Maine or Japan, scallops, and salmon, sometimes cured with soy or miso and unbeatable either way. And keep in mind that Guilford bakery Hen & Heifer handles the desserts, like a black sesame Basque cheesecake, with aplomb.

966 State St., New Haven, Connecticut, instagram.com/hachirokustate966.

Hot Murga

Nashville hot chicken is everywhere these days—New Haven has an excellent version in the quickly expanding Haven Hot Chicken—but Indian hot chicken? Uncommon. That could change if Hot Murga has its way, though. The small, fast-casual shop from Romy Singh (whose family also owns first-rate local Indian restaurants House of Naan and Sitar) features halal fried chicken with Indian spices and variable heat levels from mild to super hot, including a signature sandwich on a squishy potato bun topped with pickled onions, pickles, coleslaw, and a vegan mayonnaise-based Murga sauce. In keeping with the clever theme, cardamom infuses a cheesecake ice cream as well as maple syrup on the chicken and waffles, while masala sauce enlivens another sandwich, the robust fries, and even the loaded mac and cheese.

140 Howe St., New Haven, Connecticut, 475-321-2153, hotmurga.com.

Lalibela Ethiopian Restaurant

Scoop up a handful of fiery lentils and greens with injera at Lalibela, a downtown fixture since 1999. Owner and chef Shilmat Tessema, a 2026 James Beard Award semifinalist who hails from Addis Ababa, makes the tangy, spongy flatbread along with virtually everything else on the menu, from yemisir sambusa, stuffed with green lentils and berbere spice, and senge karya, which involves long hot peppers filled with mixed sauteed veggies, to the rare beef and tangy cheese of the kitfo and other tender meats. Thankfully, the relaxed, understated restaurant offers combo platters so you can mix and match, say, many highlights from the vegetarian section, like the ever-popular carrots and green beans of fosolia and collard greens of gomen. You can sip some Ethiopian beers and wines, too, including the honey wine that pairs so well with these layered flavors.

176 Temple St., New Haven, Connecticut, 203-789-1232, lalibelact.com. 

Louis’ Lunch

There’s plenty to love about Louis’ Lunch, even if the iconic restaurant’s assertion that founder Louis Lassen invented the “hamburger sandwich” is a little shaky. The wee red building, still helmed by the Lassen family, is steeped in history; the unorthodox outward-facing booths are riddled with carvings; the dining experience is unique as you partake in a ritual dating back over 100 years. Step up to the counter and forget about decision fatigue: Ketchup and burger buns are verboten, so you can have white toast with cheese spread, grilled onion, and tomato, simple toppings for a satisfying, freshly ground patty grilled vertically in a fascinating cast-iron contraption. Whether you’re here for lunch or a late-night snack, finish with a slice of pie and a birch beer from the local brand Foxon Park.

261 Crown St., New Haven, Connecticut, 203-562-5507, louislunch.com.

September in Bangkok

Perfectly executed pad thai and tom yum are just the beginning at September in Bangkok, which offers a warm, wood-accented interior and a lovely patio at the edge of downtown. Chef Win Seetamyae takes the menu from larb and fermented tea leaf salad through green curry with scallops; steak and mushroom with Bangkok curry; duck pineapple curry; and the option to sub smoked tofu for vegetarian dishes like spicy Chinese broccoli with Chiang Mai chili paste. Cocktails match the theme, with hits of tropical flavor from mangosteen and tamarind as well as a Thai iced tea spiked with Japanese whisky and hazelnutty Frangelico.

754 State St., New Haven, Connecticut, 475-234-5239, septemberinbangkok.com.

Sherkaan

Sherkaan houses excellent street food in a dramatic space full of bright colors and bold murals. If the weather’s right, you can also enjoy your spiced okra fries, Indo-Chinese hakka noodles, and dum biryani—a cast-iron pot pie filled with rice, roasted chicken, and other treats capped with hot naan dough—on one of the city’s most pleasant patios, set within a placid, car-free corner of the Yale campus off Broadway, in the shadow of Eero Saarinen’s striking midcentury architecture. Seasonal lassis, boozy or nonalcoholic chai, and moreish cocktails augmented with the likes of pineapple curry shrub and jaggery help solidify Ankit Harpaldas’ restaurant as one of the most exciting examples of New Haven’s flair for Indian cuisine.

65 Broadway, New Haven, Connecticut, 203-405-5808, sherkaan.com.

Sunday Dinner Everyday

Large portions reign at Sunday Dinner Everyday, Dorma Bryan’s family-run ode to the home-cooked feasts that typically take place just one day a week. But in case you also face a compulsion to order the oxtail dinner when you see it, you should know that this low-key Jamaican restaurant just east of downtown will ladle oxtail gravy on other dishes, so you could still get a taste of the savory slow-cooked goodness on, say, a pile of rice and peas alongside curry chicken. This is mostly a takeout operation, but there are a few tables if you decide to stay; either way, don’t miss the savory baked mac and cheese and generous beef patties.

940 Grand Ave., New Haven, Connecticut, 475-301-9484.

Tacos Los Gordos

This tiny downtown taqueria makes its own bread for tortas and nixtamalizes corn from Oaxaca, where owner Edgar Marcial was born, for the tortillas. The top-notch tacos, tortas, burritos, and cheesy mulitas come stuffed with the likes of fried cod, lengua, nopales, carnitas, eggs for a late breakfast, and rotating specials, all lovely with whatever agua fresca or horchata is available.

167 Orange St., New Haven, Connecticut, 203-535-0851, tacos-los-gordos.square.site.

Tavern on State

Chef Emily Mingrone owns a tidy trio of head-turning businesses in New Haven, including whole-animal butcher shop Provisions on State and seafood stunner Fair Haven Oyster Co. It all started in the East Rock neighborhood at Tavern on State, a cozy New American restaurant where often-familiar dishes receive thoughtful twists, from the plum with parsnip purée and roasted duck breast to the preserved tomato conserva that lifts the tavern burger with cheddar fondue. This care extends to the cocktails as well: Gin might pair with apricot and lambrusco, while a drink of bourbon, lemon, and rosemary might come topped with frothy egg whites.

969 State St., New Haven, Connecticut, 475-202-6883, tavernonstate.com.

Union League Cafe

Union League Cafe dates back to 1977, breathing decadent new life into a Beaux-Arts-style building that has lived many lives—including opera house and theater—since the 1800s. This venerable restaurant across from Yale’s Old Campus is about as close as New Haven gets to fine dining, but still channels the comfort and verve of a Parisian brasserie, with all the attentive service, celebratory atmosphere, and buttery escargots that entails. Order classics and specials à la carte, from foie gras pressé to butter poached lobster to a decadent daily soufflé (and other gems from pastry chef Teila Chappel), or, if you’re there mid-week, put yourself in executive chef Olivier Durand’s hands with a tasting menu.

1032 Chapel St., New Haven, Connecticut, 203-562-4299, unionleague.com.

First published in the print edition of Boston Home’s Spring 2026 issue, with the headline “Uptown Original.” 

First published in the print edition of Boston Home’s Spring 2026 issue, with the headline “Living the Dream.” 

Atticus Market

Wednesday through Saturday after 3 p.m., Atticus Market turns out brilliant pizza billed as New Haven-ish, a play on the typical New Haven-style pie starring sourdough, local whole grains, and seasonal toppings. Yes, it’s slightly pointless recommending a single pie at a place that often changes its specials weekly as regional produce rolls in and out of availability, but in the spring, keep an eye out for, say, a pizza topped with charred ramps, dotted with white beans, and drizzled with anchovy salsa verde.

771 Orange St., New Haven, Connecticut, atticusnhv.com.

Bar

This New Haven-style pizzeria is many things, from a casual brewpub to a raucous nightclub, and it bustles with college students thanks to its central location downtown. Bar’s mashed potato bacon pie is one of New Haven’s most recognizable cultural exports, a surprisingly delicious combination that shows up elsewhere in the country as an ode to the Elm City, sometimes credited directly to the source, sometimes less transparently.

254 Crown St., New Haven, Connecticut, 203-495-8924, barnightclub.com.

Ernie’s Pizzeria

This dark-horse pizzeria on the western edge of town piles on the mootz (that’s New Haven lingo for mozzarella), offering the closest thing to a New York-style pie that you’ll want to order in New Haven. Ernie’s is squarely no-frills, unless you count the recommended meatball topping as a frill.

1279 Whalley Ave., New Haven, Connecticut, 203-387-3362, facebook.com/erniespizza.

Frank Pepe Pizzeria

Without Pepe’s, there’d be no New Haven apizza as we know it—heck, this Wooster Street originator even lays claim to creating the takeout pizza box! Do as the Italian immigrant factory workers did when Frank Pepe first started feeding them here in 1925: Order a tomato pie, free of all cheese aside from a sprinkle of parmesan, and savor the interplay of thin, charred crust and zippy red sauce.

157 Wooster St., New Haven, Connecticut, 203-865-5762, and other locations beyond New Haven; pepespizzeria.com.

Gioia Cafe & Bar

This relative newcomer is making waves on New Haven’s historic apizza block with a trendy glow-up of a space formerly belonging to Tony & Lucille’s, which helped popularize calzones nationwide. Side-stepping direct competition with Pepe’s and Sally’s across the street, Gioia puts right angles on its thicker grandma-style pies—named, adorably, Wooster Squares after the neighborhood park. Try the house-made goat cheese version with truffled ricotta and pistachio.

150 Wooster St., New Haven, Connecticut, 475-250-3451, gioianewhaven.com.

Modern Apizza

In addition to the crust itself, toppings have always set New Haven apizza apart from other regional styles. The pick at Modern, the third of the city’s “Big Three” alongside Pepe’s and Sally’s, involves one of these local specialties that might strike visitors as strange: slim slices of breaded eggplant that call to mind eggplant parm. Enjoyed best when paired with one or more salty friends such as black olives, anchovies, and bacon.

874 State St., New Haven, Connecticut, 203-776-5306, modernapizza.com.

One6Three

One6Three is a small neighborhood favorite in East Rock with a few tables and several counter seats just a couple feet from the oven. No wood-fired pie is more beloved than the Fungus Among Us, a beautiful harmony of sautéed mushrooms, roasted garlic, herbaceous cheeses, and a light touch of truffle oil.

163 Foster St., New Haven, Connecticut, 203-777-5141, one6threect.com.

Sally’s Apizza

Family drama rarely tastes as good as the rivalry between Pepe’s and Sally’s, which Salvatore “Sally” Consiglio opened just a few doors down from his uncle’s place in 1938. Many locals pick a side, but the truth is everyone’s a winner. At Sally’s, an under-the-radar standout is the white potato and rosemary pie, whose uncommon herby flavor uplifts a starchy star so thinly sliced it practically melts on your tongue. Closer to Boston, there are spun off locations in Woburn and Dorchester, with Boston’s Seaport, Concord, and Weymouth in the works for 2026-27 openings.

237 Wooster St., New Haven, Connecticut, 203-624-5271, and other locations beyond New Haven; sallysapizza.com.

Yorkside Pizza

Yorkside is a casual, Greek-owned restaurant in the heart of the Yale campus. As such, you’ll find tons of college students gathered around the emblematic Greek-style high crusts glistening with olive oil here, even by the slice—a relative rarity in New Haven. Order the one with house-made gyro meat, feta, tomato, and onion so you can carbo-load next to the Yale football team before they tackle Harvard.

288 York St., New Haven, Connecticut, 203-787-7471, yorksidepizza.com.

Zuppardi’s Apizza

Most pizzerias outside of New Haven get the stink-eye when they claim to serve New Haven apizza. Not so with Zuppardi’s, in part because it opened in 1932 in New Haven before moving just across the border into West Haven, and in part because it’s the absolute king of clam pie, one of New Haven’s signature toppings. Forget chopped bits—that’s for the novices. At Zupp’s, the white pie is blessed with fresh-shucked, whole-belly clams.

179 Union Ave., West Haven, Connecticut, 203-934-1949, and other locations beyond West Haven; zuppardisapizza.com.

With research by Abigail Pritchard

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A Boston real estate developer once told me, “In Boston, I’m a rich old man. In Palm Beach, I’m a poor young one.” I’ve been playing in that luxurious sandbox on and off for many years and have witnessed endless sightings of incredibly rich people who look like characters out of zombie movies. I’ve seen elderly men, even on canes or walkers, escorted by much younger blond women. The thought balloons over the heads of the men surely say something like, “Where were you when I was in high school?” Then there’s the line about the women taking care of the older guys: “The women down here are either nurse or purse.” But if you loved Vanity Fair, Palm Beach is for you. Thackeray is alive and well.

People want to be with their tribes. It’s human nature. True in Boston. True everywhere. A gossipy friend of mine, whose parents owned a home in Palm Beach for many years, told me, “A number of Bostonians, when they became prosperous in various manufacturing businesses, typically shoes or textiles, migrated there in the winters. Several of them helped to found the Palm Beach Country Club, whose members have included Bostonians such as Robert Kraft.” Most people who own escape homes go there because friends moved there first and said, “You should come to Palm Beach, you’d love it.” Then my friend made another observation: “The three most insecure places in America are Beverly Hills, East Hampton, and Palm Beach.”

“Why insecure?” I asked him.

“They’re insecure because they can’t stand that the guy at the next table in the hottest restaurant has millions…or billions more than they have. It drives them crazy. And all these people are so proud that the maitre d’s know their children’s names. That’s insecurity.”

I visited Palm Beach last winter, happy to be in the sun, checking out the gilded playground. The classic WASP flavor—old money, jackets and ties, linen and seersucker, Panama hats, one-trick ponies from Greenwich, Darien, Lake Forest, Dearborn—has given way to arrivals from anywhere in the country where you’ve made enough to strut your stuff. These people are almost all from three industries: private equity, venture, and…consulting. They’re the modern Gatsbys. They made it themselves and they want you to know. They’re flocking to Palm Beach and West Palm, fleeing the cold and the taxes.

Everyone’s biggest complaint is the traffic. The second complaint from waitstaff and Uber drivers can be summed up in one word: entitled. “No one ever used to blow their horns down here. Now, rudeness rules,” an Uber driver told me. She said she’s writing a novel about the Palm Beach attitude: “If this place is progress, count me out. On the other hand, I’m having a great year.”

Still, for all its changes, Palm Beach remains what it’s always been: the poster child for capitalism. The old money is nervous. The new money is loud. And everyone is keeping score.

A couple of decades ago, Bernie Madoff took a big bite out of Palm Beach. Dozens of Palm Beachers, including not just wealthy people but solidly middle-class folks as well, got caught up in the Ponzi scheme. He fleeced his best friends, he destroyed his family, and he wiped out widows. I first heard about Madoff in the 1990s. I had a lot of clients at that time who were in the shoe business. “Shoeies,” as they called themselves, were born gamblers. Because every season for them was a bet on fashion trends, shoeies could be on top of the heap one year and in bankruptcy the next. They all competed with one another in loving ways, playing gin rummy, golfing, and debating who had the hottest money manager. Many of them went to Palm Beach in the winter. One of them I called “Mr. K.” He often gave me his impressions of life in Palm Beach. And I know he had put money with Madoff. In the early 2000s, he said to me, “Do you know why I came to Palm Beach? Not just for golf.” (He had a low handicap.)

“No, why?”

“Well, I sell shoes, right? You have to always look like you’re a big success. Show no weakness in the shoe business. We like good service in restaurants. So if you’re gonna make it in Palm Beach, you’ve got to learn how to duke.”

“Duke?” I said.

“Slip the maitre d’ a folded bill, down around your pants pocket so no one can see. You duke him. Palm Beach is basically Duke City.” I asked him about Madoff. “Well,” he said, “you weren’t ‘in with the in crowd’ down here if you didn’t have money with him. It was its own club. You know, I never could read any of his monthly statements. And neither could my accountant.”

“And you didn’t think anything might be phony?”

He smiled a sad little smile. “Well, I did think that.” He paused. “But I liked the checks.” Many of the early investors took money out on a regular basis. The classic Ponzi scheme. Fear and greed. Pay out the old investors with money from the new ones.

Boston, in a sense, created Madoff. A clothing manufacturer in Boston was one of Madoff’s first investors. They met, and the con man did his magic. It’s human nature to share with friends when opportunity presents itself. Friends spread the word to other friends. Madoff eventually expanded his action to Palm Beach, introducing his Ponzi scheme at the country clubs there, his perfect stage. In the major playpens of sun and money, there is a herd mentality: “We have to go where the action is.”

Speaking of going where the action is: Peter was an amusing client of mine from Pittsburgh, a divorced man who spent winters in a Palm Beach apartment. He was an outlier, a loner, not a member of any of the tribes that dominated there: high WASP old money at the Everglades Club and the Bath & Tennis Club and the Society of the Four Arts, or the Jewish population, with the Palm Beach Country Club at the top of the social food chain. Peter belonged to a different beach club that had a lot of members from the Midwest. “We’re down market from the East Coast crowd,” he told me. “We shake your hand; we have a deal. We don’t come to meetings with 20 lawyers. We don’t need the flash and dash. I wear khaki pants and a blazer everywhere. Women seem to like it. The waiters at Café L’Europe all wear ties. It’s more genteel than the other restaurants. I sit at the bar when I don’t have a date, sip a bourbon, and talk to the bartender. Recently, an attractive woman sat next to me and said, ‘You must be really rich to dress like that, as if you don’t care.’” Peter laughed. “I’m a single man in Palm Beach. Women are always fixing me up. They have a ‘hook’ when they describe me: ‘Peter’s like a prep school kid in the 1950s. He talks about William Faulkner and restaurants in Paris.’”

Peter smiled at me. “I grew up in L.A., Bel Air. It’s fun to live in places so insecure. You can be The Talented Mr. Ripley all the time.” Peter called the bartender over. “Give my friend a peek at the stash,” he said. The bartender brought out a cardboard box, put it down on the bar, and opened it. It was full of scarves. Peter said, “Every time I have a date, I’ll surprise her by whipping a scarf out of my blazer pocket, and I’ll give it to her.”

“Pretty expensive date,” I said. “Ferragamo.”

He smiled. “Why do I live in Palm Beach? I’m trolling to find a rich widow. At least I’m honest about it. And the odds are in my favor. Nurse or purse.” He knocked on the bar. “I’ll take the purse.”

Peter was playing a role, but so was everyone else. The difference in Palm Beach is that the stage keeps getting more expensive—yet some of the old backdrops are still worth the price of admission.

I would suggest, if you travel to Palm Beach today, that you stay at the Breakers hotel. Or at least have dinner or lunch to experience hospitality at the highest level. I cannot imagine another large hotel run like a boutique one, where the employees—up and down the spectrum of jobs, from concierge to shuttle-bus driver—are like the citizens of It’s a Wonderful Life. Last year, I was having a drink with a friend staying at the Breakers on the Flagler Club floors, which covers you with butler service and free cocktails at cocktail hour. “Yup,” my friend told me. “Free drinks and great hors d’oeuvres…I’m paying $4,000 a night.” I clinked my glass with his.

One day, I wandered into the Polo Ralph Lauren store just outside the lobby of the Breakers. A salesman wanted to help. “Online shopping is killing the buying experience,” he said. “All the great stores are going, going, gone down here. Neiman Marcus, Brooks Brothers, Saks. And there was a gentleness to Palm Beach, high standards. Yes, they were superrich, but they read books and listened to classical music and drove Bentley convertibles. Now it’s the Barbarians at the Gate.”

“And Gatsby’s your favorite book, I bet,” I said.

“Well, that’s why I work at Polo. I still want men in suits and ties and women in dresses not hiked up to their pippick.” He smiled a sad smile. “Sooner or later, it’s all gone, the gentility.”

Golf is big in Palm Beach, as is everything else in this bastion of money. There is a pecking order: good, better, best. My friend Jerry from Texas has a timeshare apartment and belongs to the cream of that crop: Seminole Golf Club, one of the elite courses in America that I call “CEO Paradise.” And as another friend, a Boston transplant, told me, “In Palm Beach, people-watching gives me laughs every day. It’s like one big New Yorker cartoon.”

Jerry, high up the food chain in the automobile business, was put up for membership at Seminole by several heads of major corporations. He took me out to play. The course is on almost every golfer’s bucket list—like Augusta, it’s hallowed ground. And tough to get into, even as a guest. The Seminole locker room is among the most impressive in golf, with shining wooden lockers so large you could almost sleep in one.

On one visit years ago, Jerry and I were going to lunch after our round. “Best jellied consommé in America,” Jerry said. Then he noticed a couple coming into the dining room. “There’s a new member and his wife,” he said, nodding toward them as they walked in with the president of the club. He mentioned the new member was the CEO of one of the biggest technology companies in the country. The CEO looked nervous to me. He was wearing a blue suit and a tie. His wife was wearing gloves, as if they both had come from church on a Sunday. They both looked as though they were trying to pass muster.

Which was exactly what they were trying to do. Even CEOs of Fortune 500 companies can have imposter syndrome. In Palm Beach, they can make you feel that way. Can I fit in with pedigreed Eastern preppies? Do I measure up?

Here’s a sign of the golf times: Real estate developer Stephen Ross has built three new courses just north of Palm Beach: the Apogee Golf Club. The initiation fee is more than $500,000, and I’m told the caddie fees run $600 to $700 a round. When I caddied at Putterham in Brookline, I got $5 a loop.

My favorite place to dine: outside at Bice. Then I’ll explore shimmering Worth Avenue. Two of my favorite stores in America are on opposite sides of Worth Avenue, facing off. Maus & Hoffman is one. The shop has flair and endless colors, from shoes and jackets to bathing suits. Don’t expect cheap on Worth.

Across the street is Trillion. Beautiful clothing as well. And as the name implies, incredibly expensive. While wandering around recently, I saw the perfect advertisement for the store: an elderly man, high patrician, white hair slicked back, standing with a walker. He was wearing a brilliant green cashmere sweater, and he was staring into space, as if he had no idea where he was. “Nice sweater,” I said to him.

“It was my father’s,” he said. “Used to wear it to the beach.” There was a display of cashmere sweaters on the table behind him. They came in multiple bright colors. I picked one up and looked at the price. “This one’s $700,” I said.

“The Baron,” he answered. “That’s what everyone called my old man. The Baron always told me, ‘Free is better. And if it isn’t free…wait for the sales.’” I put the sweater back.

Back across the street is the Adelson Galleries, which several years ago had a space in Boston’s South End. They always have wonderful artists. And they still do, including one of my favorites, Andrew Stevovich, who lives in the Boston area. And also Boston’s Robert Freeman, whose paintings of Black lives inspire me.

I met a woman that week at a dinner party in a client’s apartment on Breakers Row, next to the hotel, right on the beach. Her name was Charlie. She had run a major consulting firm and retired to Palm Beach, with several other dwellings where the one percent gather. I asked her about the current Palm Beach scene. “The people in Palm Beach are overwhelmed by what they have: fatigue from counting how many houses, how many planes. Fastest game in the past few years is to buy a great house and location, tear it down, and build a tribute to your success. Then buy the house on your left and the house on your right and say to yourself, ‘Can you top this?’” She went on. “Palm Beach used to be a sleepy place. Rich, yes. But kind of seersucker suit and straw-hat rich. Polo, not pickleball. Years ago, when I came down here, everyone lived a gentle life. Now there’s a crowding out, a wall of people, the toniest clubs, the Everglades, the Bath & Tennis, all taking in more members than they’ve ever had. The dream of being ‘in with the in crowd’ is relentless.”

“Well,” I said, “Everything changes in life, whether we like it or not. Why don’t you move someplace else?”

Charlie smiled. “Well, I like to see how people live. I was a marketing whiz and a history buff. I do like to people-watch at La Goulue because it has a New York feel. Then I can go to Kapsiki on Worth Avenue. They have a one-of-a-kind flair for original outfits.”

As she was leaving the party, she said, “Looking around Palm Beach, I wonder if it’s somewhat like Paris right before the revolution—the royals about to lose their heads. When you run into new friends here, they all tell you they’re running off to visit somewhere else: Venice, Antarctica…they’re nervous.”

My friend Frank has lived half the year in Palm Beach for at least 30 years. He was a star at one of the premier investment firms in the country, based in New York. He has a great sense of history about the world around him, and some sharp observations about his second home: “It was a quieter place when I came down here. Now, new clubs are popping up and are immediately filled up, with most of the members from other places, making the traffic out of control,” he said. “One recent place got this all started, the Carriage House, modeled on Annabel’s, the über club in London. Symptoms of the times. Young crowds, rock ’n’ roll. When it opened, it was around $250,000 initiation fee. Now it’s more than $400,000. No sports, just ‘see and be seen.’ Fun, fun, fun, till Daddy takes the T-bird away.”

“It’s finance-bro city,” Frank added. “They’ll probably bring back the dress code: suspenders and suits, slicked-back hair, huge watches…cuff links. They already have the clubs to go with it all.”

Real estate and hotel rates, accordingly, have skyrocketed. “We can’t believe the home prices…$120 million. New hotels are going up all over the place. I visited friends in a new hotel in West Palm. A tiny room is $2,000 a night. And getting a restaurant rez is crazy. We stay home mostly. And so do our friends.” He winked at me. “But we’ll go to the Everglades…no tourists there.”

My favorite place in Palm Beach is the Society of the Four Arts, with an amazing sculpture garden designed by the great Boston landscape architecture firm Morgan Wheelock. The Four Arts was created in 1936 to bring education and culture to Palm Beach County. There are courses and programs featuring visiting speakers, the best America offers in politics, literature, music, and current events. Name your favorite person in any field, and more than likely, they’ve spoken and delighted the gatherings at Four Arts.

I was writing in a notebook, dining outside at Bice, when a woman alone at the next table asked, “Are you a food critic?”

Donatella had been an opera singer, not quite the Met or La Scala, but a diva nonetheless. “I’m a culture maven,” she told me. “The new big money here means Palm Beach will be one of the great cities in America for the performing arts. I heard the most interesting people in the world, like Boris Johnson and Neil Gorsuch, want to speak here. The greatest symphonies as well, and wonderful theater at Glazer Hall. And every single great New York restaurant is opening a place down here. I could go to the Kitchen in West Palm or Milos every night, but I hope your wallet is fat.”

I guess whether Palm Beach is getting better or worse depends on your perspective. But either way, the point of coming down here is rubbing elbows with the economically rarefied, playing in the pools, the golf courses, the clubs and dining, the shopping, the people-watching. On my last night on a recent visit, I was waiting for a shuttle bus to take me back to my hotel. I sat in a small vestibule. Four young women came over and sat next to me. They noticed me writing in a notebook. One of them said, “You writing a book?”

“Always,” I answered. “I’m writing an article about Palm Beach.”

“We’re here on a long weekend, down here from Quincy, staying at the Breakers.”

“Having fun?”

“The best big hotel we’ve ever stayed in. Palm Beach is really lit. All kinds of old guys, young guys hitting on us. Buying us drinks. It’s like a great parade, taking it all in, away from the cold. And we get to pretend we’re as rich as they are. We’re all from Quincy but thinking that we’re Cinderella and the prince will show up and ask us to the ball. Wanna buy us some stingers?”

“A little late for me,” I said.

“Too bad—you should really act like we do. Pretend you’re really rich.”

This article was first published in the print edition of the February 2026 issue with the headline: “Scenes from the Gilded Sandbox.”

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• 18 Winter Travel Destinations to Escape This Mess

A single beam of light bobbed in the darkness as Patrick Bittman, cold and winded from hours of hiking, hauled himself up the last stretch to the summit of Little Haystack. Hours earlier, he’d set out alone on a nighttime winter hike in New Hampshire’s White Mountains to climb the three peaks of the Franconia Ridge loop and watch the sun rise from the final summit. He had left the trailhead at 12:15 a.m. under a light snow, shortly after scribbling down his first journal entry: “Maybe this is foolish.”

Three hours later, as he scanned the first peak with his headlamp, he felt as though he’d stumbled into a Norse hellscape. The summit of Little Haystack, at nearly 5,000 feet above sea level, was far colder, windier, and buried under much more snow than the trailhead. Off the sides of the ridge, stunted trees—gnarled and bent by years of pounding wind—were caked in thick layers of frozen snow. Icicles jutted out at improbable angles from the black rocks. Then there was the sound—that unnerving, haunting sound. He took off his gloves, exposing his hands to the cold, to pull his journal out of his pack. “The wind is primordial, not a roar, but a deep, unceasing, guttural back-of-the-throat growl,” the 28-year-old wrote. Still, he pressed on.

On his way up Little Haystack, the trees on either side of the trail had kept him on course. Now, above the tree line, the path vanished under fresh snow. Every few steps he strayed from the invisible, rocky spine of the mountain and sank up to his waist in drifts. Each time, it took him 10 minutes to fight his way out, leaving him colder, wetter, and more exhausted than before. A distance that would have taken 15 minutes in normal conditions took him two hours. He was badly behind schedule. But he didn’t turn back—he just adjusted his goal. Instead of sunrise from Lafayette, he’d catch it from Lincoln, the middle peak.

As he slowly advanced, Bittman kept stripping off his gloves, exposing his hands, to consult his GPS or write in his journal, yet decided against eating food or drinking hot coffee from his thermos because he was worried about the cold. After a while, the words he wrote weren’t making much sense either.

Finally, a realization cut through his mental fog—unless he made strategic decisions right away, he would freeze to death on this mountain. He thought of his friends and family, how he’d be letting them down if he never made it home. None of them even knew where he was out hiking.

But when he finally decided to turn back, it was too late—he couldn’t find the trail. Instead, he started frantically down a steep, treeless gully, thick with snow, moving faster and faster. He figured he’d eventually intersect the trail and, even if he couldn’t go any further, a hiker would find him in the morning. Sliding 10 feet at a time in the deep snow, then getting back on his feet and sprinting again, he was animalistic, his body buzzing with adrenaline, his heart thundering beneath his layers.

He ran on in a panic, littering the mountainside with his belongings—his hat, his gloves, his walking stick, his headlamp. His mind was locked in flight mode.

After about a third of a mile, his mad dash came to a sudden halt as he sank waist-deep into the snow. He could no longer move his body, nor did he even want to. His adrenaline drained away, and his heartbeat slowed. Peace settled over him. He closed his eyes and waited for death.

Just before 8 a.m. on December 19, 2024, New Hampshire Fish and Game Department Lieutenant James Kneeland drove north through Franconia Notch on Route 93 to a meeting in Lancaster. It was wild in the notch that morning, the mercury at 25 degrees, with 40-mile-an-hour winds blowing snow everywhere. As always when driving north, he decided to check out the scene at the trailhead to the Franconia Ridge Loop, which lies just steps off the highway, to see how busy things were. The loop is one of the most popular hikes in the Northeast—and the single most frequent site for rescues in New Hamsphire.

He pulled his Chevy Silverado into the snow-covered lot where a single car sat parked. Who the eff would be up there in this goddam weather? he wondered. Still, with so few cars in the lot, he felt confident he wouldn’t get an emergency call that day.

Minutes later, more than 3,000 feet above that parking lot, Bittman opened his eyes, surprised he was still alive. One lucid thought surfaced: Maybe he had cell reception. He fished his phone out of his jacket and dialed 9-1-1. To his disbelief, a dispatcher answered. He told her he needed help.

Kneeland had only made it 20 minutes up Route 93 when State Police texted him at 8:13 a.m. about a hypothermic hiker on Little Haystack. He pulled over, took out his laptop, fired up his GPS mapping software, and entered the coordinates. Bittman’s location appeared as a red dot in the Dry Brook drainage, a gully he knew all too well. Two years earlier, on Christmas Eve, he had sent a team of rescuers up there to find a lost hiker. They returned on Christmas Day carrying his lifeless body.

Kneeland called Bittman and asked if he could move, explaining he could guide Bittman back to the trail over the phone. But Bittman was too cold and his limbs were frozen. Kneeland knew a helicopter was his best chance, and he asked how far Bittman could see. When Bittman replied that he was in the clouds and could only see about 50 feet, Kneeland knew a chopper wouldn’t be able to safely fly through the clouds to get there. He would have to send rescuers up on foot. “I’m going to get a team together and send them up to you. It’s going to be several hours till they’re there, though,” he told Bittman, adding that he would call every 30 minutes to check on him.

“I know it’ll take you as long as it took me to get here,” Bittman replied.

Kneeland hung up and started calling members of his team. It was time to save Bittman.

Fish and Game Lieutenant Bob Mancini was sitting on the exam table at the doctor’s office getting his blood pressure taken when his phone lit up with a message from Kneeland about Bittman. He read it and turned to the doctor. “You might want to give me a minute,” he said. “My blood pressure could be a little high.” He called Kneeland to accept the mission, then hustled out to his truck.

Fish and Game Conservation Officer Christopher McKee was at home when he got the call. He opened his pantry, snagged two cans of Campbell’s Chicken and Stars soup from his kids’ lunch cache, boiled them up, and poured it into his thermos before grabbing his coat and jumping in his truck, where his rescue gear was already packed and ready to go. Conservation Officer Jim Cyrs was on his way to pick up a potentially rabid bat for testing when he received the call. He rerouted his GPS and headed for the notch. Conservation Officer Joseph Canfield also responded.

Kneeland knew he was going to need more rescuers for a carry-out—it would take a minimum of 18, in shifts of at least six, to carry Bittman down the mountain in a litter. He called Allan Clark, founder and then-president of the Pemigewasset Valley Search & Rescue Team (Pemi SAR), an all-volunteer group that covers this stretch of the White Mountains, and gave him the details.

Dan Allegretti, a semi-retired private equity guy and Pemi SAR volunteer, was walking his poodle with his wife when an alert hit his phone: We have a male off trail below the ridge; he is currently alive. We will be going up Falling Waters Trail to Shining Rock and then bushwhacking north to his coordinates. Staging will be at the normal trailhead. This will likely be a carry-out. Fish and Game is bringing the litter. This is for winter crew only. Temperature is dropping currently 15 degrees, wind 25 mph. Need traction and likely snowshoes.

Allegretti walked home, filled a thermos with hot black coffee, wrapped up a piece of his wife’s homemade banana bread, and gathered some electrolytes and additional food for the mission. Then he grabbed his snowshoes, pack, and fluorescent yellow Pemi SAR jacket, and headed for his car.

When Rusty Talbot, a local climbing-gym owner and mountain guide, saw the alert, his mind flashed back to nearly two decades earlier, when he and some friends had gotten caught in a snowstorm after ice climbing. When they tried to get down the mountain, they got lost for a couple of hours in deep snow in the very gully where Bittman was located. He knew exactly how disorienting that terrain could be.

Talbot quickly checked his calendar. That night was his son’s last concert of his elementary school career. He crossed his fingers that he’d be back by then and accepted the mission. Six other winter-qualified members also responded.

Kneeland knew the cloud cover was too low for a helicopter medevac mission, but he also knew that weather moves fast on Franconia Ridge. He put in the call to the New Hampshire Army National Guard base in Concord, just in case.

National Guard Chief Warrant Officer Luke Koladish was in the flight operations room that Thursday morning when the call came in. He knew from the sense of urgency on the line, and the time it would take a ground crew to reach the hiker, that the Guard’s medevac team was Bittman’s best shot at survival. He agreed to take the mission as pilot-in-command, asking Chief Warrant Officer Jeremy Gray to serve as pilot and Sergeant First Class Aaron DeAngelis to build out the rest of the crew. DeAngelis recruited Sergeant Daniel Bourque to operate the hoist and Staff Sergeant Ethan Major to serve as medic. It was a solid team; they all had extensive experience, including some who had rescued wounded soldiers from battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan, often under fire.

After their commanding officer signed off on the mission, Koladish headed to the Black Hawk on the tarmac, where the crew had already prepared their gear for the mission. He and Gray climbed into the cockpit, pulled on their headsets, and ran through their lengthy preflight checklist. The engine whined, and after a while, their seats began to shudder as the rotors came to life overhead. The rest of the crew climbed in. As the Black Hawk began to slowly rise into the air and head north, Gray radioed base: “We are off of Concord, en route to Franconia Notch.”

At about 9:15 a.m., Conservation Officer McKee swung his truck into the snowy parking-lot staging area where Kneeland was waiting. Kneeland briefed him on the plan as McKee pulled on his outer layers, grabbed his radio, and hauled his 60-pound pack from the back of his truck. Inside it were warm clothing, a chemical warming blanket, sleeping bags, and a bothy bag—a pole-less survival shelter used for keeping warm. McKee waited for Canfield to arrive on the scene, and by 10 a.m., they were heading up the trail.

Allegretti and fellow Pemi SAR volunteers Corey Swartz and Mark Casale pulled into the lot shortly after, checked in with Kneeland, and started up the mountain. Then Mancini arrived from the doctor’s office, stripped out of his dark-green Fish and Game uniform right there in the parking lot, and started pulling base layers and outer layers from the drawers in the back of his Chevy Tahoe before grabbing his spikes, snowshoes, and 50-pound pack. Kneeland handed him the litter, and Mancini began up the trail, dragging it behind him. Soon after, Talbot and three other volunteers checked in and set out with Jim Cyrs from Fish and Game.

Eventually, Allegretti and the other two Pemi SAR volunteers caught up to McKee and Canfield. Since the volunteers were carrying much smaller packs than the Fish and Game officers, they decided the volunteers should push ahead as the hasty team to reach Bittman first and start warming him. McKee handed over some of his warming gear, including the bothy bag and chemical blanket. The volunteers stuffed them in their packs and took off, moving at as fast a pace as they thought they could reasonably sustain.

Meanwhile, far overhead, the Black Hawk closed in on Franconia Ridge. In the back, medic Ethan Major was readying his rescue gear. If the clouds were high enough to get to Bittman’s location, they were going to have to move fast. They would need a long enough break in the weather to lower Major down to Bittman, hoist both back up, and safely get out of there. DeAngelis monitored visibility out the left-side window, down toward the notch. “We have an escape route down to the left, toward 93,” he said over the chopper’s intercom.

As they neared their target, their rotors whipped up fresh snow from trees and created a rotor cloud from the moisture—both limiting visibility. But the most dangerous obstacle by far was the low cloud ceiling. Koladish and Gray inched the Black Hawk slowly up the mountain to avoid punching into the clouds if they suddenly shifted. When that happens, pilots lose all visibility in an instant and with it, often, their sense of orientation. It’s an extreme emergency—and often fatal.

Over the chopper’s intercom, Koladish announced their emergency plan: If they went into the clouds, they would immediately turn left and climb to 7,500 feet—far above the range’s peaks. The pilots would fly to the edge of what was possible, but they couldn’t risk five lives onboard to save one on the mountain.

The chopper got within a half mile, then a quarter mile to where the needle on their grid indicated Bittman should be. But as they inched higher, they reached 3,900 feet—as high as they could safely fly in the clouds. Bittman’s coordinates were at 4,300.

Just then, DeAngelis piped up: “93 is starting to fade.” They were losing visibility, and their escape route was disappearing. The pilots backed off, turned left, and prepared to retreat down toward the notch.

Still, there was one last possibility: Maybe Bittman was just above the top of the clouds. The chopper climbed over the band of clouds and tried to descend to him from above, but no luck. Bittman was unreachable.

The National Guard team radioed Kneeland and told him that they would land at the Cannon Mountain Ski Area, just north across the highway, to conserve fuel and wait for a possible break in the weather. “Granite ops this is ABLE 12,” Koladish radioed to the base in Concord. “We’re unable to get to the patient. We’re going to land at the Cannon Mountain parking lot to stage.” Down in the parking lot, Kneeland sat alone in his pickup, following it all on the Guard’s radio channel. “Goddammit,” he said aloud.

The pilots lowered the chopper onto the snowy surface and powered it down. Then they strode into the ski lodge in their camo flight gear, where ski-school kids buzzed around the lodge. Around that time, Kneeland called Bittman to check in. “Could you hear the helicopter overhead?” he asked. Bittman said he could not.

Kneeland felt a pit in his stomach. Either it was far windier up the mountain than he thought—putting Bittman in even more danger—or his coordinates were off, meaning the rescuers might need to conduct a search before they could even get to him.

At about noon, the hasty team reached the turnoff to Shining Rock, just below the summit of Little Haystack. They checked their GPS maps. Bittman was at that same elevation, but about 1,000 feet off the trail. They decided to climb a bit higher, figuring they’d naturally drift downhill as they traversed toward the little red dot marking Bittman’s location.

The trail they’d climbed was hard-packed snow. Now they faced 3 feet of undisturbed powder. They pulled the spikes off their boots, unhooked their snowshoes from their packs, strapped them on, and ventured off trail.

Swartz took point, using his GPS to guide the trio through the spruce-fir forest’s nasty, matted low-lying branches. They pushed tree limbs aside with their arms and clomped over them with their snowshoes. It had taken them nearly two hours to climb the 3 miles to where they left the hiking trail. After 20 minutes of bushwhacking through the forest, they’d only made it about 500 feet.

Meanwhile, the four Fish and Game officers, Talbot, and the other Pemi SAR volunteers had made it to the point where they too would leave the trail to move toward Bittman’s location. Their mission was different: to secure Bittman’s exit. That meant blazing a trail through the trees wide enough for the litter and the rescuers carrying it, and as level as possible to avoid jostling him. Sharp or rough movements can send a hypothermic patient into immediate cardiac arrest.

They got out their hatchets and saws—Cyrs pulling his recently sharpened two-handed axe—and started hacking. Early on, McKee hit a steep drop-off. He knew they would never get a litter back up it, and they backtracked to cut a new path. They did this again and again, backtracking, rerouting, and searching for a way through.

While the ground crew made their way toward Bittman, Kneeland sat in his truck at the trailhead, calling Bittman every 30 minutes. On an earlier call, he asked again if Bittman felt strong enough to try to reach the trail. Bittman said he could not. Kneeland reassured him that help was on the way and gave him a warning: “Whatever you do, if you do move, do not go downhill.” On another call, Kneeland asked if Bittman could build a snow shelter. The answer was no.

Kneeland kept calling to check in, but by late morning, Bittman could only respond with moans. He was fading.

At noon, Kneeland called him again. The phone rang and rang. No one answered. He dialed once more. No answer. “Fuck,” he said, banging his fist on the steering wheel. He thought the worst. If Bittman’s battery had died, the call would have gone straight to voicemail. Calls were going through but Bittman was no longer answering.

Kneeland knew his team was moving as fast as they could, yet he needed them to understand how dire the situation was getting. He picked up his radio and reported that Bittman was no longer responding to calls.

At 1 p.m., about 45 minutes after the hasty team had left the trail, they were closing in on the red dot. Swartz was out front, whacking through what his map showed was the final stretch. Then a clearing came into view, and he emerged from the forest into the open gully.

There, precisely where the map said he’d be, was Bittman. A few feet away lay his phone, dropped from his frozen hands.

Down in the parking lot, Kneeland picked up his cell phone again. One more try to see if he would answer. He dialed Bittman. It rang. Then he heard a voice on the other end.

“This is Corey.”

“Oh, Corey. Sorry. I must have dialed the wrong number,” Kneeland said.

Before Kneeland could hang up, Swartz explained that he had just gotten to Bittman and picked up his phone.

“Is he alive?” Kneeland asked.

Swartz said he was, and the team was already working on warming him. Kneeland felt a wave of relief. “Update me when you can,” he said before hanging up.

Bittman was in bad shape, sitting dazed in the snow. When Swartz told him they were from search-and-rescue, he seemed to understand, but he had a vacant look in his eyes, like he wasn’t even there.

The three volunteers got busy constructing a makeshift platform out of their snowshoes and packs to get Bittman off the ice. Then they opened the red bothy bag and climbed inside. Under the warm glow of the shelter, they started pulling layers and blankets out of their packs.

Allegretti pulled out the chemical blanket McKee had given him and tried to activate it. Nothing. It was a dud. “Okay, what else do we have?” he asked. They rifled through their packs—a Thinsulate blanket, an extra jacket, a hat, and gloves—and started dressing Bittman. Then Swartz and the other volunteer opened their bright yellow Pemi SAR coats and sat on either side of Bittman, sandwiching him between them, using their own body heat to warm him. Allegretti pulled out his thermos. “I’m sorry, all I have is some black coffee,” he said. “Will you drink that?”

“I’m a barista,” Bittman replied with a smile.

Allegretti was relieved to see a sliver of the person who was still in there. They got him to eat some of Allegretti’s wife’s banana bread. He seemed to be coming back.

Still, Bittman was confused. He gazed at the strangers around him offering sips of hot coffee, a puzzled look on his face. After a while, he asked Allegretti if he could lie down. “So long as you keep talking to us,” Allegretti said. They didn’t want him to drift off.

Allegretti checked in with Kneeland, relaying that Bittman’s condition was inconsistent and unstable. He looked at the time—they’d been with Bittman for more than an hour now. Where was the litter?

Just a few hundred feet away, the rest of the ground crew was hacking through the forest, searching for the best route. They were moving as fast as they could without sweating through their layers, which would chill them and turn them from rescuers into liabilities. They looked skyward. Still socked in. This would be a carry-out, no question about it. That meant the hardest part of the day was still ahead of them. The carry-out would require great care, potentially ropes to maneuver the litter down hairy sections, and as many as 10 hours. What was less clear was whether, somewhere along the way, this rescue would become a body-recovery mission.

Down the mountain, time was running out. In the basement of the Cannon Mountain ski lodge, the National Guard members gathered around their radio, tracking the slow progress of the ground rescue and monitoring the weather. Mount Washington’s weather station predicted a break in the clouds at 6 p.m.—four hours away.

It was two days shy of the winter solstice, with sunset at 4:13 p.m. Outside, daylight was draining from the sky. Just before 2:45 p.m., they radioed Kneeland that they had run out of time—they couldn’t carry out the mission after dark without night-vision goggles and would have to head back to the base in Concord. The news rippled across the forested hillside and into the gully where the Pemi volunteers were huddled under the red bothy bag, trying to keep Bittman alive.

If Koladish had worked expeditiously through the lengthy preflight checklist on the way out here, he was now slow-walking his safety check outside the chopper, hoping for a break in the clouds before they left. He climbed into the Black Hawk, grabbed the checklist off the hook behind his seat, and methodically ran through it with Gray, one item at a time.

Up on the mountain, the trail crew knew they were almost there and had sent Talbot ahead with the litter. In the bothy bag, Allegretti kept Bittman talking. Then Allegretti heard rustling outside and stuck his head out to see Talbot emerging through the trees. He climbed out to meet him and discuss the plan for getting Bittman into the litter.

Down in the parking lot, Kneeland looked skyward and saw a break in the clouds. He radioed Talbot and Allegretti, who confirmed they were seeing it, too, as did McKee. For the first time all day, he and the other Fish and Game officers could see the entire mountainside, meaning that they—and Bittman—were about 100 feet below the cloud ceiling. “Send the helicopter,” McKee said. “It’s now or never.”

At 2:55 p.m., the pilots and crew were already in the Black Hawk, ready to fly home, when they heard the chatter on the Fish and Game channel. The three crew members in the back looked at one another and knew the mission was back on. By the time they heard one of the Fish and Game officers asking Kneeland if the Guard was up on the channel yet, Koladish had already thrown the throttles into fly.

The pilots still had Bittman’s location on their grid and headed up the mountain, this time with urgency. In back, Major was already out of his seat, preparing to rappel out of the chopper. DeAngelis monitored their escape route on the left, while Bourque scoured the mountainside through the right-side window, looking for their target. The chopper made a pass over Bittman but didn’t see him. McKee came on the radio: They were one ridge off and needed to come back.

Then Bourque spotted them—the bright yellow Pemi jackets against the fresh white snow. “I’ve got him at 4 o’clock, a half a mile or so,” he said. He opened the side door. Cold air rushed into the cabin. The pilots slid the chopper sideways toward the mountain.

By now, Major was hooked into the hoist, bringing along a bright orange stuff sack containing an air rescue vest. He leaned backward on the edge of the chopper door, his harness tightening around his pelvis, and fist-bumped Bourque before stepping off into the abyss. Bourque began lowering him, calling out directions for the pilots. “Five, continue right, four, continue right, three, two, one, and hold,” Bourque said. They were on target, with Major hanging just feet from the ground.

On the snow below, the Pemi SAR volunteers stood sideways and leaned into the slope, bracing against the downdraft that threatened to blow them off the mountain. Bourque lowered Major the rest of the way. When Major’s boots finally touched snow, he unhooked from the cable and gave the signal. The pilots retreated to hover off to the side to spare them the hurricane-force winds—but not too far in case the weather changed and they needed to get out fast.

Major made his way over to Bittman, who was still inside the bothy bag, raised his visor, and looked him in the eyes. “My name is Ethan. I’m a medic, and I’m here to help you.” He quickly assessed Bittman’s condition and asked him his name. Bittman answered. Good—he was alert enough to follow directions. They removed Bittman from the bothy bag and Major laid the triangular-shaped rescue vest on the snow and told Bittman to roll onto it. Together, they got his arms through the armholes. Then Major clipped it across Bittman’s chest and between his legs, before clipping himself to Bittman.

From the chopper, Bourque was monitoring everything on the ground. When he saw Major and Bittman were clipped in, he guided the pilots back until they were hovering right overhead, then lowered the hoist. The hook swung in the downdraft, and Allegretti reached up, grabbed it, and immediately handed it to Major. He clipped in and they were hoisted into the air.

In an instant the chopper was in motion again, banking left toward the notch, with Bittman and Major dangling beneath. Bourque hauled them up, and as soon as they were inside and he’d shut the door, the pilots blasted the heat. Major immediately knelt beside Bittman, wrapping him in the litter on the chopper floor, defibrillator pads close by in case his heart stopped. “We have the patient and are en route to Littleton Hospital,” Koladish said over the radio.

An instant later, the pilots and crew heard the sounds exploding from the radio channel—cheering, whooping, and several top-of-the-lungs “fuck yeahs” from the gully where the Pemi SAR volunteers had kept Bittman alive; the mountainside where the Fish and Game officers and Talbot had hacked through the forest; and the parking lot where Kneeland had coordinated it all. They smiled as they heard the radio channel. After all, they’d all had rescues that didn’t end the way they wanted. This one did. The mountains didn’t take this one, Cyrs thought to himself as he watched the chopper fly off toward Littleton. They’d made it just in time. Five minutes after the helicopter disappeared from view, the cloud ceiling came down again. The window had closed.

Ten minutes later, the Black Hawk set down on the hospital helipad, where medical staff were waiting just inside the building. Major orchestrated the handoff, hustling alongside the gurney into the hospital before jumping back in the chopper to head back to Concord. The doctors went to work on Bittman. His body temperature was in the 70s, at the edge of death.

At the gully, the rescuers gathered their gear, strapped on their snowshoes, and met up with the trail crew on the path they’d hacked through the forest. As they approached, Cyrs put his fist in the air and shouted, “Pemi SAR”—a salute to the volunteers who had been on the frontline all afternoon. McKee opened his thermos of Chicken and Stars, and they passed it around, sipping from the cup. Cyrs broke out his gummy bears for everyone to share. Then they headed down the mountain together, the empty litter dragging behind them.

At the parking lot, Kneeland waited for every one of them to come off the mountain and sign out before heading to a McDonald’s on the way home. He hadn’t eaten all day and ordered three cheeseburgers and fries from the drive-through.

Talbot knew that if he hurried, he could make it to his son’s winter concert. Mancini could, too—it was his kindergartener’s very first one. They both hustled toward their vehicles and drove to the school. Still in their wet mountaineering gear, they raced into the building, took their seats, and watched their children perform.

When Cyrs went home, the first thing he did was lay out his gear on the floor to dry. If a call came in the next morning, or even that very night, he’d have to be ready to head back out.

The first thing Bittman remembers from the hospital was doctors moving around the room talking about his organ function. He was lying there, his hands and feet extending off the table, warm water streaming over them, as the doctors tried to save his fingers and toes from amputation.

The next morning, Allegretti woke up unable to shake Bittman from his mind. He called Kneeland to ask if it would be okay to visit Bittman in the hospital. Kneeland said it would.

When he walked into the hospital room, Allegretti didn’t recognize Bittman—he was like a different person. “Do you remember who I am?” Allegretti asked. Bittman said he did. He was grateful for the mission that was orchestrated across two government agencies and a volunteer group, but to him, it had felt very personal. Strangers had fed him coffee and homemade banana bread. When Bittman’s mother walked into the room and he introduced Allegretti, she threw her arms around him.

As Bittman improved, his nurse joked with him about defying natural selection. Bittman thought of all the people—volunteers, Fish and Game officers, National Guard officers and crew members—who’d dropped what they were doing that day to save his life, risking themselves in the process. Maybe it isn’t survival of the fittest that matters most, he thought. Maybe the strongest force in natural selection is community.

A Fish and Game officer also showed up at the hospital—to collect information for their report, which would cite cotton layers, insufficient preparation, and poor judgment. Bittman hadn’t purchased the state’s $25 Hike Safe Card, meaning he could be charged for the rescue. But Bittman knew no amount of money could repay the strangers who had risked their lives for his. (In the end, he was not charged.)

Months later, Allegretti saw a message pop up on his phone. It was a video of Bittman, healthy and happy, back at his café job in Portland, Maine. In the video, he waved, then lifted a pitcher of foamed milk over a cup of espresso and poured a perfect tulip, topping it with a heart.

This article was first published in the print edition of the February 2026 issue with the headline: “Stranded.”

Where to Escape Screen Addiction

No hourly alerts. No app blockers. No “mindful tech use.” Just places so good you’ll forget your phone even exists.

By Madeline Bilis

Water Meets Wonder: Iguaçu Falls, Brazil

GETTING THERE: Plan for a 10-hour flight to São Paulo on LATAM Airlines, then a much quicker one to Foz do Iguaçu.

Iguaçu Falls spans the border between Argentina and Brazil, and good luck staying glued to your phone with 275 waterfalls thundering for your attention. Once you’ve caught a rainbow shimmering through the mist, check into Belmond’s Hotel das Cataratas, the only hotel inside Brazil’s Iguaçu National Park. Within its pale-pink walls, luxury abounds: think tropical gardens, a sprawling heated pool, and an expansive spa. But here’s the real flex: Once the park closes at dusk, day-trippers vanish, and hotel guests have the falls entirely to themselves. What are emails, again?

Log Off, Sink In: Morristown, Arizona

GETTING THERE: American, Delta, and JetBlue all offer nonstop flights to Phoenix. You’ll want to rent an SUV or arrange for a driver to Castle Hot Springs resort, as Ubers won’t navigate the dirt road in.

Tired of doomscrolling? Castle Hot Springs is calling your name. Since 1896, the resort has beckoned weary travelers to soak up the glorious, mineral-rich waters. A century later, the vibe is still firmly “unplugged,” albeit with some swanky modern updates (hello, spa cabanas and multi-course dinners). But don’t bother looking for the remote—there are no TVs here, and the WiFi password, “RUsureUwant2?” is a gentle warning. With limited cell service, you’re encouraged to ditch your devices and luxuriate in a sound bath, tour the farm, and finally inhale some mountain air. Go on, you deserve this digital detox.

Sunshine Down Under: Byron Bay, Australia

GETTING THERE: Get ready for a journey with a capital J. You’ll fly to L.A., then to Sydney, before catching an hour-and-a-half flight to the Gold Coast.

The beaches and surf breaks will take your mind off *gestures broadly* everything, but you’ll be so deep into a different time zone that your notifications will become irrelevant anyway. Byron Bay’s laid-back lifestyle is contagious, especially at the Sunseeker, a surfer-style getaway that harkens to simpler summers. Housed within a repurposed ’80s brick motel, it offers “tropical brutalist” rooms, suites, and bungalows, all centered around a kidney-shaped pool and a tiki bar serving organic wines and beer. By day three, you’ll stop checking what time it is back home.

Time Travel: Southern Italy

GETTING THERE: Delta offers nonstop flights to Rome. Pack extra books for the eight-hour flight.

Three days on the La Dolce Vita Orient Express will make you forget what year it is—in the best possible way. This month, the vintage-inspired art deco train pulls out of Rome for a decadent trip to Sulmona and back. Your biggest decision? Whether to savor the view of the Italian countryside from your cabin’s plush sofa or head to the lacquer-walled dining car. There, you’ll tuck into feasts from a Michelin-starred chef and afterward, retire to the bar car for a soft soundtrack of live piano. But the biggest highlight is hitting the brakes in Matera, a stunning UNESCO World Heritage Site, to explore its ancient caves. Standing in a 9,000-year-old stone city has a way of putting your unread messages in perspective.

My Greatest Escape: Santorini, Greece

I’m a chronic trip optimizer. The kind of person who makes restaurant reservations three months out, builds Google Doc itineraries, and looks up “best time to visit” everything. It’s exhausting, actually.

So when I arrived in Santorini, I expected to do the same. But my room at Andronis Luxury Suites made me forget all about my Google Docs. It was carved into a cliff, with an airy terrace overlooking the cerulean sea beyond it. A plush sun lounger called my name, as did a private pool with incredible views of the island’s famous blue-domed churches.

Suddenly, all those questions I’d been frantically Googling had obvious answers. Where’s the best spot to watch the sunset? Right here. Where can I order fresh octopus with fava beans? Room service. When does the hotel pool close? It doesn’t. I had my own pool, private sunset viewing, and some of the island’s best food at my fingertips.

I stashed my phone in my nightstand; I didn’t need it anymore. I picked up the books and magazines I’d brought—refusing to spend the afternoon scrolling—and sprawled out. By the end of the day, I’d gone hours without a screen, and I hadn’t even realized it. It turns out the whitish-blue glow of my iPhone pales in comparison to the white-and-blue vistas of the Greek islands. —Madeline Bilis

Where to Escape Climate Anxiety

No gas-guzzling SUVs in the parking lot. No strip malls packed with future landfill material. Just destinations where saving the planet still feels like vacation.

by David Gawkowski

Fjords, Forests, and Forward Thinking: Norway

GETTING THERE: Delta and SAS offer connecting flights from Boston to Oslo, Norway.

From electric ferries to green-certified hotels, Norway has been defining green travel for decades. The country makes low-impact travel look easy—it invests heavily in renewable energy, so you can be virtuous without even trying. Glide silently through the Geirangerfjord on a Zodiac boat, surrounded by waterfalls. Hike the Romsdalseggen ridge for views across mountains and fjords. In Oslo, farm-to-table and sea-to-table dining are practically universal: Sample traditional dishes like rakfisk before exploring Viking and Sami heritage at the city’s museums, including the Norsk Folkemuseum, where history blends with modern eco-consciousness, or the National Museum, which showcases contemporary art. In the winter, you can experience the dramatic Northern Lights at the Aurora Fjord Cabins. Located just over an hour from Tromsø, the cozy cabins feature floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking dramatic fjords—basically front-row seats for aurora gazing.

Pura Vida in the Wild: Costa Rica

GETTING THERE: Direct flights from Logan to Liberia are available on Delta and JetBlue.

Think of this as climate anxiety’s antidote: Costa Rica is the OG of eco-tourism—more than 25 percent of its land is protected from development, and the country runs on nearly 100 percent renewable energy. Its eco-lodges and biological corridors, meanwhile, make it a leader in conservation tourism. Visitors can zipline through the dense canopy of Monteverde Cloud Forest Preserve, spotting resplendent quetzals and sloths that move slower than climate policy negotiations; traverse the famed Hanging Bridges in the shadow of Arenal Volcano; or take a break and rejuvenate in the natural hot springs of La Fortuna, heated by geothermal energy. The natural wonders continue at the luxurious El Silencio Lodge & Spa, situated within a protected 500-acre nature reserve in Bajos del Toro. The property is home to three stunning waterfalls, none of which disappoint. Decades after it started its green travel push, Costa Rica remains the trailblazer, and everyone else is still taking notes.

Happiness Meets Sustainability: Bhutan

GETTING THERE: It’ll be a long journey: Make your way to Bangkok or Delhi, and from there Bhutan Airlines offers flights to Paro, Bhutan.

Forget doomscrolling climate reports—Bhutan measures success by “Gross National Happiness,” and you’ll feel it in every quiet valley and temple here. You’ll also feel it in the kingdom’s commitment to the environment: Nestled in the Eastern Himalayas between India and China, Bhutan is a pioneer in carbon neutrality, even absorbing more carbon than it emits. How do they do it? To start, Bhutan limits tourist numbers through a daily tariff, ensuring minimal environmental impact while funding infrastructure and conservation. Trek through pristine forests on the Druk Path, where monasteries perch on cliffs, and you’ll immediately understand the importance. Or immerse yourself in local life at a village homestay, savoring organic red rice and fiery ema datshi (chili and cheese). The elegant Dhumra Farm Resort offers cozy accommodations overlooking a historical 17th-century fortress, as well as meals made with ingredients harvested on the property for a truly sustainable stay. In Bhutan, the future looks bright—and carbon-negative.

My Greatest Escape: Roatán, Honduras

As the rickety prop plane, built in the 1930s, bobbed and weaved through the turbulence on its descent toward the short, gravel runway in Roatán, I wondered if I had chosen the right career path. But the moment I stepped onto the island, any doubts vanished. I was on one of my very first travel-writing assignments, at Anthony’s Key Resort in Honduras. What struck me immediately wasn’t just the charming waterfront cottages and world-class snorkeling and scuba programs—it was the resort’s deep commitment to maintaining the island’s marine ecosystem.

Anthony’s Key has been a model for sustainable tourism in the region for decades. Today, it boasts the largest privately owned solar energy system in the western Caribbean. The resort has eliminated single-use plastics, promotes water conservation, and runs a coral nursery program in partnership with the Roatán Institute for Marine Sciences, which restores damaged reefs. During our snorkeling and diving excursions there, I saw their rehabilitation efforts up close. I also visited the local animal rescue center, which rehabilitates wildlife like sea turtles for release. It was the kind of place that made you feel good about being there—not just because it was beautiful, but because it was actually doing something right.

That said, renting a vintage moped and cruising around the island as the warm sunshine filters through the jungle canopy is also totally the move. —David Gawkowski

Where to Escape Politics

No breaking news. No hot takes. No trending topics. Just five far-flung escapes where the only thing you’re voting on is lunch.

By Jonathan Soroff

Northern Attitude: Fogo Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada

GETTING THERE: Air Canada hopscotches from Boston to Gander (the town from Come from Away). Then it’s only an hour drive to Farewell and a 45-minute ferry.

The only outside news you’ll get on this island off the coast of Atlantic Canada’s northern tip is hockey scores and shipping news. It’s so remote, the “flat Earthers” consider it one of the world’s “four corners,” yet it’s home to the five-star Fogo Island Inn, which operates as a charity to support the isolated community. Guests are immersed in local life, joining residents for hikes, fishing, or even lunches at private homes. Meanwhile, nature is just outside the door. Icebergs drift past while whales, puffins, and caribou can wander into view. Like the lovechild of a Lego set and a centipede, the inn itself is a striking sight, but its ultra-modern design boasts rooftop hot tubs, a screening room, a library, and a Michelin-worthy restaurant. Not bad for one of the world’s four corners—especially when your cocktail comes with ice cubes carved from actual “bergy bits.”

Hidden in Plain Sight—Literally: Saint Eustatius

GETTING THERE: JetBlue and United fly nonstop to Saint Martin, and Winair gets you to Saint Eustatius.

This tiny former Dutch colony was the first foreign country to formally recognize the United States, saluting the American flag way back on November 16, 1776 (now celebrated as Statia Day). But thankfully, that’s where the stateside politics end. In fact, Statia, as it’s affectionately known, is gloriously removed from modern life: There’s the Golden Rock Dive and Nature Resort, where you can immerse yourself in a lush green sanctuary; a dormant volcano to climb; and a charming 17th-century town to explore, but the real star is the diving, with the National Marine Park offering reef and wreck dives. Perched high on a cliff, Golden Rock is your basecamp, complete with a full PADI center for experts and novices alike. Best of all, it’s impossible to watch CNN or Fox News underwater.

East of Everything: Príncipe Island, São Tomé/Príncipe

GETTING THERE: TAP operates direct flights from Logan to Lisbon and on to São Tomé. Príncipe is a 40-minute puddle-jump from there on STP Airways.

Better brush up on your Portuguese; no one here knows what a Big Mac is or cares if they serve them at the White House. In fact, this tropical Shangri-la couldn’t feel farther away from the United States: Its geographic coordinates are just northeast of 1°N, 7°E, where the equator intersects the Prime Meridian off the coast of West Africa. Like King Kong’s island, it rises out of the ocean—mist-shrouded volcanoes, untouched palm-fringed beaches, and waterfalls enveloped by rainforest. Uninhabited by humans until the 1470s, it’s a designated UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, and a hospitality company called HBD Príncipe (for “here be dragons”) is sensitively but elegantly developing it. Three luxury hotels—Sundy Praia, Roça Sundy, and Bom Bom—make it easy to forget about midterm elections.

Desert Disconnection:
Ras Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates

GETTING THERE: Emirates flies nonstop daily to Dubai, and then it’s a little over an hour’s drive. (Pro tip: The “premium economy” is as good as first class on most other airlines.)

The UAE already feels like another world, but compared to Abu Dhabi and Dubai, this sister sultanate is a truly unplugged desert oasis, where outdoor adventures replace the news cycle. You can polish your survival skills at the world’s first Bear Grylls Explorers Camp, or chase an adrenaline rush on one of the world’s longest ziplines down Jebel Jais (the country’s tallest peak). For a truly detached perspective, the Jazirah Aviation Club offers a stunning bird’s-eye view of the landscape. The Ritz-Carlton Ras Al Khaimah, Al Wadi Desert resort, hidden away in a 1,200-acre nature preserve, offers unparalleled luxury alongside its own rugged activities—think horseback riding, falconry, and desert excursions. Out here, the only notifications you’ll get are “Dinner is served.”

My Greatest Escape: Kenya

On January 20, 2017, I was on safari in Kenya at the Mara Naboisho Conservancy, a private reserve north of the Masai Mara National Reserve. It wasn’t until after lunch that I realized it was Inauguration Day, and even if I’d had the slightest desire to watch Donald Trump getting sworn in, it was literally impossible. That felt like a tremendous luxury. It was an extraordinary safari. A lioness had taken up residence under one of the far tents in our camp with her three cubs, whom two male lions out in the bush were trying to kill. A solitary, foul-tempered, and very large male baboon hovered menacingly around the dining tent. In the first 72 hours, we saw an astonishing five kills—two by lions, and one each by a leopard, a cheetah, and hyenas (a gruesome sight). We also spent time with the nomadic Maa people, whose lives are so starkly different than ours that it felt like a different planet. And when I left to finally face the fact of a Donald Trump presidency, I at least had the animals of Mara Naboisho Conservancy to remind me that politics is no more civilized than the savannahs of East Africa. The last I heard, the lion cubs were still alive. —Jonathan Soroff

Where to Escape Self-Help Culture

No journaling. No cold plunges. No “becoming your best self.” Just beaches, booze, slopes, and not a single unwanted epiphany.

By Brittany Jasnoff

Going Nowhere in Style: The Caribbean

GETTING THERE: Fort Lauderdale, Barbados, and San Juan all serve as cruise departure ports, and all are nonstop from Logan.

You could sail away on a mega-ship with 16 tube slides this winter. Or you could vacation like an adult—on the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection. This year’s late-winter and early-spring sails on the Evrima and Ilma ships, both outfitted with gorgeous suites boasting private terraces, include stops at such posh ports-of-call as St. John and St. Thomas, as well as lesser-traveled destinations like the breathtakingly beautiful Terre-de-Haut and Bequia, in the Grenadines. Though honestly, spending a day at the discreetly gorgeous pool is probably all you need to forget why you needed to escape in the first place.

No Resolutions Required: Aspen, Colorado

GETTING THERE: Fly direct to Denver on JetBlue, Delta, United, or Southwest, then rent a car and make the scenic 3.5-hour trek west to Aspen. (Or land right in Aspen if you don’t mind a layover.)

Aspen is basically the winter version of Nantucket: sophisticated, beautiful, crawling with people who summer and winter as verbs. The two destinations will have even more in common this month when an outpost of ACK’s beloved White Elephant hotel opens in town. The 54-room property, designed by Boston-based firm Embarc, comes with a beautifully curated art collection and the brand’s signature Lola 41 restaurant—plus an on-site Boot Lounge with heated ski lockers and gear from Alps & Meters, for those disinclined to schlep their own. Snowmobile tours, winter fly-fishing, skiing: It’s all here. But really, the appeal is having the same favorite spot in both ZIP codes.

Delightfully Excessive: Las Vegas, Nevada

GETTING THERE: Fly nonstop to Vegas on Delta or JetBlue.

The point of Vegas used to be bad decisions. Now it’s just…a lot to look at. There’s the Sphere, of course, the $2.3 billion entertainment venue with a massive wraparound LED screen, and the Area15 “immersive district,” which just opened the year-round Universal Horror Unleashed (fair warning: genuinely scary). Fans of sleight of hand will want to check out the new Magicians Room, a so-called magic speakeasy at the open-air Linq Promenade—the entrance is hidden through a retro crane arcade—with a full-service themed bar. And when you’re ready to retreat from all that stimulation: the Four Seasons Hotel Las Vegas is still the best place to recover from a city that doesn’t want you to.

My Greatest Escape: Walt Disney World, Florida

“But what do you do there for two weeks? Don’t you get bored?” I get this question a lot about my family’s annual summer sojourns to Disney World, and look, I get it. It’s hot. The lines can be long (if you don’t know how to navigate them). And yes, Space Mountain is still Space Mountain the 15th time around. But here’s the thing: You could spend a month and still not hit every attraction in the four parks and every dining option on the property, from a high-end rooftop French spot with cotton-candy sunsets (looking at you, Topolino’s Terrace) to a drive-in-movie-themed burger joint complete with extra-thick Oreo shakes.

Admittedly, the yearly Disney trip isn’t my tradition; it was started by my husband’s parents and extended family in the ’80s and has been going strong almost every year since. But I’m a convert, especially now that we have two kids who marvel at every last bit of the fun: the character hugs, the unlimited Little Mermaid and Finding Nemo rides, the daily Mickey ice cream pops. We stay every year at the red-roofed Grand Floridian Resort & Spa, where we often watch the fireworks from our Cinderella Castle–facing room, cozily tucked into our pajamas—no crowds, no stress, no bubble wands.

And you don’t need kids—or Mickey ears—to get it. You can drink around the world in Epcot (no DD required when you can monorail, bus, or Skyliner your way back to the hotel); check out the buzzy nightlife scene in Disney Springs; or check into the full-service spa at the Grand Floridian to unwind from it all. But one ride on the Tron coaster in the Magic Kingdom and I guarantee you’ll be revving up for more action. No meditation retreats, no digital detoxes—just roller coasters and gloriously overpriced cocktails. —Brittany Jasnoff