Hi everyone and welcome to women who travel, a podcast from Condi Nass Travel.

I'm Lale Aricoglu, and I'm joined, as always, by my co-host Meredith Carey.

Hello.

Spring is here in full force, which means warmer temperatures and longer days are hopefully just around the

corner. To talk about taking advantage of the coming sunny days, we're joined by Emily Pennington,

a women who travel contributor and outside's national park columnist, and Megan Sparell,

travelist senior editor to talk all things outdoors, from how we can get our bodies moving

now that winter's come to a close,

to the summer adventures we're most looking forward to. Thanks for both joining us.

Better to be here. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. So the outdoors has served an important

purpose throughout the pandemic, helping us get outside safely and decompress when things have been tough.

And now that we're returning to kind of a sense of normalcy, why do you think that being in

nature and continuing that dedication to being outside is going to remain so important to

everyone's well-being? So, yeah, I feel like even though the pandemic often feels like it's quote-unquote over

or things are opening up, which they are logistically, I think that we lack the privilege

of hindsight that comes from having gone through a major generational trauma. And I think that one of

the key things that the outdoors has shown us during the pandemic is the immense power of the outdoors

to, I mean, not only keep us fit and healthy and in the sunshine, but also to quite literally

decrease the levels of anxiety and depression

that the pandemic itself has caused. And so I think my guess is that in the next two or three

years, we're going to look back at this time period as a deep transition time period,

in which we're really learning how to re-socialize ourselves and how to be in the world again.

...