Opinion | Today’s Opinions: Sometimes, you just have to hike the Appalachian Trail

Okay, okay, perhaps that’s too far. But going off the grid on the Appalachian Trail sounds just right. That’s what Rusty Foster, author of the Today in Tabs newsletter, is doing with his 19-year-old son over the next six months. His decision isn’t to do with politics, however. It’s all about opportunity.

In the first of a series of dispatches from the AT, Foster explains that he never really made the decision to through-hike with his son; he just kind of realized it was going to happen. He also tells a very sweet parallel story of how he ended up engaged to his now-wife.

“An act like this is prepared within the silence of the heart, as is a great work of art,” Albert Camus once wrote. “The man himself is ignorant of it.” (Foster plucks the quote from Camus’s work on Sisyphus, whom Foster calls “one of antiquity’s greatest hikers.”)

Wendell Berry was a little keener on situational awareness. Anne Lamott, in her latest column on aging, quotes the poet’s admonition about happiness: “Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.”

Anne responds, “Yes, yes, but/and older-age joy is different.” She writes on how ambition falls away as life wears on, and that happiness is found in the bits of gratitude that pass by on the breeze: “Older joy is not so much about chasing down things, as it is about what seizes the eye, out the window or on a walk.”

Colbert King witnessed joy across the generations this past weekend at his family reunion. He explains in a column how Black communities have come to rely on the institution, which began during the post-emancipation era “when formerly enslaved men and women sought to be reunited with family members who had been separated from them or sold away by enslavers.”

No quotes from long-ago laureates in this one — just Colby’s own brilliance. “The odyssey that began … when cotton was king and lynch mobs knew it,” he writes, “was and remains an uphill battle.”

One might have imagined Sisyphus happier with family by his side.

From Catherine Rampell’s column on how Biden’s plans are so much more popular than the president himself. Donald Trump’s proposals, meanwhile, fared horribly. Of the 28 of his that polling firm YouGov asked about, only nine garnered more support than opposition.

“The contrast between the favorability of the rivals’ agendas is particularly striking when put side by side,” Catherine adds. “Some of Trump’s most popular policies are about as well-liked as Biden’s least popular ones.”

The pattern is remarkable considering Biden’s bleak personal approval numbers; he even polls poorly on the issues! You have to strip his name from his plans for them to test well.

So, are voters uninformed? Definitely, Catherine says. But what’s worse, they also just don’t much care about policy.

Chaser: If Biden falls further behind Trump in polling over in the next little while, Gene Robinson writes, the party must intervene and find alternative candidates.

Fallout continues from the Supreme Court’s decision to grant Trump broad immunity for (possibly criminal!) acts conducted while president. The court “has just ruled that the president is, in fact, above the law,” Ruth Marcus makes clear. “If I sound worked up, it is because … the aptly named Trump v. United States is bad beyond my wildest imaginings.”

The Editorial Board writes that the opinion is inarguably bad but that “the sky has not yet fallen, even if a sizable chunk of it might be missing.” This isn’t the end of democracy.

Counterpoint: It is. In her barely satirical take, Alexandra Petri writes of the court’s ruling to restore the monarchy.

“There are just so many wonderful upsides to having an unaccountable executive who is above the law,” she writes: “much greater clarity if aliens arrive demanding to be taken to a leader; much less confusion for the attorney general when deciding whether to pursue the president’s individual vendettas or enforce the law; more military parades; fewer pesky elections.”

• Leana Wen looks inside a New York hospital that is not only treating gun violence but also working to prevent it.
• The crucial questions about gender care are not political or legal, Megan McArdle writes. We need to know whether treatments benefit most children who receive them.
• Lee Hockstader explains how French President Emmanuel Macron has delivered the coup de grâce to his own political movement.

It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.

In expanding universe —

Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!