Opinion | Today’s Opinions: All the mistakes you can make on the Appalachian Trail

Or, at least, trying to. As Foster borrows from Dickens, “Mistakes were made: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.”

This first trail diary is full of overexertion, overconfidence and overexposure in something called the 100-Mile Wilderness. Of bugs, Foster writes, “I became a moving ecosystem, with entire generations of blackflies meeting, falling in love, mating, raising their young and dying within a three-inch radius of my eyeballs, which apparently weep the sweetest nectar imaginable judging by how many of them gave their lives to taste it just once.”

Along the way, however — sun-dappled naps and “flagrantly charming” lakes and plenty of lessons about humility.

The beach’s lesson, Kate Cohen writes, is one of security. It is the “one place I can go to stop feeling bad about not having the ‘right’ body — and to stop feeling guilty about feeling bad.”

Kate knows this runs counter to everything society tells us about the beach, which it treats as the gladiatorial arena of beauty.

But actually going to the beach? “After you trudge to your spot and do that little wiggle-press to anchor your beach chair in place, glance around at your fellow beachgoers,” Kate advises. “They will quickly dispel the notion that only pageant contestants are permitted.”

And that’s before you even get in the water. Wade in, float on the surface, and suddenly you are nothing but sun, surf and self-love.

I am beginning to think that George Will is not having a brat summer.

In a column urging Democrats to consider ticket options beyond Harris (who shortly after the column’s publication locked down enough delegates to clinch the nomination), George called the vice president “lighter than air” and said that “her public maunderings will live as long as YouTube enables the savoring of her streams of semiconsciousness.”

Well, YouTube and Instagram and X and TikTok. George was denigrating Harris, but it turns out people love her maunderings, especially when set to the music of Taylor Swift or, yes, Charli XCX’s summer-defining album, “brat.”

Molly Roberts takes on the meme-ification of Harris — her laugh, her dancing, her talk of context and coconuts — and how, against all odds, the memes don’t seem to be mocking her at all.

Molly writes that Harris’s somewhat strange, utterly genuine vernacular is “camp — just odd enough to bend the line between irony and earnestness, so that those who latched on to it weren’t sure whether they were laughing at Harris or laughing with her.”

If you are confused by all the coconut jokes and the lime-green overlays and why the kids are joking about Venn diagrams, this column is an excellent place to start.

The Harris campaign is already leaning into the brat image (tread carefully, Molly warns), but Catherine Rampell writes that Team Harris has another, stronger image at its disposal: Kamala the cop. The reputation that the progressive left used to attack her in 2020 might be what helps her win in 2024.

Many have pointed out that Harris’s background as a prosecutor is the perfect foil to Donald Trump’s 34 felony convictions, but Catherine goes further to catalogue all the ways Harris has been “tough on crime” broadly — a valuable asset at a moment when concern about crime ranks among Americans’ highest.

• From Garrett Graff: Roughly one-third of vice presidents become president. So, why isn’t the job training better?
• From Eduardo Porter: Look around at the world. Defeating Trump in November will not save democracy.
• From Matt Bai: Today’s Democrats love unity and hate arguing. It’s a bad philosophy for which we can blame 1980.
• From Perry Bacon: The five groups of Democrats that ended Biden’s candidacy, including six White guys in their 40s.
• From the Editorial Board: To win, Harris needs to explain where and why she differs from Biden.

Whom should the veep pick for veep?

Karen Tumulty writes that Harris is spoiled for choice with a Democratic bench groaning under the weight of next-generation leaders. Still, the best of the best is former astronaut Mark Kelly. Karen writes that the senator from Arizona inoculates Harris against her greatest vulnerabilities, including guns and the southern border.

Senior editor Laura McGann says the party should double down and put two women on the ticket. Women have been overperforming for years in the states that will matter most this election, Laura writes, and if Harris really wants to signal a break from the past, this is the way to do it.

Heck, let’s keep sledding down this probability curve until we skitter to a halt at the very end, next to the handful of Post readers who gave their advice in letters to the editor: Harris should pick a Republican.

Chaser: Or can we just get Harris herself in the VP slot again? Alexandra Petri channels a panicking Team Trump and asks, pleads, begs, “No, wait, Joe! Come back!”

• In a column adapted from her contribution to a new essay collection, Jen Rubin lays out the case for why centrism might be the democratic system’s salvation.
• The Paris Olympics begin this week, Leana Wen writes, overshadowed by a doping scandal among Chinese swimmers.
• It’s necessary to tame the national debt — and surprisingly doable, the Editorial Board writes after reviewing proposals from seven think tanks.

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

Swims in pristine streams,

Lessons and — yes — pests, as well

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