Outside Magazine, Jul 1998

Stories

C O V E R

Gone Summering, See You in September
The sweet season is here, and the time is right for hustling off to where the action is — or inaction, if you prefer: the most tantalizing adventure getaways, from sea to shining sea. Plus, a bounty of happenings to keep you sated till Labor Day.

		Cape Cod: Where land and sea blur into an alluring — and at times threatening — package.
	Gualala, California: Lost Coast survival kit: one sea kayak and one great hotel bar.
	The Dakotas: Another fine offering from the people who brought you Big Sky Country.
	Portsmouth Island, North Carolina: The consummate Outer Banks island: pure, raw, and primitive.
	Palo Duro Canyon, Texas: Down on the Panhandle, just when you least expect it.
	The Maine Coast: Here, salt rivers flow with the tides and the names of places still mean something.
	Need a Little More? Sporting diversions to keep you hopping from now till Labor Day.
	Lizard Head Pass, Colorado: It welcomes paragliders, rebuffs climbers, and baffles amateur herpetologists.
	Spring Green, Wisconsin: A brief midwestern rhapsody — with a bug spray chorus.
	The Smoky Mountains: Ever wonder what it's like to trout-fish inside a terrarium?

A L S O T H I S M O N T H :
After Burn
When rain finally quelled the worst inferno ever to rage through the Amazon, somehow the members of one of the world's most storied Stone Age tribes escaped with their lives. But in the end, rampant fire may be the least of the Yanomami's worries. An exclusive report from the still-smoldering jungle.
By Tad Friend

Where Have All the Wise Men Gone?
The Marathon des Sables is the world's most daunting footrace, seven days and 142 miles of running in the merciless, 120-degree Sahara. To some, it's a transcendent foray into the timeless sands of Morocco. And to the rest, it's plain bloody awful.
By Hampton Sides

Tell Us Now the Saga of the Self-Styled Viking, of His Epic Voyage Over the Frozen Sea, of His Glorious and Stirring Triumph …
Or, barring that, how about a tragicomedy about a West Virginia postmaster who hatches a laughably quixotic scheme to sail the North Atlantic on the trail of Leif the Lucky — and then actually tries to do it?
By W. Hodding Carter

D E P A R T M E N T S
Dispatches: News from the Field
A Montana biologist and her Finnish-bred hunting dogs practice tough love on delinquent grizzlies.

		Southern California's winningest lifeguard makes what may be his last stand as King of the Sand.
	Despite members' recent axing of a Sierra Club anti-immigration proposal, the hot-potato conflict continues to divide the U.S. eco-community.
	Back after a century, retro-chic "scorchers" are burning up mountain-bike trails from coast to coast.
	The brutish travails of the prairie dog, beleaguered It rodent of 1998.
	P L U S : A German techno-nerd preps his remote-controlled sailboat for the first unmanned circumnavigation of the globe, a B.C. town jump-starts tourism by embracing its dark side, the Aussie cyclist who's at the front of the pack on both road and trail, and more.

Out There: Lord of the Flies
Wherein Cahill's First Rule of Vermin Shrieking — that the cries of a bug-terrorized person are pretty funny — leads to Cahill's Corollary to the First Rule, with a demonstration involving 13 Congolese pygmies, swarms of tsetse flies, and one unwelcome centipede.
By Tim Cahill

Field Notes: Today Boulder, Tomorrow the World
In Boulder, a new generation of distance runners is trading loneliness for togetherness, spurred by a harmonic convergence of thin air, Colorado camaraderie, and hopes that emulating their sociable foreign competition will end a U.S. Olympic losing streak.
By Bruce Schoenfeld

The Wild File
What's foxfire? What makes fish taste so … well, fishy? And where does smog go after it rains?

Bodywork: Summer Care Package
From on-the-fly first-aid tactics to bug-juice basics and a lesson on your UV ABCs, our solstice survival kit will keep you playing hard throughout the long, hot days of summer.

		Side Saddled? A simple remedy for the dreaded side stitch.
	The Massage Shortcut: A do-it-yourself sports-massage primer.
	Pulling It All Together: A swimming champ's tips on the perfect pull-up.

Review: Sailboats that break the mold
The new plastic models are cunningly cartoppable, a breeze to handle, and nearly maintenance-free. Four snazzy little skiffs from Laser, Hobie Cat, WindRider, and Escape — and, for the fiberglass faithful, the abiding classic Sunfish.

		Buying Right: Polarized sports shades that are too sturdy, too glare-banishing, and — all right — too cool to leave to the fishing and sailing sets.
	The Other Stuff: Verandas rule: a portable porch for your tent. A paean to that classic canoe, the Mad River Explorer.
	Books: Where the Sea Used to Be, the hefty first novel by Rick Bass; Imagining Atlantis, by Richard Ellis; and more.

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Cover photograph by Rob Howard