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Outside magazine, January 1997
Between The Lines
Long and Interesting Trips
By Larry Burke, Publisher/Editor-in-Chief
If the magazine [or mouse] you're holding in your hands feels a little ...special, that's because it is. At least it's special for us, inaugurating as it does Outside's 20th year of publication. Although, strictly speaking, our anniversary occurs in October (look for a commemorative issue that month), we decided to get the retrospective ball
rolling just a bit by ringing up some of our veteran contributors and dispatching them once more into the field. Thus this month you'll find stories by Tim Cahill, David Quammen, Craig Vetter, Peter Stark, and Randy Wayne White--durable Outside voices all--giving some of the old-timers here a pleasant sense of having come full-circle from our early
days in San Francisco and Chicago.
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Craig Vetter
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Anniversaries tend to get you thinking about stalwartness, of course, so it seemed only fitting that we revisit one of the longtime icons of the outdoor world, Yvon Chouinard. Renowned climber, founder of Patagonia Inc., and self-described "deep ecologist," Chouinard is a complex and borderline-misanthropic figure who has long wrestled with the moral quandaries of his
phenomenal business success--feeling, in a way, that he helped loose the very outdoor-industry boom that's needling him these days. Recently we asked contributing editor Craig Vetter, who last profiled him in March 1984, to drop in on Chouinard at the construction site of his current pet project: his new California dream pad, a spartan and environmentally unassailable hideaway
that aggressively reflects its owner's Zen-Luddite personality. Vetter finds the force behind Patagonia (which, incidentally, is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year) still cutting against the grain, all the while pricked by "a conscience that sees the human smudge--including his own--virtually everywhere." For Vetter's revealing portrait see, "He's Not Worthy."
From the cool mist of the Pacific coast, we jump to the hard-packed slopes of British Columbia's Mount Whistler for a look at a curious competition that editor-at-large David Quammen aptly describes as being "like no other ski race on God's white Earth." It's the Classic, a lung-searing telemark marathon of bumps, jumps, skates, and hill-climbs that has long been dominated by
Norwegian athletes--as is only appropriate, since telemark skiing is their birthright. A dyed-in-the-woolens freeheeler himself, Quammen treats us to the loopy history of telemark competition, and then gets down to the salient microbiological question: Do Norwegians have a ski gene? [Outside Online was not granted permission to post this article.]
Just about now another Norwegian, Bùrge Ousland, should be more than halfway through his own punishing marathon, a three-month solo trek across Antarctica. Writer Jack Barth waylaid the indefatigable adventurer from Oslo just days before he embarked on his quest to become the first person to cross
the white continent unassisted. Why would he--or anyone--put himself through such torture?
For those of you whose idea of adventure is a tad less extreme, see "The Trip-Finder," our annual compendium of some unforgettable guided experiences in the outback, from paddling Madagascar's Tsiribihina River to horsepacking in Nevada's Jarbidge Wilderness to rafting Ecuador's RŒo Upano.
Featuring 50 destinations on six continents, our roundup is introduced by Outside's very own archdruid of antipodal travel, Tim Cahill, who shares a few priceless nuggets of sojourner's wisdom. To wit: "Never, never, never put a marshmallow in your mouth and try to feed it to a bear."
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Peter Stark
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Elsewhere in this issue: In our Field Notes column author James Hamilton-Paterson weighs in from the island of Marinduque, a somnolent, palm-covered speck of igneous rock in the Philippines that has been his part-time home for the past 16 years. Recently Marinduque was the scene of a disastrous
copper mining accident that suffocated an entire river system in a thick coat of slurry. Hamilton-Paterson's letter from his now-devastated island paradise is an allegory of extraction, grappling with the question of whether the financial gains of large-scale mining are ever worth the environmental risks. Peter Stark takes us on an engrossing, macabre journey into a human body as it slowly freezes to death. And finally, the news from Delphi: In "The 1997 Outside Prognosticator," writer Ned Zeman checks in with some of the world's leading psychics to take the pulse of the new year. What do these
oracles see for 1997? Many earthquakes, a hot-air ballooning craze, an imperiled Newt Gingrich, and...wait...it's just coming into focus...many happy anniversaries.
Copyright 1997, Outside magazine
Photographs by (from top): Blair Jensen; Amy Ragsdale
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