Between the Lines

Adventure is a fungible commodity, which is a roundabout way of explaining the bounty presented in our annual Trip-Finder, a collection of the year's most covetable outfitted trips. There is an embarrassment of options for nomadic types, from trekking Bhutan's highest unclimbed peak to kayaking Ethiopia's Blue Nile Gorges to biking Nova Scotia's Cabot Trail. Assembled by frequent contributor David Noland, author of the recently published Travels Along the Edge, the wanderlust portfolio includes 83 excursions ranging in price from a modest $485 to a more meaningful $11,000. Our trip-finder himself is now plotting a return to Chile's Futaleuf• River. "It's spectacular," he says, "a combination of Yosemite and nineteenth-century Switzerland."

Also weighing in on the trip slate: Contributing editor Randy Wayne White analyzes group dynamics, Adam Platt chats up Michael Palin, and correspondent Bucky McMahon proffers packing pointers. McMahon's own worst faux pas was forgetting a knife for a self-reliance course he took on a deserted island off Belize. "The leader had a knife; I think that made him the leader," he recalls. "He whittled while those of us without knives watched."

In his decade of writing for Outside, Charles Siebert has sussed out characters as diverse as a Staten Island landfill visionary, a Belizean jaguar tracker, and in his hometown of Brooklyn, pigeon mumblers — rooftop commanders who engage their flocks in midair battles. The mumblers worked their way into Wickerby: An Urban Pastoral, Siebert's account of his retreat to a backwoods Quebec cabin, which is excerpted and will be published by Crown in February. "It ended up being an ode to cities," he says of the book, though the charms of rural life have apparently penetrated his urban armor. Now working on his next volume, a contemplation of the human heart in its metaphysical, physical, and historical aspects, Siebert is playing country squire in a wee Cornwall cottage.

Contributing editor Craig Vetter has an affinity for willful eccentrics, and he's filed reports on quite a few of them, from tornado-chaser Howie Bluestein to Patagonia Inc. founder Yvon Chouinard. This month he sheds light on the peculiar myopia of solo round-the-world sailors — and the folks assigned to rescuing the unlucky ones — in "Godforsaken," his evocation of the Southern Ocean, the tempest-prone setting for some of the world's most dramatic survival stories. "I've been fascinated by the place since I met some British Ocean Challenge skippers in Argentina," says Vetter. "They were so happy just to have come through alive."

One of the fast-growing number of backcountry skiing converts, correspondent Rob Buchanan taught himself to tele behind his parents' house in Carbondale, Colorado. A skin-shaving slide down a California peak, however, convinced him that learning self-arrest and avalanche beaconry might not be such a bad idea, an experience he recounts in "Working Your Way to the Top." Three weeks after completing the course in the Sierra Nevada, he was emboldened to return, four friends in tow, to ski the classic High Route traverse. "We're thinking of going to Morocco next," he reports, "where the locals have no idea what to make of you." Buchanan also picked up a few tips from photographer Chris Noble, a Utah-based mountaineering veteran who's currently working on a book about adventure in the modern world.

Close readers will notice that a familiar voice has crept into the Out There column this month, as editor-at-large Tim Cahill stages a prodigal's return 16 years after inaugurating the monthly missive. A founding editor of Outside, Cahill is an inveterate wanderer whose unfailingly entertaining yarns have filled memorable pages of this magazine as well as six books, including, most recently, Pass the Butterworms. Among Cahill's stock of travel truisms is the fact that journeying alone makes one irresistible to silver-tongued schemers, which is his theme this month. "This column was written in Montana, revised in Patagonia, and polished in Laguna Beach, California," he says. "And things keep happening. For the first time in my life, I'm looking forward to a monthly deadline." Stay tuned.