There are few places on earch where editor-at-large David Quammen would rather log field time than Madagascar, that outlandish oasis of biodiversity off the east coast of Africa. The Bozeman, Montana-based writer makes his third trip to Madagascar, this time to profile Russell Mittermeier, the swashbuckling primatologist and Conservation International president. The writer of our Natural Acts column for 15 years and the author of several books — including The Song of the Dodo, a critically hailed study of island biogeography — Quammen has long practiced a style of writing that is, as he puts it, "equal parts science and vaudeville." Which also turns out to be a fair description of Madagascar, actually. "Madagascar is so unearthly, so peculiar, so remote," says Quammen. "The animal life, the architecture, even the light is so strange it's almost Martian." Quammen's story is illustrated with the work of New York photographer Rob Howard, who spent most of his downtime lizard-spotting with Mittermeier's 12-year-old son, John.

The author of ten books, including Notes from a Small Island and The Lost Continent, Bill Bryson is a self-described "Anglo-Iowan" with a keen radar for spotting human foibles in "strange and tacky places." After living for nearly 20 years in England, Bryson recently moved back to the States, lighting in Hanover, New Hampshire, "because it seemed like a nice town." Check out our sneak preview from Bryson's latest book, A Walk in the Woods (Broadway Books), a spirited travelogue about the Appalachian Trail that hits the stores next month.

Longtime Outside correspondent John Skow heads way north and way west to British Columbia's mighty Stikine River, to glean a tip or two about the lost art of "deep camping" from a true master of the North Country bush, Canadian mountain man Dick Person. A native Midwesterner who regularly pens book reviews for Time, Skow has logged considerable mileage for Outside over the years: Among other things, he's trekked to the western Himalayan kingdom of Zanskar, gunkholed along the coast of Maine, and sailed the frigid North Sea, following in the ghost-wake of the Vikings. Also contributing to our camping package is Los Angeles photographer Craig Cameron Olsen, a far-flung traveler himself, who rates the Stikine wilderness as "the most startlingly beautiful topography I've ever laid eyes on."

Northampton, Massachusetts-based writer Barry Werth has long been interested in stories from the cutting edge of medicine, and this month he explores one of the more intriguing medical tales to emerge from the sports world in many years: the possible comeback of America's premier cyclist, Lance Armstrong, after a grueling bout with testicular cancer. Werth is the author of The Billion Dollar Molecule and, most recently, Damages, a book that follows the course of a particularly wrenching medical malpractice suit. "Medicine is a trillion-dollar business, the biggest one we have,"Werth says. "I'm intrigued by how it all works — and what happens when it doesn't."

Outside's fashion editor, Vicky McGarry, has a tough job: setting up photo shoots in some of the world's more appealing places, from Alaska to Malibu. This month the New York stylist takes us to one of our hemisphere's true aquamarine paradises, Bimini, for a look at the latest in board shorts, wetsuits, dive watches, and other sine qua nons of the watery life.

Frequent contributor Florence Williams has an eerie sense of timing. Just three days after she was shadowing trauma docs for her story on Aspen's famed ER , the tony slopeside infirmary became the epicenter of an international news story with the tragic ski-related death of Michael Kennedy. Williams lives in Helena, Montana (where her husband is the state director of The Nature Conservancy), and writes for the New Republic and the New York Times in addition to Outside. An avid skier and snowboarder, she admits to being a tad accident-prone. "It was a refreshing perspective," she says, "to be in an emergency room and not be lying prone on an X-ray table."