Between the Lines


By Larry Burke, Publisher/Editor-in-chief

Aside from outer space or the marginless microscapes of genetics and particle physics, terra incognita is a hard thing to come by these days. In the long shadow of Columbus, Lewis and Clark, and Hillary, exploration in the 1990s seems to be not only lacking for genuine frontiers, but increasingly starved for imagination as well. And so with this month's cover package, "The Twilight Expedition," we take a long, hard look at the last remaining grails — some legitimate, some patently absurd — that animate the adventuring world. To illustrate the peculiar challenges of contemporary exploration, Brad Wetzler decided to head for the northern ice packs to follow Lonnie Dupre, a preternaturally cheery Minnesotan who, as you read this, should be about a quarter of the way through his historic attempt to circumnavigate Greenland. Not only does Dupre's epic slog embody all the public relations posturing and dancing for sponsorship manna that are the sine qua nons of modern adventuring; it also points to the existential predicament that many latter-day Magellans face. "Explorers these days are a bit like Civil War reenactors," says Wetzler. "They know that the age of exploration has passed them by. They're out there, trying to push increasingly esoteric frontiers. And ironically, their expeditions may be harder to pull off than those of the past." Our package also includes reports by frequent Outside contributors Bill Donahue and Elizabeth Royte.

Author of the macabre novel Geek Love (Knopf), Katherine Dunn has a finely honed appreciation for the grotesque. If you don't believe us, click here for her homage to such charming creatures as the wood tick, the bombardier beetle, and the tiger mosquito. Which bug gives her the biggest case of the willies? "My personal unfave is your basic cockroach, because it just seems to come in such prodigious numbers," she says. "Of course, I may just have been living in too many cheap apartments." Dunn's creepy ruminations are accompanied by a rogue's gallery of intimate portraits shot by German photographer Oliver Meckes, who uses an electron microscope to capture heretofore invisible quirks of nature. "Making a new picture," says Meckes, "is like dropping into another world every day."

When Bruce Schoenfeld (Field Notes) dropped in on a soon-to-be-asphalted valley outside Manchester to meet the shaggy cadres of the so-called Direct Action movement, he found a peculiarly British strain of environmentalism that's part Earth First!, part Benny Hill. "Whether they're nailing their ears to trees or slathering themselves with Vaseline to elude arrest, the Direct Action folks take things to the brink of parody," says Schoenfeld, author of The Last Serious Thing (Simon & Schuster). "Their high jinks wouldn't play in the States, but they'd be a lot of fun to watch."

Except for commuting on its metro system, Erin Arvedlund had never ventured into Moscow's vast subterranean labyrinths until she hooked up with a posse of explorers known as the Diggers of the Underground Planet. "The Diggers are classic creatures of the wild, wild East," says Arvedlund, who covers Russia's buccaneering business world for the Moscow Times. "Russians everywhere are sifting through the past, trying to make sense of this stark, ominous place — and then looking for some way to make a buck off it." Her story is illustrated with the work of noted Irish photojournalist Jeremy Nicholl, who's lived in Moscow for nearly a decade. "After this place," says Nicholl, "everywhere else seems normal."

Paul Keegan ("Dr. Feelbetter,") has long been intrigued by visionaries and snake-oil salesmen, so he was well suited to take on the curious phenomenon of nutrition guru Barry Sears, author of the perennial best-seller The Zone, who now finds his empire being chipped away. Keegan got on the Zone diet and touched down in Los Angeles, the land of perpetual body-consciousness, for a glimpse of Sears in his element. And did the diet work its magic? "There was one day that I felt really great," he says. "But that may have just been because I was zooming around southern California in a fast convertible."