Between the Lines

To Each a Passion
By Larry Burke, Publisher/Editor-in-Chief

"No compromise in defense of mother earth" was the war cry around which the environmental group Earth First! was founded back in 1979. Earth First! would pioneer such famed techniques as blowing up bulldozers, driving large nails into doomed trees to disable sawmills, and in one inspired moment, festooning the side of Glen Canyon Dam with a giant plastic "fracture." But for all of Earth First!'s well-publicized guerrilla theater, it gradually became clear even to the group's founders that the methodology of militancy had been less than successful in furthering the real goals of the environmental movement. Mostly, it seemed, all ecotage had done was piss people off.

So where has this realization left the "monkeywrench" crowd? We dispatched writer Tad Friend to Action Camp to find out. A weeklong seminar run by Earth First! cofounder Mike Roselle and held in a secluded bosk outside Darby, Montana, the summer camp was designed to teach a new generation of ecopirates how to avoid some of the excesses of the past while fine-tuning the green pitch for the age of cyberspace and sound bites. From the communal bulgur breakfasts to midnight slide shows, Friend and the campers learn not only to flawlessly stage-manage protests, but to "stay on message" in ways that would have made Marshall McLuhan proud.

These new ecowarriors, believe it or not, might be hard-pressed to match either the determination or the passion of the Moles, a group of elite cave divers who've devoted their lives to the Theseus-like task of mapping the intricate labyrinths of Florida's spring caves. Recently the Moles invited correspondent and fledgling cave diver Bucky McMahon to come along on one of their cloak-and-dagger forays in the Floridan Aquifer in search of a virgin cave. As McMahon discovers, these high-tech aquanauts are also contortion artists who've mastered the highly risky pursuit of wedging themselves farther and farther into tighter and tighter cellars in the earth. McMahon's exuberant, if decidedly claustrophobic, group portrait, "Deeper."

Elsewhere in this issue: Philip Gourevitch ventures to the savannas of Zimbabwe to hook up with Gavin Ford, a ruddy-skinned, khaki-clad safari guide who is a perfect throwback to the age of Cecil Rhodes. Ford leads an African wildlife trek that's billed as "an extremly rare, hard-core safari in the oldest style." The oldest style, of course, means slogging through the bush on foot and at least theoretically confronting man-eating predators face-to-face. But as we're reminded in Gourevitch's amusing travel narrative , no matter how you choose to take your safari, you'll need a good dose of dumb luck and plenty of patience for those less-than-idyllic moments that never get mentioned in the prospectus.

In our amusing Field Notes column, Robert Stone revisits the misty islands and back channels of Ha Long Bay, a haunted spot he visited 24 years ago while in Vietnam reporting on the war and researching his National Book Award-winning novel, Dog Soldiers. In his elegant reverie, Stone reflects on the ghosts of Vietnam's tortured history and the curious way in which war distorts one's memory of a landscape.

Devon Jackson, meanwhile, takes us to Queens, New York, where six men and women are completing the longest sanctioned footrace ever run, a mind-numbing insane-a-thon of 2,700 miles. Five of these devoted and driven runners are followers of Sri Chinmoy, the India-born "stuntman of the spiritual world," who preaches enlightenment through epic physical feats, ranging from marathon sack-racing to underwater pogo-sticking to somersaulting the entire 12-mile route of Paul Revere's ride. Jackson's revealing portrait of Chinmoy and his astonishingly hyperactive fan club gets off and running in amusing "Bless You, Sir, May I Jog Another?" .

And finally, if you--like the Outside crew pictured here with canine comrades--prefer to experience the great outdoors in the company of a certain four-legged sidekick, turn to amusing "It's the Dog in Them." Photographer Neil Winokur presents seven dogs that have more than lived up to that well-known canine rallying cry: No Compromise in Defense of the Master.