Between the Lines

After spending countless hours in coastal communities from alaska to Newfoundland while putting together his discerning report on the world fisheries crisis, writer Bill McKibben came away impressed not only by how much fishermen love their work, but also by the lengths they'll go to to hold onto an increasingly tenuous way of life. "It's one of the few professions where, when you go out in the morning, you don't know how well you'll do," he says. "It's entirely dependent on skill and luck. Reporting, at times, has some of the same qualities, but the stakes aren't so high." In truth, the celebrated author of The End of Nature isn't afraid to tackle high-stakes subjects. His next book is Maybe One: A Personal and Environmental Argument for Single-Child Families, to be published in the spring by Simon & Schuster.

Longtime Outside contributor Chip Brown still can't decide whether Kilimanjaro is "the world's hardest easy mountain or the world's easiest hard mountain." Like others before him, Brown, who's now at work on a book about alternative medicine, nurtured slightly mystical goals when he set out to climb the equatorial peak. "But I didn't find God," he sheepishly reports."I just wrecked my knee." Brown was accompanied by New York photographer Norman Jean Roy, whose pictures have appeared everywhere from a Bjork album cover to the pages of Vogue.

Eddy Harris calls himself "a glutton for new experiences." He's lived in Harlem, Tuscany, and Paris. He's canoed the Mississippi River, wandered across Africa, and traipsed through the South. Most of his journeys have formed the central narratives for his critically hailed nonfiction books about the African-American experience (Native Stranger, South of Haunted Dreams). His wide-ranging curiosity, together with his love of any number of outdoor pursuits, stood him in good stead as he wrote "Solo Faces", in which he raises a provocative question: Why is the outdoor world so overwhelmingly white?

El Ni˜o has been stirring up tempests in everybody's teapot these days, but actor-writer David Rakoff claims the world's most talked-about weather system hasn't affected his life at all. "I like my climate controlled," says Rakoff, who directs off-Broadway plays when he's not busy interviewing meteorological superstars.

This month Outside correspondent Mark Levine makes his way to a remote village in Sumatra, where he delves into a dark tale of sorcery and fatal deception. Levine divined a deeper truth amidst the story's many conflicting accounts. "I realized that storytelling is itself a form of magic," he says. "Events are an odd combination of what happened and how people think about what happened."

Outside deputy editor John Tayman ("Boneheads") was on hand in New York recently when Sotheby's auctioned off a Tyrannosaurus rex for the princely sum of $8.36 million. It was a signal event, tossing the sleepy world of paleontology into the realm of high-stakes commercialism. "We're entering an era of paleo free-agency," says Tayman. "A lot of players are getting squashed by the push to tart up the science for entertainment purposes. Of course, a lot of people are also getting very rich."

Speaking of signal events: We regret to announce that our friend and favorite world gadabout, Randy Wayne White, who has held the estimable Out There chair since September 1989, will cease writing the column after this month to concentrate on his novels-though he'll continue to travel and pen longer pieces for Outside. A truly larger-than-life guy, Randy has developed a tremendous following through his acclaimed Doc Ford intrigue novels and his two-fisted columns, and we're going to miss having him with us month in, month out. Randy's changing relationship with Outside is somewhat leavened, however, by the happy fact that Out There will remain in exceedingly capable hands: Editor-at-large Tim Cahill, who inaugurated Out There in 1981 and wrote it for years, will pick up the column next month.