There's a body of thought suggesting that the world would be a much different organization if the default greeting of the human species was not "How are you today?" but rather, "What did you do today?" That this notion originated in these offices is frankly beside the point. The fact remains: The first query prompts a sticky inward gaze (the questionee probing around for some balky thing of sufficient interest, like a sinus or a mood), whereas the latter throws the gaze outward, to the very meat of the matter — how are you living your life?

It's a good question. John Goddard, who was profiled in these pages lo some 16 years ago, spends his days in the satisfaction of his Life List, a 127-item roster he assembled at age 15 of experiences he desired to have before, as the popular euphemism goes, his "subscription lapsed." (OK, that's another one of ours.) We've always liked the idea of Goddard's list, but defined a little more loosely. As a series of good ideas for an active life, let's say; something to help plot a way through the tangles and brambles of the day-to-day and remind you that, yes, you do want to run the Tatshenshini, and soon. A wish list, rather than a checklist.

Thus we put out the call, and back came the suggestions — from explorers and conservationists, from athletes and anthropologists, from acclaimed writers such as Jonathan Harr and Ian Frazier and Katherine Dunn and Roy Blount Jr. and countless others. Out of this bounty we've assembled "The List," a proposed outline for a larger life.

A final note. The section benefited from the efforts of many, none more valuable than those who shelved their own lives for the weeks it took to report and write it: Donovan Webster, Paul Keegan, Mike Grudowski, Florence Williams, Stephanie Gregory, Jake Brooks, and Cristina Opdahl. Our advice to them (and you): Now try number 12.

The author of Swimming in the Volcano and the National Book Award-winning Easy in the Islands, contributing editor Bob Shacochis set out to roam the wilds of Kamchatka and fish its salmon-rich waters only to find himself a guest of some Russian hoodlums ("Here the Bear and the Mafia Roam"). "They were so solicitous, and they've got nice little branch offices in Miami and New York," reports Shacochis, who divides his time between now-undisclosed locations in Florida and New Mexico. Shacochis has traveled with armed companions before: He was on hand for the 1994 American military intervention in Haiti, an event chronicled in his forthcoming book, The Immaculate Invasion, to be published in February by Viking Penguin.

"I actually picketed the White House over Christmas Island," says Paul Theroux, who as a college student hopped a bus from Amherst to D.C. to protest nuclear testing on the atoll. "We were throwing things. Some people were arrested. It was great." The author of Sir Vidia's Shadow, The Great Railway Bazaar, and two dozen other novels and travel memoirs, Theroux finally got a chance to see the island for himself this fall ("Merry Christmas Island"), paddling and camping this startling Pacific spit.

With Shacochis in Kamchatka was photographer Macduff Everton, who has also traveled to Sikkim and Haiti with the writer since the two met on assignment for Outside on the island of Providencia. "But this was the first trip where we had caviar for every meal," he says. "Of course, that meant vodka with every meal too." Everton's latest book is The Code of Kings (Scribner), a collaboration with several scholars on Mayan archaeology.

Mark Kram, whose work appears in three of the last six editions of The Best American Sports Writing, sits down with Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson ("Ben Still Needs to Run") as the fallen Olympian struggles to regain his footing a decade after the fact. Though especially admired for his profiles of athletes, Kram doesn't think of himself as a sportswriter. "I tend to gravitate toward sports," Kram says, "because the stories are usually so good. In the end, I'm most interested in people, relationships, and conflicts." The author of the novel Miles to Go, Kram's next book will be about the 1975 "Thrilla in Manila" between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier.

Frequent contributor Susan Orlean reports from deep in Florida's Fakahatchee Strand in this month's Field Notes, an adaptation from her forthcoming book, The Orchid Thief, which Random House will publish next month. Initially lured to the swamp by tales of orchid poaching, Orlean was quickly drawn in. "I had been to Florida millions of times, and I'd never even heard of the Fakahatchee," she says. "It's not quite a time capsule — more like a buried treasure. It's right in the thick of things but somehow remains this secret place, full of secret things."

The photos of Ben Johnson are by New York portraitist Frank W. Ockenfels 3, who in addition to his still photography directs music videos by Blues Traveler and Better Than Ezra, as well as commercials. "I recently had to rappel 400 feet into a canyon outside Whistler to film a kayaker for a Medic Alert commercial," says the self-proclaimed couch potato. "It was a nice stretch." Ockenfels's recent subjects for Outside include cyclist Lance Armstrong and Exxon Valdez captain Joseph Hazelwood.