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Outside Magazine October 2002

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Don't Forget to Write
From Outside's screwup files, a tale of epic miscommunication


	Clockwise from top left: Disalvatore and Finnegan in Java; Disalvatore with the hermit in the outback; our boys in Queensland, Christmas, 1978; at Kirra Beach, Australia (Courtesy of Bryan Disalvatore)

This magazine has a history of sending people to the ends of the earth. Sometimes when things go wrong, blame lies with the editors. (Like the time writer Dave Eggers was sent to hang out with New Age seekers at the pyramids of Giza—only there were no New Age seekers to be found.) Or the writer. (Um, no names—let's just say it usually involves self-medication.) Or both. In the granddaddy of all such tales, which played out in 1978-79 during Outside's formative years, four journalists from Montana—Bill Vaughn, William Kittredge, Bryan DiSalvatore, and William Finnegan—unwittingly set in motion a saga that we're still talking about.— KEVIN FEDARKO

VAUGHN: I started working for Outside in its second or third issue, when I was invited to edit an equipment-review column out of my home in Montana, a role that apparently gave some people the notion that I actually had power at the magazine. Which, I think, was how I got in trouble with these two guys, Bryan DiSalvatore and Bill Finnegan.

DISALVATORE: Bill's recollection is essentially true. (I'm so glad he got his meds calibrated.) But I think the culprit in this tale was another writer, Bill Kittredge. Kittredge had been both Finnegan's and my mentor, and he's the one who led us to believe that Vaughn was the emir of Outside.

KITTREDGE: Oh, God, did I do that?

VAUGHN: DiSalvatore and Finnegan were best friends, or something like that, and they decided to take a surfing trip around the world. For some reason—I can't for the life of me remember how—they got it into their heads that I had given them a contract to do this trip and write a story for the magazine.

DISALVATORE: The story we had in mind was a look at sailing yachties who roam the globe. We figured we'd make cash while traveling by selling articles. Vaughn was, according to Kittredge, our, ahem, contact.

VAUGHN: I was?

KITTREDGE: I did what?

FINNEGAN: This is completely wrong. This all happened because Bryan and I hadn't gotten our shit squared away before we left.

DISALVATORE: So off we go—

VAUGHN: So off they go, I can't even remember where...

DISALVATORE: Guam, Nauru, Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, New Caledonia (or whatever the hell it's called these days), four Australian states, Bali, Java, Sumatra, and then, separately, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Spain, France, England—

VAUGHN: And for the next God-only-knows-how-many months, I get these postcards from all over the world.

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