Innehållsförteckning för June/July 2020 från Outside

Traveling Full Circle The Journeys Issue? Right now? In the midst of a global pandemic? I guess I should explain. The seeds of the travel-themed magazine you’re now holding in your hands, perhaps in latex gloves or after a thorough scrub with a disinfectant wipe, were planted more than two years ago, when senior executive editor Michael Roberts first floated the idea. Every edition of Outside has a travel component, he argued, but how about a whole issue dedicated to the literary side of adventure and exploration? Stories that are less about where to go and which outfitters and hotels to book, and more about exploring the idea of travel itself. An issue full of inspiration, not advice. We all loved the concept, so we began reaching out to writers…

BEST FOR: DAY HIKES Mammut Ducan Spine 35 $240 With a clever weight-distribution system usually reserved for larger touring packs, this three-pound carry-all has patented technology that relieves pressure on shoulders and moves it away from your back for ventilation. Made of durable nylon ripstop fabric, it’s hydration-system compatible and has an anatomically padded hipbelt with easy-access pockets for your gear. BEST FOR: CARRY-ON FLIGHTS Tortuga Outbreaker Laptop $225 The Outbreaker fits under most airplane seats, accommodates two days’ worth of clothes, and has padded pockets for your laptop and tablet. But the details are what make it the ideal weekender: chafe-proof foam in the straps and back panel provide comfort, while the main compartment’s wide opening makes packing easy. We love the durability of the waterproof exterior. BEST FOR: MOUNTAIN ADVENTURES Patagonia Ascensionist 55L…

THE LONGER I sit still, the more I yearn to move. The pull of motion isn’t a calm desire; it’s a nagging that builds up until I imagine that it enters the couch or the bed I’m on. I can’t stand lying there another second. Then I wonder if the bed, itself infected with yearning, has begun to move. It creaks as if it’s about to start. The key moment, the passing between the two states—from motionlessness to motion—will be almost undetectable. I keep watching for it. Is the headboard just slightly farther from the wall than it was a minute ago? We know that all beds secretly want to fly. I grew up in Ohio, the centrifugal state. For no reason I can explain, Ohio takes people who were…

PART ONE Later, everyone who saw White Island erupt would remark on how quiet it was, how magnificent, and how swift. At 2:10 P.M., nothing. At 2:11, a two-mile-high tower of steam. Fifty miles away on New Zealand’s North Island, a search and rescue helicopter crew returning to base watched, astonished, as a colossal mushroom unfurled on the horizon. “Oh, my God!” shouted the pilot. “We’ve just seen a volcano erupt!” Then, a shudder of dread. It was December 9, the summer season. The island would be packed with day-trippers. Just inland from the island’s rocky southern beach, with four middle-aged German clients he had brought in by chopper an hour earlier, pilot Brian Depauw glanced around to see a mammoth cumulus silently fill the sky behind him, then “go…

HO AND HSI WERE THE COURT ASTROLOGERS FOR CHINESE EMPEROR CHUNG K’ANG IN 2136 B.C. THROUGHOUT HISTORY, CHINESE RULERS—WHO WERE SOMETIMES PARANOID MEGALOMANIACS—USED ASTRONOMICAL DIVINATION TO JUSTIFY THEIR OFTEN ECCENTRIC DECISIONS, AND A TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE WAS BELIEVED TO BE A BAD OMEN. According to legend, Ho and Hsi failed to predict the eclipse that occurred on October 22—4,156 years ago—and both were beheaded. It still seems like a bum rap: no one would be able to predict the precise timing of a solar eclipse, within a few minutes, until 1715. Luckily, my friend Large and I, despite getting almost everything wrong about the eclipse in South America last summer, only lost our heads metaphorically. Our goal was to be the first confirmed humans to witness a total solar eclipse…

THREE MILES OFF THE COAST OF DOMINICA, ON A FLAT BLUE CARIBBEAN SEA, PERNELL FRANCIS LOWERS A HYDROPHONE INTO THE WATER AND SLIDES A PAIR OF HEADPHONES OVER HIS EARS. CAPTAIN JERRY KILLS THE ENGINES ON THE SOUTHERN CROSS, HIS SPORTFISHING BOAT, AND THE OTHER TWO PEOPLE ON BOARD, THE MARINE SCIENTIST GAELIN ROSENWAKS AND HER MOTHER, STACY, GET SUPERSTITIOUSLY QUIET. It’s eight o’clock in the morning on November 21, and we’re listening for the sounds of the world’s brainiest and most charismatic megafauna. Dominica is one of the best places in the world to interact with sperm whales, and each year the government grants a handful of permits that allow scientists and photographers to get in the water with them. Gaelin’s permit is for Visual Assessment of Potential Stressors…

I’M HEADING TO THE ARCTIC THINKING ABOUT DEATH. Lying facedown in the top bunk of an overnight train inching from Saint Petersburg toward the Russian port city of Murmansk, I have a berth waiting for me on an August expedition sailing north. I’m working on a book about Arctic explorers, and that means swimming in a sea of sorrow. In my train compartment, dead adventurers haunt me: Faithful sled dogs eaten by humans or swallowed by chasms in the ice. Sailors devoured by polar bears or their own shipmates. Even when no animals or people are stalking them, polar explorers have a tendency to starve or freeze or succumb to disease. I’ve come to Russia at age 51 to re-create parts of William Barents’s third voyage to the Arctic from…

When Denver photographer Seth Langbauer traveled to Mongolia’s eastern steppe in 2017, he was fascinated by the local hunting dogs known as taiga dogs. He first encountered the muscular canines, traditionally used by livestock herders, when he saw a demonstration at one of the region’s many horse festivals. “It’s basically a winterized greyhound,” says Langbauer, 27. “They’re quite burly, but still lean and very fast.” Working as a team, the dogs will chase down and kill foxes, rabbits, and even wolves. Overharvesting has long been a problem in the region, but Langbauer says that many of the families he met hunted to survive. The photographer spent more than two weeks traveling throughout the eastern steppe, braving minus-30-degree temperatures to cap-ture the dogs in action. —SOPHIE MURGUIA…