By Cameron McPherson Smith
Another big Pacific swell came up fast and silent, moonlight flashing on its face. Hurrying east, it lifted and then dropped our sixty-foot raft with the smooth motions of an elevator. I caught my stomach and adjusted a steering plank. The glowing compass revolved slowly as the raft pointed back on course. [...]

by Cameron M. Smith
I knew that polar bears tore apart cabins every winter, so the first crunchthe sound of a large animal stepping carefully in deep snowstopped my breath. The second crunch tripped a dozen primal alarms, jolting me out of my sleeping bag to stand with the cocked 12-guage aimed at the door, the [...]

by Gail Harrington
“Roberto, Roberto, come see!”
I’d made a remarkable discovery in the Ocucaje Desert, 12 miles inland from Peru’s southern coast, but my guide was a quarter of a mile away, relieving himself in a gully. I jumped up and down, screamed, and did a few cartwheels, which made my head swirl, but still no [...]

by Wendy Knight
Bumping along in a white Toyota Land Cruiser, Rehan motioned for Justus to veer right toward a huddle of mud and grass huts. Well-trodden dirt paths wove through the low elephant grass, a lone acacia tree stretching its meager canopy across the savannah.
“There’s one,” Rehan, an aid worker from the Dinka tribe, announced, [...]

by Tom Joseph
Don Juan says the Río Grande de Quetena holds trout. To make the point, he extends a muscled arm as if signaling a left turn: long as this and thick, too. He’ll meet us four days from now at his hotel, Mallku Cueva. “Voy a llevarlos.” I’ll take you there. I’m skeptical about [...]