Outside March/April 2020

In January of 1994, when I was a sophomore in college, I walked over to the student union after the holiday break to check my mailbox. Inside I found a copy of Outside, the first issue of a gift subscription my parents had given me for Christmas. I immediately fell in love with the writing, and then, in the ensuing years, with one writer in particular: David Quammen. Every time I received a new copy of Outside, I’d start flipping the pages to find his Natural Acts column, where Quammen spun fascinating yarns out of seemingly dry topics like plant ecology. As I look back, reading his stories acted as a kind of invisible hand on the steering wheel that gradually changed my career trajectory, prompting me to veer off…

Snippy Remarks This winter, Outside Online columnist Wes Siler wrote “I Got a Vasectomy Because of Climate Change,” calling the surgery “the most powerful personal action” he could make to limit his carbon emissions. The piece spurred gratitude, skepticism, and some breathless anger. I want to let you know how much it meant to me to read Wes Siler’s piece. This is something I’m planning to do, and I applaud him for making this struggle personal. His actions have a quantifiable impact on the world. Dylan Jones Connecticut Or we could raise children who will also raise children who will change the way humans impact the planet. We are part of the earth’s ecosystems. Choosing no more humans means choosing to have no hope. Meglantyne Allison Facebook A handful of companies are responsible for most of the pollution.…

THE DIASPORA along China Hat Road unveils itself slowly as you drive southeast out of Bend, Oregon. At first the ponderosa pine and sage Forest Service scrubland seems to offer a healthy dose of rugged nature just beyond town. But as you roll in the direction of China Hat butte, you begin to feel that something’s wrong. Turn down a dirt road and you might spot a tarp camp. Keep going and you could see a weathered RV parked next to an old pickup. The owner is a carpenter who commutes to jobsites in Bend. Nearby, a pop-up camper, tucked into the brush, looks like it will need to be towed out come spring; dusty propane tanks reveal the resident’s heat source. Farther from the road, children’s toys lie near a…

“I BECAME A WRITER for a reason,” Noé Álvarez tells me a few moments after we meet. “So I wouldn’t have to talk too much.” The 34-year-old is quiet but friendly, wearing a beanie and a flannel shirt. We’re at a coffee shop in Boston, where he lives, discussing his forthcoming memoir, Spirit Run, a remarkable account of a 6,000-mile ultramarathon relay through North America. Álvarez was raised working class in Yakima, Washington, the son of two Mexican immigrants. Early on in Spirit Run, he laments the impact that years of labor in an apple warehouse had on his mother’s body, explaining how he’d internalized a singular idea: his parents’ existence was a painful one, and making it to college was his only way out. In 2003, Álvarez earned a full scholarship…

For Anna Filipóva, the earth’s poles aren’t lonely, inhospitable places—they’re more like home. The photojournalist has spent the past decade cataloging the lives of researchers above the Arctic Circle, from Greenland’s isolated Summit Station to northernmost Lapland, Finland. (In late 2019, she added the Antarctic peninsula to her assignment itinerary.) Filipóva strives to convey the urgency of climate change without the shock and awe utilized by many documentarians. “I choose to show the beauty,” she says, “then the devastation.” The mundane appears amid the endangered to paint a fuller picture of what’s at stake. “I care about the Arctic,” she says. “What happens there affects us all.” —MADELEINE LAPLANTE-DUBE…

BETWEEN THE winter release of Disney Plus’s Togo and 20th Century Fox’s The Call of the Wild, old-school sled dogs—and their grizzled dudes—are having a cinematic moment. That’s great for people who love a cheesy dog story (that is, people with a soul), good for anyone who wants to geek out over vintage toboggans and parkas, and less great for those discouraged by the general whitewashing of mushing’s heritage. Both films manage to break down and build up misconceptions about the history of America’s north, with plenty of adventures and fluffy husky butts along the way. Togo, streaming since December on Disney’s new on-demand platform, stars Willem Dafoe as legendary Norwegian musher Leonhard Seppala. In the winter of 1925, children in rural Nome, Alaska, fall ill with diphtheria, so Seppala and…