Mardi Fuller grew up in a world of swimming lessons and swim teams because of a mysterious death that haunted her family’s past.

All over the West, a housing crisis is causing workforce shortages, crippling local businesses, and threatening the culture and existence of mountain towns as we know them. But amid the doom and gloom, some people are fighting for solutions.

How did the most wanted man in America, the serial bomber behind the Atlanta Olympics explosion, survive for five years in the North Carolina woods? And was he helped?

When I was 27, I quit my job to travel and ski-bum, and by that point I had managed to save a small sum that could float me for a year. I called it my fuck-you money, because if I was ever in a situation I didn’t like—stuck in a job or with a boyfriend I wanted to leave—I could say fuck you and go. Living in ski towns is how I learned the dirtbag lifestyle, and to my surprise I took to it naturally and with enthusiasm.

An ocean race from the Olympic Peninsula to Alaska, with no motors allowed.

Can the International Swimming League take on the IOC and Vladimir Putin?

For centuries, dowsers have claimed the ability to find groundwater, precious metals, and other quarry using divining rods and an uncanny intuition. Is it the real deal or woo-woo?

Park ranger Paul Fugate vanished on an Arizona trail more than forty years ago. Investigators are still looking for him.

Love, loss, and growing up in the Utah desert

A rider’s self-improvement project becomes a whole lot more.

A nephew investigates his uncle’s suicide

A husband’s stroke, the Australian bushfires, and a trip to the Great Barrier Reef.

A 32-year-old medical student finally goes on the record.

In her pandemic summer, a college student retreated to a cabin on an island, and a job on a lobster boat.

What happened when 59-year-old Paralympian Angela Madsen set out to row from California to Hawaii.

How dexamethasone corrupted mountaineering.

On hope, violence, and being Black in the outdoors.

Two friends try to make a dream come true.

A trip into the Arctic.

There are myriad arguments for and against eating roadkill. Can they all be true at the same time?

John Ackerman has spent millions procuring a majority of the known caves in Minnesota, which add up to dozens of miles of underground passageways and likely make him the largest cave owner in the U.S. He collects and charts them in the name of preservation, but his controversial methods have created many opponents.

On a newfound appreciation for the stroll.

A letter from a cyclist who survived.

A Ranger graduate breaks down an ordeal that shapes some of the nation’s finest soldiers.

Two brothers attempt to bond on a trek in the Cascades