* Once Found, Now Lost
Soul was more than an employee, but we weren’t quite friends. This was 2002 and I was living in Johannesburg.

* Saharan Scenes
Outside our windows the desert is silent, malevolently hot, and virtually empty. Every so often, though, we see things: knots of camels grazing the scrubland; hulks of cars left for dead by the roadside, their skeletons filling with sand; wraithlike men engaged in the Sisyphean task of sweeping the blowing sands off the blacktop.

* A Nexus for Culture in Johannesburg
On the western edge of downtown Johannesburg, a neighborhood named Newtown has emerged as the city's cultural heart. (see p. 18.)

* True Grit: Sandboarding in the Oregon dunes
Sandboarding, as the thumbnail definition goes, is essentially snowboarding on sand. But ask anybody who’s tried a snowboarding-style hockey stop in a dune: Once he picks himself off the ground and digs the sand out of his ears--I speak from experience here-- he’ll probably tell you that there are some important differences between the sports. (story starts on p. 40.)

* Gathering of the Tribes
Burning Man is so last decade. These days, Bay Area adventurers are off to Mali (pdf).

* From Georgia with Love
If an enterprising wine distributor has his way, bottles from the war-torn republic at the eastern edge of Europe will be the next grape thing. (see pg. 58)

* Pack Your Passion: Bear watching in Katmai National Park, Alaska
From a thousand feet up in the cockpit of a floatplane, southwestern Alaska feels like the edge of the world.

* Downward Momentum
Boarding in July? Snowmelt lakes in the heat of summer? Mount Shasta proves it's a place for all seasons. (pg. 7)