William T. Vollmann

The California Lake Killing Everything Around It—And In It

What's that smell? It's a teeming avian sanctuary—and a sump of troubled waters. It's a mess that we created—and a puzzle we can't solve. It's California's Salton Sea, a hypersaline lake that kills the very life it shelters.

Tough Trips Guide

So, feeling like a plunge down a Himalayan river, a race up the face of a Patagonian spire, or a ski expedition to the North (or South—that's O.K. too) Pole? Feeling a little scared? That's why we call them Tough Trips.

It may be cold, it may be impossibly vast and empty, but in its first hours of existence, Canada's newborn Inuit territory proves that there's nothing so liberating as home rule.