Is it ever too late to become the caring parent you thought you could be? To find out, one man went in search of his adopted manatee—only to discover the many injustices that humankind has heaped upon these hapless marine mammals. And when Junior is fat, slow, and endangered, family values are nothing more than an easy way to break your heart.

Does wilderness therapy help troubled kids? After a gang of teenagers staged a violent mutiny in the badlands of Utah, we joined the search for answers.

A Wetland Restoration Comedy: how one man transformed vile, polluted, dank little swamp into the perfect glassy ice pond

To save the day when the crevasse hits the fan; to be chased by AK-47-wielding bandits; to be the one guy who's gotta say, "Time to turn around, everybody"—this is what it means to be a professional guide. (Still interested?)

In a setting of beauty and grandeur, a twisted soul was on the loose, a murderer who revived gnawing fears that our national parks are no longer safe. New evidence reveals the confessed killer's tortured past—and his bizarre obsession with Bigfoot.

When a promising young runner went missing in Wyoming's Wind River Range, everything changed for the community of athletes she left behind.

Premise One: Eight years ago a drunk Joe Hazelwood piloted the Exxon Valdez into a reef. Premise Two: Eight years ago Joe Hazelwood martyred himself out of pride. Resolution One: After much suffering and introspection, Joe Hazelwood has found peace. Resolution Two: He's resolved absolutely nothing.

In the dusty realm of big-league map collecting, one man cut a darker figure than his milquetoasty colleagues. Armed with an X-Acto knife and an arsenal of fake identities, he systematically ransacked the nation's libraries, hoping in his own peculiar way to dominate the globe.

Along the 43rd parallel in North America, raising pumpkins isn't just a sleepy backyard pursuit—it's an extreme sport. And nowhere are the stakes higher, or the intrigues thicker, than at the annual weigh-off of the World Pumpkin Confederation, the Olympics of garden-patch gigantism.

They are virulent, microscopic menaces, diseases so deadly that they could swiftly destroy our nation's livestock and send the economy into a free fall—which leaves the government with the daunting task of keeping them from our shores. It's a battle being waged across the globe, and in the command center on tiny Plum Island, the folks in the lab coats are on red alert.

Six young men set out on a dead-calm sea to seek their fortunes. Suddenly, they were hit by the worst gale in a century, and there wasn’t even time to shout.

Longtime Outside readers will tell you: The funniest story this magazine ever published appeared early in its history, in 1983, when a prolific writer named Don Katz persuaded the editors to let him celebrate the strangest sport anybody had ever heard of. His odd but true tale became an instant sensation.

As a young climber, David Roberts believed in the greatness of risk. Then death came suddenly, too easily. And it came again and again.

For 90 million years the turtles have massed to lay their eggs. This time they gathered for their own mass murder…