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ALSO THIS MONTH:

Doug Tompkins, the elusive multimillionaire and cofounder of The North Face and Esprit, had a vision: He started buying up huge swaths of Chilean rainforest — an Eden of fjords, waterfalls, 2,000-year-old trees, pumas, and parakeets — to piece together the planet's largest private nature preserve. An environmentally noble plan, worthy of a thank-you, no? Apparently not.
By John Ryle

The not-so-swell parts of being a young American cyclist trying to make it big on the European circuit? Cold spaghetti for breakfast, getting cursed at in Italian, and perpetual homesickness. So why bother? For the sweetest part: a chance at becoming the best racer in the world.
By Paul Keegan

The Billion-Dollar Boat
Somewhere out there, Tommy Thompson knew, lay a fantastic treasure waiting to be claimed, a Midas-like stash of gold with a value "impossible to describe." But when somewhere means more than a mile beneath the Atlantic's chop, actually getting your hands on the fortune is a bit of a challenge.
By Gary Kinder

Destination: the sweeping vistas of the American West. Mode of travel: the 29-foot-long mother ship, the gas-gulping scourge of the interstate, the absurdly enormous, slow-moving road turtle with the name that strikes fear into the heart of tailgating motorists everywhere: Winnebago!
By Ann Patchett

DEPARTMENTS
News from the Field
With Kenya's national parks in shambles, two legends of wildlife conservation publicly lock horns.

• hit the auction block, laying bare, so to speak, the sporting side of Camelot.
• is coming to San Francisco Bay. So why are local enviros smiling?
• , the Moses of itinerant technogeeks looks for a new way to wander.
• — very big — a plucky entrepreneur gives Idaho a makeover.

PLUS: French sailing diva loses her own race, why might make for a really new-and-improved Tide, and .

Strange bedfellows
From the sound of things, western North Carolina is attracting not only hikers and paddlers these days, but also conspiracy theorists, doomsayers, and assorted menacing nutjobs. Which is why things needed a look.
By Alex Heard

Getting up again
Flattened by back surgery, the karmic tit for tat for decades of immoderate adventuring, one intrepid yet hopeful sort contemplates life, death, and the (bleeping) moss-covered rock that landed him here.
By Tim Cahill

How many times can a stone skip? What's that smell when it rains? Why is yawning contagious?

Bodywork: Feets of strength
Perhaps it's no secret that the lowest extremities take the brunt of an athlete's abuse — or that we tend to ignore them until they start barking. Thankfully, whether the goal is to heal old injuries or prevent new missteps, a few simple strategies can help to keep your dogs faithful. PLUS: A step-by-step guide to choosing proper-fitting athletic shoes.

• Routines: A 20-minutes-or-less routine to power up your gams.
• Trends: Why fat tests get an F, no matter how you fare.
• Classics: How an old classic can propel you through a summer of carefree wave-riding.

Summer's smartest athletic attire
Technical shorts, shirts, and outerwear that — mirabile visu — boast all the style and comfort of your regular workaday threads.

• Sport watches so complete that just telling time seems, well, too easy.
• A camp stove that'll burn any fuel you feed it, the new shoe that takes the slip 'n' slide out of your riverside scrambling, and CamelBak's clever new hydration system.
• Cities of the Plain, the long-awaited final installment of Cormac McCarthy's border trilogy; Inside the Sky: A Meditation on Flight, by William Langewiesche; and more.