Outside Intervention

      Back then my idea of exotic travel was going to Lake George for an afternoon. It was twenty miles away, after all. A big trip.

     Outdoor adventure? That was when a cow had hidden her newborn calf in the woods and I had to find it.

     My recreational gear consisted of a balloon-tired bike languishing in a back of the barn junk pile. It was a rust bucket that hadn't been ridden in 25 years.

     And my environmental credentials consisted of picking up beer bottles from our roadside fields before a tractor tire found them.

     Then a friend gave me a dog-earred copy of a magazine that had seen the rounds. Told me to check out the last page, something called 'Parting Shot'. It was a photo of a free standing tent air-born over the summit of Buck Mountain. Lake George lay stretched out below. Pretty funny although it had 'staged shot' written all over it. The magazine was called Outside and I read it cover to cover. Liked it so much I've been reading it ever since.  

Original photo credit: Ed Burke

     It was like fog lifting from a socked in landscape. The stories and photos opened my eyes to a world I hadn't seen before. There were people exploring every last hidden corner of the Earth. There were runners, cyclists and climbers going faster, further and higher. Environmental activists dealing with big problems, dealing with more than roadside trash. Places, experiences and issues chronicled in word and image.

     Slowly, subtly my life began to change. I started running again, the first miles since school track and cross country. Then I bought a bike, a light 12 speed that I put thousands of miles on and still ride to this day. Got a canoe and wrecked it over on White Creek. So I got another and then another. Did the 90 miler one year with an 80 pound Grumman! Climbed mountains, bought a bunch of Peterson field guides, joined citizen activists fighting polluters. Even traveled a bit. Nothing too far flung but I have hiked into the Grand Canyon, camped in Texas and gazed in awe at Yosemite's El Cap.

     I always liked to read books but now I was more apt to be turning the pages of Norman Maclean, Thomas McGuane or John McPhee than of a Fleming 'Bond' novel. Started keeping a journal, started taking photos. Words and images again. In those days it was hard (nigh impossible) to put the two together. Words were on paper, images on film. Combining the two? Not possible in any kind of practical way. But those issues of Outside that came every month convinced me that marrying prose and pictures was the best way to capture experience, to share ideas. I didn't know it at the time but the impetus to blog had been seeded before the technology to do it had arrived. 

     These musings were prompted by the news that the magazine has recently been sold. Perhaps this is a good time to review a little history. Let's start in the 1970's, with two young men. Jann Wenner had launched Rolling Stone in 1967. It covered music, culture and politics. A few years later Wenner wanted to create an outdoor offering and assigned three of his staffers to come up with something. Tim Cahill, Michael Rogers and Harriet Fier got to work and 1977 saw Outside's first issue. There was almost a last issue a year later. The magazine stumbled and with the number of pages and number of issues cut it looked to be a very short run.

     While Outside was enduring a difficult birth, another publication covering some of the same turf had developed a small readership. Mariah was the creation of Larry Burke, a disillusioned young IBM exec who dropped out of the corporate world to travel the real world for several years. Coming back to Chicago and his family's business he started his shoe-string magazine in 1976. It's mission was to celebrate wilderness and the thrill of adventure.

      Legend has it that in 1978 Wenner knew he had to do something about his faltering magazine so he approached Burke about buying Mariah with the intent of using it to rejuvenate Outside. Instead, Burke, perhaps the better businessman, ended up buying Outside from Wenner and combining the two. There was a confused year when they were published under a combined title with an uneasy marriage of concept and content, but eventually Burke and managing editor John Rasmus got their act together. Mariah was dropped from the title and it's been Outside ever since.

A young and adventurous Larry Burke

     The '70's were a culturally fertile decade. That's when Saturday Night Live and National Public Radio both got their start. There was lots of new music and something of a Hollywood golden age with such classics as The Godfather, Star Wars, Apocalypse Now and Taxi Driver. Athletes were exploring new territory as well. The first Hawaii Ironman Triathlon was in 1978. I remember Outside's coverage of the brutal battles between Dave Scott and Mark Allen on the searing Kona lava fields. Two of the fittest people who ever lived, they would go head to head for eight, nine hours pushing their bodies beyond what seemed humanly possible. And their duels seemed like fun and games compared to Julie Moss's 1982 performance. She started the race looking like a fashion model but some 11 hours later could have been mistaken for a concentration camp survivor. Befouled and nearly broken, she was unable to stand but kept stumbling and crawling thru the darkness towards the finish line and victory only to be passed in the last few yards. It was a portrait of grit and determination that once seen couldn't be forgotten.

Julie Moss - almost finished

Web image

        Triathlon and Outside came of age together and by the mid '80's the magazine was profitable and winning awards for excellence. Ed Abbey, Barry Lopez and Peter Matthiessen wrote for it. David Quammen (Natural Acts) and Mark Jenkins (The Hard Way) were popular columnists. Donald Katz's 'The King of the Ferret Leggers' became something of a cult classic and E. Jean Carroll's tale of an  all-female rafting trip down the Grand Canyon ('Women Who Run with No Clothes On') was a rollicking take on Clarissa Pinkola Estes' Women Who Run with the Wolves. Jon Krakauer's wrenching account of the 1996 tragedy on Mt. Everest (eight climbers died in a storm) first appeared in the magazine before becoming the bestselling book Into Thin Air. Maybe not quite up to New Yorker standards but every issue had something literate, insightful and entertaining (although I never quite understood their obsession with expensive watches). 

Happy Anniversary - self congratulatory issues come along every few years

 

TAKE IT OUTSIDE...

    Decades went by, anniversary issues came and went and technology changed. A new generation of readers weren't necessarily readers at all, but simply consumers of what was on their screens. Outside adapted with an early and vigorous digital presence: website, Instagram, youtube channel and podcasts. They expanded into travel services and even a TV channel. And perhaps in the process the magazine suffered. It grew thinner and less frequent and in an echo of its beginnings, that portended a sale.

Outside Online screen shot

     The challenges faced by print media are well known. At Outside there had been hints of trouble for sometime. In online forums current and former employees complained of low pay and few benefits. They said the magazine didn't treat its freelance writers and photographers well, consequently losing the best talent. There were grumblings about 'the top of the masthead'. And diversity was all but absent. It was all about young, affluent white men. Recently there were 'special' issues meant to change this image but to some they seemed token, too little too late.

     It was like the number-crunching business devil whispering in Larry Burke's ear wouldn't let the editorial angel get a word in. He is in his late seventies and reportedly wants to work on his memoir, wants to spend time at his New Mexico ranch. It seems like he had become more interested in milking his cash cow than feeding her. Maybe it was time for a change. Maybe the sale is a good thing.

     Pocket Outdoor Media bought the magazine in February and quickly changed their company name to Outside. They own a slew of other active/outdoor publications including Climbing, Rock and Ice, SKI, and Velo News. They seem excited by and committed to Outside and have pledged to keep all the current employees.

     Magazines still have a role in recording events and accomplishments, in sharing experiences and ideas. They are where we can be challenged by those who have seen, done and thought about things beyond what most of us can imagine. Here's hoping a new generation can draw inspiration from Outside, much as I have for so many years. 

 

Outside's all-time most popular cover - I guess its readers like their rock