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At ten miles, the Strait of Gibraltar is the shortest of the Oceans Seven swims, though with more than three hundred ships passing through each day, it’s one of the most challenging. The rest are the North Channel between Northern Ireland and Scotland, twenty-one miles; Cook Strait between New Zealand’s North and South islands, sixteen miles; Moloka’i Channel between Oahu and Moloka’i, twenty-seven miles; English Channel, twenty-one miles; Catalina Channel between Santa Catalina Island and Los Angeles, twenty miles; and Tsugaru Strait between Japan’s Honshu and Hokkaido islands, twelve miles. As of publication, nineteen swimmers had successfully completed all seven.

Photos: Antonio Bellido, antoniobellido.es, @antoniobellido__

While the twenty-six-hundred-year-old bald cypress in this story is indeed ancient, somewhere in California’s White Mountains there stands a bristlecone pine that’s five thousand years old. But even that tree is a mere pup compared to Pando, a stand of aspen trees (a grove of aspens is made up of one genetically identical organism) in Utah that is estimated to be, and we’re serious here, eighty thousand years old. Visit gatheringgrowth.org to learn more about champion trees.

Peter Macia is a writer based in New York. His work has appeared in Pitchfork, Fader, and the New Yorker, among other places. @petemacia

Photographer Erinn Springer is a contributor to the New Yorker, New York Times, Vogue, and other publications. She divides her time between Wisconsin and New York. springerinn.com, @erinnspringer

Brian Kelley’s photography can also be found at briankelley.nyc and @briankelleyphoto.

Outdoor writer Mark Jenkins once wrote of Joe Kelsey’s love of his favorite craggy bit of Wyoming topography: “No one else on earth has Kelsey’s knowledge of the Winds.” Pretty good reason to get your hands on a copy of Joe’s most recent edition of Climbing and Hiking in the Wind River Mountains (2013). It reads better and is more accurate with your own coffee, beer, and dirt stains smudged on it.

Leath Tonino is a frequent contributor to Adventure Journal. He lives…somewhere.

If you’re looking for a new partner, the website Meetup has nearly sixteen million hikers looking for someone to share the trail with, spread among more than nine thousand groups worldwide. Think of all the possibilities for lifelong hiking friendships—or spectacular backcountry flameouts. meetup.com/topics/hiking/

Monica Prelle is a regular contributor to Adventure Journal. She lives, and has plenty of hiking friends, we swear, in Mammoth Lakes, California. monicaprelle.com, @monicaprelle

Photos: Sarah Attar, sarahattar.com, @sarahattar

All five hundred thirty-four issues of Desert Magazine are available free on Scribd, though there’s a limit to how many you can download before you’re required to buy a paid account, scribd.com. The collected issues can be purchased on two DVDs for fifteen bucks at Southwest Deserts, swdeserts.com.

Forty thousand years ago, hunter-gatherers in Europe learned to use charcoal to draw elaborate rock art, the first evidence of the recognition of charcoal as a unique byproduct of wood burning. Fourteen-thousand-year-old charcoal kilns have been discovered in Japan, and Binchō-tan, the country’s famed white charcoal prized for centuries, can be purchased online.

The Forest Hearth was excerpted and adapted from Water, Wood, and Wild Things, Viking, 2021. Author Hannah Kirshner lives in Brooklyn and Japan and her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Saveur, and Atlas Obscura, among other places. hannahkirshner.com, @sweetsnbitters

The Tsavo lions, on display in the Field Museum’s Rice Gallery, remain one of the museum’s biggest attractions nearly one hundred years after they first arrived. Their skulls and skins are still studied by scientists for a peek into why the lions turned to eating humans. fieldmuseum.org

Tales of fishing for steelhead in the Pacific Northwest may be fewer and farther between in the coming years. Because of habitat loss due to dams and climate change, and competition from hatchery-raised fish, the wild steelhead fishery in Puget Sound has declined by ninety-seven percent since 1895. For more, visit wildfishconservancy.org

This story was excerpted from Headwaters: The Adventures, Obsession and Evolution of a Fly Fisherman by Dylan Tomine, published by Patagonia Books in 2022. Tomine is a former fly fishing guide who writes, fishes, and grows blueberries on an island in Puget Sound, Washington. dylantomine.com, @dylantomine

Megan McDuffie and Michael van Vliet once roamed the country in a van, perfecting their campsite meals. Now they’ve set up shop in Bend, Oregon, which is basically like living in a van, but in a town. freshoffthegrid.com, @freshoffthegrid

Elliot Ross was named a National Geographic Explorer in 2019 and has published two books of his photography, American Backyard and Guy Pei: Couture Beyond. He lives in Colorado. elliotstudio.com, @elliotstudio