Kim Brown Seely

Getting to Know Arctic Svalbard

A search for healing – and leopards – in Botswana’s wide-open spaces.

Hiking, biking, dogsledding, and guiding: From Zimbabwe’s plains to Puglia’s hills, lives lived out of doors make for great wisdom – and great stories. Eight adventurers share their thoughts on why it’s important to get outside and what we can learn from nature.

Floating to Antarctica and Other Daydreams.

Click into central Idaho's legendary ski zone and cultural epicenter.

Pristine nature and a dose of fitness buoy a cruise in Baja California Sur.

A Montana artist breathes new life into the things adventurers carry.

Getting back to basics for a big celebration.

Scott Sanderson is a veteran white-water kayaker who has logged four first descents on Mekong River tributaries and tackled the Class IV rapids that form as the river tumbles from the Tibetan plateau. But it wasn’t until he embarked on a laid-back, outfitted float through Laos that Sanderson beheld the Mekong’s most sacred rites.

 “We pulled into a village and the headman invited us to join a funeral ceremony,” says Sanderson, 47, a technical writer from Oaklyn, New Jersey. “It was a big party – like a wake. Everywhere we went on the river it seemed they were either giving birth or burying someone. You really got a feeling for the ebb and flow of life.”

A private villa in Umbria, a Roman shopping spree, and the crucial element: friends who make the most of it all. No one checked e-mail. Everyone slept in, steeped in sensuous well-being and dolce far niente.

Three generations take to the Colorado River for an awe-inspiring trip through the Grand Canyon.

The wind was the distillation of cold itself. It shrieked down the ice-covered basalt cliffs, ripped across the bay, and shredded the rocky spit where I stood with a dozen other red-parka-clad travelers. Moments before, a Zodiac had dropped us off for a rare landing at Antarctica’s Elephant Island. We’d scrambled ashore, thrilled to set foot upon the aptly named Point Wild, the legendary beach where Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expedition had survived – on penguins and seals – for an unthinkable 137 days.

We are scared to death of getting sucked under a big tow, but at the same time, it is exhilarating. Fighting our way across the dark river beneath a black sky feels like paddling through the night itself.

After a taverna lunch of stuffed grape leaves and tomatoes, lamb, roast potatoes and pitchers of local wine, we down Greek coffees and push off again. Despite full bellies bound in bike shorts, we promptly realize how much we love this. Moving through a country at the pace of a bike ride is a remarkably intimate way to experience it. And what you encounter during an afternoon’s ride, is well, everything. Every single dog barking. Each rooster crowing. The road, rising and falling. The group spreads out, so it is just my husband and me riding through acres of silvery-leaved olive orchards. We pass two leathery Greek ladies – sisters maybe – out for a stroll.

Take a short journey to Stehekin, Washington and discover an unplugged paradise for all ages

Blissful downshifting in Portugal’s undiscovered Alentejo region.

A journey to the end of the earth reveals that, sometimes, we need to go far to go deep.

A lifelong love of the literary giant leads to the backroads, bars, and boats of Key West, Florida.

An Indian exploration in two acts.

Big landscapes and intimate lodges on New Zealand's South Island.

Notes on mountains of soul-stirring beauty.

How one young family took a historic but dilapidated Wyoming guest ranch, made it their own, and now invite you to visit.

Expedition cruising takes a turn for the luxe on a journey through Melanesia.

Life is busy but rivers are long, which makes them ideal for friends and family bonding.

In Italy’s boot heel, a coastal escape that’s long on allure and short on crowds.

In this storied Himalayan kingdom, travelers find serpentine roads, ancient Buddhist traditions, crimson robed monks, and, yes, rack of lamb with arugula for dinner.

On board a vintage sailing yacht, a Mediterranean voyage through Greece and Turkey turns back time - and turns heads.

Nothing really prepares you for your first day in the Great Bear Rainforest. It’s one of the planet’s last great expanses of coastal temperate rain forest, a place where you can still find salmon, wolves, eagles, grizzlies, and even the rare Kermode — or spirit — bear.

A trip up or down the Yangtze means you see the economic tsunami that is China floating by.

Charles weighed 400 pounds, stood nearly six feet when fully upright, and was 100 percent alpha male. His massive black head was luxuriantly hairy, and our eyes met daringly as he reclined in a bamboo thicket as big as a Barcalounger.

When Seattle’s Debbi and Paul Brainerd went looking for a weekend place on nearby Bainbridge Island, they heard that 1,100 acres of forest were being sold off in 20-acre lots. Instead of scoping out favorite parcels, Debbi decided that they should build a school in the woods for kids who rarely had a chance to leave the city.