The New York Times Magazine: The Voyages Issue

Kayaking across the Atlantic, lost in Joshua Tree's wild interior and more stories of extreme travel. View in [Browser]( | Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book. Thursday, March 22, 2018 [The New York Times]( [NYTimes.com/magazine »]( [The New York Times]( Thursday, March 22, 2018 [Why He Kayaked Across the Atlantic at 70 (for the Third Time)]( By THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE Joakim Eskildsen for The New York Times We’re shaking things up and making some changes to our weekly newsletter. Tell us what you think by emailing us at [magazine@nytimes.com](mailto:magazine@nytimes.com?subject=Newsletter%20Feedback%20NYT%20Mag). And thanks for reading. Dear Reader, I hope you’ve had a good week. I spent some of mine shoveling snow and thinking about Aleksander Doba, the man on the cover of this weekend’s special Voyages Issue. Doba is a Polish man who decided, late in life, that he wanted to kayak solo across the Atlantic Ocean. He has now done it three times, most recently at age 71. On any of these journeys, he could have died, of course. Each time he left, his family knew they might never see him again. He gets sunstroke, goes half-mad from the solitude, is tossed around by 50-foot waves, subsists on freeze-dried soup. It is, as Elizabeth Weil notes in [her wonderful profile of Doba]( “a real katorga,” the Polish word for forced labor. Why would anyone do this? Weil went to Warsaw to try and answer this question, spending time with Doba and his wife, Gabriela. Let’s just say the couple have an interesting relationship. Doba’s crazy journeys inspired the theme of this year’s spring Voyages Issue, which is all about extreme travel. I’ve highlighted some of the other stories below. I hope you enjoy it. Onward, Jake Silverstein Editor in Chief [WORLD’S GREATEST HITCHHIKER:]( Juan Villarino, an Argentine semiprofessional vagabond, has caught 2,350 rides all over the world, totaling about 100,000 miles in 90 countries. By his estimation, this makes him the world’s greatest hitchhiker, and it’s hard to argue with that. For his profile of Villarino, Wes Enzinna accompanied him and his girlfriend, Laura Lazzarino (the only person who could maybe pose a challenge to his title), on the final leg of their journey across Africa. [MARS ON EARTH:]( I challenge you to not be fascinated by Nathalie Cabrol, a philosophical planetary geologist who figures out which places on Earth have conditions similar to those on Mars, and then goes to those places and spends a great deal of time studying the flora and fauna to understand what life on the red planet might have once looked like, or what, buried deep under its radioactive surface, it may still look like today. In Helen Macdonald’s profile, Cabrol emerges as a true visionary, someone who sees things that the rest of us do not. [THE MISSING HIKER:]( Not all voyages turn out well. In 2010, a man named Bill Ewasko disappeared while hiking in Joshua Tree National Park, which is just two hours from Los Angeles. In the years since then, a small community of searchers, most of whom never met Ewasko, has been diligently combing the park, looking for clues as to what could have happened to him, animated by the nagging question: How is it possible, so close to civilization, to utterly and completely vanish? In addition to those four articles, you’ll find some of the magazine’s regular columns. Here are a few you might like . . . [CHAIN REACTION:]( In First Words this week, Stephen Kearse takes up the phrase “chain migration” and uses it to explore some of the contradictions surrounding the immigration debate: “The chain is just a pattern of movement; the immigration system is the patchwork of policies and institutions that shape that movement.” [THE DAILY GRIND:Â]( photographer Peter Funch has a clever new project. For nine years, from around 2007 to around 2016, he stood outside Grand Central Terminal and took pictures of commuters. Soon he began to notice faces reappearing, and he’d snap pictures of the same people on different days, often at the exact same moments in their commutes. In his On Photography column, Teju Cole writes: ‘‘Funch’s project is a feat of both patience and memory. But it is also a record of the many individual rhythms that make up city life." [“2007.06.28 08:59:39”; “2012.07.03 08:54:01”.]( 08:59:39”; “2012.07.03 08:54:01”. Peter Funch. From V1 Gallery. [SICK DAYS:]( A question to The Ethicist this week asks whether it is O.K. to lie to your employer about suffering from severe depression. The letter writer, a lawyer, notes that on some days he or she is too crippled by depression to come in to work, and generally lies and blames a bad cold or fever or some other more acceptable form of illness. Is this ethical? The Ethicist thinks the answer is complicated but encourages the letter writer to come clean and tell the boss. EASY COOKING: [Tejal Rao’s recipe for beans on garlic toast]( and [Dorie Greenspan’s recipe for lemon tart]( to be competing this week to be crowned Most Delicious and Easy to Make. You be the judge. MORE STORIES IN THIS WEEK'S ISSUE: [What Young Rats’ Workouts Could Tell Us About the Human Heart]( By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS Exercising as a youngster might mean more heart-muscle cells as a grown-up. [Letter of Recommendation: Schleich Figurines]( By CHARLES SIEBERT Little representatives of a dying world. Tip [How to Clean Paper Currency]( By MALIA WOLLAN If you don’t have access to highly pressurized and heated carbon dioxide, bleach notes in the sun. Talk [Vivica A. Fox Wants Women in Hollywood to Last Past 35]( By MOLLY LAMBERT The actress and author on her time in Trump’s orbit and aging in Hollywood. If you enjoy our newsletter forward this email to a friend and help the magazine grow. Getting this from a friend? [Sign up to get the magazine newsletter](. Let us know how we can improve at: [magazine@nytimes.com](mailto:magazine@nytimes.com?subject=Newsletter%20Feedback%20NYT%20Magazine) Check out our [full list of free newsletters]( including [Well:]( the latest on health, fitness and nutrition, delivered to your inbox twice a week. ABOUT THIS EMAIL You received this message because you signed up for NYTimes.com's The New York Times Magazine newsletter. [Unsubscribe]( | [Manage Subscriptions]( | [Change Your Email]( | [Privacy Policy]( | [Contact]( | [Advertise]( Copyright 2018 The New York Times Company | 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018