Bill Donahue is a writer living in Portland, Oregon.

Kateri Tekakwitha was a seventeenth-century Mohawk Indian and a Roman Catholic ascetic who slept on a bed of thorns. On December 19, 2011, Pope Benedict XVI credited her with causing a miracle. She will soon be named a saint. But what exactly does that mean? How does someone become a saint? And why is a con artist Italian friar who faked his stigmata wounds already a saint?
Edited by Laura Hohnhold.

Six astronauts simulate a mission to Mars, by repairing to a Spartan basement in Moscow and isolating themselves in a fake spaceship for 520 days. Edited by Mark McClusky.

Can Antioch College return from the dead again? Edited by Dean Robinson.

A week among the Latino emigres working at one McDonald’s in Washington, DC. Edited by David Rowell.

In the late 1990s, NASA spent $250 million on a satellite designed to monitor climate change. The satellite has never flown. What happened? Edited by Seth Fletcher.

The author launches a career as a nordic ski racer. Edited by David Rowell.

Riding the bus from Ohio to Washington, D.C., with a contingent of Tea Partiers bound for Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally. Edited by David Rowell.

Bicycling to the world’s largest statue of Genghis Khan, in Mongolia. Edited by Tim Lavin.

A summer with the college students working in the rustic hikers’ huts of New Hampshire’s White Mountains. Edited by Dennis Lewon.

Youngstown, Ohio resurrects itself from a Rust Belt death. Edited by Dan Ferrara.

American rodeo is taking on a Latin flair. Edited by Don Peck.

The poet Mary Barnard was an extremely private person, and single throughout her entire life. Her verse was spare and a bit cold, devoid of people. So how is that her 1958 book—Sappho: A New Translation—perfectly captured the Greek lyric poet, in all her sublime sensuality? Edited by Chris Lydgate.

Todd Palin competes in the Tesoro Iron Dog, a 2,000 mile snowmobile race across Alaska. Edited by Chris Hunt.

Ruled over by druggie tyrant Manuel Noriega for seven years, and occupied by the US military for nearly a century, Panama is still dotted with torture chambers and ominous military installations. Which is exactly what makes it a primo tourist destination. Edited by Amy Meeker.

The summer I turned 18, I lived with my grandmother in our family’s rambling summer home in New Hampshire’s Lakes Region. It was an unusual housing scenario, but somehow the experience kind of launched my writing career. Edited by Jason Wilson.

At the age of four, slum kid Budhia Singh ran 40 miles without stopping in the blistering heat of his native India. Then, afterwards, his childhood only grew stranger. Edited by Peter Flax.

Russell Means is an American Indian activist, a movie star who played the last Mohican in Last of the Mohicans, and also a political operator who has befriended Muammar Qaddafi, Larry Flynt, and Louis Farrakhan. In late 2007, he seceded from the United States, to launch The Republic of Lakotah. But is Lakotah an actual sovereign nation, or just a state of mind? Edited by David Rowell.

On a warm summer evening in 1919, a comely young factory worker named Bella Wright set out for a bicycle ride through the country lanes outside Leicester, England. What happened next involved a revolver, a raven, and a shady character on a high-end green bicycle. Edited by Bill Strickland.

Built on the swamplands of south Florida, Ave Maria University is the newest Catholic school in the U.S.—and a place where the faith of my fathers has been wholly transmogrified. Edited by Alistair Paulin.

Social worker John Donovan was a monklike figure who lived alone in a succession of dingy $300-a-month apartments. Strange things transpired after he got lost and died in the high mountains of Southern California. Edited by David Howard.

In a booming city mad for the automobile, cyclists are second class citizens. But it’s still a joy to ride the streets, especially when your guide is an industrious pimp. Edited by Marilyn Snell.

For years, Craig Rosebraugh was the spokesperson for the Earth Liberation Front, which burns down SUV dealerships and ski lifts in the name of eco-defense. When he changed jobs and opened a blue chip vegan restaurant, his inner anarchist never stopped working overtime. Edited by Dan Ferrara.

Writer Paul Bowles spent most of his adult life in Tangier, Morocco. But when you search for his ghost there, what you find is the soul of the city. Edited by David Rowell. Republished in Best American Travel Writing 2004.

Did George W. Bush’s henchmen light a forest fire in Oregon in order to sell Bush’s “Healthy Forest Initiative”? An investigation. Edited by Ed Lempinen.

In Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in Morocco, thousands of sub-Saharan African migrants wander the streets, hoping to make it across the Strait of Gibraltar, into mainland Europe. Edited by Tim Dickinson.

Fourteen Kansas teenagers make their senior class trip to Washington, D.C. Edited by David Rowell.

The Hatfield-McCoy Recreation Area, in the stripmined hills of West Virginia, is the world’s premier all-terrain-vehicle playground—and oh, what a joy it is to ride there after midnight and toss your empties into the woods! Edited by Jay Stowe.

Skier Bill Johnson won the gold medal in the downhill in the 1984 Olympics. Then in 1999, when he was 39 years old and ravaged by years of hard drinking, he tried to make a comeback. He crashed, incurring permanent brain damage. Edited by Laura Hohnhold.

When my daughter was almost six, I thought it would be a good idea to take her kayaking down Oregon’s Tualatin River. Edited by Mark Jannot.

As a travel destination for kayakers, the Los Angeles River—that 50-mile concrete channel that cuts through the heart of the city—is underrated. Edited by Monika Bauerlein. Nominated for a National Magazine Award.

I didn’t really know my hardscrabble Portland neighborhood until I floated the local creek in a $49.95 inflatable raft. Edited by Toby Lester.

In the love letters he wrote to his sweetheart, my grandfather extolled the joys of fighting in World War I. “Tennis, swimming, teas and dinners with charming French girls,” he said in one 1918 note from Paris. “The beauty here is punctuated by the boom of long range shells (one just went off in the front of the hotel), but no one seems to mind, unless they are actually hit.” Edited by David Rowell.

Gilmanton, New Hampshire, population 3,000, is where novelist Grace Metalious wrote Peyton Place—and also where I spent every summer of my childhood. Local rumor holds that, in fact, Grace did not write the book. Edited by Laura Miller.

Long the debate has raged: Did Frederick indeed summit Mount McKinley in 1906? Edited by Alison Osius. Republished in 20 Years of Climbing Magazine.

Pray Here Ministries’ Rick Schneberger offers absolution in a gravel parking lot on the strip mall fringes of Portland. Edited by Rob Odom.

My great-great-uncle, Tim Donahue, played catcher for the major league Chicago Colts in the 1890s. When he came to bat once in 1899, according to the Chicago Tribune, “It appeared as though the select party on top of a neighboring building would jump off in excess of delight.” Edited by Bob Hicks.

In 1974, in the waning days of the Nixon administration, I attempted to become the pogo stick jumping champion of the world. Edited by Barry Johnson.