Pick up the June issue of Men’s Journal to go inside the mind of the world’s fiercest competitor, Rafael Nadal; to take a tour the 30 best neighborhoods in America; to follow one man’s swamp-slogging, machete-wielding mission to walk the length of the Amazon River; and to read the heart-wrenching tale of Norman Ollestad’s new memoir of survival, Crazy for the Storm.

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From Elizabeth Kaye’s profile Zen and the Art of Rafael Nadal:

Shortly after 11 pm he enters the arena, emerging apparition-like through the benign haze of desert heat. The court is his domain, the realm he commands, but tonight the intimidation factor belongs to Nalbandian. Nadal plays defensively, allowing Nalbandian to capture the first set. Late in the second set, the pro-Nadal crowd sinks into mute apprehension when Nadal butchers a service game and gives Nalbandian a match point. Nadal fends it off, then fends off three more as fans erupt with fervid cries of “Vamos Rafa!” When Nadal snuffs out a fifth match point with a ferocious backhand winner, the crowd goes wild, which is saying something when you’re playing in a retirement community and it’s one o’clock in the morning.

Revived and aggressive, Nadal seizes the second set. By now Nalbandian has tried everything and made the mistake that Nadal forces you to make: He has tried too hard. Like a matador vexing a bull, Nadal bedevils his opponent, crushing any lingering hopes he harbors of escaping unscathed. At last, Nadal moves in for the kill, purposeful, pitiless, imperturbable.

“I change completely,” Nadal will say later. “I decided to change.”

 

 

From Matthew Power’s Lost in the Amazon:

The jungle life is beginning to wear on me after 10 days of trekking. As my willpower flags, my astonishment at Stafford’s determination grows. My feet, soaked for 12 hours a day, look cadaverous. I long for water that doesn’t taste like an iodized puddle. I am covered with ant bites, and my ankles are embedded with parasitic fleas. At one point Stafford stumbles into a swarm of wasps, and the four of us sprint in a panic back down the trail. Then, while crossing through waist-deep water, McBride looks down and shouts, “What the hell is that thing?” This is not something anybody wants to hear while standing in an Amazonian swamp.

The creature has a huge whiskered head like a catfish, but a bright red mouth and a tail that winds off behind a stump and breaks the water six feet away. It swims slowly toward McBride and then vanishes below the surface in the murk. Bernobe tries to explain in broken Spanish, repeating the word anguila, but none of us knows what it means. Only later do we realize that the thing was an enormous electric eel, which could have generated enough of a shock to knock us all unconscious, facedown in the water.

 

From the excerpt of Norman Ollestad’s forthcoming memoir, Crazy for the Storm:

Time seemed to decelerate as if lassoed by a giant rubber band. Fog pressed against all the windows, and there was no up or down, no depth at all, as if the plane were standing still, a toy hanging from a string. The pilot reached down with one hand and spun the knee-high trim wheel. I wanted him to spin the dial faster — we’ll climb faster, away from the trees. But he abandoned the trim wheel and steered the giant W with both hands, jerking us side to side. What about that dial? Should I spin it for him? A branch out the window caught my eye.

“Watch out!” I yelled, curling my 4-foot-9, 75-pound body up tight.

A wing clipped a tree, sending a thud into my spine, and the plane twisted ass-backward. We bounced like a pinball off two more trees — metal ripping, the engine revving. I was fixated on the trim wheel. Too late to spin it now.…

We slammed into Ontario Peak, 8,693 feet high. The plane broke apart, flinging chunks of debris across the rugged north face and hurling our bodies into an icy chute.

We were sprawled among the wreckage on a 45-degree slope. Exposed to freezing snow and wind, we dangled 250 feet from the summit — the distance between life and death.