Rick Marini ’94 is moving at warp speed—working 80 hours a week, barely stopping to eat, hardly pausing to sleep. The pace is relentless. But Marini is pumped. He’s building a new company, and he’s pretty sure it’s his billion-dollar opportunity. “Being an entrepreneur is a rollercoaster—you have to have a strong stomach,” says Marini. “It’s hard, but I love it.”

It was the color that had her worried. Martha Carlson ’09G had never seen syrup like this before—and she’d been tapping maple trees on her Sandwich, N.H., mountainside property for more than 30 years. In 2009, though, the syrup was dark and glistening, more like molasses than the clear amber liquid she and her husband, Rudy, always produced in their tiny sugar shack. It smelled odd, too, and needed extra filtering, leaving behind a sticky residue. . .

The tiny crab is fast, skittering just out of reach, headed for cover in a pile of oysters. But Ray Grizzle is faster. “Ha!” He plucks the critter, about the size of a nickel, from the pile of shells and holds it between his thumb and index finger, squinting against the brilliant September sunshine. “See this? He’s one of the main culprits. These guys love baby oysters.”

Like a lot of guys, Will Carey puts on a suit before he goes to work. Unlike most of them, he has to zip himself in—one heavy-duty zipper up the front and another across the upper back, which requires a hook, a piece of line and some serious body contortion to get the thing to close. . .

When the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, Nancy Kinner ’80G, ’83G was in Anchorage, Alaska, doing one of the things she does best—talking about oil and, ironically, what to do with it when it spills.

On a late December afternoon, Taylor Chace flies across the rink at UNH’s Whittemore Center Arena, carving long arcs in the fresh ice as he whoops and hollers toward the goal.

Tyler Walker ’08 grew up in northern New Hampshire at the foot of Cannon Mountain. Like every other kid in town, he wanted to ski. But he had been born with a spinal defect that required both legs to be amputated above the knee. When he begged to join his friends on the slopes, though, his parents didn’t bat an eye. They got creative. . .

Joris Brinckerhoff ’82 was a new Peace Corps volunteer, hitchhiking along a dusty road in Costa Rica, when a dilapidated land cruiser pulled up beside him and changed the course of his life. . .