Reading date change at Steinbeck Center ...

I just wanted to point out that my reading at the Steinbeck Center at San Jose State has been changed to Tuesday, September 30, 730 p.m. (see list of events below.) It will be on the fifth floor of the Martin Luther King Jr. Library. Snacks and wine will be served.

Walking with mountain lions: four backcountry survival tips

The other day, I went on a twilight run through mountain lion territory. It was scary! Every time I heard something stalking around in the bushes, I thought a puma was going to leap out and bite me in half. It always turned out to be a quail, a woodrat or a sparrow, but still. From now on, I will remember these words of wisdom every time I'm walking through cougar territory:

1. Always hike in a group. The mountain lion will only eat your slow-moving, chubby friends and leave you alone.
2. If you see a mountain lion, stand on your tip-toes and stretch your arms high in the air to make yourself look larger. That way, the mountain lion will think there’s more to eat.
3. If you see a mountain lion, make as much noise as possible! That way, every cougar in the forest will know where you are.
5. And last, but not least: If a mountain lion attacks you, fight back! It will look funny on YouTube.

KFOG

I just had a great conversation on KFOG about The Cactus Eaters and living in the backcountry. Many thanks to the listeners who called in or emailed questions during the broadcast.

French cactus eaters

Thanks to Mr. Victor White for contributing this theme-appropriate photo, taken during a recent visit to Paris.

Upcoming Cactus readings (with one date change...)

I will be reading -- and going on the radio -- very soon in San Francisco, the East Bay, in San Jose and other locations. Here is what I have lined up so far for the near future. Please note the changed date (same time) for the San Jose State reading below.

Saint Mary's College of California, Creative Writing Reading SeriesMoraga, CA
Soda Activity Center
7:30 p.m., September 24 (Wednesday)

San Jose State University
San Jose, CA
new date:
7:30 p.m., September 30, Tuesday
Reading at the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies
Fifth floor, Martin Luther King Jr. Library
Reception to follow.

Books Inc In The Castro
San Francisco, CA
(2275 Market Street)
7:30 pm, October 2 (Thursday)
Books Inc. in the Castro
Reading and signing


Livermore Public Library
Livermore, Ca
2 p.m., October 5 (Sunday.)
Reading and signing

The day I climbed Mount Whatever

More advice for travel writers ...

Summer is coming to a close, which means one thing: you are probably contemplating one last serious backpacking or day hiking trip before the cold weather and September obligations come slamming down. You will probably bring a digital camera out into the woods with you and take thousands of pictures of mountains, lakes, streams, people and woodland creatures.
But if you decide to take pictures, do me one favor. Label your photos!
I am speaking from sad personal experience. During my wilderness sojourns, I took approximately 3,000 pictures -- and I did not label a single one of them!! Now, I am at a total loss about the pictures. I have forgotten the identities of almost all the people in the photos. I cannot tell any of the crags, lakelets, streams and sylvan landscapes apart. Now, when people look through my photos and slides, I am not very helpful at all. "Oh, that was the day I climbed Mount Whatever with What's-his-Face, in Whatever-the-hell state it was.''
By the way, if you can help identify the mountains and waterway in this picture, shoot me a message. It would be a big help.

Smut give-away in Noe Valley (updated.)

Run, don't walk, to the corner of Castro and Clipper today. There (unless some mean person has removed it) you will notice a large box of free books that someone has left on the sidewalk right next to the bus stop near the coin-op laundromat. The box is filled to the brim with such books as "The Ninety Days of Genevieve,'' "The Romance of Lust,'' and "My Darling Dominatrix.'' I even overheard someone with a very dramatic voice, loudly reading such passages as "whimpering in tight-lipped grunts,'' "straining sinews,'' and "both girls awaited tensely, knowing that a spanking was imminent.''

Whoever left this box removed all of the covers, which was a very cruel thing to do. However, the person left a helpful sign on the top of the box, lest there be any confusion. "SMUT!'' it says.

(Addendum: I drove past the intersection yesterday, and noticed that someone has taken the entire box. The opportunity has passed.)

A bear in Silicon Valley?

This is old news for many of you at this point, but I was surprised to read, in Tom Stienstra's column, that two Bay Area hikers saw a black bear this week at Rancho San Antonio near Cupertino. It's a beautiful open space area where you always see vitamin-D deprived programmers going on long runs with "Got Code?'' T-shirts.
By the way, there is a slight connection between my book and Rancho San Antonio, once the home of the unfortunate Elisha Stephens, a pioneer and homesteader who appears in The Cactus Eaters(Stephens helped open up what became known as "Donner Pass,'' got zero credit, and died a bee-keeping, bitter grump in Kern County. Apparently he's in an unmarked grave.) Rancho San Antonio is my big escape every time I feel like going to points south and warming up but don't have the time to get to my beloved Santa Cruz. I've seen rattlesnakes, deer, hundreds of quail and a limping bobcat --- but alas, never a bear. Is Ursus Americanus taking over Silicon Valley? Stay tuned.

Brave New Traveler Interview: "Dan White Eats Cactus And Loses His Mind.''

This just in, an interview with the writer Alexis Wolff, in Brave New Traveler magazine. And yes, the bearded scarecrow holding the knife in front of Mount Shasta is me. (That photo is living proof that you need to eat quite a lot of calories on the trail or you will look like a walking skeleton after a while. You can burn 6,000 calories a day out there. When I started out on the trail, I weighed around 200 pounds. When it was all over, I weighed about 160!!)

P.S. --- see entry below for reading/signing appearance list, updated today with a new SF appearance.

Outstanding in my field of dirt

I used to be known as the "Pigpen of the Trail'' or "Dirty Dan.'' This nickname came from the simple fact that dirt, dust, gnats and trail grime clung to me, my gear and my clothes. In many photos from that period of my life, it looked as if someone used my T-shirts to scrub the dirt off a bison or a water buffalo. However, I am not taking my title, or my trail name, for granted. If you can provide visual evidence (i.e. an emailed jpeg photo) that you or any of your hiking friends are bigger dirt magnets than I was, feel free to send them here --- but let me know if I have your permission to put them on the blog. (If this happens, I will also have to change my trail name into something else.)Meanwhile, here is some visual evidence:

The Crawlspace Letters: the mystery continues

A while back, I wrote about a cache of very old and mysterious letters and photographs that I found in a crawlspace in my apartment (I live in the Haight, in a house that pre-dates and somehow survived the San Francisco earthquake.) I took another look in the crawlspace this weekend, and found dozens of items that are even older and stranger than the first batch. I found a 70-year-old letter from Camp Curry, Yosemite, begging the recipient for cash and urging a response about an undescribed "serious matter.'' I also found a vaguely menacing letter, urging the recipient to march in a parade scheduled for Labor Day, 1926. "Remember,'' the letter reads. "You will be conspicuous by your absence!'' I also found a King of Hearts playing card from the turn of the century, an identification card dated Dec. 31, 1937, an advance advertisement for Steinbeck's Cannery Row, and a catalog filled with photos of old corsets, yokes and other kinky-looking things from the early 1920s. Obviously, this apartment has had quite a life before I moved in last year!

I'm hoping to find an SF cultural historian who can help me make sense of all these artifacts. When that happens, I'll file an update right here.

Freeze-dried matzo ball soup --- yum!

As of Aug. 2 (Saturday) you will be able to download a podcast of my talk with Evan Kleiman about trail food on KCRW. This week's program also talks about cupcake fetishes, food allergies, natural wines, chicken curry and more.

Ghosts of the Utah desert

I had quite a profound and spooky experience exploring a remote canyon in the Utah outback some months back. If you're interested in reading about this place, here is my story, which appeared in Backpacker Magazine. By the way, I am glad to say that this place is extremely well-guarded and patrolled. It is also quite difficult to reach. I hope that people visit this place and tread lightly here for many generations to come. (As a disclaimer, I should add that this place is pretty subtle. Don't expect anything too dramatic. For me, it was mostly about the peace, the solitude, the atmosphere and the wildlife --- I saw a black bear, many wild turkey, snakes and lizards galore.)

Nextbook

This just in: my interview with the New York-based writer Adina Kay on Nextbook: A New Read on Jewish Culture

Advice for travel writers

I have some advice for people who are out exploring the world, backpacking around the globe, trekking through Nepal, hitchhiking around Thailand and keeping diaries of their experiences: do me a favor and spend a few extra bucks for a good-quality pen with archival smear-resistant ink ---- and a decent weather-resistant journal with durable pages.

Here's why I'm telling you this: When I did a lot of exploring in my youth, I bought thousands of Bic pens with red water-based ink, and dozens of fifty-cent journals with pages made of one-ply toilet paper. This seemed like a sound decision because, hey, I was saving money.

Years later, I needed those journals for a writing project --- but when I opened them, I saw that water had leaked into the journals.

Every once in a while, I would find passages like this: "If there is only one thing that I always want to remember about this travel experience, it's (ENORMOUS HOLE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PAGE ) Furthermore, I will never forget meeting (UNREADABLE INK BLOB ) who changed my life when he told me about (HOLE IN THE PAGE .) Furthermore, (BLOB )gave me a few words of advice that I will always try to live by: (UNREADABLE RORSCHACH SMEAR.) I will always be greatful for (RIP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PAPER. )''

Among the Giant Slugs

(photo from slugweb.com)

APTOS, California: It's hard to believe that the Forest of Nisene Marks was once a stumpy wasteland, with loggers doing their darnedest to hack down every redwood they could find. In the turn of the century, this place was a disaster. Now, the forest offers some of the best hiking you can find anywhere on the Central Coast. You can hike all day on the edge of ravines, splash through streams and ogle banana slugs, which look like slices of overripe mango.

Second-growth redwoods grow so tall here, you can barely see the tops without straining your neck and back (like I did!) It's easy to forget the place's unfortunate history until you stumble across a stump with ferns and moss growing out of it, a broken-down cabin, or a set of railroad ties fading into the woods.

Sometimes you forget you're near Santa Cruz until you see or hear the signs: fat-tire unicyclists on an illegal trail ride deep in the park's interior, someone lost in the sounds of his own bongos, a musician blowing out a melody on the digeridu while sitting cross-legged on a folding chair, and a couple having exhibitionist sex in a Range Rover with the windows down on the fire road, paying zero attention to the small army of moms pushing babystrollers right past them. There are few people here, even on a nice day. Get there early in the morning and watch the steam rising off the redwoods.

Chronicle bestseller list, plus upcoming radio show about food

"Cactus'' made the SF Chronicle bestseller list this week in the Bay Area paperbacks category.
Also --- I will be talking about dehydrated matzo balls and other unusual backpacking foods on KCRW's "Good Food'' program at 11 a.m. (western standard time) August 2. I will post the podcast link when it's up. If you have any unusual backpacking-food suggestions, shoot me an email; at some point I'd like to do a follow-up post about this subject.

"Chomp!!!!!''

I'm not sure if I told you this before, but I kept two kinds of diaries during my wanderings --- a regular diary and a "Comic Book'' diary. This entry, from the "Comic Book'' version, gives you some sense of what was going through my head during the title sequence from "Cactus Eaters.'' Note the facial expression. Also, here are some scratchboard sketches inspired by various critters I saw in the American West. Alas, the grizzly sketch is a memento mori. They've been extinct in my native state since the 1920s. Nice going, California.

Range of Light

Now would be a great time to hike the John Muir Trail, which was completed 70 years ago and is still the most beautiful footpath in America (and possibly the planet.) It's also a genuine adventure; you bag a high-mountain pass almost every day. I guarantee that this path will turn you into a lifetime backpacker. If you can put up with a bit of leg burn, one or two scary creek crossings, and two or three thousand mosquitos nesting in your nostrils, this hike is for you. It also helps if you're handy with an ice axe. I grabbed this shot with the Behemoth Camera a number of years ago.

The Cactus Eaters in the Boston Globe

The author Steve Almond wrote this detailed review of the Cactus Eaters for The Boston Globe. In other news, I am adding several speaking dates in the Bay Area and points south; I will give more specific updates very soon.