Year: 2008

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…

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. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

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.) http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

This just in: my interview with the New York-based writer Adina Kay on Nextbook: A New Read on Jewish Culture http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

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…

(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…

“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. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

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. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

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. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

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. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default