Year: 2009

I thoroughly enjoyed the writing/hiking Pogonip exploration last week — and, if you’re interested, you have two more chances to write and hike in the woods. The writer Patricia Vecchione and the artist Tom Killion will soon lead hikes of their own into the forest. Check out Bookshop Santa Cruz’s website for more details. Also, stay tuned to this blog for a few other observations and reading recommendations related to the Pogonip walk. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Here at long last is that digest I was talking about, highlighting you, the readers, your recent projects and your interests. I will continue to update this.-Cactuseaters readers in the news, volume one: One of our readers, William Jacobs, was just voted one of the “least powerful people in Seattle.” Bill Jacobs also alerted me to the journalism, blogs and and recent books by Novella Carpenter, who runs an urban farm that I would like to visit someday. Carpenter is the author of Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer, which will be published by Penguin this June. And this just in from reader Mike Orlando:, who is feeling the pull of altruism and reaching out to help others. “How many lawyers get to spend their afternoons helping a 13 year old and his family raise money to build schools for Kenyan orphans? This is precisely the question I…

Don’t be alarmed if you see a guy in a black Nike hat wheezing his way across the Golden Gate Bridge and up into the Marin Headlands tomorrow (unless I pass out along the way.) Every year I do some sort of outlandish and very long birthday trail run or hike, and this year will be no exception. This will also be my first significant training run before the San Francisco Marathon, which I am planning on running a second time. (By the way, please don’t honk if you see me. I startle very easily.) http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Also — one or two of you vanished out of the Pogonip before I could get you your “hike survivor” certificates. (pictured above.) If so, shoot me an email and I will get you a hard copy one way or the other. I might send a small pile of them over to Bookshop Santa Cruz so you can just pick them up. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Also in honor of Earth Day, I wanted to talk about a great all-day hike that begins and ends in downtown Santa Cruz (or at the Harvey West industrial area) and will leave your calves sore for about a week. I guarantee that you will see redtail hawks, you will probably see bobcats and you might even catch a glimpse of a mountain lion. Various folks at our recent Pogonip “Write and Hike” extravaganza asked about this so I will try to throw together a very rough map as soon as I can and put it up on the blog. Essentially it starts at the Pogonip, includes the open space area over UC Santa Cruz, crosses Highway 9, goes straight into the Gray Whale Ranch area, traverses through Wilder Ranch and finally winds up in downtown Santa Cruz. This is almost all woodlands and rolling hills, with only a few…

The Santa Cruz Sentinel ran an article about our recent writing/hiking adventure in the spectacular Pogonip — an open-space area where nature is asserting itself after years of mistreatment. (These days, flourishing redwoods are kicking down the same lime kilns that burned through most of the old-growth timber in the area.) It was great to hear from so many talented people who described themselves as “non-writers” but read breathtaking descriptions of the natural world. It was even more impressive when you think about the fact that they wrote these observations right on the spot while walking through the forest and the meadow. We didn’t see any banana slugs or coyotes –or mountain lions — but we crossed streams, meandered through ferns, climbed a hill, enjoyed ocean views and had a peaceful picnic near the old building where they filmed the climactic vampire battle in “The Lost Boys.” Also: during the…

To everyone who is coming along on the Nature Walk this Saturday in Santa Cruz:(organized under the auspices of Bookshop Santa Cruz.) First of all, greetings to all of you. Looking forward to meeting you in person (and I’ve already met a few of you on my past travels, so hello again.) I wanted to let you know that we are in for one medium-grade undulating hill early on in the walk and one short but somewhat steeper hill. Overall, I would call this walk moderate, with quite a few easy sections (flat or downhill). Just bring comfortable walking shoes or boots with good traction for that steeper hill because it has a bit of loose gravel on it. Here is how this will work: we will talk about ‘voice,’ the narrator and the places where memoir and nature writing intersect. We will talk a bit about the lovely greenbelt…

I just want to take this opportunity to thank the entire country of Canada. A couple of days ago, I received two inspiring and uplifting messages from the first-ever Canadian to write into my blog. Ever! In light of these recent messages, I want to take this moment to emphasize that Cactuseaters.blogspot is a Canada-friendly zone and let you know that I, too, was offended by the recent Billy Bob Thornton comments. It helps to remember that Billy Bob has also said some peculiar things about the Statue of Liberty and antique shops, among other things. If I ever have the chance to go on a book tour throughout Canada, I promise to never compare your fans to Thanksgiving foodstuffs. By the way, I am soliciting contributions to “stuff you probably don’t know about Canada.” Feel free to send in at any time, and I’ll turn it, eventually, into a…

Thanks so much to everyone who signed up for the Bookshop Santa Cruz hike/talk in the woods; looking forward to seeing you out in the redwoods on Saturday. I also want to thank readers so much for your very moving messages about testimonials about David; I am getting so many great stories and messages about him, and I will add them continuously to this blog as they come in. Also, make sure to check out my brother Phil’s blog, Pawprints, listed below. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

I’m getting quite a few emails from people asking me if “Zook” had any favorite charity, and if they can donate to it in his name. I still need to pin down the details with his family — but in the meantime, I can safely say that he was a true champion of animal adoption; his household was filled with creatures (two dogs, two cats) and every one of those animals is either a stray or a shelter animal. He took great care of the animals, and hated to leave them in kennels for any length of time when he was away. So … one great way to honor David is to give a good home to a dog or cat that you find in a shelter. In my case, I eliminated the middleman and just adopted a cat right off the street some years back when I was living…