Year: 2009

You should have seen it: a crowd of people two football fields long, swilling Heineken Light, Dos Equis, Liberty Ale and Ravenswood Lodi Zinfandel, throwing beach balls around, clogging and contra-dancing to John Prine. I could have sworn this was Santa Cruz when I saw an irrepressible guy in his 50s near the front, leaping up, shaking his shirtsleeves, waving his elbows and doing the chicken dance to “Grandpa Was a Carpenter.” Dude looked just like Edward Abbey. There was some weird stuff too, of course; some guy about 100 feet from the stage took out a violin and started sawing away on it right in the middle of “Angel from Montgomery.” Prine, as usual, put on a perfect performance; he pulled out “Crooked Piece of Time,” which I’d never heard live before, and he was positively glowing when Lyle Lovett — next in line on the Banjo Stage —…

You are faced with some hard choices this weekend if you’re coming to San Francisco for Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, probably the greatest free music festival in the nation, especially if you like that KPIG-style Americana as much as I do. It’s kind of like the legendary Fat Fry, but bigger and with no admission charge. Friday is easy. The great John Prine will be playing at 415 p.m. that day on the Banjo Stage, and if you’ve never seen him in concert (I’ve seen him eight times) then you would be crazy to miss this. (who knows how many times he’ll be back on the festival circuit…) And you don’t have to budge from your spot when the concert is over; Lyle Lovett — complete with his “Large Band” — will be playing the same stage at 545 p.m. Saturday will test your loyalties and force you to make painful…

During my first reporting job, I interviewed a horse in Connecticut. It went about as well as you would expect. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

A reader from the Eastern Seaboard emailed me this question a month ago. I’ll have a much more detailed answer next week, but my initial response is “Absolutely not.” I realize that I’m only going on my own very limited experience, which took place quite a while ago, but just about everyone I met out on the trail was not well-off at all (and some were strictly subsistence.) As for me, I left a very low-paying job to do the trek. Also — there are opportunities to save money by preparing your own foods and making at least some of your own gear. More on this later. (by the way, thanks for sending in all these questions over the past few weeks. While I am probably the last person on earth that you should ask for backpacking or survival advice, I can at least refer you to folks who know…

The best place stories are also human stories. If there are no people in them, no real-life characters, place stories will feel free-floating and listless. That’s why you’ve got to read Best American Travel Writing 2009 with selections by Simon Winchester. There are lots of great stories in there — in particular an essay by Bronwen Dickey about the mighty, 57-mile-long Chattooga, “The Last Wild River.” The essay, which originally appeared in the Oxford American’s Best of the South issue, combines gorgeous landscape description, great characters, humor and ecology, along with reflections about wilderness and wildness. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Check out the line-up for the Center for Literary Arts in San Jose, including Denis Johnson, who will deliver the Martha Heasley Cox Lecture in November. Fans of outdoor writing won’t want to miss the great Tim Cahill, this year’s Lurie Distinguished Visiting Writer. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

What a weird coincidence. Today, in my Cactuseaters inbox, I saw a message from someone out in Pennsylvania, asking about the wisdom of hiking with an umbrella to block out the sun and avoid “sliming excessive sunscreen all over the body.” The person was especially interested in the idea of taking an umbrella on long hikes through hot and arid places. How strange; I was just thinking about this very issue. Give me a couple of weeks and I’ll post some thoughts when I return. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

Here is a compendium of recent Cactuseaters reader adventures, outside and indoors. Keep in mind that this is only the partial version; I will add to this again when I have more time. Send in if you have an interesting story in the coming weeks, (but keep in mind that this isn’t an advertising site: no used Passats, junky furniture, etc.) Imagine taking a year off and traveling around the world. That is what Asa is doing. This just in from Jorma in Bellingham: Chris Beamish is off sailing around Vancouver Island (BC) right now in his 18′ homemade wooden boat. Beamish, formerly an editor at the Surfer’s Journal, is off on a sailing odyssey. He sailed halfway down Baja and has done a number of other great trips. Stay tuned. Edie, a real-life ‘character’ in the Cactus Eaters, (and my big sister) is having fantastic success with a private-nonprofit…

I am stumped. I just received an emailed question about trekking poles and whether or not hikers should invest in them and take them on long-distance or day hikes. The questioner told me that she has some old crappy ones and never got the utility out of them. I will ask around about this, but meanwhile, if you have any experiences you wish to report about hiking poles — or a particular kind that you like or don’t like — let me know, and I will incorporate your ideas into my answer, which I will post right here on Cactuseaters.blogspot.com. Personally, I’ve never used the retractable, shock-proof, store-bought hiking poles, although I’ve always been curious about them; I usually improvise with ski poles or twigs or something like that. Also — I often hike in forbidding terrain that requires two free hands for scrambling up and down slopes (making it…

In case you missed this, the Chronicle ran an interesting story (reprinted in the Seattle PI) about the quest for speed on the mighty John Muir Trail. The author of the article is the Chronicle’s Tom Stienstra, who has also written many good trail guides and walking books. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default