Author: Dan White

Coming soon from Catamaran Literary Reader at a bookstore or mailbox near you: the forthcoming issue of our magazine includes my brief essay on women facing the wilderness on the Pacific Crest Trail, with a detailed Q & A with Gail Storey and Aspen Matis and with prominent mentions of Cheryl Strayed and Suzanne Roberts. There is no online version of the magazine at this time but you can find out where to buy it and how to describe by visiting us here.  Also, please get your hands on the current issue of Catamaran, which is another great one, with contributions from Paul Muldoon, an overlooked piece of writing from John Steinbeck, new work from Ursula K Le Guin and Nathaniel Mackey and my interview with Susan Shillinglaw about the 75th anniversary of The Grapes of Wrath‘s publication. I hope you’re all having a good summer and I’ll see you out in…

                                Thank you to my friend Samuel Autman for asking me to participate in the Blog Tour, in which a group of writers talk about their latest projects and share a few words about their writing process. So here I am, taking part and passing it on. Read here about Samuel’s writing process. Here goes:1. What are you working on? For the last couple of years I have been working on a book that is now under contract with Henry Holt & Company. The working title is Soaked to the Bone. It is an embodied history of American camping, meaning that I must participate — enthusiastically, and sometimes dangerously — in every form of camping I write about. I am using a combination of research and history and my own adventures to tell the story…

Lately I’ve signed some seriously scary copies of my book. A few of them looked like somebody dropped them in a lake, rolled them down a hill, or cleaned their showers with them.  I signed them anyways. I am willing to sign anything except for a blank check. In other news, I’m heading to the Hoh rainforest very soon to spend time with the bugling elk and write about “quiet camping” for my new book. Also, thank you for your continued support of my first book. It keeps creeping along, slowly, inexorably, like a slimy but determined hermit crab at the bottom of the ocean. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

… I prepped for the Pacific Crest Trail by baking boatloads of granola. Oh to be young & dunderheaded again. On that fateful week, I baked dozens of batches of appalling, inedible granola to take with me on the Pacific Crest Trail. Every time I stopped at a new trail destination, another enormous baggie  awaited me, spoiled cashews, burned oats, and all. Tehachapi? I opened up my supply box and out came a baggie of home-baked granola cinders. Kennedy Meadows? A mountain of scorched granola awaited me once again. The overwhelming bulk of it wound up in the “free pile.” So if you’re evem thinking of hiking the PCT right now, do me a favor and taste test everything before you ship it to yourself. And avoid sending perishable stuff with nuts that will turn  rancid and sour on you or buttered oats that will grow blue fuzzy stuff by…

Here is my recipe, which appears this week in Bay Area Parent. I hope you like this. I had some good success with it this week. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

NEVER bring a fondue maker into the woods with you. The bread crumbs, fruit wedges, gas and molten cheese will form a white magma that will spew all over you, leaving fourth-degree burns all over your entire body. NEVER cook a meal while sitting inside your tent, even when it’s raining outside. (Trust me. Your tent will explode.) NEVER forget that “freeze-dried’’ and “chili’’ is a very bad combination. (Trust me. You will explode.) NEVER try to reason with anyone riding an All-Terrain Vehicle — especially if he or she is drunk and holding a 12-gauge Mossberg shotgun and wearing a knit cap that says “I Like Big Jugs.” NEVER try to make your girlfriend, or boyfriend, hike faster by calling out a military cadence in a fake Southern accent. (“Sound off, sound off, one, two, three, foe!”) NEVER attempt to brush your teeth in total darkness. Preparation H does…

Here she is. We met in the Everglades last week and got along famously. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

This will be part of my new book in progress, tentatively titled Soaked to the Bone. I’ll take loads of notes. Looking forward to the gators but not so much the mosquitoes. Thinking I should have seam-sealed my tent; potential rain out there. More soon. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

I know this blog has run its course, but Chanukah and Thanksgiving won’t coincide again until about 25,000 years. By then, we’ll all have four brains and gills like Kevin Costner in Waterworld. Maybe we won’t even have tastebuds. Truly, it’s now or never. Hope you like this recipe. And remember, cook the hell out of them!  Douse them in oil and fry them until they can take no more. http://cactuseaters.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

I am temporarily mothballing the Cactuseaters blog as I gear up for my second book, which is now under contract with HarperCollins. The working title is Soaked to the Bone: 15,000 Years of American Camping, and should be in your hands by 2016 I hope. I will try to update this from time to time, but meanwhile, I have embedded my Twitter feed in the right hand corner of this blog so I can at least keep you up to date about new adventures, etc. I am contemplating a new website built around the upcoming book project. And, if you are seeking information on The Cactus Eaters, here are reviews and related links, and here is the recently updated Frequently Asked Questions link.  Meanwhile, please take a look at forthcoming issues of Catamaran for my essays about — and interviews with — T.C. Boyle, Lawrence Weschler, Helene Wecker, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and others. By…