Year: 2016

hi everyone. My reading tour begins in just a few hours. Packing my electric toothbrush and getting ready to hit the road. I thought about camping my way from bookstore to bookstore, but couldn’t get my act together on time to make that happen so I will be sleeping indoors (though I’ve got a cabin or two on the itinerary, in rustic surroundings, so there will be a certain roofless quality to the sleep-over, even though I’ll have a roof.) Tonight: Haight Ashbury’s famous Booksmith in San Francisco. I hung out here all the time while living in the Haight for three years. In fact, I once did a live interview with Andrew Sean Greer at this bookstore, so this is a kind of homecoming. The fun begins at 730 tonight (Tuesday, July 12.) Refreshments served.   Then the schedule continues as follows: Thursday, July 14 9 a.m.,live television interview, KATU…

Dear camping friends: my book, Under The Stars, combines my own experiences in the wild with the history of outdoor recreation and the stories of the men and women who made their way into the forests of America seeking happiness and renewal.  I had to make some draconian decisions about who to include and exclude from the final line-up of “heroes of camping” in this book. I simply could not find space for all the stories I wanted to incorporate — including this tale of a fearless grandmother who conquered a long-distance footpath without any fancy gear, and with no preparation whatsoever. If you are ever tempted to go on a long camping trip, but worry that you can’t afford a carload of fancy new equipment, consider the story of Emma “Grandma” Gatewood, who hiked every inch of the Appalachian Trail for a grand total of a hundred dollars and with no…

Under The Stars has made two appearances in one week in the Wall Street Journal. Today, the WSJ posted my history piece about camping, and last week, the newspaper ran a review of Under The Stars. I have read the WSJ all of my adult life, and have never appeared in the newspaper in any context until next week, so these are unusual circumstances. I love the layout of the history piece and the use of archival photos. (I also loved the image of s’mores that they used to accompany the book review.) Happy camping, everyone. See you up in the Pacific Northwest.        

  Hello, everyone. I hope you are taking advantage of the nice weather and having a good old time exploring the mountains, meadows, swamps, cane breaks, estuaries, dells and dales and dogwoods of America. The public lands belong to you. Take advantage. Get out those blue tarps, those panniers, and those bear kegs. And you don’t need to go far afield to experience nature. I love to explore the hinterlands of my own  town — the greenbelts, the coastal meadows, the sloughs and oak thickets. Thank you for sending me pictures of my new book, Under The Stars, hanging out in America’s campgrounds. Lately I’ve been so busy, I’ve only taken shorter camping trips to places like Napa and Big Sur. Beautiful country! Word is still getting out about this website. Until recently, the readership demographic consisted, overwhelmingly, of my mother in law at this point. Other folks have been…

Hello campers and friends and camping friends. Just wanted to let you know that my publisher (Henry Holt) is going to go live tomorrow with an Under The Stars interactive page that will allow you to send in camping photos, photos of Under The Stars in far-flung locations (or near-flung locations), camping stories and other things. They’re calling it an Under The Stars “fan page” but I’m thinking of it as a camping page or virtual campground of sorts. Thank you again for your support, by the way; I really appreciate it. .  

Friends, I’ve had plenty of readings before. Readings in dive bars. Readings in the middle of the woods, where all the audience members were dehydrated and lost. But this upcoming reading at the Booksmith — marking the centennial of the National Park Service –– will be like a virtual car camping experience.   Because of fire regulations, I don’t think we’ll be able to build an actual bonfire at the Booksmith, a wonderful San Francisco bookstore, but there will be  campfire stories, trail mix, and  barley-malt drinks. Anyway, the fun will take place at July 12, 730 p.m. sharp. I will read from two sections of the book, which takes you through the wild and woolly history of American camping from the chilly heights of Whitney to the swamps of the Everglades. I will answer any questions you have, and we will hang out, and reflect on campouts past, present and future….

  And this just in. I just found out that Under The Stars made Oprah’s Summer Reading List. Take a look at the current issue of the magazine and you will find it high up in a list of ‘books that make a difference.” The story was just posted on line and here it is.

Long before I started working on Under The Stars, I marked every Father’s Day by buying a piece of camping gear or paraphernalia: a flashlight, a bottle of bug spray, or an inedible chunk of freeze-dried Neapolitan ice cream. I engaged in this ritual because my father got me into wilderness camping at a young age. Considering how much he’s influenced my complicated love for camping, you’d think my dad was raised in the middle of the countryside. Actually, he’s a slum kid from the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He was a child during the Great Depression.  The first camping he ever witnessed was the desperate or ‘needful’ kind on the edge of his neighborhood. At the height of the Great Depression there were sprawling “Hoovervilles” below the Williamsburg Bridge, rows of shacks made of tin sheets and cardboard. Campfires smoldered along the East River. One day, some local…

  And here is what she had to say last week: “The definitive book on camping in America. . . . A passionate, witty, and deeply engaging examination of why humans venture into the wild.”—Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild

  Dear campers and readers: Here is a just-published news-feature story about my upcoming book (which launches just six days from now.) By the way,  I so appreciate your detailed reviews and commentary. I just want to thank all those who have taken the time to share their thoughts on the book with the rest of the world. I appreciate the way that you are taking the time to delve into this. Somehow you’re deepening my understanding of experiences that I’ve lived through and written about, which is really extraordinary. In some ways this has been such a hard year for me. The loss of my father in late March weighs very heavily in my heart every day. But I am hoping that this book will sustain his memory, especially if it continues to find an audience out there; after all, he is the one who gave me my camping…