Talking Travel Writing with Tim Cahill

Travel Blog • Michael Shapiro • 08.18.06 | 1:33 AM ET

Editor’s note: Travel writer Michael Shapiro is in Corte Madera, California for the annual Book Passage Travel Writers & Photographers Conference. He’s on the conference faculty and is writing about the gathering for World Hum.
Adventure writer and humorist Tim Cahill joined Travelers’ Tales editor Jennifer Leo last night to launch Leo’s latest collection of travel humor stories, What Color is Your Jockstrap? They appeared at Book Passage on the eve of the annual four-day Travel Writers & Photographers Conference. As the event began, Leo confessed to feeling a bit flustered appearing alongside her literary hero. Over a decade ago, after graduating college and biking across the country, she stumbled across Cahill’s Outside magazine story “The Howling,” a tale about a dazzling Northern Lights display in Alaska. Leo said she still remembers the picture of an illuminated golden tent under the shimmering skies.

So it was Paul Dix’s photo, not the story (that inspired your career)?” Cahill shouted. The audience of about 50 people laughed and from then on Leo seemed at ease. She confessed that after being blown away by Cahill’s writing, she saw him interviewed in San Francisco and found him “boring.” But she blamed the interviewer’s ponderous questions for that and later saw him at a Berkeley bookstore and was enchanted.

Cahill has a story in “Jockstrap” called “Fear of Floating.” It recounts Cahill’s days at a Wisconsin camp where a counselor captured a snapping turtle and showed how quickly the turtle’s head could dart out and latch on to a dangling digit. The counselor demonstrated with a stick, but ever since, Cahill has feared floating face down in freshwater lakes.

Cahill and Leo closed by discussing the origins of the titles for their books. Leo’s first travel-humor anthology, “Sand in My Bra,” spawned “Whose Panties Are These?” and led to the underwear theme. Cahill said he chose such titles as “A Wolverine is Eating My Leg” and “Jaguars Ripped My Flesh” to spoof the “No shit, there I was” school of adventure writing. A few years back he wanted to go straight and call an anthology “Remote Journeys Oddly Rendered,” but his publisher insisted he stick with the program. So he called it “Pass the Butterworms,” which his editor accepted but didn’t find as gripping as his earlier titles.

“But,” Cahill asked, “have you ever tried to eat a bunch of butterworms?”

Michael Shapiro wrote a cover story entitled “Land Beyond Time” about Wales for the May-June issue of National Geographic Traveler. He’s also written recent stories for Islands about Kauai and Chiefs Island in Botswana’s Okavango Delta. His work also appears in the New York Times, Washington Post and San Francisco Chronicle. Shapiro’s book, A Sense of Place: Great Travel Writers Talk About Their Craft, Lives, and Inspiration, is a collection of 18 interviews with the world’s leading travel writers, conducted where they live.