Dan White

Dan White has been obsessed with camping ever since he was a child, when his father would drag the family out to the woods and stomp around in army-issued boots. In his latest book, UNDER THE STARS: How America Fell in Love with Camping (Henry Holt; on sale June 14), White demonstrates that he is far from alone. This August marks the 100th anniversary of the National Parks Service, and White pays tribute to “America’s Best Idea” by visiting those protected places while introducing the players who helped them achieve that status, including John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt, and Wallace Carothers, whose invention of nylon allowed adventurers to push even further into the backcountry and catalyzed the commercialization of the camping industry. All the while, White works to unpack the fact that indigenous peoples once thrived year-round on the lands that are now frequented by predominantly white male tourists. White travels to the Adirondack Mountains where he convinces sympathetic Canadians to rent him a car without a valid driver’s license; to the Florida Everglades with the Miami chapter of Inspiring Connections Outdoors, a group that takes children from urban locales on weekend camping excursions; and to the Santa Cruz Mountains where he is attacked by yellow jackets while camping in the nude without food or shelter. In Sequoia National Park, he and his family have a run in with antifreeze-addicted marmots who will chew through brake lines to get to the sweet stuff. White tries his hand at “glamping” (glamorous camping), lauded by Justin Bieber, as well as navigating an RV from state park to state park with stopovers in Wal-Mart parking lots (White notes that this is a favorite pastime of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Virginia). Adventures and mishaps abound, highlighting the “two funs” of camping: the fun had in the moment, and the fun one has at recalling the calamities of a trip. About the Author: Dan White is the author of The Cactus Eaters: How I Lost My Mind—and Almost Found Myself—on the Pacific Crest Trail and is a contributing editor at Catamaran Literary Reader. He has taught composition at San Jose State, and Columbia University, where he received his MFA. He lives in Santa Cruz, California, with his wife and daughter.