Paddling Peru’s Maraňón River, a source of the Amazon, I dodged boat-swallowing whirlpools and kept an eye out for danger lurking in the thick brush. On another expedition to count gorillas, elephants, and leopards, I bushwhacked with pygmy guides through the steamy Congo jungle. On that trek, swarms of bees made life a living hell. Atop a 40-ft tree house deep in the Western New Guinea rainforest, I wondered what our (possibly) head-shrinking cannibal hosts would serve that night. Could their parents have attended the feast of Michael Rockefeller, who disappeared here in the 1960s? In that mosquito-infested rainforest, I picked up the “shivering sickness.” And as if that’s not enough adventure in one lifetime, I galloped the Mongolian steppes on a rangy steed, fleeing “yogurt carriers” in hot pursuit.
Not My Stories, But Cahill's
In truth, these stories aren’t mine to tell. They merely live in my head after reading page after fascinating page of Tim Cahill’s anthology, Pass The Butterworms.
Cahill is an adventure travel writer who ventures into remote and inhospitable places that most of us would never (willingly) venture into ourselves.
It’s a safe bet to say he isn’t someone you’ll find checking into a luxury hotel with 400-thread-count cotton sheets at the end of his adrenaline-packed days.
The Life Of An Adventurer
Preferring to be one with nature, Cahill slings a sleeping bag. I’m pretty sure a bed roll would be too pampering for this outdoorsman and founding editor of Outside, a magazine for more “active lifestyle enthusiasts” than me. Additionally, he is editor-at-large at Outside and has co-authored four IMAX documentary screenplays, two of which have been nominated for Academy Awards. Moreover, Cahill’s work appears in Rolling Stone, National Geographic, National Geographic Traveler, Esquire, and The New York Times Book Review. His travels are fashioned into highly literate adventure stories. They capture our imaginations, revealing the world’s off-the-beaten-track wonders, and making us laugh—a rarity in travel blogging.
Relatable Misadventures
Despite his unconventional travels that test fortitude and survival skills, Cahill’s stories are not just about his wild adventures. They are about the human experience, and that makes them relatable. Inevitably, something goes wrong, but the awkward situations, ambiguity, and humor make this book so engaging. Furthermore, Cahill never takes himself too seriously. Take, for example, one of the stories in this book, “Help, My Pilot Just Had a Heart Attack and I Can’t Fly a Plane.” Misadventure with calamity and humor makes for a great story every time.
A Master of Storytelling
This writer of nine books and over 300 magazine articles drops his readers into his stories with in-the-moment action and strong imagery. Despite his ever-present wit, he builds suspense, letting readers interpret a scene before revealing the outcome. This stylistic approach is deftly shown in the short story “Mongolia: Adventures in You-Cut Hairstyling, perhaps my favorite.
The burning questions throughout his story are: What would the yogurt carriers do if they caught Cahill? Why do they carry yogurt? Why is Cahill carrying “noisy cheese?” Spoiler Alert: These last two paragraphs provide clues.
“And then, just outside Toson Cengel, when we were completely out of anything at all that might be construed as an appropriate gift, I saw the yogurt riders who would do us in. We fled, thundering over the grassland. We fled in a deafening clatter of noisy cheese. We fled the smiling beneficence of Mongolian generosity.
“When the yogurt riders caught us, as they surely would, we’d give them the shirts off our backs.”
Vivid Prose and Quirky Facts
With vivid prose and a gift for storytelling, Cahill provides historical context and weaves in quirky facts that entertain, inform, and occasionally horrify. We learn how to do kayaking rolls, about nymphing in fly fishing, and how to rescue people lost in 25 degrees Fahrenheit below zero temperatures. However, a word of warning to the faint-hearted: some imagery you cannot unsee. One of those passages is his description of Arctic foxes nipping the heads off snow geese partially buried as they nest in the snow at the North Pole. Cahill gets close to nature, and nature is, well, nature.
Cahill's Unique Titles
Of his nine books, eight fall into the travel genre. They include Jaguars Ripped My Flesh, A Wolverine Is Eating My Leg, and Pecked To Death By Ducks. Those anthologies have titles of the sort once found in testosterone-fueled adventure magazines for men.
Cahill says these titles are an inside joke—a dig at those who thought adventure writing needed swashbuckling heroism. In February, the author spoke via Zoom to travel writers at Book Passage’s four-session travel book club. He said no one thought an adventure story could be literary until Outside magazine was founded in the late 1970s. Back then, Cahill championed adventure stories written by good writers, some of whom simply bumbled into compromising situations.
A Book for Lovers of Travel and Good Writing
Whether you’re a leisure traveler or writer who dreams of adventure, a thrill-seeker, or an armchair traveler, this book will take you on a lifetime of adventures.
While I enjoyed Cahill’s book, the survival skills I learned will likely only be helpful in my REM-fueled dreams (or nightmares). As a conventional travel blogger, I have no intention of ever putting myself in a position to use these incredible new-found skills—with one exception.
One day, I will trace his horse’s steps in Mongolia. I’ll watch for the yogurt carriers and carry plenty of noisy cheese. The North Pole? I’ll give it a miss. I’ll also pass on the butterworms (the menu item, not the book); thank you very much.
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For more travel book reviews from Travel The Four Corners, please see “Journeys in Travel Literature.”
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