All-Saints Day, or happy November!

Every year the first thing I listen to in November is “November Rain”, a ridiculous monstrosity of a song that somehow works. I don’t need to post the video here - you already have this song in your head right now. Perhaps not coincidentally, it is also pouring rain here in Portland today, just in time for the rainiest, dreariest month of the year here in the Pacific Northwest. The faucet has been turned on, as they say.

When I started this blog I meant to write a lot more often than I have. The time has gotten away from me, which is to be expected when you wear as many hats as I do. But I’m still here - just busy with all the life things that get in the way. We’ve been busy with the first couple months of the school year, with both of us being teachers. I’m sure some of you out there understand.

November is dreary but it’s also a good time to stay inside and do good things. Now, more than ever, we need to step up and help wherever we can. So I am happy to announce a number of things:

1) I am donating $5 from every sale of the second edition of PDX Hiking 365 to the Mazamas, to help support their programs and the organization. I have been a Mazama for almost 20 years, and I am currently serving in the role of the chair of Mazamas Trail Trips Committee. I have been a Mazamas hike leader since 2009, and leading hikes is something I greatly enjoy doing.

I know that plenty of you reading this already own this and my other books, so if you’d like to donate to the Mazamas directly, here’s a link. The Mazamas are a very meaningful organization to me, and an organization that has done and continues to do many wonderful things. I would be very honored if you choose to donate through me, or donate directly.

2) I am also donating $5 from every sale of Extraordinary Oregon! to the Siskiyou Mountain Club in southern Oregon. Siskiyou Mountain Club does incredible work. They have helped resurrect many trails in rough, rugged, fire-scarred places that few people take the time to visit, mostly in southern Oregon. I was lucky to go on a work trip with SMC to the Kalmiopsis Wilderness in southwest Oregon last year. The experience thoroughly kicked my ass and I came home with a terrible case of poison oak (it turns out I’m much more allergic than I thought…yuck), but it was an incredible trip. It was very meaningful. I finally got to see the magical, mythical Chetco River up close:

I am very happy to help support the mission of the Siskiyou Mountain Club. As with PDX Hiking 365, many of you reading this already own a copy of Extraordinary Oregon!. If you’d like to help support the Siskiyou Mountain Club and don’t need to buy any more books, here is a link where you can donate directly to the SMC. They do great work and I am very happy to support them. I would be honored if you donate!

People have asked me recently if I’m planning on publishing any more books in the future. I am working on a novel right now, but my writing has slowed down considerably while I am busy with work and the encroaching fascism engulfing the US. I could spend hours writing about how Portland is indeed the farthest thing from a “war-ravaged hellscape”, which is how the Trump regime called it. But you aren’t here for that, and you can find all the information you need elsewhere. This is still a beautiful place to live, and while we have our problems, I’d rather live here than I would anywhere else. If you’re hearing otherwise, you need to reconsider your news sources.

When I released my most recent book, the aforementioned Extraordinary Oregon!, I had high hopes that it would sell well, seeing as how it’s a guidebook for the whole state of Oregon. I consider it to be the best of all my books, but the sales never came. It was very disappointing, and it took a long time for me to accept that the sales may never come no matter how good the book is. The market for hiking guidebooks has cratered as people have moved to online sources (primarily AllTrails, but there is also an absolute wealth of other sources no matter where you go). Earlier this year I released a series of mini-guides for different places, all of which had lots of updated information and new hikes. None of them sold well, and the waterfall guide did not sell a single copy.

I don’t need any sympathy here, nor do I expect any - this is just the way it is for everyone working in this industry now.

Needless to say, the idea of publishing a new guidebook is not something I’m willing to consider at the time being. But I am at least contemplating trying to update my second guidebook, 101 Hikes in the Majestic Mount Jefferson Region. The Jefferson book was a labor of love and is probably my favorite of my four guidebooks. Fires have ravaged the Majestic Mount Jefferson region in the ten years since I finished the book.

I completed my last hike for 101 Hikes on November 4, 2015, and on my way out of the area, I drove up to a viewpoint to see if I could catch a glimpse of the mountain. Here is a photo of that afternoon, the last work I did on 101 Hikes:

In the time since I took that photo, almost everything in the foreground has burned. I can’t even get to the spot where I took the photo anymore, as the road has been closed for the last five years in the aftermath of the 2020 fires.

Most of the area is open now, other than the South Breitenbush Canyon where I took that photo. I have been venturing back into the Majestic Mount Jefferson Region this year, and I was finally able to visit Elk Lake Creek again in September, one of my favorite places anywhere. Even with significant fire damage (I had to push through a lot of dense brush and follow pink flagging tape to get here), it was still gorgeous:

So my question for all of you is this: would you be interested in a second edition of 101 Hikes in the Majestic Mount Jefferson Region? It would be a lot of work, and I’m pretty sure it isn’t going to be financially viable, but would you be interesting in seeing another edition? I can always just host it on my website of course, and I’ll probably just end up doing that…but I’m at least thinking of writing another edition. Maybe you should talk me out of it more than talk me into it.

So that’s what’s up for now. At some point I’ll have to write about hiking the Timberline Trail with the Mazamas over Labor Day weekend this year, and about my goals for next year. But for now, it’s November, which means it’s time to give back and do what we can for each other and our communities, and the organizations we respect and admire. Shouldn’t we be doing that all the time, though?

Thanks for reading, stay in touch…and I’m sure at this point you still have “November Rain” in your head. My work here is done!