Climbing Up on Solsbury Hill

One of my favorite songs ever is “Solsbury Hill” by Peter Gabriel. You probably know this song and you’ve probably heard it hundreds or even thousands of times, but even if you have, here is its surreal and delightfully absurd music video:

The lyrics of “Solsbury Hill” are Peter Gabriel explaining how he came to leave Genesis and go solo, and the experience he had when he realized that everything was going to be just fine. Or as he said: "It's about being prepared to lose what you have for what you might get ... It's about letting go."

It is awfully hard to let go of almost anything right now, but I’m trying. It will not be very surprising to any of you out there that I’ve been really depressed for a long time, maybe even years now. The last several years have been very hard, and of course there’s so much to be depressed about: a fascist in the White House, racism, misogyny, homophobia and transphobia are on the rise, and even our Social Security might be at risk. They even want to come for the forests, as soon as possible. And that’s just the US - it’s rough all over the place right now, and it’s going to get worse.

February was not kind to us. Both our heater and water heater broke, the weather was awful for most of the month, and we couldn’t get outside all that much. We both got sick at the end of the month. When times are tough, small things can become big things, and it’s easy to want to retreat from the world. I certainly get it. Dealing with all of this is very difficult for anyone, let alone anyone who suffers from depression or mental health issues.

Speaking of Peter Gabriel, if you’re struggling right now, this song is for you:

With beautiful weather in the forecast for last Friday, we finally got out for a hike. Our goal was to hike Swale Canyon, a place I have been many times and one of my favorite hikes on the eastern end of the Gorge. This hike is included in my books Off the Beaten Trail and PDX Hiking 365. I have become so accustomed to hiking this trail in the winter and spring months that it never occurred to me to see if the trail was open. To our surprise, we arrived at the trailhead only to find that the trail was closed. Although a friend had already told me that the trail was closed, it somehow had slipped my mind. Hey, there’s a lot going on! So we turned around and drove back to Lyle, and drove up the Klickitat River to the Wahkiacus Trailhead, which is in fact the lower end of the Swale Canyon hike. From here, we hiked downriver to one of my favorite spots in this area, the Klickitat Mineral Springs. The springs are on the remains of a carbonated water bottling plant along the river. Naturally carbonated water still bubbles out of a pipe beside the Klickitat River here:

On the opposite side of the river is the only building left from this operation, the dry ice factory:

This is a fun hike, and you can learn more about it here. This hike is also included in PDX Hiking 365. As this was a much shorter hike than we had originally planned, we finished it quite early. From there we drove back down the Klickitat River to Lyle, then followed a country road to the Catherine Creek Trailhead. Here we followed the Catherine Creek Universal Access Loop, a short but very lovely hike. Here we were rewarded with the first grass widows we’ve seen this year:

The Grass Widow (Olsynium douglasii) is one of the first flowers to bloom every year, marking the end of winter and the coming of spring. They are known to bloom in the Catherine Creek area throughout February and March, but flowers have even been spotted after warm periods as early as New Year’s Day. Seeing the Grass Widows bloom in the eastern Gorge every year is a rewarding, even spiritual experience. Spring will be here soon.

Speaking of spiritual experiences, I had one of the more interesting evenings of my life earlier this week. As this year began, I decided to incorporate cannabis back into my life. I smoked weed on occasion during my college years, but mostly went away from using cannabis after moving to Portland. I don’t know why - I just wasn’t in that frame of mind for some reason. That being said, I do not consider cannabis to be a drug, and neither should you. And beyond that, the sale and consumption of cannabis is legal in the state of Oregon. It should be legal everywhere.

So the other night I decided to take an edible to help me sleep. I primarily consume edibles that are a mixture of THC (the active component of cannabis) and CBD, a compound found in cannabis which can help manage anxiety and can often make for an excellent night’s sleep (at least, for me it does). So I took an edible on Monday night, and got to work on a new book project (more information on that below), and then read for a bit as is my custom before bed.

And then I couldn’t sleep a wink.

Instead, my brain filled with a deep sense of both calm and excitement, and ideas flooded into my brain in a way that I have not experienced in a very long time. Threads came together. Patterns emerged. My heart was going BOOM BOOM BOOM. By the time Wendy got up to go to work at 3AM, I had come up with an entirely new business model for my books. And beyond that, I felt a deep sense of peace and excitement for the first time in a very, very long time.

So what new business model came from my epiphany? This: I am shifting my business to a mostly digital model.

There are many reasons for this:

1) Book production costs have increased exponentially since I began publishing guidebooks in 2013. It now costs approximately $9 to produce one of my books, and then everyone has to take their cut after that. I had to raise the prices of my two most recent books to $26.95, a price point that is tough in this or any economy.

2) Shipping costs have increased exponentially since I began publishing guidebooks in 2013. In fact, just shipping books via media mail has gone up more than a dollar in the past year alone. Then there’s the possibility that the US Postal Service, an institution older than the United States itself, will be dismantled by the Trump regime in the very near future.

3) My sales have slumped significantly in the past few years, for reasons both obvious (inflation, people moving away from owning physical guidebooks), to the mysterious. Publishing books has always Over the past month, I sold 4 books through my publisher, Lightning Source. I made $16.62, which I will receive at the end of May. This is the industry, and it’s not going to get any better.

So that’s the negative. Here’s the positive: I am very excited to announce a new series of projects: starting in just two weeks, I will begin publishing E-Books on hikes all over the Pacific Northwest! Each E-Book will have ten hikes rewritten specifically for that guide, feature full color photos, brand-new maps in color, and will come with lots of fun ideas and tips to extend your hikes, information on where to camp when possible, and so much more. I will publish these guides in PDF format, so you can use them on your phone, your tablet, your E-Book reader, and your computers. You can even print them if you want to go really old school! Each E-Book will be DRM-free so you can use them however you like, whenever you like, in whatever way you wish. Each book will have some surprises in them, such as hiked I’ve never written about before, tips on where to camp, additional hikes in the index, and so much more. Each book will cost $10, and will only be available on my website.

The first E-Book, The Ten Best Hikes in the Portland Metro Area, will be released on Friday, March 21. A second E-book, Wildflower Hikes of the Eastern Gorge, will follow the week after. Over the 15 years or so that I’ve been writing guidebooks, I have researched and written approximately 400 hikes. About 100 of these hikes never made one of my guidebooks for one reason or another, even if they happen to be hikes I quite like. This gives me a great deal of material to work with. My plan is to keep overlap in these mini guides to a minimum, so that each one that I publish stands on its own. I have many more ideas for future guides - I can’t wait to share them with you!

I have always done things as DIY as possible, with as much of a punk rock ethic as I can muster. To me these mini-guides are more like fanzines, love letters to my favorite places, designed for hikers from all skill levels, backgrounds, and fitness levels. They are and will always be 100% my work, free from outside sources, free from corporate sources, and totally yours once purchased. I originally decided to self-publish my guidebooks after two publishers rejected my first guidebook, Off the Beaten Trail. It has not been perfect, but I am immensely proud of my decision. Every hike, every photo, and every word in my books is 100% mine. This is the model I wish to continue, on my own terms, on my own time, and always with my readers in mind.

I will still keep my two most recent books, Extraordinary Oregon! and PDX Hiking 365, in print. On that subject, keep an eye out for a big book sale starting on March 31! I am immensely proud of all four of my books, and I am grateful for each and every copy that I have sold. They were all huge projects, and I am very proud of how they turned out. Thank you for reading!

Publishing is a tough business, now more than ever. Not only is it hard to get a book published, but most authors make very little on their books even after publication. I think the great science-fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin (a Portlander!) said it best in a now legendary speech, which you can watch below:

Or if you’re pressed for time, here’s the money quote:

Read those words and take them to heart, because they do not just apply to writing, but to life itself. Resistance starts in ignoring the very power structures that bind us, and in slowly dismantling their power. There is power in changing the way we live, the way we interact with the world, and the way we interact with the very structures that hold us back.

I have struggled so very much with my own mental health, and with my place in the world. I have felt helpless, and even hopeless. And yet this is my victory: There is so much good I can do, and there is so much we can do for the world around us, and there is so much good we can do for ourselves. I am working very hard at it. I very much hope that you are doing okay too. While there is so much darkness in the world right now, I am also very much looking forward to this new journey, and in all the ways we can resist and build the world we all deserve, no matter how long it takes.

Thank you for reading.

With love always,

Matt Reeder