NEW BOOK!! Hiking Waterfalls Colorado
My newest book HIKING WATERFALLS COLORADO (2nd edition) was released by FalconGuides on July 1, 2022.
Last year I worked on five book projects, four for FalconGuides and one for Every Adventure Publishing, and this year the fruits and images of my boot and keyboard labors are arriving on shelves in bookstores, on-line book retailers, and specialty shops near you. Two of the books—Hiking Colorado’s Hidden Gems and Scenic Driving California’s Pacific Coast—have already been released, while HIKING WATERFALLS COLORADO saw the light and bookshelf in early July and Best Lake Hikes Colorado will come out on October 1.
HIKING WATERFALLS COLORADO was quite a journey. It began in December 2021 when my friend and fellow Falcon author Susan Joy Paul asked if I would coauthor the second edition of her book Hiking Waterfalls in Colorado, which came out in 2013.
Yes, of course, sure, sounds great! I replied. And then I set to work finding new waterfalls for the book, hiking out to them, making GPS tracks and map scraps, shooting photographs, and finally, sitting at my front porch office, I strung words and paragraphs into manuscripts. We also fact-checked and hiked to all of the other waterfalls in the first edition, cutting some and replacing them with more scenic ones, and making new images.
The new edition of HIKING WATERFALLS COLORADO is a hefty book with 352 pages that include 100 waterfall hikes to over 150 waterfalls, color photographs of the falls, and accurate maps to get hikers to the trailhead and waterfall.
I got obsessed with waterfalls last year when I worked on this book. It’s a great feeling to plod through thick woods and across flower-strewn meadows to a rushing creek. You follow the rush and tumble upstream along grassy banks and then you hear it in the distance, the roar of falling water. Hastening your steps, you push through willows past aspens and firs and then, there it is, a whitewater falls pouring off a granite cliff, pounding into a rock-rimmed plunge pool.
Sitting on a boulder at the base is restful and rejuvenating, and the flood of negative ions reduces your anxiety. You breathe deeply, filling brain and body with oxygen, thinking great thoughts, feeling buoyant and happy, and being part of the real world, far from the madding crowd and busy streets of a place you call home.
Sitting there, you think, here is my real home. See you on the trail!
