Among the first guidebooks I bought when I started hiking back in high school was a Falcon Guide called Hiking Arizona. You’ve probably seen a Falcon Guide before—besides covering virtually every area of the US, they’re probably best known for their consistent design, featuring a distinctive yellow cover adorned with a black bar.
As I started my national parks quest, I naturally spent some time in each visitor center bookstore, which nearly always included one or more Falcon Guides for the park or surrounding area. I’d pick up a book here or there, figuring that it’d come in handy for planning my current visit, as well as future adventures. They also served a bit as souvenirs, little reminders on my bookcase of a cool-ass place I had visited.
The consistent design of the spine makes a collection of them look great on a bookshelf, and after collecting a dozen or so of the books, it became a bit of a tradition to pick up a new book whenever I visited a park or region I expected to return to. They weren’t always the best guidebook for the park or region, but they were the ones I’d buy anyway.
We also started to log our hikes in each of the books—just a quick note of the date and who participated. And when my ex-wife and I got engaged at the shoreline of Shoshone Lake in Yellowstone National Park, we recorded the GPS coordinates, too.
By the time my ex-wife and I split up, I had filled two full bookshelves of Falcon Guides. The collection looked great, and guests would scan through the titles, often running a finger across the spines. I was pleased; it was a fun thing to own. I nearly considered office decor, the way an attorney might in having a nice set of law books adorning their credenza.
Quite a bit of time has passed, however, and I’ve only added one or two books since then. And I’ll admit that it’s been ages since I’ve actually relied on the information in any of the books. As much as I prefer traditional guidebooks to the crowd-sourced subscription alternatives (looking at you, AllTrails), too many things could have changed—such as wildfire damage or new public lands pass requirements—to not consult a more recent source of information.
I’ve been reorganizing our charging station and the area where I store all the various cords, battery packs, chargers, and other electronic accessories we have. And it’s clear that I need some more space to accommodate that burgeoning assortment of stuff. So I started eyeing those two shelves of Falcon Guides, which occupy prime real estate. I don’t really need these anymore, I tell myself. They’re a relic of a previous era of my life. I should finally bite the bullet and get rid of them.
But before purging all of these books, I sought to memorialize the memories they represented. So I flipped through each of the pages of each of the books, transcribing any hike logs and notes I found in my personal memories vault, along with title, author, and edition. I also pulled off the custom nameplate sticker—containing my name, email, phone, and address—that I had added to each of them (I often played there role of “outdoor library” for my friends).
I’m a sentimental guy, so it’s been a trip going through all those old memories. I’ve gotten distracted many times reliving old hikes and cherished trips. Just leaning back and letting the memories wash over me. Smiling at the good memories, and frowning at the hikes I had always anticipated getting to, but haven’t—yet, at least (and yes, I also logged all of the hikes I had flagged in each book). And I spent some time simply remembering the role this whole endeavor has played in my life.
Preparing to purge these books has been surprisingly difficult. I guess I hadn’t considered what an important phase of my life they represented. And while I’m certainly not losing that part of my life—I have many new hikes and new trips in my future—it does feel like I’m closing the door on a previous era of my life. One that helped define my life’s general direction.
I’m still keeping about a dozen of the guides, for various reasons. But I’m ready to donate almost 50 of them. It’s the end of an era, for sure.
One final note.
I had forgotten how many of these books included messages of advocacy, especially around wilderness and the value of public lands. From that first Hiking Arizona book, for instance, here’s a foreword by former Sec. Bruce Babbitt (a board member of my former employer, the Conservation Lands Foundation), along with an ode to wildlands and the 1990 Arizona Wilderness bill, which set aside millions of acres of BLM land as wilderness, and a list of hiking clubs and conservation organizations.
