Having been in the room for the birth of both my children, I won’t make the mistake of comparing getting a book to press with childbirth. That would be stupid on so many levels.
I can, however, understand why some authors are tempted to make comparisons.
If only I’d been waiting around for a mere 9 months for High Cols and Deep Canyons to emerge into the world – screaming – I would be mildly content. It’s been much longer than that, and as of writing (April 28th, 2024) there are still a few uncomfortable weeks before my 16th book is unleashed on the world.
High Cols and Deep Canyons was conceived in 1992. Nearly everything I publish these days has an awkwardly long window of conception. Earth and Sky: 17 years. Imagine this Valley: 15 years. But High Cols and Deep Canyons takes the cake at 30 annums.
The project started a collection of essays about my first summer in the Rockies. I called it Vertical Earth (also the name of the chapter in High Cols about the same period), and photocopied and spiral bound the chapbook for a few friends who never spoke with me again.
The project has been on my mind, and on my list of writing projects since. It survived my five summers as a Park Interpreter in Lake Louise, and my winter at Grand Canyon National Park as a Student Conservation Association intern. When I was booted from Parks Canada, the project followed me down valley and quickly became an eddy for the literary flotsam in my life, catching essays I wrote for publications like The Trumpeter, Talking Leaves, Paddler, Kanawa, Eco Traveler, Canadian Wildlife, and even the Globe and Mail.
After my winter at the Grand Canyon, I was free-loading at my father’s place in Burlington, and I condensed 400 pages of journal entries from my Summer on Loon Lake at Murphy’s Point Provincial Park (in 1991) to a tight narrative about my discovery of my purpose in life: to be in nature, as an advocate, writing and photographing the world I love.
It went on from there. Long trips to the southwest, a million hikes and backpacking trips in the Rockies, encounters with wolves and grizzly bears and marmots. Horses rescued from quicksand, and the time I almost got Ian Tyson killed while riding together at Ya Ha Tinda Ranch. The interwoven relationships between nature and love and loss.
All told, there were about 400,000 words to choose from when, 4 years ago, I sat down – under-employed once more – to develop what would become the final manuscript. My first attempt was a 180,000-word hippopotamus that even the people who love me couldn’t get through without liquid encouragement. The book now stands at a trim 113,800 words, and so far nobody has been admitted to the hospital while reading it. Small victories, friends.
After failing to publish the book with a traditional press, I decided to do it myself. That was more than two years ago. Thanks to fifty or so of the people who I now consider my best friends, I was able to raise about 2/3rds of the money needed to work with Friesen’s Press to undertake a self-publishing undertaking. It’s been a tremendous amount of work, but we’re almost there. I’ll write more about this sometime when I have the strength to confront this amazing, but challenging, endeavour. It really has been a lot of work, and a lot of fun.
I am wildly excited about how the book looks and reads and am grateful to first and foremost my wife Jenn who has been supportive every step of the way, and to Nicky Pacus, Kat Wiebe, and Kristy Davidson who have worked to make the project as tight, and error-free as anything I write could be, and look as nice as it does.
In the next month, the book will be printed and shipped and my goal is that at the end of June, I’ll have books in the hands of the good people who sponsored the project, and anybody else I can trick into purchasing one. I hope to do an in-person and an online launch in June.
If you’d like a copy – the book will be priced at about $20 for the softcover – drop me an email and I’ll put your name on the pre-release list.
stephenlegault.ca 