Rattlesnakes & Bald Eagles: Pacific Crest Trail Book Update

Camp by a frozen Chicken Spring Lake in the High Sierra on the Pacific Crest Trail. Scan from Kodachrome 64 transparency.

Creative Scotland, the public body for the arts in Scotland, has rather plush modern offices in an old traditional building in the centre of Edinburgh. A few days ago I made my first visit here for a meeting with Bob Davidson of Sandstone Press and Heather Macpherson of Raspberry Creative Type to discuss the design and photographs for my book on the Pacific Crest Trail.

The meeting was productive and the book now has a cover and a shape and a size. I've almost finished writing it too but what's going to take time is the photographs. I had forgotten just how difficult it is dealing with slides rather than digital images. Just keeping track of them all and linking my scribbles on the slide mounts with the digital scans is proving quite hard, especially as these pictures are over 30 years old and I can't quite remember exactly what some of them show!. Pictures that look fine as transparencies don't necessarily scan that well either so images can only be selected after scans are made.

The result is that publication has been put back and Rattlesnakes and Bald Eagles won't now appear until October. I'm sure it'll be worth the wait!