Wildwood on the World Wide Web
The Wildwood website is, as they say, live. There’s an excerpt from the book on there and some other fun things. Thanks to the ever classy Jenn Armbrust at Motel for designing it.
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Happy Father’s Day To My Dad
Thanks for teaching me to play cards and to build things out of wood; to be adventurous and to be nice.
Decatur Book Festival
Well, this is unexpected and amazing: Colin and I will be the keynote speakers at the Decatur Book Festival this year! We’re really, really honored. The DBF is the largest independent book festival in the country and it’s free and open to the public. I’m preparing for the awkward challenge of writing a joint speech and of delivering it in a way that won’t sound canned like we’re reading a teleprompter at the Oscars. Stay tuned!
Go In Peace
I rescued this baby mole from my ruthless cats and set it free. Go in peace, little friend. Don’t make tunnels in my garden. You owe me.
Rock Tour
This is one of a few posters I’m designing for Decemberists’ shows this summer. I’ll be along for this whole tour – roughly a month between mid-July and mid-August – so I’ll be at this show. Which is terrific because I love Missoula. Truth be told, though, I don’t know how I got talked into going on tour for this long. It’s hard to live on a bus with a little kid for a month and I thought I’d sworn off it a few years ago. But my little kid, who likes nothing better than touring and to whose whims I am enslaved, talked me into it. So he’s happy, Colin’s happy, Lizi – the nanny who’s coming with us – is happy, and I’m happy because Lizi’s coming. I’m looking forward to a lot of stops on this tour: historic Jacksonville, Oregon, The Newport Folk Festival, The Boise Botanical Garden (I’ve never been but how could that suck?), Austin, San Francisco, Missoula. It looks like I’ll have a lot of time to sketch so, if we’re coming to your town and you have suggestions for good places and things to draw, drop me a line on twitter (I’m cfellis). And if you see me in your town looking frazzled, tell me to hang tough!
ATC: Hike #3
Firelane 15 > Wildwood > BPA Road > Firelane 12 > Firelane 15
We saw some big trees and I saw patterns everywhere.
Posters
I’m designing some posters for upcoming Decemberists shows. Drawing them is easy but coloring them is hard. Tonight I’m looking to two of my favorite poster artists for inspiration.
Zeloot, from the Netherlands:
And Grady McFerrin, from Brooklyn:
ATC: Hikes #1 and #2
All right, I have embarked upon the All Trails Challenge.
It's not yet Keds season in Forest Park, in case you were wondering.
Today’s walk: Leif Erikson > Ridge > Wildwood > Hardesty > Leif Erikson
I saw a lot of delicate woodland plants at their greenest – wood sorrel, maidenhair fern, solomon’s plume – along with slugs, snails, beetles, a dead mole being eaten by beetles, and a snake. Also: I got stung by nettles for the first time in forever. And I wore unsensible shoes.
On Wednesday, I took a rainy walk with Colin: Leif Erikson > Hardesty > Wildwood > Springville > Leif Erikson
The most interesting thing we saw on this walk was a house cat hiding in a hollow tree. It was a weird thing to come across so deep in the woods. Our cat Albert was eaten by Forest Park coyotes last year and this one was obviously lost so I felt desperate to rescue it. But, when I tried to get a look at its tags, it mauled me so bad that I had to get a tetanus shot and an antibiotic prescription. Yes! Anyway, if anyone is missing a black and white cat with a red collar, check the hollow tree on the right near a bend in Wildwood trail between Hardesty and Springville. Also, your cat is a jerk.
2.83 miles down. 78.14 miles to go. Click here to sponsor us!
Forest Park and the ATC
wintry day on Leif Erikson trail
You guys, I really, really love Forest Park. It’s a 5,000 acre wood on the west end of Portland – the largest urban forest in the country. It’s also the inspiration for Wildwood and the subject of most of the woodsy photos on this blog. And it’s a big place that requires a lot of work and money to conserve.
So, this summer Colin, Hank and I are taking part in the Forest Park Conservancy’s All Trails Challenge to help raise funds. We’re getting a late start but the idea is that we’ll traverse the park’s 80 miles of trails by October. Will we really do it? I think so! Sponsor us! If enough people seem to care, I’ll devote a blog post with some photos to each hike. Here’s the link to our page.
Goodbye
Goodbye to my extraordinary, beloved grandma, Ruth Friedman.
She was born in a New York tenement in 1915. She fought the good fight – for civil rights, workers’ rights, women’s rights, and peace – all her life. She was a total cultural snob, yet she was uncommonly warm and open-hearted with just about everyone she met. She died last Wednesday at 95 on the anniversary of my grandpa’s death, which makes sense because she was hung up on him until the very end. I miss her terribly.
