Many years ago, Nancy and I were doing field research along the Kenai River in Alaska for The Nature Conservancy. It was about as wonderful as life gets, and the mural that came of it is still there in the visitor center in Kenai. We were on that great gray river with Alaska State Parks interpreters, learning about the critters, moose, wolves, caribou. That was all easy stuff, but then there were the plants, and the Kenai area didn’t have a good book for any of that, so we had to buy a bunch of guides and piece the information together. I remember we paid around $125 for all of them, just to learn about a few plants – about what it costs for a bad hamburger up there. “Holly cow. We should write a guide for this place” said Ms Nancy – and so we did. That idea started a string of nature guides for many parks, from Badlands to Zion, Yosemite to the Redwoods, and I’d not be ashamed to say that a much larger company eventually came in and copied what we were doing. Oh who cares, it’s better to be the instagator than the copier. 

The past couple of weeks I’ve been revisiting this one for Lassen Volcanic National Park in Northern California. I have a long history of art projects for Lassen, including a mural, books and guides. This one is being revised and reprinted, and was so old it originally was PASTED UP, a term unknown in today’s page-design software programs or the kids who use them. So, I had to totally recreate it in digital form. It made me realize how complex these guides were when they were but pasted-up bits of paper on a board.

What you’re seeing here are two partial pages of the much larger guide, but you’ll get the idea. Click on either and they should enlarge so you can see details – and don’t tell me if you find a typo!! I’m telling you, I’ll track you down and give you such a dope slap – it’s already at the printer and the proof  has been approved. I’m just sayin’.

Thanks for reading this week.
Larry Eifert

Click here to go to the online blog this was to.

Click here to go to our main website – packed with jigsaw puzzles, prints, interpretive portfolios and lots of other stuff.

Click here to check out what Nancy’s currently working on with her photography.