Next Projects
Ancient Trails, Hidden Serpents: forgotten pathways in the Pacific Northwest
Concept title and temporary cover art.
Hunkered down in the writing phase of this project, after ten full months of research, I put together this piece of concept art to help visually ground my story intentions.
The hand of a Dakelh elder on a beaver skin map pointing to the historic Indigenous trade routes that crisscrossed the region, by land and river, around early 1800s Fort Saint James: the capital, for a time, of the PNW’s New Caledonia. With gestures of welcome, the First Nations people of mythical Oregon Country invited the first Europeans to “Follow us.”
The icefields of the Rockies. Foot trails chased rivers to their headwaters in the snowcapped peaks. Frigid passes were crossed. New rivers were followed down to distant valleys. The land west of the Rockies was exotic—different from the rest of the continent. Its millennia-old pathways were different too.
The only free flowing, unfettered, section of the Columbia River in the US PNW. White Bluffs to the right: an ages-old stepping off point for trade trails in all directions. Hanford to the left: the birthplace of the A-Bomb and nuclear power; the stepping off point for pathways we wrestle to conceive.
Exploring long forgotten ancient trails to find the future.
Tune in to this page from time to time as I update milestones in the process and reveal the chronological progression of this book’s coming to life.
You can also sign up for my monthly randykwriter Newsletter, a fun way to follow along. I keep it short and sweet—and hopefully entertaining!
Researching: Ancient Trails, Hidden Serpents
Q1 2024 - Reading and Writing
Writers read. For research, for enjoyment, to study the storytelling craft of others. Project work in Q1 2024 was primarily reading, note taking, idea gathering, more note taking. Mining for gems in the words of others, and in my own scribbles. Casting aside the bulk of it. Gaining strength through the lifting and sifting. And maps, overlaid like river sediment, provided layers in time, tales of change.
By the end of March, the word count on my research notes topped 60,000, close to the number of finished words in PJR. Lots of carving to do. All those details aren’t going to make the final cut.
Q2 2024 - Hell’s Bypass
On April 15-16 the research road trip along the Fraser Canyon from Yale to Lytton took place.
The goal was to investigate where guides from various First Nations led A. C. Anderson around the “Fraser Canyon Problem” in 1847. Their guidance gave him, and the Hudson Bay Company, an overland route to Nicola Lake and Kamloops after the Fur Brigade route down the Columbia River to Fort Vancouver in the Oregon Territory was closed with the extension of the US/British boundary along the 49th Parallel all the way to the Pacific in 1846. The route, and another that followed, enabled the HBC to get their furs to tidal waters on the Fraser for the first time. Those routes, shown to the traders by the First Nations, played a role in changing the land and its people forever.
We navigated backroads through rugged, beautiful territory where the transition from coastal to interior ecosystems could be seen and felt with a turn into a valley or the cresting of a mountain pass.
The catastrophic rerouting of the Anderson River in the October 2021 Atmospheric River Event was dramatically evident when we finally reached it after 4x4ing up-and-over what I’ll be calling “Hell’s Bypass” in the book. What was witnessed will lend itself directly to specific theme building. An unexpected yet welcome result of pushing through when it looked like we had hit the end. Kudos to my buddy, Glenn, for intuitively figuring out how to re-route and get to the river. That’s how great adventure days are made!
Q2 2024 - The North
In June, Cindy and I and our 16-year-old golden retriever set out on a 3,165-kilometre road trip, taking a circuitous route around the northern PNW to see and travel for ourselves some of the ancient trails I was researching.
Written words from the 18th & 19th Centuries became reality when we sat on the shoreline rocks of gurgling Blaeberry River contemplating over 8,000 years of foot and canoe travel; when we took in the broad vista of Howse Pass; as we watched the pastel sunset at Fort St. James on Stuart Lake; as we searched out heritage trail signposts far up potholed forest service roads and stopped at river-stone obelisks bearing worn iron plaques.
Reality became fantasy as we chased the North Saskatchewan River to its headwaters and discovered that the river flowing from the Rocky’s icefields, through the prairies, to empty into Hudson Bay, issues from a crack in a mountain like a scene from a movie about dragons and swordplay and wizardry.
The first section of the book, “The North,” fell into place across the distance we travelled.
Q3 2024 - Hell’s Gate
The more info I gathered, the more the story evolved. The book’s outline continued to ebb and flow in Q3—all for the better. I was pleased with how a north/south, past/present format developed. It will give the book a refresh at the transition. It should also strengthen the circle closure at the end when seemingly disparate threads are knotted together as thoughts for the future.
An exhilarating research event in Q3 was our day with Kumsheen Rafting on the Fraser River in August.
The canyon between Boston Bar and Yale, through Hell’s Gate, is shot only three times per year commercially, with Kumsheen the sole company to offer the ride. As a result, less than 60 people pass through those rocks and rapids annually. We were fortunate enough to be a part of 2024’s crew.
A key tenant of the book is the unnavigable nature of the Fraser, especially through the section often referred to as the Black Canyon. We experienced the turbulent reality of that in a fortified and powered raft with an expert guide, Elliot. In the era of birchbark canoes, it was said that entering the canyon would lead to certain death 9 times out of 10. Our trip put an exclamation mark on that statement.
It’s nice to be able to say we have already survived what, for now, is slated to be the real-life journey that anchors the conclusion of the book.
Q3 2024 - The South
September concluded with my final scheduled research road trip: a backroads loop of the southern PNW with Cindy and our good friends. Over ten days the four of us followed ancient trails east and north along a river subdued by concrete, taking the time to weave through the mechanical oasis the Columbia’s web of tributary canals sustains within a tortured landscape of scablands. In an odd coincidence, our southern trip’s odometer reading settled at 3,165 kilometres—identical to the north’s.
The research phase ended upon our return home. Days later the book’s outline was finalized, the chapters named. At the end of Q3, Ancient Trails, Hidden Serpents had three sections:
The North: Bison Boulder/Problem on the Fraser/Tilted Tables and a Rumpled Carpet/Oolichan Oregon/Danube of the West/Follow Us/Ancient Trails/Hell’s Bypass/Big Bend Buried
The South: Petrified River/Forged in Fire/Sunken Treasure and Big Dogs/Trickle to a Flood/Almost Washed Away/A-Bombs and Apples
Returning Home: Following McLoughlin/Navigating the Fraser
Sci-Fi series.
A lifetime project first typed into my cutting-edge college IBM Personal XT Computer (with a cobbled on 10MB brick of a hard drive) in 1988, expanded upon in my early forties as I typed on my laptop to whittle away too many lonely hours on business flights and in distant hotel rooms, and now, resurrected a second time as I push into my sixties. This ever-expanding story of the blurred lines between dogmatic cultural religion, individual spirituality, and an evolving human ability to sense, physically encounter, and influence spatial dimensions beyond the three that most homo sapiens perceive they exist in, has held my interest for almost forty years. My long-term goal is to bring it fully to life, concept by concept, character by character, one suspenseful twist after the other. This is my back-burner project.