June has always been my favorite month of the year. Summer takes over at the Solstice, when a long school break and road trips and vacations begin. When I was young, we launched summer by celebrating my birthday with a pool party and a Father’s Day barbecue.
June triggers adventure planning: Quick day-trips, overnight adventures, and long journeys to new places. Lounging days of reading. Movies in cool dark theaters. Hikes along the water’s edge. Packing overnight bags. Sand between our toes. Sunhats and sunscreen. Dips in the water. Sun tea and wine spritzers. Shade umbrellas. Blank white space on the calendar to squander as we please.
Ahh! Summer has just begun! What are your plans for summer?
Inconceivable! Twenty years ago, in June 2006, Cappy and I were in the final throes of preparing for the month-long adventure that would become Force of Nature: Three Women Tackle the John Muir Trail. Twenty years ago? How can that be?
That anniversary means TWO fun things:
Scroll to the end of this newsletter to read a brief excerpt from “Cornucopia,” one of several Force of Nature chapters that were left on the cutting room floor. Over the next couple of months, I’ll share photos and little stories from our Big Walk!
To celebrate 20 years, I’m combining energies with my friend Jann Alexander, author of the women’s historical fiction novel Unspoken, who is also celebrating an important anniversary. We are doing a drawing for book giveaways (2 paperbacks, 1 ebook, 1 audiobook). Click the image below to see all the details and to enter the drawing before August 7.
I believe in the power of stories!
Available to watch on Auburn Community Television (ACTV) and YouTube, the next installment of Reading in the Wild spotlights 3 terrific books. Though they all have a hiking-adventure theme, they deliver very different tales. All three come from my 2026 Earth Month Reading Challenge. The video is 20 minutes and includes enthusiastic book recommendations with special suggestions for book club readers! (Thanks to ACTV and manager/director/editor Philip Jacques.)
A Walk in the Park - a wild Grand Canyon adventure memoir by Kevin Fedarko.
Havoc: Trouble on the Trail - part of the Tyler Zahn adventure-thriller series by Cam Torrens set on the Colorado Trail.
Everest and the Rest of Us - an adventure-filled memoir by James Nehring that also investigates why humans are drawn to adventuring.
You can find the entire list of 30 nature-centered books at my website here.
When purchasing books, if you prefer to support local bookstores and avoid using Amazon, you can still conveniently order online while supporting the bookstore of your choice using Bookshop.org. The books I discuss in my Substack are spotlighted on my Bookshop.org page here.
I recently had the distinct honor of playing the role of Trail Angel to two friends who are hiking from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail. The PCT runs right through the Sierra Nevada, doubling up with the John Muir Trail for most of it’s 200 miles. The PCT by comparison is over 2600 miles! I met up with my friends, Cam Torrens (author of Havoc noted above) and his daughter Natasha, where the PCT intersects with Old Highway 40 near Donner Pass’s Rainbow Bridge.
I fed them lots and lots of the fresh foods they were craving. They restocked their packs at the market, mailed home no longer needed ice axes and spikes, showered, did laundry, and slept in my guest room.
I enjoyed an amazing vicarious thrill from filling them up and listening to their stories. Twenty years ago, I walked about 200 miles on the JMT in the lovely months of July and August. They traveled the same miles where the trail was buried deep in snow. I admired blue lakes, plunging waterfalls, and green meadows filled with seas of wildflowers. They saw meadows, frozen lakes, forests, and granite all turned white by a blanket of snow. We experienced very different versions of the High Sierra.
I dropped the two of them back the next day at the intersection where I found them, and they headed north at a 25-miles-a-day pace, so I’m sure by the time you read this, the father-daughter pair will be well inside Oregon.
The Big Edit…
It’s coming right along, one chapter at a time. I started at the beginning using comprehensive editorial advice from editors and critiquing partners. I even rearranged my book’s “Murder Board” to keep up with the new order!
Meanwhile Back at the Ranch…
Strangers in My Blood, my adoption memoir, is partly the story of meeting new half-siblings. Two months ago, I introduced you to my new half-sister Genie. Last month, I hinted you’d meet Glenn this month. (You can meet Christina in a couple more months. I’m stringing this out, hoping to pique your curiosity!)
Glenn and I are close in age, but because we didn’t know one another as children, we were both raised as the first-born, with the privileges and expectations of the eldest child in our parallel lives. We two share both genes and that “first born” attitude, so are alike in many ways. When we spend time on the phone, sitting on opposite coasts in New York and California, we talk away an hour digging into serious topics and laughing a lot!
However, there’s one slice of life where we’re very different. Like everyone else in his branch of the family, Glenn is an accomplished musician! (I didn’t get that gene!) He made his career in the music business, as owner of Bar/None Records. Now retired, he and his band, Glenn Morrow’s Cry For Help, are about to release their newest album in July. Glenn is much “cooler” than me. Check out the band, music, and album here.
You can watch and listen to the album’s trailer video by clicking on the image below.
“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use the more you have.” ― Maya Angelou
I love good stories, whether on the screen, on the stage, or in the pages of a book. I saw two excellent movies this month, Disclosure Day and Pressure. Have you seen them?
One, set in the near future, looks at the possibility that all the alien sightings over the decades were real and they live amongst us. Disclosure Day is a Spielberg movie and exhibits all the suspense and surprises you’d expect from him.
Pressure is set in the past, in the last few days before D-Day’s Allied invasion of Europe. The main characters are General Eisenhower, two expert meteorologists, and the weather. It was way way more exciting than that lineup might suggest!
Rotten Tomatoes Popcornmeter gives 95 to Pressure and 70 to Disclosure Day.
I get goosebumps every single time Force of Nature is spotted on a bookshelf in a library or a bookstore! It never ever gets old! Thanks, Bart O’Brien, for the photo and the alert! And thanks, Once Upon a Trapeze for stocking my adventure memoir!
Thank you for reading my book, following me online, and subscribing to my Substack blog/newsletter. I am beyond grateful for your support!
Books thrive in our busy world only when readers like you share them with others!
P.S. Be sure to invite me to attend your book club when you read my Force of Nature. I can join you in person if you’re nearby or via Zoom if you’re not. I have Book Club Kits, too, complete with goodies. Check out the Book Club page on my website.
Excerpt from “Cornucopia” — Twenty years ago, June 2006
I sat on my living room floor surrounded by mounds of food and supplies collected over the preceding weeks. Beside those piles stood my empty backpack and four boxes I’d soon ship ahead to resupply locations along the trail. One cardboard box, already packed, taped, and addressed to Red’s Meadow Resort, sat off to the side. It contained the first five days’ meals—four days of hiking plus one just-in-case extra day.
I addressed the second box to myself at Vermilion Valley Resort (VVR), where I intended to arrive on Day Nine. Red’s and VVR, commercial campgrounds on the border of the wilderness, sit a short hike off the JMT. For a moderate fee, they provide caching services to thru-hikers.
Container number three’s destination was Muir Trail Ranch. Near the halfway point along the trail, it’s pretty remote. They required that we pack our supplies inside five-gallon plastic paint buckets to keep the wildlife out.
To whittle down the mounds, I had measured and packaged individual portions into bags for each day. Thirty little bags of instant coffee. Thirty of Gatorade. Thirty of nuts and dried fruit. Thirty lunches. Thirty freeze-dried dinners. Then, each of those I arranged into larger bags, one for each day.
I looked around at the dwindling piles. “3000 calories! That’s a lot of food!” The meals were based on a 3000-calorie-per-day diet that included plenty of protein (for keeping muscles strong) and ample fats and carbohydrates (to maintain consistent energy).
Food for eleven days still waited to be packed. I’d carry six of those in the bear canister in my backpack on the first leg. The final five belonged to a box to be mailed to a packing service.
Just thinking of the final food cache plan made me a little nervous. The last spot where Cappy and I needed to resupply was nearly twenty miles from anywhere, so we arranged for a packing service to meet us right on the trail. Those arrangements left us both anxious. The fee was expensive, and the meet-up directions were vague.
Excitement overpowered my anxiety. Physically arranging food in boxes made the trip feel real. “This is actually going to happen!” My dream adventure was about to happen!
I turned to the final box. Food went in first, sturdy dinners in a pile at the bottom, then the more fragile lunches on top. I pressed protein bars snugly around the edges. Personal care and first aid items along with the softest bits—undies and socks—covered the meals. Chocolate treats and other surprises were cherries on the top. Finally, crumpled newspaper filled any empty space.
We three women planned to take our first steps on the trail at Tuolumne on Wednesday, July 19, 2006. So, I would mail my four carefully packed resupply containers at the post office on June 30… Twenty years ago!
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