On the response to his books

Overall, it’s been overwhelmingly rewarding. [Writing my books] has been a great excuse to learn a lot about the land, the water, the culture and the geography of the places we hike. [My books] have helped some people learn more about environmental responsibility and the cultural history aspects of hiking trails. It seems like there’s a lot of appetite for people to learn more about the trails of B.C. I’ve gotten to meet lots of people who were interested in hiking and who actually got more into hiking because of the books. Especially during the pandemic, there were lots of people wanting to go hiking and to get off the popular trails. It seemed like my second book came out at just the right time for that.

On including Indigenous knowledge

Cease Wyss, the Squamish ethnobotanist, wrote the foreword [for 105 Hikes]. Cecilia Point, a Musqueam activist, wrote the foreword for [Destination Hikes]. Myia Antone, a young Squamish language teacher who encourages young people to get back on the land, wrote the foreword [for Best Hikes and Nature Walks with Kids]. [They] have a lot of local knowledge about the area, and two would say that they don’t hike. They just go out on the land and harvest. It’s a different way of looking at the environment than most of the settler population. Also, I’ve learned that so many of the places we go to, the beautiful places especially, tend to be sacred places, and there are sacred stories associated with them. So it’s really important to be careful with them and not remove or disturb anything.