This stretch of coastal terrace rolls gently along the seaward edge of the farm fields. Two substantial steel bridges carry the trail across deep gulches vegetated in coastal scrub and near its midpoint the trail switchbacks down to a shorter bridge across Purisima Creek.

The land has been farmed for well over a century; POST’s conservation easements have helped stave off development pressure from nearby Half Moon Bay and hopefully will ensure the farm operations are viable for generations to come. The main ranch complex — several houses, outbuildings, and a white barn — is just north of Pilarcitos Creek. In early Fall, the northern 3/5 of the terrace was planted in brussels sprouts and beans; the southern 2/5 was fallow pasture and a dormant pumpkin patch.

The chance to wander this landscape at a walking pace offers a whole new perspective. You can look down on these pristine little crescent beaches at several points along the new trail, and gaze back at the hills. Pelicans and gulls fly just off-shore at eye level, coasting on the wind rising over the blufftops. We also saw a number of little songbirds and at least a dozen bunnies. The trail is distant enough from Highway 1 that traffic is hardly heard. The southern viewpoint has a glorious view north all the way to Pillar Point.

On our August, weekend visit there were dozens of people fishing on Cowell Ranch Beach, with carts for their fishing gear parked near the head of the stairs, plus picnickers. Its popularity also means the northern trailhead tends to fill up (with overflow parking on the east shoulder of Hwy 1 if you’re careful). At first we saw few people along the trail, but I’m sure as it gets to be known that will change.

Here’s how the trail looks added to my Trails of the Coastside map. Feel free to copy for personal use. I’m doing a 2nd edition of the Coastside map in mid-2012 (If you have an old map and would like a page of stickers to add the new trails early, drop me an email at the Pease Press website). – bp

Map of Cowell-Purisima Trail near Half Moon Bay, CA

I do use circled cross-hairs as registration marks on the edges of my big, color maps, to make sure the color plates line up perfectly; they get trimmed off after printing, before the maps are folded.

The Atlas has been everywhere recently (even though it’s sold out of its first printing – new ones on the way by the end of December). Most recently this morning, on KALW’s marvelous little 5-minute broadcast “99% Invisible. Producer Roman Mars and Rebecca Solnit talked about two of Shiz’s maps: Death and Beauty (homicides and cypress trees throughout the city) and Treasure Map (49 places around the city we know and love, from WPA murals to buried ships and  nesting herons). Roman’s December 13th blog post has images of two maps and a good portion of the intro text, plus a link to the podcast. Pease Press in a pPodcast!

With Thanksgiving behind us, I’m happy to report the map IS available in stores. There’s a list of stores on our website, which I’ll update as more locations come aboard. In downtown San Francisco, it’s at Alexander Book Company and The Green Arcade; in the northern half of the city it’s at Russian Hill Bookstore, the Warming Hut, Green Apple, and Japonica. It’s at Bird and Beckett in Glen Park, and at Books Inc. (various locations) and I’m pretty sure it’s at Book Passage (Corte Madera and SF Ferry Building). 

Pretty soon we should have it in a couple bookstores on Valencia, plus Bernal Heights and Noe Valley. I haven’t found just the right store in the Inner Sunset District (which for all other purposes is the city’s perfect commercial district), but something will come up. Getting it into REI through the proper channels should happen in a month or two. 

In the East Bay, try Moe’s and Builder’s Booksource in Berkeley; on the Peninsula, Kepler’s in Menlo Park; in Marin try Book Passage. 

Not entirely believing the map would be finished until I held it in my hot little hand, I FINALLY added the map to my catalog, so you can take a peek and order by mail. Suggested retail price is $7.95. With sales tax the price is $8.76 each.  Add $0.50 per map for postage. On my website you order the old-fashioned way by printing out a form and mailing it with a check; if you want to use a credit card and a virtual shopping cart, you can order the map from Bored Feet Press  and check out their great selection of books and maps of Northern California.

updated and re-posted 12/3/2010

The final map is 33.75 inches wide x 25 inches tall, double-sided. It is as much a neighborhood map as a trail map, hence the departure from my usual “Trails of…” titles. (Some of the city’s best trails are streets). The north and south maps overlap about a mile, in a swath stretching from Golden Gate Park to AT&T Park.
It’s an unusual format for a city map, but this is no usual map. The north map extends north to Sausalito, Rodeo Valley, and Angel Island; the south map shows the trails of Mt. Sutro and Twin Peaks area, Glen Canyon, McLaren Park, and San Bruno Mountain.

One of my goals was to show the city book-ended by its natural habitats, so you can get in touch with the fragments of coastal scrub and grassland that have been preserved (the city is unique in having a parks division that specifically manages 31 natural areas), then see the same landscapes, bigger, in the Marin Headlands and San Bruno Mountain. Most city parks stop at the County line, but for a trail/habitat map, that’s just where things get really interesting. I am very happy to cross those lines with this map.

And you can use the very same map to find the historical markers on the waterfront, ride the bus, climb stairways, visit the streetcar suburbs (via streetcar!) and find a nice cup of coffee

So the map will be out by Thanksgiving; first place to find it (besides by mail) is at Green Arcade Bookstore at Gough and Market, and 17th and Balboa Market in the Richmond. Books Inc. has a bunch on order (if my distributor and I can sneak them in before the holiday rush). By early 2011 I should have it at REI, the Warming Hut, and other bookstores. It’s a steal at $7.95.

Thank you all for your patience and encouragement.

Here’s a sample of Buena Vista Park, which along with Golden Gate Park and downtown is shown as a detail map. The blue Ridge Trail route along the east edge of the park is my plain, simple detour around the park we planned in 1989; it is signed for both bikes (on street) and hikers (on sidewalk). There is an exciting proposal to route the hiker’s route over the center of the park using a combination of new and old trails. It will take some doing to get it approved and signed, but it will give a much more intimate view of the park (and from the park). 

Detail of Buena Vista Park trails

Having put in a few solid weeks of work, the San Francisco map is looking beautiful, loose ends and all. I’ve added lots of landmarks and now trail mileages. Haven’t written a word of text, but my to-do lists could fill all the space on the map. Heck, my THANK YOU list could fill half the map, and I’m sort of a recluse. I’m planning to print in September, so I have my work cut out for me. Which will make me even more of a recluse. I do remember to field check things around the city from time to time. This week I’m hoping to get out and scout views from Russian, Nob, and Telegraph Hills. 

The other day I went to check on the Arboretum and ended up walking a couple miles to document which paths got moved. Sort of dead reckoning with the map and my memory of how things were, plus tracing the newly seeded lawn where the old geometric paths have been removed and rerouted. Interesting to see old, familiar places made ADA-accessible. 

Since the finished map has a semi-opaque relief layer, it’s a little frustrating to output it. I am working as far as I can in FreeHand, then importing it to Illustrator, where I have to move the relief to a mid-level layer, grab the brush and beach fills and make a copy with a swatch pattern for brush and beach sand respectively (Illustrator doesn’t import FreeHand’s tiled or postscript fills). And adjust a bit of type. I think by week’s end I’ll have made a couple files that make this transition as easy as possible (say 50% easier). I’m not ready to work in Illustrator yet; there are just too many stupid things it does. (Old time FreeHand users can list dozens or hundreds of shortcomings; a few more practical Illustrator converts have invented, and shared, scripts that replicate some of what Illustrator ought to do; for which I am highly grateful).

I AM enjoying Illustrator CS4′s capability to make multiple, overlapping artboards; once the file IS set up in Illustrator I can play with how the front and back sides of the map overlap, and keep adjusting the position of the artboards to print out samples of each side exactly how I want them.  Heck, I’m even using the map to navigate around the city.

When I get a few more projects out of the way this week I’ll post some images. I promised that last month, didn’t I. It’s been a heck of a month.

I brought along my draft Trails of San Francisco map but did very little direct work on it. Italy was distracting enough it took all our attention. However I did get to explore our area with two marvelous trail maps by MU Edizioni. They were fabulous guides for a stranger in a strange land, with every roadside shrine, regional trails, mule tracks, houses, place names, shaded relief, the works. At scales of 1:12,500 (roughly half the scale or 4 times the resolution of your standard 1:24,000 USGS map) and 1:20,000. I realized the scale of my own trail map was headed in the wrong direction (smaller and smaller to fit more acreage, but so small the trails within the parks weren’t readable, which was the point of the map in the first place). First thing I got home was enlarge my map about 150%, from 1:30,000 to 1:20,000, and let the scale determine the paper size, rather than vice versa. The sights of the city have a lot more breathing room, and what falls off the map will fall on my next edition of the Coastside, plus (dare I introduce another map in progress) Marin Headlands/Tamalpais in 2011.

There are still hundreds of little things to clean up, and dozens of loose ends with the format, plus running it by agency folks for review, but the San Francisco map really will come out this summer. Pretty soon I’ll post some previews. Thanks to everyone for your patience!

I’m catching up with my other work; I’ll slip in a trip report when time permits, and San Francisco is underway.

On the east side the trail crew has rebuilt the alternating granite and wood steps so they’re all stone (old curbstones extracted from the nearby underbrush) with a uniform rise and run. The crest has new wooden steps replacing an eroded step-down. And down the west side,  they removed the old, rotted wood bench on the north side of the trail, which had been a welcome resting spot, but whose view had disappeared behind a young cypress tree. In its place, masons built a handsome pair of stone benches on the uphill side of the trail. Each seats 2-4 people and provides a snippet of view west toward the Pacific.

Trails in GGNRA's Lands End (excerpted from Trails of San Francisco map)

The big stairway is located halfway between the Camino del Mar and Merrie Way, about 0.5 mile from each trailhead.

I am an early adopter about some things, but I’m just about the last person in my family to start a blog. My dad has one, my partner started one last month. My brother and his wife each have one; even my niece’s guinea pig has one.

I’ve certainly read my share of blogs (particularly since getting DSL and marveling at the 2008 election). And I’ve found some really neat blogs, on topics ranging from public transit to trails to Alaskan politics.

I have taken a few stabs at making my website work like a blog, but with tools like WordPress and Blogspot, there’s no sense recreating the wheel (and all those links, folders, and self-updating archives). So here I am! I’m kinda excited.  It’s going to take a little while to get started — I went to add a link to the list and accidentally erased the page I was working on. And I’m the guy who says “save early and often.” I’ve reconstructed about half of my brilliant first post here, and as they say, it’s easier the second time around, and the rest I’ll catch later.

As I was writing a moment ago, my goal for this blog is to let you know about interesting projects and techniques relating to my freelance cartography business, Pease Press, and (if not too off-topic) other relevant aspects of my life. The other big chunk of content will be news of San Francisco Bay Area trails and neighborhoods. I publish a line of Bay Area trail maps. I don’t get a chance to update them on a regular basis, but I’m always finding new trails and hikes, and occasionally favorite trails fall into the brink. There are also a number of great websites and books out there which deserve mention, and/or links. 

No one platform is perfect, but I look forward to finding and sharing my voice about things that matter to me (environment, food, trails, neighborhood, hidden histories). And  connecting people with ideas, and linking to other, better voices. Here and in the real world.