Added soon after posting: Thanks to siriosa, Rana, Eric Brunner-Williams, and Coturnix (in chronological order) for sending their readers over to donate.
Creek Running North readers have responded with humbling generosity to my request for funds to cover expenses in finishing the Joshua tree book. At this writing, a total of 1,121.59 has been deposited in my Amazon account — this is net, after Amazon skims its couple of percent off the top. People have let me know a few other donations are on their way in check form, and one significant in-kind donation is in the works. I am very grateful for the response so far. Thank you all.
And I got a couple helpful pieces of critical feedback from people who felt I could have done a couple things to help potential donors. And those helpful pieces of critical feedback were utterly correct.
The first, from an old colleague in the non-profit world, pointed out that I was doing what I think is called “burying the ask”: the post in which i asked for donations starts out with 1090 words of not asking for donations. Fair enough: the ask is in the first sentence of this post.
The second pointed out that a bit more detail on the nature of the expenses I face might be informative to Joshua tree book supporters. So I did a little bit of figuring. Looks like I will have access to a 4WD vehicle for some site visits I’ve been needing to make, and I figured out fuel costs for four of those trips. The result, detailed below the fold, kinda surprised me: $954. That’s $954 bucks in gasoline alone, for just four trips. This is an expensive undertaking, this book: I’ve spent ten years filling gas tanks to get out there, not to mention all the other expenses involved, and I’ll only get that back in sales if I am very lucky. What Beth said about royalties in comments to the previous thread is depressingly true.
So I am very, very grateful for the support Creek Running North readers have shown so far, and your further donations are not only greatly appreciated but much-needed.
It’s an intriguing thing, this community-supported book writing idea, and I’m glad to be part of it. I’m thankful so many of you have chosen to be part of it too. The Amazon donation page is here, and if you click the “send info” button to let me know who you are, I’ll be glad to acknowledge your help in the book, and — as I realized last night I owe this to the book’s supporters — I’ll put you on an email list to receive periodic updates from me about the book project. (I’ll check to make sure you want to be on the list before I add you.)
I’ll get back now to writing thank you letters to the kind people who’ve chipped in. Look for a non-fundraising blog post sometime in the next 48 hours. Thanks for your support.
Gasoline expenses for four field study trips:
St George, Utah: Base camp for visits to Bulldog Canyon and Beaver Dam Wash, the Virgin River gorge, and Pakoon Springs, Arizona, to study the extremes of the tree’s range in the east and recovery (or lack thereof) of a few burn sites of different ages. It’s 700 miles from here to St. George, and call it conservatively 200 miles of driving from site to site. An optimistic 20 miles per gallon, and a probably even more optimistic $4.00 per gallon (it’s that much already in Baker), and that’s $320 in gas money alone.
Tres Alamos Wilderness, Arizona: I tried to get here with the two wheel in 2006, and couldn’t. This is wild land where the range of the Joshua tree slips well into the Sonoran Desert, and failing to make observations here would be a marked gap in the book. It’s just under 750 miles one way, and using the above assumptions that’s $300 in gas money round trip.
Tikaboo Valley, NV: Gateway to Area 51 and the backdoor of the Nevada Test Site. The Tikaboo valley is the one place in the world where both subspecies of Joshua tree grow wild. This valley is reachable by paved road, but to get to where wildlife can be observed unmolested by road traffic and Wackenhut rent-a-cops with shoot-to-kill orders, one needs 4WD. It’s a little over 1,000 miles round trip: $200 in gasoline.
Joshua Flat, CA: North end of Death Valley National Park, and one of the northernmost populations of the tree. Reachable on the Death Valley Road from Big Pine, which is marginally drivable in good conditions with a high-clearance two-wheel drive: if so I might be able to shave 20 percent off the below totals. If Tioga Pass, the shortest route, is open, Joshua Flat is a 675 mile round trip, and $134 in gasoline. (If the southern passes are closed and I go by way of Tahoe, add another twenty bucks.)
