Ron Strickland, Ph.D., began to create the 1200-mile Pacific Northwest National Scenic Trail in 1970.  Seven years later he founded the non-profit Pacific Northwest Trail Association (PNTA) to locate, develop, maintain, and protect the Trail.  He described its Continental Divide-to-Pacific Ocean route in The Pacific Northwest Trail Guide.  His current project is the creation of the transcontinental Sea-to-Sea Route.  He is excited about the Sea-to-Sea's (1) vast scale, (2) proximity to record numbers of potential hikers, and (3) potential to transform America’s National Trails System.

Dr. Strickland is fascinated with America's regions. As early as 1964 he sought the first person, local perspective at Vermont's School For International Training where he deployed teams of foreign students to survey farmers about rural school consolidation.  Years passed and he forgot about those barnyard interviews as he worked to locate, develop, and protect the Pacific Northwest Trail (PNT).  During the 1970's he was totally focused on raising funds, recruiting volunteers, cutting brush, digging dirt, and lobbying landowners, officials, and politicians.  However, out in the backcountry he accidentally turned up many priceless narratives.  And when it became clear that people's vanishing lifestyles needed a chronicler, he collected some of those stories in River Pigs And Cayuses (1984.)  The creation of that first book inspired him to record the process of change in other regions. So far he has published and illustrated 5 such volumes and begun others about the South, Midwest, and Far West.