About a month ago it occurred to me that all the hikes I’ve been writing about at my homepage might constitute “local copy” that the folks at the paper might be interested in publishing somewhere. I mentioned this to one of the folks who occupy glass offices and make Important Editorial Decisions (like where to run the Anna Nicole’s Baby’s Dad Identified story) and like a bolt from the blue, the reply came: Great! Let’s put this in the entertainment section! I was hoping for something easy that I could cut and paste for the Web site but now it turns out I’ve volunteered to do some actual work: writing a twice-monthly column about local hikes for the “Eye” section (which will, of course, be renamed “Feet” when they name me Executive Editor).

So, starting next week and every couple weeks after that the paper will run profiles of local parks and trail recommendations and, oddly enough, pay me to assemble them. I also need a little tagline explaining why folks ought to be reading my copy, and this ol’ blog is just the ticket for the task, with one small problem: it has no local copy. It’s that way on purpose — I keep my hikes at my homepage and write mostly about other people’s hikes here.

I could just start doing my hike write-ups here, which would have the twin benefits of annoying all the folks who like reading my write-ups where they are already, and driving way all my readers who don’t care to be reminded how much cooler the Bay Area’s trails are compared to theirs.

So I’m going to have a compromise: a list of links to my hikes in the right-hand rail. This should help introduce a few local readers to the wider hiking blogosphere and still provide links to trails they may be thinking about hiking.

Good thing I got that all settled, eh?