Whether you’re a weekend warrior, a committed backcountry rambler or an armchair aficionado, a new hiking magazine based in Deer Isle promises to whet your appetite for hiking adventures.
Senior Hiker, a glossy, high-quality publication loaded with color photos, feature stories and practical tips, published its first issue earlier this fall. It includes stories from as far away as Wicklow Mountains National Park south of Dublin, Ireland, and as close as the mountain-inspired art of Maine master printmaker Siri Beckman.
In addition, you’ll find a description of a hard-scrabble trek to the Alpine Garden on Mount Washington in New Hampshire, a celebration of off-trail hiking in the Catskills, tips for hiking safely alone, an eloquent photo essay from the White Mountains, a sprinkling of quotes from the naturalist John Muir and a poem by the ancient Chinese poet Li Po.
The inspiration for the publication came about last year during a family hike on Mount Washington, said publisher and lifelong hiker Lisa Schoonmaker, 68, who lives in Deer Isle.
“We found ourselves on a trail that was much steeper and more strenuous than we expected,” she said. “We started joking that our imminent demise would be written up in ‘Senior Hiker,’ this nonexistent magazine we dreamed up on the spot.”
It was all a joke to keep their spirits up, but something clicked that day for Schoonmaker, whose professional background includes copy editing, marketing and communications .
“I went home and opened a new document on my computer and typed ‘Senior Hiker’ across the top,” she recalled.
She added a bit of text about the recent hike, and then a “welcome to the first issue” message. She emailed it to a group of hiking buddies.
“It was still just keeping the joke alive,” Schoonmaker said.
But before long, her friends were encouraging her to get serious.
“I have all these friends who love to hike,” she said, and they all had stories, photos, artwork, ideas, energy and enthusiasm to contribute.
She briefly considered launching an online journal, but quickly decided that a high quality glossy format was needed to do justice to photos and artwork.
“Also, I started thinking of the demographic of people who will enjoy this,” she said. “So many of our friends are 50 and over; they go online, but they still like to read a newspaper, to hold a magazine in their hands. They like the tangible quality of something they can touch and feel and maybe keep.”
For the next issue, available in February, Schoonmaker has reached out to “friends of friends and contacts of contacts” for stories, photographs and other content.
“My goal is to extend our reach out of the northeast,” she said.
Accordingly, she’ll be including a piece about hiking on Carriacou, a tiny island in the Caribbean Sea near Granada, as well as a profile of a senior hiking group based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
There will be a column on avoiding getting lost in the woods and how to get found again if you do, and one on older hikers’ health considerations.
Contributors, who must be 50 or older, will be paid about $200 per story, depending on length, number of photos and other factors. By recruiting older contributors, Schoonmaker hopes to appeal to an audience of the same age.
“The community of older hikers has seen a lot of change over time. They are sensitive to changes in the environment, including the overuse and mismanagement of trails, pollution and the effects of climate change,” she said. “That older sensibility will be reflected in the magazine, in stories that are about experiencing the beauty and diversity of the environment and not about being the first one to get to the summit.”
Schoonmaker, who has osteoarthritis, understands that advancing age brings changes in physical ability. She hopes her magazine will help older people stay active in the outdoors even as they make certain accommodations.
“The real goal is to encourage older people to continue to do the things they love,” she said. “As you get older, there are going to be limitations, but you can still get out and do what you can while you can.”
And when you can’t anymore, you can still dream.
Senior Hiker will be published three times per year and printed in Augusta. A one-year subscription is $25. For more information, visit seniorhikermagazine.com.
