Field Notes Explore America, on the Way

For anyone who collected the National Parks series and wished there were more, this one is for you. Field Notes has launched Explore America, a new ongoing series that picks up where the National Parks left off, and the first two 3-Packs are heading our way.

On the Way

Field Notes Explore America — Northern California and the Triple Crown of Hiking

The Explore America series broadens the scope beyond America's national parks to include monuments, forests, coastlines, and long-distance trail networks. The first two releases are a Northern California 3-Pack and a Triple Crown of Hiking 3-Pack covering the Appalachian, Pacific Crest, and Continental Divide trails.

Crucially, this is a continuation of Field Notes' collaboration with the artists of The Fifty-Nine Parks Print Series — the same illustrators behind the National Parks covers that became one of the most-loved Field Notes runs in recent memory. The headline addition to the roster this time is Shepard Fairey, whose cover for The Big Sur Coast anchors the Northern California 3-Pack. For a series built on the WPA poster tradition, having the artist behind the Obama "Hope" poster and the OBEY campaign step in is no small thing. Glenn Thomas returns with Muir Woods and the Continental Divide Trail, Chris Turnham with Golden Gate and the Pacific Crest Trail, and Benjamin Flouw with the Appalachian Trail.

A small piece of context for newer Field Notes followers: The Fifty-Nine Parks Print Series is a screen-printed poster project that pairs a different contemporary artist with each U.S. national park, often compared to the WPA park posters of the 1930s though the project itself describes its aesthetic as a contemporary parallel rather than a throwback. Each poster is screen-printed in the USA, and a portion of every sale supports public-lands conservation. Field Notes' first collaboration with the project produced the original National Parks editions, and the partnership has clearly proven strong enough to extend into a dedicated, ongoing series — now with Shepard Fairey in the mix.