San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
SALES OF CAMPING, HIKING GUIDEBOOKS RISE AS AMERICANS TAKE TO OUTDOORS
American travelers aren’t taking the pandemic sitting down.
They are showing an increased interest in hiking, bicycling and other outdoor getaways.
Even the esteemed 94year-old wildlife filmmaker Sir David Attenborough has weighed in on visiting nature during the pandemic.
In a recent “60 Minutes” interview, Attenborough observes that “people who have never listened to a bird song, are suddenly thrilled, excited, supported, inspired by the natural world.”
And outdoor escapes as basic as going for a long walk seem to be accompanied by another basic: the travel guidebook.
Sales of hiking and camping guides are up, consumer analysts say.
“It was a very, very good summer for road trips, camping, driving and closer-tohome travel,” says Kristen Mclean, primary industry analyst for NPD Books, which monitors retail trends.
Overall, travel-guide sales are down because European and global travel is essentially nonexistent for Americans, Mclean says, speaking by phone from her office in Miami. However, she says, “maps and atlases sold well,” as did guides on parks, campgrounds, hiking, ecotourism and family travel this year. Other retail trends offer a clue as to where those brandnew maps may be leading COVID-ERA travelers. Sales of hiking boots, for example, are up 10 percent, NPD data shows.
According to NPD Bookscan’s list, among topselling travel titles through mid-september in the United States were “The Camping Logbook,” and the “SAS Survival Handbook: The Ultimate Guide to Surviving Anywhere.”
At Field Notes, the Chicago-based producer of notebooks and related stationery products, President Jim Coudal says the National Parks notebook three-packs “have been flying out of here since March.”
“I think lots of people have been planning, taking or dreaming about road trips while stuck in their house. I know I have.”
Veteran long-distance hiker Barney Scout Mann, whose “Journeys North: The Pacific Crest Trail” was just released by Mountaineers Books, says we were already in an emerging golden age of hiking when everything changed. “COVID-19 just punched the afterburner on an already speeding jet” of popularity, he says.
Mann points to American Hiking Society numbers showing 34 million Americans hiked in 2013 and 9 million backpacked.
“Walking is the most natural thing we do,” Mann says.
Max Phelps, director of outdoor sales for the National Book Network, which distributes Falcon Guides, says U.S. guidebooks have been selling well in recent months.
Elaborating via email, Phelps writes, “Information on regional destinations that can be reached by car and where social distancing is less of a concern (or not a concern at all) are of considerable interest right now.”
Falcon Guides buyers, he says, showed particular interest in mountain towns in the Rockies, especially the northern Rockies, and in Maine.
At the Book Beat, an independent bookseller in suburban Detroit, co-owner Colleen Kammer says the staff has experienced a similar surge.
“At the end of August, before Labor Day, people wanted books on the Upper Peninsula,” Kammer says, referring to Michigan’s sparsely populated northern reaches, a place rich in natural beauty.
While not exactly Somerset Maugham, such guidebooks do stir longing for wide horizons and following in the footsteps of Henry David Thoreau, whose essay, “Walking,” was published in 1862; Cheryl Strayed, whose memoir on hiking the Pacific Crest Trail was made into a hit movie; and Robert Taylor, the first African American to thru-hike both the Appalachian and Pacific Crest trails.
The urge to explore is age old. And rare and antique guidebooks have been enjoying a resurgence in popularity, says Lucinda Boyle, travel specialist and shop manager for Shapero Rare Books in London, speaking via email.
“I always take a couple of printed guidebooks with me when I travel, an old one for the history and new one for current cultural information,” she says. “My personal favorite is the Baedeker series of handbooks.”
Founded by Karl Baedeker in 1827 and published by four generations of his family, the famed Baedeker travel guides covered dozens of countries in three languages. Baedeker was acquired in 1951 by Mairdumont, the German travelpublishing group, and is included among its several brands.